I haven't got the time or energy to revisit my lost post. I've been driving around all day in the service of others and I'm bloody knackered, and if I stayed up until two in the morning I'd be wrecked tomorrow. Damn.

What I gleaned before making that post is that, sure, Joe, Pius XII was not a bad man. But I think he was overwhelmed by political figures who had ten times the guile that he had. A man cloistered in seminaries, then in the rarefied air of the Church institutions, shackled by the moral mores of his religion, was not able to exercise the naked expedience of the seasoned politico. And when you consider that those politicos were Hitler and Mussolini, well, frankly, what chance did he really have?

The criticism is that he serially vacillated. Didn't speak out. You say, what else could he do? Some would answer, he could have gone for broke. His mentor Jesus went for broke when he threw over the tables in the temple. He knew what was happening to the Jews. He saw his role as trying to strike a balance when "balance" was the last bloody thing that six million Jews needed to hear. He serially disappointed the good people who needed the one and only forceful non-combatant voice that was even remotely conceivable in the darkest days of the war. He was a massive let-down, a man whose courage failed. That's what I read again and again about him when I was making that post. I've got to get to bed!