Should Pope Pius XII be made a saint?

The simple answer to that: It's none of your business.

The more theologically accurate answer is that it doesn't matter, what you, I, or anyone else thinks on the matter - not even the current pope. According to the rules of the Catholic Church, Pius XII either is a saint already or is not and can never be.

All that's left to the powers that be in the Vatican is to recognize him as the saint that he either is or is not.

Now that we've cleared that up, let's get back to the unseemly argument that seems to have broken out between the Jewish people and the Holy See. Only, once again, that too is not very inaccurate.

There are a number of arguments going on in that realm. One is between historians over facts and their interpretation. Not surprisingly, there are Jews on both sides of this argument.

Another debate is raging between Catholics and Catholics on matters of faith and religious politics.

There is also a third argument in the works between elements in the Vatican and some Jewish organizations, but this is just as much about style then about substance.

As for the historic debate, there is little an amateur can add. After reading two books, interviewing a number of experts and reading countless newspaper on the subject, I am no closer to reaching my personal conclusion on why Pius kept quiet during the Holocaust.

Was it because he wasn't very troubled by the extermination of the Jews and secretly prayed for a Nazi victory? Or was his silence rather a cover for valiant rescue efforts carried out with his encouragement?

Neither side has managed to produce enough evidence to convince me either way. And, I doubt they ever will since the only major remaining source of documents are the Vatican archives - and even when those open, you can almost be certain there will be nothing there to change anyone's mind.

If there was a document clearly showing Pius' involvement of behalf of the Jews, the Vatican would have displayed it prominently, and if there was a "smoking gun" proving him to be a collaborator, rest assured, it has long ago been removed.

The internal Catholic debate is especially interesting, both because it puts the entire Pius problem into context and because it neatly mirrors similar issues within the Jewish religious establishment.

Pius' WWII record is not the major consideration within the Vatican over his canonization. Those who revere him do so for his image as the last century's leading Catholic conservative. His adoration is a central tenet for those who believe in the most extreme version of papal infallibility.

If Pius XII has still not been recognized as a saint, it means for many Catholics that there is still a question mark looming over the historical role played by Rome during the entire era before, during and after the War.

It is a dispute that has been going on for centuries. The promulgation of papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council in 1870 caused Lord Acton to write his famous dictum: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Since then, subsequent popes have never retreated from the principle of infallibility, and, as a rule, were prudent in using it. The one striking exception to this rule was in 1950, when Pius XII ruled that the "assumption" of Mary is an article of faith of the Catholic Church.

Like Acton in 1870, infallibility still causes many Catholics discomfort, and for the conservative hardliners, his canonization is imperative to confirming their ascendancy within the church.

The current Pope Benedict XVI is quite rightly seen as a conservative but he is also a clever politician and is trying to tread a careful path between the factions in the church. He has infuriated the hardliners by not acting to bring Pius' beatification, the crucial step towards canonization, forward.

Judaism as a religion generally has a less developed sense of dogma than the Catholic Church, but many who rail against the paralysis of Orthodox rabbinical thinking, hidebound by relatively new concepts such as Da'at Torah (knowledge of the Bible), emunath hachamim (faith in the sages)and hadash asur min hatorah (anything new is forbidden by the torah), will sympathize with Catholics who struggle to preserve their faith in the face of papal infallibility.

As a response to haskalah (Jewish enlightenment), the rabbinical establishment tried to stifle debate by commanding allegiance to tradition and strictures that were to suddenly stop evolving.

All this leads to the latest acrimonious round of charges between elements in the Vatican and Jewish representatives over the caption in the Yad Vashem Museum on Pius, the supposed cancellation of Benedict's visit to Israel and the threats of what might happen to Jewish-Catholic dialog if Pius is indeed canonized.

Yad Vashem certainly should not allow itself to be bullied into changing what its experts believe to be the historical facts - and the future of Israel-Vatican relations cannot be hostage to that. The threats of Jewish leaders of the harm that will be caused by the canonization are equally out of order.

The diplomatic and inter-religious issues between Israel, Jewish organizations and the Vatican and the historical debate over what the pope did in the Holocaust should not be connected to the question of whether Eugenio Pacelli is to become St. Pius or not.

That is quite simply a matter of Vatican political power games and Jews really have no business getting involved in them.