Talk:Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address

A fact from Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 August 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address was interpreted differently throughout Europe by contemporaries and remains a "lightning rod" of historical interpretations?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/August.

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Rejoinder: plural or singular?

"Maglione's oft-repeated rejoined to the effect " Is this rejoinders in the original text?--Wetman (talk) 06:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It was a typo. The original is "rejoinder". Thanks for catching. Savidan 06:22, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Broader perspective

I understand that this is a new article, and I'm no expert on the subject (so I can't add much to it), but it seems right now that this article focuses excessively on Michael Phayer's interpretation and perspective of the address. Kelvinc (talk) 05:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Phayer agrees that the 1942 speech did denounce genocide, but argues that "it is still not clear whose genocide or which genocide he was referring to, and we can do no more than speculate as to why he spoke out".

It looks like the pope's speach was well-worded., but the aticle is missing historical perspectives. At the time, all over the world racial hatred and persecusions intensified during the time. Jews, Gypsies, the Chinese, Poles, Serbs, Croats, 'subhumans" of the Soviet Union, and many others were killed because of their race. European internees in East Asia and the Japanese in the US and Canada were rounded up in camps for a "slow decline". And the mass deportations of many ethnic groups by Stalin were just two months away (E.g. almost half of Crimean Tatars and Chechens would perish in deportations). Alltogether tens of milllions died due to their being "ethnically unappreciated" and expendable - most of them Chinese and Slavic. So, if the pope had just mentioned some of the specific cases, the rest of the perpetrators would think "ok, that does not apply to us". And now modern "criticizers" would find still other reasons to blame Pius for, and would cry out: "Aha, the pope stood up for these victims and not for those". But in his speach he said, that no-one ever is allowed to persecute others for their race or ethnicity. With no exceptions. Vox Veritatae —Preceding unsigned comment added by 135.12.8.34 (talk) 06:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to add any cited and attributed "perspectives". Savidan 03:00, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Date of Christmas address not given

There's no reason, linguistically, to assume that the Christmas address was delivered on Christmas day itself (or that 25 December is fixed in the mind of all English speakers the world over, but that's another matter).

Many times, in other contexts, this construction would mean "the address occasioned by Christmas, with usually some close temporal proximity as mediated by custom, convenience, and ritual".

Consider, for example, "commencement address", where the diploma ceremony is somewhat independent of obtaining the final requisite (and its subsequent bureaucratic ratification, which probably takes place in a stuffy administrative office, well before the captive, enrobed oratory).

So perhaps we should just go ahead and state the obvious: that the address was delivered on 25 December (supposing my guess is actually correct, and it's not delivered at 2300 on xmas eve). — MaxEnt 00:18, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Me again.

I looked that the wording again, and it says "on Christmas 1942" at least suggesting that Christmas stands for one fixed, defined date, where only one reasonable candidate exists. Nevertheless, according to our own resident weasel:

Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world.

Also, when I grew up, Easter was (primarily) three days: good Friday, the Saturday straddled, and Easter Sunday; I also knew that there were more distinctions in the week preceding Easter Sunday (but I wasn't very clear on what they were). If you had tried to pin me down on a formal meaning of Easter, I probably would have guessed that (pedantic) "Easter" referred to the entirety of the crucifixion and resurrection.

Then there's the whole thing about xmas as a calendrically fixed date, and Easter as a floating date.

This are a lot of cultural baggage for English speaking people with little or no Christian context to wade through.

And this speech is not entirely an xmas artifact, either; anyone with an interest in the politics of the holocaust could land here, quite independent of their familiarity with the Christian calendar, and its major occasions, and their calendrical quirks. — MaxEnt 01:04, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]