I looked at your full posting on Deja.com.  When I said that Wills
condemned Pope Pius XII I did not mean he joined in Cornwell's sweep-
ing condemnation, but that he condemned him on specific points.
However, one of your paragraphs calls for fuller attention.  You
wrote:

    (Incidentally, I can't help but be impressed how, while so-called
    conservatives inside and outside the Church love to attack liber-
    als for their alleged "moral relativism," when it comes to uncom-
    fortable matters such as past Popes expressing racist views,
    suddenly we're implored to  understand the poor old fellows in
    the context of their times.  The same "relativism" that's wicked
    when used to mildly opine that perhaps homosexuality isn't evil
    suddenly glows with spiritual virtue when it offers a handy
    excuse for the powerful.)

The Catholic Church, along with, I assume, many other groups, distin-
guishes between the objective morality of an act and the moral re-
sponsibility of someone who performs the act.  There are many circum-
stances that can diminish, or even completely eliminate the moral
responsibility of someone who performs an objectively wrong act.  I
have in front of me a booklet textbook _Catholic Morality_ published
in a series "Studies in Religion for High School and Adult Groups".
It has a 1939 copyright, well before Vatican II.

In discussing the difference between mortal and venial sin it says,

    1. The first condition. What is done must be a serious violation
    of God's law either in itself or by reason of the
    circumstances. ...

    2. The second condition.  The seriousness of the sin must be
    clearly known at the time it is committed.  One who commits a
    moral sin, thinking at the time and through no fault of his own
    that it is only a venial, is not guilty of mortal sin but of
    venial sin because he id not have the intention of committing a
    mortal sin.

    3. The third condition.  There must be full consent of the
    will. ...

The formulation I learned as a child was "grievous matter, sufficient
reflection, and full consent of the will."

I will expand on the second condition, which is the important one for
this discussion, that someone who commits a mortal sin, thinking at
the time and through no fault of his own that it is not a sin at all
is not guilty of any sin.

Moral relativism, which the Church condemns, denies that actions are
objectively immoral.  An extreme example that was widely publicized a
while ago was a report by a college professor that his students were
so affected by moral relativism that they would not say that Nazi
genocide was wrong.  They didn't approve of Nazi genocide, but they
wouldn't say the Nazis had done something morally wrong.

That is not the same as saying we should take into account a person's
cultural background when considering his actions and should not judge
people who lived in a different time and place by the standards of
1999 America.

As I was typing this I suddenly remembered a passage in Hayakawa's
_Language in Thought and Action_.  It's been years since I read it,
so I'm fuzzy on some of the details, but Hayakawa, then a professor,
wrote that a black colleague once told him that when he was a young
man, probably when he was in college, he was hitchhiking in a rural
area in the West or Midwest.  This probably would have been in the
1920s or 30s.   He stopped at a farmhouse seeking food and shelter.
Instead of turning him away or giving him some food at the door and
letting him sleep in the barn the farmer and his wife invited him in.
They gave him a room in their house to sleep in and let him eat with
them at the table.  The only problem was that the farmer kept refer-
ring to him as a "nigger", saying things like, "Imagine that.  We've
got a real nigger staying with us."  Finally the young man could take
it no longer and said, "You've been very kind to me, and I appreciate
it, but why do you keep calling me a nigger?"  The farmer replied
with some puzzlement, "What do you mean?  You are a nigger, ain't
you?"  Was the farmer a racist because he called the black man a
nigger?  No, his actions showed he was not a racist.  He used the
word "nigger" because that was the word he knew for a black man and
he was unaware of its derogatory connotations.

I think it's in the "little list" song in _The Mikado_ that Gilbert
used the then current phrase "nigger minstrel".  Was Gilbert a racist
because he used the then current phrase?  Was the phrase itself
racist?  Very likely, but not with the same kind of racism as that of
a Klansman who uses it today.  It would be wrong to say that a Victo-
rian Englishman who used the phrase necessarily had the same kind of
racism as a 1999 Klansman who uses the word "nigger".
-------
Marty Helgesen
Bitnet: mnhcc@cunyvm   Internet: mn...@cunyvm.cuny.edu

"Ever noticed how many people claim it's organized religion they
object to?  Makes me wonder what's so great about incoherent
religion."                         Teresa Nielsen Hayden