Document. An article in the COMMONWEAL on page 315 entitled "The Non-Encyclical." ~ "Would publication of an encyclical specifically condemning racism and anti-Semitism have accomplished anything?" Gordon Zahn thinks an explicit encyclical would have helped the more crucial state of the Jews in Europe. "Nazi anti-Semitic practices would not have stopped," Zahn writes in the NCR, "but they may not have escalated to the stage of planned extermination. . . "