Wow, there are five posts in my Inbox. I've just read this one, so far, and have to go to bed soon...
But I do have to express a certain, er, cynicism at these remarks of the Pope. For example,
How could man have such utter contempt for man? Because he had reached the point of contempt for God. Only a godless ideology could plan and carry out the extermination of a whole people.
Does the Inquisition ring a bell?
How about being in collusion with the extermination of a whole people? Not opposing it? Feeling, peut etre, an "extreme need for Silence" as the butchery proceeded. His Christian ideology had little problem with that. Signing a deal not to interfere with it if the Nazis collected taxes for you? Was that the fault of a "Godless ideology"?
How dare he. I mean, really, the nerve.
I'm glad he feels so bad about it all in retrospect. I didn't notice an actual apology for the Church's unhelpfulness to the victims of the extermination, but maybe he has given one elsewhere.
Okay, the Pope, and Church, made a boo boo. They felt an extreme (and useful to themselves) "need for Silence" as the millions were slaughtered. They were deaf to the "heart rending laments of so many" he now laments. Let them please admit their part in the "terrible tragedy of the Shoah" and not blame it on atheists. Please.
Hitler was the product of a Catholic upbringing and education, not an atheist one.
And the Pope in 1933 was a Catholic, not an atheist.
And he made a deal. |
