Re: So why was pope apologizing for the Catholic church during WWII again?
For the same reason Protestant popes had to apologize as well (see below) and, perhaps even more compellingly, because of the Zionist lobby's unremitting blackmail against the Catholic Church... As you must be aware, the Catholic Church tends to be more sympathetic to Arab Christians than Protestant freaks. Arab Christians, in turn, are themselves closer to their Muslim brethren and use their Catholic connections to convey the latter's desiderata... That's why Iraq's former foreign secretary Tariq (George) Aziz visited John Paul II on the eve of the second Gulf war (in late 2002 or early 2003?). Of course, such a "pro-Arab" leaning is not to please Judeo-Protestant crusaders --hence their taking on the Catholic Church, first as regards the Holocaust proper (lawsuits to claim billions of dollars), next on the thorny issue of pedophilia... So much so that the Pope somehow feels like the French king Henry IV who quipped, Paris vaut bien une messe...(*) Likewise, the Church's sake is well worth an apology to the Zionists....
(*) bartleby.com
March 2, 1938 • Niemoller Imprisoned for Righteous Resistance.
by the Staff or associates of Christian History Institute.
© Copyright 1999-2005. All rights reserved.
The results of some trials are foregone conclusions. In the case of Martin Niemöller the words of Hitler ensured that any court appearance would be perfunctory. Niemöller had delivered a "rebellious" sermon in 1937 and Hitler heard of it and of taped phone conversations in which Niemöller repudiated the Nazi line. Bent on obtaining absolute control over the church, Hitler flew into a rage and bellowed that Niemöller was to be placed in a concentration camp and kept there for life since he had proven himself "incorrigible."
It is true that Niemöller had helped organize a "resistance" to Hitler's takeover of the Protestant churches, a group called the Pastor's Emergency League. "...we have called into being an 'Emergency Alliance' of pastors who have given one another their word in a written declaration that they will be bound in their preaching by the Holy Scripture and the Reformation confessions alone..." he wrote in an open letter September 1933. This group developed into the Confessing Church. Nonetheless, he apologized with deep regret in October 1945, after the war, for failing to speak out early and strongly enough against Nazism.
Often he would say, "First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me."
However, there were plenty of [Protestant] "German Christians" who did not resist at all; who thought that Christ had come through Hitler and their first task was to be German, not Christian. Pastor Leutheuser verbalized their thoughts. Niemöller, an ex-submarine captain, was appalled at this attitude. Christ was to be central in every Christian's heart. 7,000 Lutheran ministers agreed with him. Niemöller, until his imprisonment, was their strategist. Karl Barth joined this Confessing Church in writing a rejection of the state's claim to totalitarian power in religious and political matters. This became known as the Barmen Declaration.
Niemöller was the symbol of Protestant resistance to Hitler. After a trial in a special court, which ended on this day, March 2, 1938, he was sentenced to seven months in prison. Hitler had him arrested again almost as soon as he was released. This time his resistance placed him in concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and Dachau until the end of the war. Altogether he spent eight years in prison.
When Niemöller visited the hotel where Albert Speer, a Hilter associate, was held after the war, Speer expected to see a broken man. Instead, it was a healthy and youthful figure he saw who had emerged from the camps. Perhaps a clear conscience had kept him so.
Resources
Among the sources used to prepare this story was Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich.
chi.gospelcom.net
Yet the German Protestant church that emerged from the ashes in 1945 was a very different one from the predominantly nationalistic church that had greeted Hitler in 1933. In the October 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt its leaders acknowledged their guilt and complicity in the Nazi reign of terror. In the decades since, Bonhoeffer's writings and witness have continued to inspire and influence German Protestants as well as Christians throughout the world.
bonhoeffer.com |
