Del, I think a major problem here, for me at least, is a misunderstanding of my goals when I discuss Christianity. As I have said, most of my friends and family members, and most of the people who read this thread are Christians, and I am not in any attacking their belief systems.
I am more interested in trying to balance the whole thing out. In America it is assumed that, all else being equal, being a Christian is thought by most to be a higher moral state, and people look at me funny when I tell them I am not one. Of course, at Ask God many people assume anyone who is not a Christian is Satan.
I look forward to the day when atheists, agnostics and pagans will be taken at face value, for the people they are, rather than being viewed suspiciously. I am absolutely sure that Penni does not look at life that way, with Christians being presumed to be more honest, and having more integrity, but unfortunately most people still do.
When I bring up past events like the Holocaust, or the witch burnings, it is in the hope that people who are aware of history will not allow it to be repeated, not that I would ever blame any individual for playing a role because of their religious faith. I do think there are problems with the New Testament in the way Jews were portrayed as Jesus' supporters split from them finally in the third century, and an awareness of this could certainly help fight anti-Semitism today. This misunderstanding is something for which the Pope has recently apologized.
I believe that the Holocaust could not have happened on such a grand scale without Christian complicity, even though Hitler was the totally evil catalyst, and I will throw in parts of two letters to the editor of our local paper published today, omitting the writers' names, because these bring up sources and facts and views I found interesting. Both writers very clearly emphasize the good deeds done by individual Christians during the Holocaust, which I think is very important, and are talking very specifically about the Church as an institution in its failings:
Letter 1
. . . The Holocaust occurred in the heart of Christian Europe. It could have occurred nowhere else. It happened not because the church was Nazi, but because almost two millennia of anti-Semitic hatred from its pulpits and its writings provided the seedbed from which the Nazis grew their poisonous plant, in ground to which the church had so generously contributed fertilizer.
During the Holocaust there were magnificent acts of incredible heroism on the part of individual members of the laity and the priesthood, but that these happened in spite of the silence and occasional complicity of the church is no surprise; when it comes to moral leadership, the laity and the general priesthood are notably in advance of the hierarchy.
For a start . . . could read James Carroll's "The Silence," in the New Yorker (April 7, 1997), and Padraic O'Hare's 1997 book, "The Enduring Covenant: The Education of Christians and the End of anti-Semitism." He might also take note of the confessions, since 1995, of the German and French bishops, acts which also reveal the morality gap that still persists in the Vatican . . .
Letter 2
You and your readers may be getting tired of the analysis of the Catholic Church's role in the Holocaust. But I believe that is is deserving of further comment.
In the Sunday, April 12, letter column, two readers question that the church could have turned the tide against the Nazi Holocaust.
The facts are quite simple, really. About 40 percent of the population of Germany was and is Catholic and close to 100 percent of the population of Austria was and is Catholic. The Austrians were the most enthusiastic Holocaust murderers.
If the pope (Pius XII) would have declared that all those who participated in any kind of atrocities, against Jews and others selected by the Nazis for extermination, would be excommunicated, the Holocaust would have stopped. But he did not do that.
While it is quite true that individual priests did assist individual Jews the church itself was essentially passive. We also must remember that the church made successful efforts in facilitating the escape of Nazi bigwigs to South America . . . |
