Pope asks why God was silent at Auschwitz

OSWIECIM, Poland (Reuters) - Calling himself "a son of Germany," Pope Benedict prayed at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz on Sunday and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died in this "valley of darkness."

Ending a four-day pilgrimage to Poland, Benedict, 79, said humans could not fathom "this endless slaughter" but only seek reconciliation for those who suffered then and those who now "are suffering in new ways from the power of hatred."

As on the rest of his trip, he walked in the footsteps of his Polish-born predecessor John Paul, who came to the camp in 1979 on his first visit to Poland as pope. John Paul died in April 2005 and is revered as a saint in his native country.

"Pope John Paul II came here as a son of the Polish people. I come here today as a son of the German people," Benedict said in Italian at a monument near the ruins of a crematorium at Birkenau, the death camp section of the Auschwitz complex.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060528/wl_nm/pope_poland_dc_22

didn't seem too bothered about it at the time.

hitlerjugend.

and eventually did desert. What should he, as a 17-year-old German, have done in order to stop that? Is there anything he could have done? Sometimes it's easy to sit back & blame people for not showing enough courage at the time. But, really, right now there are secret prison camps operating in Eastern Europe, gulags at Gitmo, & torture at Iraqi prisons. What are most of us doing about it? How much can one person go against the society that they are a part of?

the pope is considered to have been divinley called to be pope from birth - that god knew he'd be the pope from the get-go? Because if that's the way the catholic church believes it works, then it raises the question as to why the person god intended to be pope was parading around with the hitler youth. If one person would defy that expectation, it seems like it would be the person god chose to lead the church.

to contradict the Catholic doctrine that people have free will.

I think you're referring to the doctrine of "papal infalliability". Under this doctrine, when the pope makes an official "papal declaration" on an issue of faith, that is considered infalliable & inchangeable. It's sort of like a new "law" that governs church parishioners. But, this doctrine doesn't extend to any statement the pope makes, & it doesn't mean that he's always right. The pope can be wrong, and he can commit a sin. The pope isn't really "God's messenger," because he's not divinely inspired (that's Jesus, Mary & the Apostles). He's not "appointed by God", but is appointed by the church itself to head the Church, issue papal doctrines & lead the faithful. I'm wondering if some practicing Catholics can help me out any on the theology? Is that basically right?

http://www.cathcorn.org/foof/11.html

I remember reading that when he became the pope but it certainly could have been from a biased source.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm

Also see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05677a.htm
on the concept of Ex Cathedra (a Similar Concept, but only used every 150 years or so, basically it is a finding of the faith so fundamental that from that point forward it is NOT to be debated). Please note Abortion being Murder is a ruling by Pius XIII in 1869 during Vatican I (Not to be confused with Vatican II held in the 1960s). This was a ruling and is viewed as binding on Catholics but was NOT Ex Cathedra (He appears to have wanted to do it Ex Cathedra, but given that the change was a radical change from traditional church teaching it was better to make it a general ruling by him NOT an Ex Cathedra ruling and see how the Ruling was followed. Since 1869 the Popes have reaffirmed the ruling but none have made it a Ex Cathedra ruling)).

From the Catholic Encyclopedia (This is the summation of the above cited reference):

V. WHAT TEACHING IS INFALLIBLE?

As regards matter, only doctrines of faith and morals, and facts so intimately connected with these as to require infallible determination, fall under the scope of infallible ecclesiastical teaching. These doctrines or facts need not necessarily be revealed; it is enough if the revealed deposit cannot be adequately and effectively guarded and explained, unless they are infallibly determined.

As to the organ of authority by which such doctrines or facts are determined, three possible organs exist. One of these, the magisterium ordinarium, is liable to be somewhat indefinite in its pronouncements and, as a consequence, practically ineffective as an organ. The other two, however, are adequately efficient organs, and when they definitively decide any question of faith or morals that may arise, no believer who pays due attention to Christ's promises can consistently refuse to assent with absolute and irrevocable certainty to their teaching.

But before being bound to give such an assent, the believer has a right to be certain that the teaching in question is definitive (since only definitive teaching is infallible); and the means by which the definitive intention, whether of a council or of the pope, may be recognized have been stated above. It need only be added here that not everything in a conciliar or papal pronouncement, in which some doctrine is defined, is to be treated as definitive and infallible. For example, in the lengthy Bull of Pius IX defining the Immaculate Conception the strictly definitive and infallible portion is comprised in a sentence or two; and the same is true in many cases in regard to conciliar decisions. The merely argumentative and justificatory statements embodied in definitive judgments, however true and authoritative they may be, are not covered by the guarantee of infallibility which attaches to the strictly definitive sentences -- unless, indeed, their infallibility has been previously or subsequently established by an independent decision.

right to me. I'd just qualify it by saying that I'm pretty sure infallible statements have been extremely rare -- something like twice in the history of the Church.

And he was forced to join the Hitler youth.

Hitler Youth and the army. What could he as a teenager have done. He could have refused which would have put
his whole family in danger of being rounded up or his family could have gone into hiding, which was not for him to decide.

He is a human being who is elected to the Papacy.

If you can find this in Church doctrine--please share it with us.

I'm not the Pope's biggest fan, but he was a boy during WWII. Cut the guy some slack.

Hell, you could ditch his Nazi past and STILL find him to be an evil bigoted fuck.

and that my 18 year old doesn't have to enter the army or go to jail.

My sons and I have been protesting since before the war began, but there is a limit to what we can do.

...just like John Paul II did when the Nazis required him
to join the Hitler youth at age 14.
Now THERE was a kid who had the makings of a POPE!

And where are you getting this "eventually deserted" story?
Pfft! Stuff and nonsense!
He went back home when the Nazi Empire collapsed,
and there was no one left to give him orders, or a paycheck.
Hardly "Desertion" by any definition.

And since you mention all the Nazi-style camps that are
springing up these days like a 50 year old recurring nightmare,
WHAT has this "innocent draftee" done about them?

As someone who lived through the Nazi era, and saw it first hand,
I would hold him to a higher standard of vigilance against
allowing such things to happen again.

But I would be WRONG, wouldn't I?
Seems he spends his time getting REAL cozy
with the folks who are setting the world stage
to recreate the same shit all over again.
The "free pass" you give him for what he did in
the 1940s EXPIRED sixty years ago.

He's not a 17yo kid anymore, he's the frickin' POPE fer Chrissakes!
No "free pass" this time!

and what did you do? ( And what are you doing now about our own governments' crimes?)

And what do you specifically say that HE should be doing now? He did speak out against our involvement in Iraq, so did the bishops, and so did a large group of Protestant leaders, who tried unsuccessfully to meet with Bush to express their concerns.

I naturally have no defense against attacks upon
THINGS I NEVER SAID.

"As someone who lived through the Nazi era, and saw it first hand,
I would hold him to a higher standard of vigilance against
allowing such things to happen again."

That's a VERY badly parsed sentence there, innit?

For the record, I'm 37. I missed the FIRST Nazi era by a few decades.
Luckily, history repeats itself, so I get a bit part in the re-run!

And what I MEANT was something like:

"Considering that the current Pope lived through the Nazi era,
and saw it first hand,
I would hold him to a higher standard of vigilance against
allowing such things to happen again."

That's what I meant, but certainly NOT what I wrote, is it?
The resulting confusion is entirely my fault;
I apologize.

Guess it's a good reminder for all of us to watch our grammar -- which can be a challenge when we're in one of these heated discussions!

During the Second World War academics of the Jagiellonian University were arrested and the university suppressed. All able-bodied males had to have a job. He variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant and a manual labourer in a limestone quarry.....

One of many John Paul II statuesIn 1942 he entered the underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha. Karol Wojtyła was ordained a priest on 1 November 1946, by the same bishop who confirmed him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_paul_II

Since you lived through the Nazi era & saw it first hand--what did YOU do?

This is one EVIL Pope!

Can't be critical of a child being forced to serve in the local Hilter Youth which was standard for boys his age during WWII Germany (this is for Pope Benedict).

The Pope we should be questioning is the pope who served during WWII who received countless pleas from various groups including Israel & US to intervene with the deportation of Jews. Pope Pius pretty much ignored those pleases which probably led to the death of thousands and thousands of Jews.

If any pope is to be blamed about the Holocaust the current one isn't really the right choice

But, hey, that's another of those unfathomable mysteries which belief is all about.

God is all-knowing, and doesn't bother to ask.

Pius, who was Pope at the time or Benedict, the current one.

Like this bigot, who calls gay marriage EVIL, has ANY fucking moral authority on anything.

I knew I'd find it.

:popcorn:

I didn't really post this to start a fight, but because I think it brings up a number of interesting issues. Where does God's responsibility end, & man's begin? Was it God's fault that Aushwitz occured, or was it ours? I think it's a good thing that the Pope really acknowleged the Holocaust & attempts to reach out to Jewish survivors. But still, I couldn't help wondering if was God's silence, or Germans' silence, that allowed this tragedy to occur. Is it ducking responsibility to blame God? "Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?" I almost feel like God could have asked the Pope the same question.

--Catholic Church: the then pope made a Concordat with Hitler, supposedly to protect the Catholics in Germany......the argument has been made that IF the pope had condemned Hitler few catholics would have enlisted...see among others Hochhut's Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) of 1963

--Lutheran Church: the Germ church essentially took over the Lutheran church; some, Bonhoeffer + Barth + others formed the Confessing Church in protest.......finally the church required all ministers to swear a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler or lose their position

--the allies: in the PBS series The American Experience, the show America and the Holocaust shows how the US state dept and others in the govt so disliked Jews that they deliberately placed barriers in the way of Jews wanting to leave Europe.....the show documents the rabid anti-semitism in the US population at the time........also, American Jews asked the US to bomb Auschwitz and the train tracks to the camp; they were told that allied planes could not fly that far---BUT nearby factories WERE bombed

Would have to admit that it's racism isn't just defined by the 'slavery/black' issue. Which is the ONLY racism that is ever addressed. Of course, we need to address it. But we also need to cleanse ourselfs of ALL racism. Admit ALL the racism that went on and goes on today.

Only then can we walk forward UNITED States. But .... Shhhh.. No racism. Didn't happen.

Really? The Pope condemned the Iraq war. Hasn't stopped Bush. And Bush doesn't even use conscription like Hitler did.





I'd swear whatever they wanted if the alternative was a Death Camp. I am more disturbed by the collaboration of Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people (Hannah Arendt, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem'). The threat of death can extract more than just a loyalty oath. Much more...





The shameful restrictions on immigration are a matter of public record. :(
The debate about Mexican immigration uses the same vocabulary.





When rail lines were destroyed, the Nazis simply forced prisoners into the famous Death Marches, which were more fatal than the actual camps.

Destruction of rail lines was extremely wasteful given the inaccuracy of the technology available. Munitions factories were a much better target, and saved many more lives. Roosevelt did the right thing.

I'm an atheist, and the Holocaust, in my opinion, was entirely a failing of human morality, not a question of the "will of God".

So that doesn't let the Catholic church off the hook in any way, considering that Pope Pius IX allegedly knew of, and did nothing to prevent the Holocaust nor shelter it's victims. As God's supposed representative on Earth, what are we to make of this?

As for the question, "Why did God let this happen?", I say that the Holocaust is just one of a series of major human disasters, none of which were prevented or even mitigated by God. There have been similar deaths on a grand scale like the Holocaust in Communist Russia and China, but I never hear God's name invoked in those disasters. The fingers point at purely human actions.

Sorry if I don't share your faith, but this is but one reason why I became an atheist in the first place.

That's why the question struck me as odd. I could maybe see it for a true "act of God" like hurricans or tsunamis, but the Holocaust was a truly man-made tragedy. So, I'm not sure if I agree w/the Pope's point of view here, but I do appreciate that he made the effort. Whether you agree w/it or not, I think the question was one of humility. He could have issued a bland platitude about "God's will," or worse, implied that it didn't happen or it was somehow Jews' fault. He didn't do that - but expressed grief, doubt, honest questions & pleas for reconciliation. His speech didn't reassure, but instead challenged God, & challenged people to end the hatred that persists today. It's more than I would have expected, & I gained a new level of respect for the man (meaning, any respect at all.) Especially in contrast w/statements by people like Ahmadinejad, the pope's speech seems like a real attempt at honoring the past & learning from it.

Here's a transcript of the whole speech: http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=672

That's a great job if you can get it. :smoke:

I think of us living in a world damaged by the Fall of Adam, whatever that metaphor means. It makes sense that God interferes rarely, else what would remain of free will? It also makes sense that God would interfere to make things better, not worse. Who are we to say that those who did manage to escape were the ones that God was able to assist without causing too much of a disruption in the World?

hearing the voice of a high-profile grown-up asking where God was during the period of the camps, would be left with a heightened awareness that things are not plain, not simple, not black and white, not easily decided.

The question the Pope asks is not new to grown-ups, but it might have tremendous resonance for that 9-year old. If there are events in the world which stymie grown-ups, then one's own misgivings and misapprehensions and personal failings at age 9 might not be a death sentence after all. There might be a commerce of unease and confusion wherein any human being at all, no matter their age or station, might seek a common purpose.

The Pope served here as a teacher. Inadvertent or by design, this visit to Auschwitz by this German Pope is a valuable thing, rich in lessons.

A very simple answer suggests itself to my own mind....

figures can be in unique teaching postures, and that in this case, the lessons would be of lasting value.

I do not endorse the ultra-conservative political agenda of the Catholic Church, especially in matters of reproductive freedom.

But this gesture struck me as decidedly conciliatory, self-acknowledging of frailties and short-comings, and genuinely within the realm of public duty.

Often you jump in, Magistrate, with something quite insightful and when I can, I offer praise and support for it.

But on other occasions, you hit-and-run me, dropping a point or point of view, then fleeing into the night.

My "beliefs," as you reference them, are not Catholic. I am not a church goer. I remain opposed to the Protestant Reformation on grounds that it replaced an admittedly corrupt Church with absurd, unimaginative, unloving and overly restrictive prohibitions.

This Pope wasn't my first choice. I would have preferred to see one of the land reform Popes from Central or South America. But the call didn't come in from the Vatican Cardinals seeking my input, or maybe I was out that night.

'am curious to hear your thoughts.

It was far from my intent to distress you. The comment was made just before departing to attend to other matters, and was to some degree spurred by my mind having been turned, and rather bitterly, to the events of that period by participation in a discussion touching on them elsewhere on the board just before seeing this topic.

My reference to your beliefs was simply because it has been my impression that you are a believer in the Christian diety, and was an attempt to indicate respect for that in this context, though it is impossible for me to share that belief. Part of the reason it is impossible for me to do so is the impossiblity of squaring items of Christian dogma concerning that diety with events of the twentieth century in which Auschwitz stands squarely as a centerpiece. As a thoughtful man, you will at least be aware of that line of thought, I trust, and understand that the simple explaination come to my mind for the "silence" this man spoke of is that there is nothing extant to have spoken or acted. A great deal of religious thought and comment after the fact of those events strikes me dreadfully false, and never more so than when it attempts to deal directly with them. In my view, the man would have done better simply to mourn the suffering and the dead and confess his impotence before them, a thing he could doubtless have found a way to cloak in religious vocabuary.

I have long admired and respected what you say on these boards, not to mention how very well you say it, and I often find myself in agreement with your positions as well.

That is a pleasant combination. And a learning opportunity as well, and I am the better for it, and I say thank you.

You frame Benedict's dilemma with conviction. If several options present themselves for addressing the horror of the Holocaust, public figures must choose one or another. Not for me to say if he chose the best option, but regarding what he did have to say, I took his words as having value, because the young person I place near the site would see that even grown-ups, even famous and erudite grown-ups, are overwhelmed by events, or can be, or certainly are in the face of transgressions of this magnitude.

I felt, but did not do a good job of conveying, that prior models suggested authoritarian infallibility in the office of the Pope, and I would suggest that that model has been a failed one. So I welcome any religious entity who opens the field for question, for doubt, for exploration, for shifts in context. I don't see it often as I go up the hierarchy of the Church, and I heard some of it in this Pope's remarks.

Certainly I do see your point and follow it back in your written passage to its possible source, which appears to be the part of you that is assertively fair. It is in many of the passages you post on DU, and recognizable, even if I didn't read "The Magistrate" in the author line, or see the moderator's icon.

And that brings me back to my first point, and that is I appreciate good writing very much and look forward to your posts on these boards.

}(

And it also helps highlight the Church's condemnation of what happened at Auschwitz & other camps. Maybe it doesn't do enough, but he is at least trying to lead by example and show the dangers of bigotry & anti-Semitism today.

join the Underground againt Hitler.

I may not have been cut out for the spy business, though. I might have been unacceptably clumsy or not sufficiently self-possessed to pull off underground, organized resistance to the Third Reich. Those guys played rough and it took people with a lot more cunning and wherewithal than I have to pull off the Underground resistance.

Still, that would have been a noble option. You can't march against Hitler's machine in the open streets. You'd be in a box car within 48 hours, in a camp within a week, and likely a pile of ashes shortly thereafter.

I wish all churches would be less complicit with dark power. Here I'm thinking of the unholy alliance in the United States between the so-called Christian Right and the Republican Party. As victims of such alliances go, I don't think the innocent citizens of Iraq killed or maimed by U.S. military action are less human than the victims of Hitler's holocaust.

I would like to see the Protestant evangelicals in this country held accountable for their alliance, and refuse to let them off the hook.

As for this Pope, if he can do ANYTHING at all to help reduce anti-Semitism, I'm for it.

I like to think I'd be part of the Resistance, hiding people who were being taken away, sabatoging Nazi efforts, organizing underground activities, etc. But I'm not sure I'd be a great spy, either. It might've been futile, but at least you'd feel like you were doing something. I truly can't imagine just standing to the side while atrocities went on all around you. But who knows? I think unless you've been in that situation, it's impossible to really know how you'd react. I've noticed that heros are seldom who you'd expect them to be.

The alliance of power is really a big problem. Churches, as powerful institutions, will tend to ally w/other powerful institutions in the government - whether in Germany, or here. And this is one reason I'm not a big fan of religions as an institution. It's too easy for people to use that power & influence over people to further purely political, or financial ends.

The article noted that one of the speakers at the service, a Polish rabbi, had just been attacked the day before by a punk who screamed "Poland for the Poles!". It reminded me a little of the "American for the Americans!" movement gaining force here. By speaking out against anti-Semitism, maybe it will help reduce intolerance towards Jews in Europe, & remind everyone of the dangers of other kinds of intolerance, as well. I'd prefer it if the Pope wasn't so often intolerant in his own actions, but this speech is better than nothing.

going to happen.

I think people should be able to make the distinction between someone who is non-Catholic and someone who is anti-Catholic.

And I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the Vatican's stand on civil rights, but I can't. It is frequently disgraceful, in fact.

I do affirm their world-wide charitable services. I've been an insider to some of those operations, and can attest that quite a few people of true and dedicated heart are involved with them, and that genuine good is accomplished. Hat's off to the charitable arm of the Catholic Church.

And in another sort of subtheme in this thread, I wonder why the intolerant and hateful politices of many Protestant churches are given a free ride? Fred Phelps ALONE is a great abomination. When we ask institutions to be kinder and more inclusive than they often are, I like holding them equally accountable.

Your thread today has produced a wide, wild range of responses, Marie. Good for you.

I admit as a liberal, cafeteria Catholic I was skeptical of Benedict when he became pope last spring but I really do appreciate what he's doing here. He at least is trying to make amends to the mistakes that the church made. Meanwhile you have Mahmoud Ahmadijad asking Germans to stop feeling guilty about the Holocaust and that's the real problem. I think what the pope is asking here is a rhetorical question, I admit as a believer I have sometimes questioned God but I also like to think that God does exist. I can't prove that god exists, the only thing I have is faith.

and had thought of you when Marie posted the thread originally.

If I get over the fact that I'm not in charge of the universe, and likely won't ever be, then I can approach events as they happen, and try to understand why they happen as they do.

With Benedict's visit to Auschwitz I felt it was a teachable moment, in part because of the words he used, and in part because it is useful for all of us, whether we're little kids or old cusses, to hear our confusions and sorrows verbalized.

That's the guy's job. And in that respect, he did his job.

Again, if I'm ever at the control panel of the universe, I'll have the Pope offer women a right to control their own bodies, I'll have him grant equal sanction to lesbians and gays, and I'll have him intervene with fury whenever an American bishop orders that John Kerry will be denied the sacrements -- communion -- because of his political stance on abortion. And I'd definitely have women as priests -- don't see any real good reason not to. Never did.

And the Protestant churches have not exactly been angels over the centuries, either. All sides have a lot to answer for.

There are many in the Church who quietly and dutifully attempt to live good lives and create freedom and safety for others. That's all anybody can ask. Likely you are one of those people.

That's my guess, anyway.

remembering the Holocaust for the human tragedy it was than have Mahmoud Ahmadijad in Germany asking Germans not to feel guilt about the Holocaust and then denying it exists. The Catholic Church like all the major organizations and nations of the Second World War has its bad, take the Utashe in Croatia, they would kill anyone who wasn't Croat or Catholic but then you have those like Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish priest who gave his life for a Jewish prisoner. The man was still alive in the early 80's when John Paul II beautifed Kolbe. I wish we could have done more honestly to help the Jews of Europe. We should have taken refugees, the British should have too. I know the Dutch did because that's where Anne Frank lived and she was a German Jew. Shame really that so many died because of hatred and indifference. The biggest heroes in history in my eyes are the Oskar Schindlers and Raoul Wallenbergs who risked their lives to save people.

and gauges tell us that the Holocaust was absolutely, horrifyingly real.

My ears don't understand words saying it didn't exist.

I just am not getting that at all.

I hope I never get it, in fact.

And if Ahmadinejad is a crazy-ass, and it appears that he is, I wish only that a President Gore or a President Kerry were in office in the U.S., and not the trigger-happy chimp we have now.

I'd feel a whole lot better about things.

so he can get a place on the news. I think that's why most people deny the Holocaust so they can get attention like that British Historian, David Irving.

men and women rounded up in boxcars and railroaded to the camps.

It's unbelievably insulting to pretend that 6 or 7 million people just disappeared into the ether.

I wonder if Ahmadinejad is taunting the U.S. to somehow increase his bargaining position. But it might not work if he is.

The Bush administration's known to be a bit trigger happy.

Slavs, Gyspies, Communists, Gays, etc. I had a family member killed by the Nazis when they invaded Slovenia. According to my grandfather his family fought back, I've always been proud of that honestly.

And we agree that other groups of people were similarly targeted and killed.

Besides Jews, political dissidents, lesbians and gay men, and gypsies, plus many others. The Third Reich was a frightening bunch of people.

I think before he headed up one of the most vicious and heartless political operations in human history, Heinrich Himmler was a chicken farmer.

THAT is a major careeer shift.

It's said that he got some of his ideas for the human experiments the SS did from his experience chicken farming. The Third Reich was truly one of the most evil if not hte most evil nations in history. Thankfully it lasted 988 years shorter than Hitler intended but that 12 years was a 12 years that should never be forgotten.

.. who had joined the Communist resistence in Nazi Germany at a very young age (thirteen or fourteen). I once commented to him that the failure of most Germans to fight back was incomprehensible to me. He would have none of it and described in some detail exactly how the Nazis terrorized ordinary people. He left Germany, by himself, as the situation deteriorated, when he was about sixteen and had a long and productive life as an activist. I don't think he himself ever lost the spirit of fighting back, but neither did he lose sympathy for the fear that ordinary people feel in such circumstances.

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one that is different from some seperate superhero type who punishes and rewards from some throne.

expect an "answer" from God, as if God was a man, like a Pope or a President or a King, just a sort of bigger version of these--good luck to you! If you think of God as people thought of Zeus or Hera, as a human being--who judges, controls, rewards and punishes, and gives "answers" through Oracles (like the Pope)--then you are never going to understand the Nazi Holocaust, or help prevent another. God being "silent" implies that God can "speak"--something God has never done. Only people speak, in word and deed. God is US--our highest aspirations, something we are yearning toward, something we are CREATING here and now, and have been creating throughout our history and evolution. God is the best that we can be--the most expansive, the most loving, the most intelligent, the wisest--and this is very clearly a work-in-progress.

What did the Pope expect--when HUMAN BEINGS permitted the Holocaust to occur? Lightning and thunder? Earthquakes? A Big Voice in the Sky hurling anathema upon the human race? The truth is we weren't far enough along in our CREATION of God, as a collective work of the human spirit, to prevent that great crime.

We've had another such crime very recently, and it is on-going: The slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and the torture of many more. Why isn't the Pope at Abu Ghraib, or at the barricades of the "Green Zone," crying out for God to speak?

Well, some of us who are the vanguard of the human creation of God ARE crying out; some of us even went to Iraq, as peace activists, and stood with the innocents as the bombs came down.

The Pope and the Church--and its dinosauric notions of God--may be one of the things we have to overcome in order to evolve into better people. The Church and its witchburnings, its crusades, its inquisitions, its accumulations of wealth, its accommodations of fascists, and its suppression of women, seems to me to have veered quite far off from ITS initial inspiration--"love thine enemy." It still clings to the trappings of power--and nasty misogyny--that Jesus would have been appalled at. Now THERE was a man who would have cried out! A true God-in-the-making. And what he tried his best to communicate--that the inheritors of St. Peter soon twisted out of all recognition--is that "the DEMOCRACY (not the kingdom) of Heaven is within YOU (not invested with the powerful) in so far as you love ME (your neighbor, or your enemy)."

The democracy (--for Jesus was, more than anything else, an egalitarian) of what could be a heavenly earth, right here and right now, is within you and me--within our capability--no matter how lowly or powerless we think we are. If we love one another. This is never going to happen as the result of "God" speaking. It is going to happen--has happened, and will happen--as the result of PEOPLE speaking, of people BECOMING God. Not going to church. Not spouting hypocrisy. Not enforcing "doctrines." Not going off on bloody crusades. Not seeking our own salvation, apart from everyone else. Not imposing our own egotistical, self-aggrandizing rules, and rewarding and punishing, and excluding. BECOMING God: our highest aspirations of love, intelligence and wisdom.

We are ALL capable of this, even the Pope. But the Church and its hierarchy have never had any faith in Jesus, really. And they stand as an obstacle to people becoming God, by promoting the notion of God as other--as something outside of us.

I happened to hear the BBC broadcast of its radio documentary on Nelson Mandela the other day. And when that man got out of prison--after 27 years--and began reconciling black and white, and preventing the bloodbath that seemed inevitable in South Africa, and the people greeted him with cheers and singing, THAT was God happening. THAT was people becoming God. The best that we can be.

Thank you for saying so eloquently that which I could only hint at in my response.

After all, his BEING the pope is supposed to give him the "inside track" with God now.

:shrug:
rocknation

:sarcasm:

...children of Egypt? Or ordered the slaughter of the Canaanites?

on the doorway, if it wasn't there the 1st born died, that is a very specific method for choosing who lives and dies. Indiscriminate would have been hurling fireballs from the sky.

Now I get it!

In fact before he destroyed S&G, he listened to Abraham's pleading to spare the city if 50, 40, 30, 20 or finally just 10 righteous men could be found, but they weren't there so he put the biblical smack down.

Answer:

IF there is a god, it probably can only act through people and the Vatican wasn't really in touch with god back then and isn't now....

during the war, the Church really got to work collaborating AFTER the war...

There was Operation Paperclip with Grace and Luce and the American Catholics, there was Bishop Hudel and the Italian Catholics, there was Father Draganovic and the Croatian Catholics, far too many 'ratlines' courtesy of Vatican papers...shit it became so obvious that Italian socialists in the post-war period sarcastically refered to the 'new' American CIA as 'Catholics in Action'.

Why? Well creeps like Pope Ratzo here might hate the Nazis, but regime types like that, historically have been far more generous to Catholics than say Communists or Protestants would ever be...

Hardly a surprise that the Catholic Church would seek out the planet's worst dictators to protect it from their more enlightened parishioners over the centuries... :eyes:

:nuke:

when the holocaust was going on. WHat was he doing to stop it or was he helping hitler cause it.

unconscious or barely-conscious subtext.

I read on the front page of a Catholic newspaper yesterday something which, in my perhaps limited awareness, strikes me as being totally epoch-making. He was deploring the way in which Christians were being sucked into conforming with the values of our modern, consumerist, Western society. He actually used the term, "bourgeois values", I believe. It was the professionals and industrialists who were Hitler's chief supporters.

That strikes me as something akin to the revolutionary Gospel message of Christ, which has been so marginalized down the centuries by the Church, so that the ambition and worldly intelligence so highly prized by the World, seems to me have become virtually the sovereign Christian virtue, as well. Indeed, you'd be tempted to wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg.

How often do you hear it said, "He/she is very intelligent", as if it were not referring to worldly wisdom, but to a particularly pious Christian virtue. I once read Solzhenitsyn harking back enviously to a time in Russia, centuries before, when for a Christian, the only proper ambition was a devout life. (This would not preclude excellence in a any field, but rather lead to it).

about his having connections to Nazism

This isn't new.

you were 14?

(2) participant in peace marches and rallies (by myself, not with my parents or other adults).

Big difference between 1930s Germany and 1960s USA, but a 14 year old is not a child and is capable of conscience.

and what Ratzo could do is act like he wants to make amends for HIS past. not Germany's past. HIS past.

that, some might argue, is a way of making amends for his past.

that permission from some higher power to treat a portion of the population as second-class citizens, or worse, is not all that much different whether it is Hitler or "God" granting the permission.

I've been hip to the RCC misogyny (among other things) for a very long time now. sorry, no free passes for Ratzo.

father? None of us really know much about him at 14 besides the fact that joining the Hitler youth was compulsory.

comes from the fact that I would prefer to hear Ratzo make personal amends for the evil he abetted, rather than making lofty pronouncements of questions with no answers. if he thinks as Pope that he is above all that, then I take his personal silence as complicity.

on edit: no doubt that societal norms of the time and place made it near impossible for dissent. but one can always make amends, or so say the 12 Steps. (a better spiritual philosophy IMHO than the RCC's)

Maybe God was speaking through their agony, Mr. Pope, sir.

That's all people need to know... A Pope even. He seems to be the only one who didn't hear God.... now that is telling.

A step in the right direction, IMHO, since there IS no evidence (outside of unshareable personal feelings/emotions/whatever that who knows what they could be) for his chosen god.

Interesting!

of faith. Otherwise, it wouldn't be faith -- it would be certainty.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1572667_1,00.html


In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.

He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. “Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer.

He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp.

He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile

your resistant ass in an oven lickety-split."

At age 14 anywhere, autonomy is daunting. Under the Third Reich, it was virtually impossible.

And in the meanwhile served as a guard at the BMW plant where the work force consisted of Jewish prisoners from Dachau.

by any means.

Enrollment was mandatory. A case could be made that the development of an individual social consciousness is not possible when the state does not sanction a rights-based citizenship, as was certainly true of the Third Reich.

If there were not sanctions AGAINST independent inquiry en route to social consciousness, it remains unfair to hold teenagers expressly accountable NOW for what they may have believed THEN. By such a standard, very few of us would escape embarrassing scrutiny.

an individual social consciousness? It seems like that, more than anything, is what would prevent something like the Holocaust from ever happening again. People now say "never again", but looking around the world, from Rwanda to the Sudan, to Afganistan, to the creeping fascism in our own country, I wonder if much has truly changed.

are in no instant danger.

But many of us do contribute time and money to causes like Amnesty International and other global peace and environmental groups, and their impact is considerable.

I've definitely not ready to throw in the towel yet!

capable of standing up to the Nazis?

Having two teenage sons myself, I'm curious. They're wonderful kids, but they're kids.

He was 14 when he initially JOINED the HY, where he remained for several years. But here's what some others said about youth reisistance --tell it to these folks:

http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/04/former-hitler-youth-nicknamed-gods.html

Impossible to resist?

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=92405

“Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. “Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy.”

Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. “It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”

In 1937 another family a few hundred yards away in Traunstein hid Hans Braxenthaler, a local resistance fighter. SS troops repeatedly searched homes in the area looking for the fugitive and his fellow conspirators...

Or like this?

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/wr.htm

Or this?

http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20000305rodgers3.asp

There are perhaps 6-7 millions Jews, gypsies, gays, lesbians, and other "undesirables" whose absences attest to that fact.

You offer individual accounts and I salute those people for their unbelievable bravery. However, the Rodgers-Melnick piece in the Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE deals almost exclusively with Ratzinger's predecessor, does it not? It traces John Paul's trajectory of beliefs in context of his times and circumstances and does not address the overwhelming difficulty of resistance against Nazi Germany.

The statistics, horrifyingly enough, do not favor resistance against institutional tyranny. The prohibitive and punishing the state, the greater the sanction for exile and execution of dissidents and "undeseriables."

In WWII Europe or anywhere else.

The Catholic church is full of martyrs. Was their resistance "successful" in a human or moral sense? OTOH, perhaps it's a test of faith to resist, leaving your fate to your God. Apparently Ratzinger didn't have as much as he is credited for. Some did.

the incentive to do either of those things, or whether it hinges on what part of each of us the decision to affirm or condemn comes from.

If I knew the exact answer to that, the question of how to confront tyranny would be a lot different. The strict law-abider would condemn a resistor to tyranny on a legal basis. Would condemn Harriet Tubman, who taught slaves to read and led them to north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Both illegal acts. Local officials posse'd to curtail such acts on thin grounds that they were illegal, no matter the ethical consequences.

If we prefer to live in a world in which tyranny is not achievable owing to the higher cconsciousness of individuals in society, then we may have our work cut out for us. A lot of people were frightened into voting for George W. Bush. I do not have, in my pocket or coat closets, the tools required to reduce that level of societal fear to a point where electing vacuous monkeys to the White House is unthinkable.

It's left for all of us to seek a conscionable way to navigate through disappointments, setbacks, and over-ordered police-state actions. Witness the NSA and other related "policis." Data-mining is a high-tech posse, but it's made up of the same people trying to curtail Tubman's Underground Railroad.

I would side with Ms. Tubman and during the Second WW in Europe, with the Underground there against Hitler. Whether we would all stack up in training and talent and temperament to be effective in that role is quite another question, but our hearts would be in the right place, and the strategy, it seems to me, would be the best available.

And anyone whose edicts would affect or afflict countless millions of God's followers. The current Pope's inquisition against gays would make me question not only his moral authority, but God's.

addressing.

I don't believe it was the point the OP was addressing, either.

Do I understand you to believe that you feel resistance is as casual a choice against tyranny as which brand of goods to buy at a shop?

The challenge resistance poses against political fascism is overwhelming. Some high school students can't even talk back to their math teachers, and you have them overthrowing the Third Reich?

That's unfounded crap.

I would just prefer that folks at least be honest about the choices Ratzinger did or did not make. Whether or not he CHOSE to be an anti-aircraft gunner at the BMW plant where Dachau's prisoners were used as slave labor, that's in fact what he did, just as surely as he was a member of Hitler Youth. Whether or not he CHOSE to lay tank traps in Hungary, that's what he did. What he did not choose to do is resist when there were others -- even if relatively few, such as those in the White Rose Society -- who did. I'm not going to softsoap or rewrite Ratzinger's participation in the Reich in order to assuage any comfortability level with his moral choices.

Facts is facts, as the saying goes, and if they are pertinent to the current Pope then it is within the scope of gauging how such a youth's experiences might influence his choices in the future when he actually has the option of making different choices from a position of such great personal power, the spiritual leader of millions. From what I have seen, Ratzinger's intractable orthodoxy falls squarely within his comfort zone of unquestioningly "following orders" of an authoritarian figure (be it Hitler or God), only now he speaks for God as the voice of moral choices. Is this true or not? Fact or not?

So now when faced with the kind of choices we cannot dismiss for his youth, Ratzinger chooses to tighten the screws of persecution even tighter on women and gays, whilst the immoral wars of the same corporatists who used concentration camp victims as slave labor continues unchecked and uncondemned. Which leads one to wonder how it could seem so easy for this Pope to condemn entire groups of people for who they are and not for the choices they make. I don't wonder at all. For Ratzinger, it's just business as usual.

The original post in this thread addressed one issue, the context of a German Pope commenting on the atrocities of a detention and death camp.

You've missed that from word one in this thread, and you've missed it by a country mile. You're not even in the same county.

If you object to Benedict's positions on women and gays you are VERY likely to find widespread agreement on DU for those positions. But here, you are missing the point. And you're being stingy to people who are responding TO the point.

The presence of a GERMAN Pope at a death camp should prompt comment on the ethical lapse of a culture who imprisoned human beings inside those walls, with the view toward what is said by a GERMAN Pope about the Holocaust. He readily acknowledged the difficulty. The OP did a very good job of putting that in front of us here.

It wasn't just Jews, but gypsies, gays and other people deemed "undesirable". To have Ratzinger, the official mouthpiece of modern-day gay persecution deliver his platitudes on the Holocaust rings hollow with me. He was a fascist then and he's a fascist now. His words are as meaningless to me as the Christian platitudes of George Bush. Deeds, Mr. Ratzinger -- NOT words.

denies your point.

Now give yourself a moment to esteem the fair presentation the OP offered us of a news event.

You have other objections to Benedict, and that's fine. Who knows -- many of us might even agree with you on that.

But you aren't paying any attention to points raised with you in your posts or in others' posts, and you are dismissive to others when they make resonant points.

Mostly you ignore the points and default to your personal agenda against Ratzinger.

If you want to do a thread bashing the Pope, the software for that is available, and you can even have your pick of which Board.

In THIS board, in THIS thread, you have done a piss-poor job of paying attention to what's presented, and I don't much respect that approach.

You have an opportunity to discuss a German Pope's appearance at a death camp, and its reverberations across an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe, and you failed to take it.

compulsory membership in the Hitler youth at the age of 14 hardly seems to be one of them.

... is that the experience seems to have had no effect on the grown Ratzinger's authoritarianism and persecution of entire groups of people whom he deems "different" or "inferior". He's still a moral coward, but now HE has the power to make people suffer.

in general. But I don't think we can call him a "moral coward" based on the very little we know about what he did as a teenager. Especially while most of us are situated relatively comfortably in the U.S., while our government is killing people in our name in Iraq.

His authoritarian, orthodox repression of women and persecution of gays (while not using his power against warmongering corporatists) is simply evidence to that fact.

Catholic schools.

By any chance have you ever seen Louis Malle's film AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS? ("Goodbye, Children").

It is a film about the true account of a Catholic child thinking back as an adult on his school years during the Third Reich, when the Catholic fathers of his school agreed to hide a Jewish child among the Catholic population to save him form the death camps.

I saw its American premier in Miami, and Malle was there to discuss the film and the experience.

Well. If you have not seen it, maybe rent it and give it a look. It's an excellent film.

That's Josef Goebbels on the far right

Why was G-d silent in Auschwitz? Duh!

But it is a sickening picture.

desiring Ratzinger to have been deported to a concentration camp at age 14, or perhaps being on the run, subject to being executed if found. Because pretty much you're saying he's bad for not being dead. It's one thing to say that a conscientious objector who is probably now long dead was a role model; I strongly doubt she was happy at her brother-in-law's actions and went around speaking proudly of them as a role model at the time.

I've known many people who were Communists, some elderly enough to have supported some very bad things. Or done very bad things. A number were soldiers in the Red Army in WWII. Some were civilians in the western Ukraine and Moldavia during the war--notorious Nazi-supporting areas. I've simply learned not to ask; their abject repentance or lack thereof is not my concern, and their moral failings also not mine.

That's because I've never tried to equate 'moral cowardice' with 'absence of exceptional bravery'. Because then you and I would probably turn out to be moral cowards, instead of merely average: it's unlikely we're both exceptional, and expecting the exceptional out of everybody isn't reasonable. Here we have grounds for humility, not a wish for somebody else's death.

Makes for good reading if nothing else, since melodrama is a good seller.

Nope, there are plenty of cowards in the world, including moral cowards. Perhaps you and I are two such people. Ratzinger was one. He still is. The only difference is he presumes to be the embodiment and voice of God's own moral authority on earth. A little humility goes a long way, even for a Pope.

Those didn't occur when he was 14. They occur NOW. He has no moral authority to be on the site of the murder of the gay victims of the Holocaust. He is merely perpetuating Nazi policies today. It is a TRAVESTY that this bigot is using these people's deaths for his political gain.

He was involved in the Hitler Youth, but as you point out, it was compulsory & he seemed to join reluctantly. He was only 6 years old when the Nazis came to power. His father was anti-Nazi & the family had to move a few times because of his opposition. During the war, he wasn't on the front lines, but producing anti-aircraft missiles at a Hungarian factory, alongside forced concentration camp laborers. And he deserted in 1944 & was sent to a POW camp. I think Ratzinger took the line most people would take - not supporting the atrocities, but not openly opposing them either. Open opposition could get that person sent to a camp as well. Maybe it would have been futile for one person to oppose it, but would it have been futile for 10 million to oppose it? Is it a cop-out to say "resistance is futile", or was it realistic given the total Nazi control?


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1572667,00.html

He did not work "producing anti-aircraft missiles at a Hungarian factory, alongside forced concentration camp laborers." What the article actually said is: "Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp."

You should be ashamed for twisting the facts in order to protect Ratzinger's past!

Because I'm all about protecting Ratzinger's past. I'm such a huge fan! The combination of intolerance towards gays, suppression of Latin American activists, his role head of the Inquisition, & his Nazi past really makes Ratzinger one of my favorite people. I truly can't stand this man, & was very upset when he was appointed Pope. I have called him "Pope Ratzinger the Creepy," pointed out his eerie resemblance to Emperor Palpatine. Sometimes, though, I felt a little bad about being so mean to the guy, & wondering if maybe there's another side to his story. I think you shouldn't be so quick to assume what people's motives are, or what they're saying w/o really reading or understanding it. So, I think maybe you should be ashamed of accusing me of trying to "protect Ratzinger's past" w/o apparently reading any other posts I've made, or taking one second to consider my point here. This is all too common on this board.

I fail to understand the distinction between my post & the quote that you apparently see. My point was that he worked alongside concentration camp laborers - he knew what was happening. He knew these people were being enslaved & forced to work. So, it's hard for him to claim ignorance on that score. He might get a little pass for not actively fighting for the Nazis, but does that matter if he was actively producing weapons, despite knowing of Nazi atrocities? In his actions conforming to his society, was he an exception, or was it the norm? Can we condemn him for cowardice? Does this mean we must then condemn ourselves for every time we could have made a stand, and didn't? Should we forgive him, or are his actions unforgiveable? I think you really like self-righteously condemning people. As do we all. What's more difficult is really looking inside yourself to question your own actions, or the morality of your own deeds. I respect that this Pope is now really condemning the past atrocities of the Holocaust & trying to make up, in some small way, for the church's earlier silence. I don't respect that he seems to be blaming God, instead of blaming mankind's own hatred, & instead of taking some responsibility for his own role (however small) in that action. I think, unless we can really question ourselves, & change ourselves, blaming God is not going to stop anything wrong in this world. I'm trying to understand Ratzinger, as one small change in myself. Maybe you can try to understand my perspective, as one small change in yourself, and it keeps going. I think, if we human beings can understand our own reactions a little better, we won't have to blame God for the things that we do.

... you can NOT see the difference in what you posted and what was actually said in the article. Now you even repeat the original assertion, "I fail to understand the distinction between my post & the quote that you apparently see. My point was that he worked alongside concentration camp laborers - he knew what was happening."

No, Marie, he did not "work alongside" concentration camp prisoners -- he was a Nazi anti-aircraft gunner guarding the plant. Big damn difference IMHO, but then propaganda is sometimes just a matter of semantics.

"I respect that this Pope is now really condemning the past atrocities of the Holocaust & trying to make up, in some small way, for the church's earlier silence."

What? By now using his position and influence to condemn gays rather than Jews? As a gay person whose mother's family were German Jews, it's good to know I haven't missed out on the latest hypocrisy of the Christian church. Yes, he's learned a lot from his experience, I see. Maybe instead of threatening pro-choice politicians with excommunication he could threaten the same against anyone supporting the immoral war in Iraq. But he won't. Some things never change, do they.

- Can you not see the distinction between my point & the point you assumed I was making? My point was that, as a German soldier at an anti-aircraft plant that employed concentration camp workers, he must have known what was going on. I don't see you disagreeing w/that point. I'm condemning Ratzinger's involvement w/the Nazis, while also questioning what this means, or whether it was a result of hatred or conformity, whether we could do differently, & how we should judge it now. Since this is so important to you, I looked at what Ratzinger's job actually was in the plant - he was drafted into the anti-aircraft unit as a "helper", because he was too young at the time to be a soldier. He wasn't probably "working alongside" the laborers on the assembly line, though he did work near the laborers themselves - but I don't know exactly what "helpers" did, and the articles aren't more specific. Why are you still insisting I'm spreading pro-Ratzinger propaganda, in spite of my posts here? Is it that you believe anyone who's perspective differs from your own must have bad intentions? How did you feel about my points about questioning our own reactions? How did you feel about Ratzinger's perspective on this issue - do you agree, or disagree w/his view of God's role? Why?

- I'm not talking about any of the other stances the Pope has taken, but only about his stance on this issue. And I do have to give him a bit of credit for addressing the Holocaust head-on, & condemning anti-Semitism. That in no way changes my opinion on his other actions. But, it's better that he's doing this than making another intolerant speech, right? Even if you believe he is hypocritical on this issue, isn't it better for him to speak against it now, rather than simply ignoring the Holocaust? I'm not happy w/many things this Pope has done, but on this particular issue, I'm glad he's now speaking out.

years is convincing. More work still to be done, but the trendlines are encouraging. More dialogue and respect is better than less dialogue and no respect. This Pope in this visit provides further context for the next summit between interested parties to reduce anti-Semitism. I find that an obvious plus in the event, and Marie has properly culled that from the news story as well.

The Catholic Church's stand on lesbian and gay issues is disgraceful, but asking Benedict to shoulder sole blame for this is not fair policy. Fred Phelps, a degenerate Protestant jackal, stands at funerals of gay and lesbian Americans with signs reading "GOD HATES FAGS."

I seriously doubt that any of us could picture ourselves doing that to ANYONE, no matter who they slept with during their lives, or what church they went to, or didn't go to, etc.

It is so stridently cruel that we hardly even have a context for it.

Both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church have a LONG way to go in accepting lesbian and gay people. A LONG way. Pressue must be brought to bear against both -- not just one -- so that the God people are introduced to is not a discriminating old fool or a bigoted old tyrant. If these folks are in the God business, it needs to be a God without a quality control problem, and who someone sleeps with or wishes to marry should not be a disqualifying factor for membership.

That fight is necessary and it is on-going.

"Can you not see the distinction between my point & the point you assumed I was making? My point was that, as a German soldier at an anti-aircraft plant that employed concentration camp workers, he must have known what was going on."

Nowhere in your original post #28 did you make that assertion. So you expect people to proceed from an assumption on what basis? Because you NOW say you meant something else entirely?

Let me also (again) refute false information you are spreading which downplay Ratzinger's "job" at the BMW factory. It was not actually his "job" but his assignment in the Germn Army after he left the HL. He manned an anti-aircraft gun. He has admitted that. He also said the only reason he himself didn't fire that anti-aircraft gun was because he suffered a thumb injury. Later, he was transferred to Hungary setting tank traps. If you want links I can provide plenty of them. Here's just one example:

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=92405

You want to know what was going on at the BMW plant? Here are the facts:

http://www.theawfultruth.com/salbmw/
http://www.religioustolerance.org/fin_nazi.htm
http://www.wsherc.org/center_&_local_resources/Bearing_Witness/Bowl_Allach.asp
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/05/07/files_uncover_nazis_trail_of_death/?page=2

You'd obviously much rather criticize me than address anything I was trying to say. I assumed, based on my post that he worked at a plant w/concentration camp workers, that people would assume that he knew that the concentration camps existed. I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption, but I'm sorry if you came to a different conculsion. What is the HL? What was his actual job (or assignment) while stationed at the plant? I've said I don't know & you haven't helped me out with that. I'm not spreading any information, because I don't know that much. But you'd much rather think I have some burning interest in defending Ratzinger, for some reasons you perhaps know best. Why didn't you address ANY of the questions I posed?

outside the plant. He was not a gunner. I'm not even sure he was armed. The Hitlerjugend were not soldiers; he was later a soldier, but I don't think he ever saw combat--the war was all but over, and he fled when command was breaking down. His fleeing the army isn't as bold as it's made out to be; and his service in the HY wasn't as heinous as it's made out to be.

BTW, had the Allied forces bombed the plant, the concentration camp folk and German civilians would have died. Collateral damage, in a war that saw lots of it.

It's also a matter of tradition in many places that when you see soldiers escorting people from buses or down the road into the camp, you don't interact with them, either the soldiers or the chain-gang. You know both exist; you don't know who they are, and you don't ask. Many a Russian saw such things; most learned not to ask, because questions got you arrested, beaten, or killed.

But then again, exceptional cowardice is apparently the norm for 95% of the population.

Not formally, but a hell of a lot of them sure acted like it when the allies overran Germany in 1945. The HJ were particularly despised by allied soldiers because their youthful lack of a sense of mortality led them to perform daredevil acts against the allied troops. The German leadership was aware of this behavior, and exploited it by making the HJ antitank troops who engaged allied armor at close range with the Panzerfaust and other AT weapons.

Shame, I say! Throw her in the stockade!

(Good grief...)

:eyes:

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Maybe the translation is poor, because that is screwy theology.

God. On the cross, Jesus is said to have questioned God. ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?")

I can't speak for people of other Christian faiths, but as someone brought up as a Catholic, this doesn't seem strange to me at all.

Probably my favorite story from the Bible. There's no easy answers there, either - just questions.

By Oscar Hijuelos.

It's a kind of Job story, set in modern day New York, and beautifully written. I just checked and it's still available in paperback.

Job is that that is the last time in the Bible that God speaks to human beings. After that remarkable speech at the end, the rest is silence. God is silent because we are responsible. And you are right, just questions. Incidentally, I second the other poster's comment on the Hijuelos novel.

"Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1572667,00.html

Is there some reason you left out this passage from that article? The way you posted does not indicate that you were deliberately picking and choosing from the report.

It's obvious that any reader could read the whole thing. My point is that he was too young to stop anything at time. I blame him for actions now, not then.
( I'm an atheist,. and could care less about the religious aspects. I'm interested in a fair discussion of the topic at hand)

This isn't just a matter of leaving something out -- you actually CHANGED what the article said and presented it as if this was an actual passage from the article. That indicates a conscious, deliberate decision on your part. If you want to link to an article and post as if you are quoting from it, then don't twist the facts. If what you want is a "fair discussion" of the topic at hand then quote your sources in a truly objective and accurate manner. Ratzinger himself admitted he manned a Nazi anti-aircraft gun at that factory. He wasn't working there alongside concentration camp laborers. Why did you say that?

Edited to add: Sorry, I was responding to Marie 26. Yours was a sin of omission.

"April 1944". There's not many places in Europe that Ratzinger could have deserted to during that month, unless he was south of Rome or somewhere in the USSR. (Believe the author meant "1945").

A telling comment in the article was -



Of anyone, the Germans know how it was in Germany during those years. The trouble with the "resistance was futile" statement is that practically everyone took that line in 1945, regardless of whether they had run a concentration camp or baked brötchen during the years of the Nazi regime. And unless we were to hear from, say, some the slave laborers from Dachau who might have noticed him at the BMW factory, it is hard to say just how young Ratzinger was behaving in those days. Elizabeth Lohner didn't sound impressed with Ratzinger's story:



This, for me, is why Ratzinger's selection as pope is so troubling. Out of all the possible candidates the cardinals could have selected, they made a point of selecting one who was a former Hitler youth. In my opinion, the church made a serious error with this selection, and Ratzinger deserves to be particularly well scrutinized in his actions as pope.

BH

Putting aside the institutional anti semitism of the Catholic Chuch, since they have officially apologized for it, it is still obscene for this Pope, a man who institutionally seeks to destroy gays and lesbians, to go to Auschwitz and trample on their graves.

He has no shame.

stingy in acknowledging the men and women of that color triangle in the camps.

The hinge appears to me (just one opinion) to be about an impulse for an institution to control others' genitals. I don't mean that flippantly. I mean an impulse to perceive yourself at the head of an institution -- no matter which institution -- as the arbiter of what others may do with their genitals. Hence the prohibition on masturbation, oral sex, premarital sex, prostitution, and so forth. As there are no medical rationales for prohibitions of these behaviors, and as long as strategic birth control technologies are used, the only motivation I see in a church or school or what-have-you trying to prohibit these behaviors is the impulse to control.

And that is what is unethical. The Republicans blasted Bill Clinton for "cheating on his wife" and for "having sex with Monica Lewinsky in the White House." But that is a conflict between Bill and Hillary Clinton, and none of my business. I have no more right to know how their marriage is doing than I have a right to go peek into their windows at night.

Same for the Church, any church.

and in each and every call for help that was not answered.

It was us humans who once again did not listen.

haunted everyone since those days.

Nicely put.

Thank you for expressing it so perfectly. Maybe God is speaking, but we aren't listening. To say that "God was silent" seems to place the blame on God for our own silence in the face of such suffering.

When are we going to start listening to those who are suffering? :shrug:

... questioning the motives of God cannot be good for the Church, actually I'm a bit shocked... Isn't he supposed to say some "wise-sounding" shit like, "God has reasons for things he does and we must not question his motives?

It seems like he's honestly questioning God, instead of issuing bland cliches to reassure people.

would put in his mouth. I think all of the people who are so shocked by this cannot be very familiar with Scripture or with Catholic beliefs. The Bible is full of people expressing doubts about God, including Christ while on the cross.

... is NOT unusual...?

Ok, please find me another example of any other Pope in history, questioning the motives of God and why he didn't stop a particular tragedy... Other than Bible scripture please...

reference to Scripture, so by telling me to leave out Scripture you are tying my hands.

Also, there have been few tragedies on the scale of the Holocaust.

The current pope should look to his own house for some uncomfortable answers. "God's representative on earth" turned a blind eye. And Ratzinger himself was, we are told, an "unenthusiastic" Hitler Youth, and later member of the German military. Don't question god, you piece of shit: where were YOU?

at the same time, isn't it better for the Pope to acknowledge the horrors of the Holocaust rather than being silent about it today?

"Benedict, 79, said humans could not fathom "this endless slaughter" but only seek reconciliation for those who suffered then and those who now "are suffering in new ways from the power of hatred.""

I for one am glad the Pope said and did this. It was a good thing to do and also, he has acknowledged the existence of the present state of affairs in the above statement - "suffering in new ways". This is a striking comparison and even though is is somewhat indirect, I believe he has made a significant statement.

As for his past, he was a young Catholic boy. He had few options and he did escape.

Anyone who was a German Catholic at this time was also a potential concentration camp resident. There are many reasons no one acknowledged the ongoing holocaust. The government made sure of it and not many people knew the reality of it is what I was told. They were shocked as hell after WWII when the reality became known of what had occurred.

This is a good act from the Pope I believe.

from hatred?

When he perpetuates hatred every day of his Papacy????

A holocaust is going on in Iraq right now. If he is so much a good man of God, why doesn`t he use his control over the hundreds of millions of his followers that bow to him and worship him as a direct conduit to God, and tell them to rise up against the powers that be and stop this war crime in Iraq? My opinion is that this poor excuse for a pope has his own agenda. And could really care less about the human race as a whole. Just people stupid enough to be his sheep. Which will never include me because I am agnostic.
Peace
Wildman
Al Gore is My President

the Guardian:

"VATICAN CITY (AP) - The Vatican said Friday it had asked the Mexican founder of the conservative order Legionaries of Christ to renounce celebrating public Masses and live a life of ``prayer and repentance'' following its investigation into allegations he sexually abused seminarians.

the Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI had approved the sanctions against the Rev. Marcial Maciel - making it the first major sexual abuse disciplinary case handled by the pope since he took office last year.

Maciel is one of the most prominent Catholic Church officials the Vatican has disciplined for alleged involvement in child sexual abuse. The case is also significant because Maciel was so warmly regarded by Pope John Paul II."


Full text at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5832171,00.html

The collaboration is nonsense. While he did not do enough, he did more than anyone else did.

god may have made the world but it's up to us to live in it - or die in it - as we so choose and damn the ones who seek to make that choice for anyone but themselves.

ridiculous comment.

he could have excommunicated hitler and called on the german people to throw off the mad-man's dictatorship. In FACT most of the church LOVED the idea of a restoration of strongman king-like rule. The nazi atrocities are just one more example of the utter failure of the roman church. Jesus would not approve of what's been done in his name.

The truth is that the Church was strongly opposed to Hitler, the controversy is whether the Pope and others did all they could do. There are arguments on both sides, but you're obviously not someone looking for a thoughtful discussion.

While it is good that he, as a German who did nothing and leader of the Catholic Church, is trying reconcile with victims of the Holocaust, it is weird that he would ask "Where was God?" when he as an individual and part of the Church allowed it to happen. It is true that Hitler and his regime do have more of a responsibilty for what happened but don't ask of God what you aren't willing to do yourself.

saint were you when you were 14?

As a teenager and whether we should except men who would become the Pope to be more exceptional than the average person in taking risks to do good. Regardless, he was involved as were many other individuals.
I guess a comparable example would be if I was involved in a class or a job where we dumped toxic chemicals into the local stream and I suspected that it was wrong but I did so anyway because I didn't want to fail the class or lose my job. Years later, everything in the stream is dead and polluted which I regret. I don't ask where was God. I don't ask why it happened. I know why it happened and I know that I was part of it.

better Ratz should have made a statement that included making some amends. after all, didn't a poster note that he knew he was born to be Pope (somewhat like a Dalai Lama)? seems someone born to the Shoes of the Fisherman might express more remorse and regret, rather than pontificating (ha) about what "God" should have done.

Catholicism is not like Buddhism. The pope is not divinely chosen, or God's messenger on earth. He's simply the head of the church, who is chosen by the church to issue papal doctrine & lead parishioners. He's not considered especially "divine" in any way, but can sin & must ask forgiveness like anyone else. He wasn't destined to be Pope, because under Catholic doctrine, all of us have free will to choose our fates. You can ask that he show some more personal regret, and I think that's a valid point. But he didn't know he was born to be Pope, & that belief in predestiny is not a part of Catholic doctrine. In fact, I think that's more of a Protestant concept.

in the RCC, so I am well aware of the dogma and doctrine. I did somewhat misread the post I referred to - the poster actually said that God knew who the Pope would be, therefore Ratzo was pre-ordained to be Pope. So it's truly MORE akin to the Dalai Lama -- God knows who the leader is and it is up to humans to find (usually) him.

But where do you get all this stuff that the Pope is not considered to be God's messenger on Earth? According to the official propaganda, the Pope is infallible. The Pope speaks for God on Earth. Has the propaganda changed that much since I sat under the watchful eye of Sister and studied my Baltimore Catechism?

My point was that he's not pre-ordained to be Pope, isn't that right? Catholicism believes in free will, so God wouldn't know who the Pope would be. It's really not like the Dalai Lama, otherwise, they'd be searching for divine signs instead of just holding an election. I think he's infalliable when it comes to issuing Church doctrine, but not infalliable when it comes to his general actions or statements. So, he can still make mistakes & still commit a sin in his own actions. But, it's probably a technical distinction. I think there's a split between the official theology & what Catholics will believe in general. It's like, you don't have to eat fish anymore on Fridays, but people still do it. So, I think sometimes people will follow traditions or beliefs that aren't, technically, part of Church doctrine. "God's messenger" implies that he's got some direct line to God that normal people don't have, & that's not my understanding of the Pope's role. And it's apparantly not the Pope's own understanding, since he's asking questions that "God's messenger" should already know, right? The Pope, as head of the Church, is God's representative, but that doesn't mean he has special divinity, or knowledge, or messages from God. Again, that concept of God directly sending messages through "divine communication" seems more Protestant to me. I've got a LOT less education than you, though, & am basing this on some hazy Sunday school memories & Google. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

the Pope isn't considered infallible unless he specifically makes a statement that he pronounces "ex cathedra," which a pope (any pope) has only done a couple of times in history. (If I'm remembering correctly, the two doctrines stated ex cathedra both had to do with Mary -- the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception.)

the Sister. The Pope is not considered infallible unless speaking "ex cathedra." That has happened only a couple times in history.

And no one ever told me in Catholic religion classes that he was "God's messenger on Earth." But I was a post Vatican two kid, so I don't know what you might have read in the Baltimore cathechism.

and I actually have those catechisms somewhere (reprints I found at a Catholic supply store... I read them for nostalgia factor). I still remember the "glass of milk" metaphor for sin... white/sin-free; grey/venial sin; black/mortal sin.

were you actually never told that the Pope spoke for God on Earth?

cleary a breath of fresh air to my parents. I was too young to understand what was happening.

That's a decidedly uninformed opinion of the position of Pope.

that you are still active in the RCC, perhaps your information, and my recollection of 43 years ago, pre Vatican II, may indeed be different.

near the top of my list.

http://www.traces-cl.com/apr2001/pio.htm

"The Righteous Pope"

BY DAVID G. DALIN

"A rabbi in New York, David Dalin, is one of the leading figures in the American Jewish world. His book, Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience, was named one of the best academic works of 1998. He has lectured on Jewish-Christian relations at the University of Hartford, Trinity College, George Washington University, and Queens College of New York. In an article published in the February 26, 2001, issue of The Weekly Standard (published in the United States), Rabbi David Dalin called for Pius XII to be recognized as “righteous,” because of his efforts to save Jews from the Holocaust. We publish here excerpts from the article.

SNIP

“Provoking suicide”
Holocaust survivors such as Marcus Melchior, the Chief Rabbi of Denmark, argued that “if the Pope had spoken out, Hitler would probably have massacred more than six million Jews and perhaps ten times ten million Catholics, if he had the power to do so.” Robert M.W. Kempner called upon his experience at the Nuremberg trials to say (in a letter to the editor after Commentary published an excerpt from Guenter Lewy in 1964), “Every propaganda move of the Catholic Church against Hitler’s Reich would have been not only ‘provoking suicide,’ but would have hastened the execution of still more Jews and priests.”
This is hardly a speculative concern. A Dutch bishops’ pastoral letter condemning “the unmerciful and unjust treatment meted out to Jews” was read in Holland’s Catholic churches in July 1942. The well-intentioned letter–which declared that it was inspired by Pius XII–backfired. As Pinchas Lapide notes: “The saddest and most thought-provoking conclusion is that whilst the Catholic clergy in Holland protested more loudly, expressly, and frequently against Jewish persecutions than the religious hierarchy of any other Nazi-occupied country, more Jews–some 110,000 or 79 percent of the total–were deported from Holland to death camps.”...
One might ask, of course, what could have been worse than the mass murder of six million Jews? The answer is the slaughter of hundreds of thousands more. "

SNIP

Karl Barth and others brave enough to speak out despite the consequences heard the message quite clearly. :shrug:

The Barmen Declaration, 1934, was a call to resistance against the theological claims of the Nazi state. Almost immediately after Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, Protestant Christians faced pressure to "aryanize" the Church, expel Jewish Christians from the ordained ministry and adopt the Nazi "Führer Principle" as the organizing principle of church government. In general, the churches succumbed to these pressures, and some Christians embraced them willingly. The pro-Nazi "German Christian" movement became a force in the church. They glorified Adolf Hitler as a "German prophet" and preached that racial consciousness was a source of revelation alongside the Bible. But many Christians in Germany—including Lutheran and Reformed, liberal and neo-orthodox—opposed the encroachment of Nazi ideology on the Church's proclamation. At Barmen, this emerging "Confessing Church" adopted a declaration drafted by Reformed theologian Karl Barth and Lutheran theologian Hans Asmussen, which expressly repudiated the claim that other powers apart from Christ could be sources of God's revelation. Not all Christians courageously resisted the regime, but many who did—like the Protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Roman Catholic priest Bernhard Lichtenberg—were arrested and executed in concentration camps.

Too few then; hopefully more now.

Maybe God is listening, and as long as pope benedict is talking, nobody can hear her.

you little brown shirt.

It is very well known that the Catholic Church entered into non-agression pacts with fascist Italy and Hilter early in the rise to WWII. To some degree, it was the Catholic Church and not the concept of God who is to blame for some of the Auschwitz dead.

J

http://www.traces-cl.com/apr2001/pio.htm

by David G. Dalin, author of Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience, pub. in 1998


"His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, rushed out in 1939 to beg for peace, was in part a declaration that the proper role of the papacy was to plead to both warring sides rather than to blame one. But it very pointedly quoted St. Paul–“there is neither Gentile nor Jew”–using the word “Jew” specifically in the context of rejecting racial ideology. The New York Times greeted the encyclical with a front-page headline on October 28, 1939: “Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism.” Allied airplanes dropped thousands of copies on Germany in an effort to raise anti-Nazi sentiment.
In 1939 and 1940, Pius acted as a secret intermediary between the German plotters against Hitler and the British. He would similarly risk warning the Allies about the impending German invasions of Holland, Belgium, and France. ...
When French bishops issued pastoral letters in 1942 attacking deportations, Pius sent his nuncio to protest to the Vichy government against “the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews from the French-occupied zone to Silesia and parts of Russia.” Vatican Radio commented on the bishops’ letters six days in a row–at a time when listening to Vatican Radio was a crime in Germany and Poland for which some were put to death. (“Pope Is Said to Plead for Jews Listed for Removal from France,” The New York Times headline read on August 6, 1942. “Vichy Seizes Jews; Pope Pius Ignored,” the Times reported three weeks later.)...
In the summer of 1944, after the liberation of Rome but before the war’s end, Pius told a group of Roman Jews who had come to thank him for his protection: “For centuries, Jews have been unjustly treated and despised. It is time they were treated with justice and humanity, God wills it and the Church wills it. St. Paul tells us that the Jews are our brothers. They should also be welcomed as friends.”
As these and hundreds of other examples are disparaged, one by one, in recent books attacking Pius XII, the reader loses sight of the huge bulk of them, their cumulative effect that left no one, the Nazis least of all, in doubt about the Pope’s position. ...
In its editorial the following day, The New York Times declared, “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. In calling for a ‘real new order’ based on ‘liberty, justice, and love,’ the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism.”

Sensing that the early cooperation was not going well (and maybe arousing some sort of conscience), Pius then reversed himself and did all that you note above. I find it interesting that you only quote Church activities from 1939 forward on the issue. Maybe you should see or research what your beloved Church was doing in the mid-1930s.

BTW - issuing "pastoral letters attacking deportations" in 1942!!! By that time, hundreds of thousands of Jews were already dead! Too late, too sorry. If the Catholic Church was so high-and-mighty, they would have repudiated the rise of fascism well before 1939. If their intentions were CLEAR and WELL DRAFTED BY ACTION AND WORD, there would be no question either way as to whether they did what the Catholic apologists claim.

J

And why was the Catholic Church any more culpable than WE were? They didn't have an army, we did.

As God's right-hand man, the Pope and his church had a moral authority and responsibility above and beyond that of governments, like the USA, to denounce the rise of fascism. Instead, Pius chose (initially) to look the other way in hopes of avoiding conflict with Hitler's rise. It was not God's will that Pius was doing, but that of self-interest and preservation of the church. Self-interest in the face of injustice would not have been God's will if we are to learning anything from the teachings of Jesus and the Old Testament.

J

about the "power of hatred" having concerned himself with an anti-gay campaign.

"God" has been silent on a LOT of atrocities.

thunder gods were no longer necessary. Will the last person to leave the church please turn off the lights.

The classical G-d of the Bible does not exist or does not care! We are all alone!

The Holocaust forces a reexamination of one's theology.

The Holocaust forces a reexamination of our own consciences, particularly in view of the currrent war in which we find our country involved.

world. Period. Free will doesn't apply to insane people by definition. Free will is not a gift, it is simply discretionary decision making. All animals have it. Only a religion would glorify a simple, basic, animalistic concept such as free will.

Edit: Oops menat to post at bottom of thread!

bad. But nobody could trouble themselves to help those people.

FYI, it took me many years to figure this out, and it's okay if you want to believe what works for you.. fine. There is no God, imho. This idea of some guy sitting up in the sky deciding who does what and when.. doesn't work for me. When you have millions of people dying before they reach 20, simplye because of the unfortunate luck of being born in particular regions of the world, it doesn't exactly speak of a master plan, now does it? God wants little children in Africa to die of AIDS at 10 years old? Or perhaps he wants their parents to die of starvation, and the children to suffer for a year or two, then die an agonizing death later.. all because some people lucky enough to be born elsewhere, are too selfish to make sure that all "god's children" are fed and cared for? Sorry.. I just don't see it. Satan is not killing these children, the rest of the planet is... The Holocaust happened, sad to say, because people who BELIEVED in God were drawn into believing that god wanted them to kill others (wasn't Hitler's saying "god is with us"?). I'm more inclined to believe in an inner power, and the sanctity of living things, not in a patriarchal set of beliefs that have been used as an excuse to start wars, kill people, and keep anyone but heterosexual males in power. If you believe otherwise, that's fine with me. I have no issue with religious people, as long as they don't try to shove into my face at every turn.

I also used to believe in a vague, dissipated sort of inner power. That was my first stop after I stopped believing first in organized religion (i.e., their teachings of heaven and hell, devils and angels, etc.), and then second the whole concept of a god in general. When I examined the concept of this inner power with the same rigorous philosophy that I applied to the concept of god, I came to the conclusion this power does not make sense either.

hate its' creation? Or does humanity blame the creator for killing the creator's creations? Did God tell Joshua to murder everyone in Jericho, every man, woman, child and the animals? Or did Joshua murder and blame God? So, if there is a creator, is the creator a scapegoat of inhumane atrocious things that humans do in the name of said entity?

It's that eternal question of "why does God let bad things happen to good people?" And no religion has really come up w/a satisfactory answer for it (IMO).

:)

Or the 100 years war? Or during the horror of the middle passage of the slave trade? Or the virtual extermination of many American Indian tribes? Or the gas attacks of WWI?

And so on.

It's hard to get a handle on the problem of evil. That's why anti-evolutionists are deluding themselves if they think Darwin is the source of most atheism.

Compare the world today to the ancient world where he deigned to intercede. Looks like god doesn't
like to get involved when the going gets beyond ox carts and hand-to-hand combat.

And let's not forget, the Hebrew god can't defeat armies who use iron chariots.

People were easier to dazzle, I suppose.

To clear up some questions ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII#World_War_II

Pope Pius XII

-snip-

The Holocaust

In March 1939, Pius obtained 3,000 visas for European Jews who had been baptized and converted to Catholicism to go to Brazil, although two-thirds of these were later revoked for "improper conduct" (i.e. continuing to practice Judaism). <35> In April 1939, Pius lifted the ban on Action Française in France, a virulently anti-semitic and anti-communist organization.<36>

In the spring of 1940, Pius declined to act when Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione to intercede on behalf of Spanish and Lithuanian Jews facing deporation to Germany.<37>

In 1941 Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna informed Pius of Jewish deportations in Vienna.<38> Later that year, when asked by French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain if the Vatican objected to anti-Jewish laws, Pius responded that the church condemned racism, but would not comment on specific rules.<39> Similarly, when Petain's puppet government adopted the "Jewish statutes," the Vichy ambassador to the Vatican, Leon Berard, was told that the legislation did not conflict with Catholic teachings.<40> Valerio Valeri, the nuncio to France was "embarrassed" when he learned of this publicly from Petain<41> and personally checked the information with Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione<42> who confirmed the Vatican's position.<43> In September 1941 Pius objected to a Slovakian Jewish Code<44>, which, unlike the earlier Vichy codes, prohibitted intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.<45> In October 1941 Harold Tittman, a U.S. delegate to the Vatican, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities against Jews; Pius replied that the Vatican wished to remain "neutral,"<46> reiterating the neutrality policy which Pius invoked as early as September 1940.<47>

In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, told Pius that Slovakian Jews were being sent to death camps.<48> In August 1942, by which time it has been estimated than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, in response to a letter from Andrej Septyckyj, Pius advised Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience" (a quote from Psalms).<49> On 18 September 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini (who would later become Pope Paul VI), wrote to Pius, "the massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."<50> Later that month, when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned Pius that silence on the Holocaust would hurt the Vatican's "moral prestigue"—a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from Great Britain, Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, and Poland<51>— the Cardinal Secretary of State replied that the "rumors" about crimes committed against Jews could not be verified.<52> In December 1942, when Tittman Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if the Pius would issue a proclamation simialar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," Maglione replied that the Vatican was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."<53>

-snip-

There is more at the above link ...

Signed; Ex-Catholic Atheist ....