Posted on 10/07/2004 7:40:19 AM PDT by carlo3b
New Pope Book Says Communism Was 'Necessary Evil'
Oct 7, 6:23 AM (ET)By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Communism was a "necessary evil" that God allowed to happen in the 20th century in order to create opportunities for good after its demise, Pope John Paul says in his new book."Memory and Identity," which is due to be published early next year, is the ailing 84-year-old pontiff's latest and perhaps last book intended for a mass circulation audience. All of his previous books have been international bestsellers.
In one chapter, the pope, who lived through both Nazism and Communism in his native Poland, reflects on the meaning of evil in life and in history.
"I have personally experienced the reality of the 'ideologies of evil'. It remains indelibly fixed in my memory," he says in the book, which is a series of conversations he had in Polish with fellow philosophers in the summer of 1993.
Excerpts of the book, which was announced Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair, were made available by the Italian publisher Rizzoli.
The pope, who has been credited with helping bring about the fall of Communism after his shock election in 1978, reveals that even an optimist like him had moments of pessimism during his life under Communist oppression.
"To me it was quite clear that Communism would last much longer than Nazism had done. For how long? It was hard to predict," he writes.
"There was a sense that this evil was in some way necessary for the world and for mankind. It can happen, in fact, that in certain particular human situations, evil is revealed as somehow useful inasmuch as it creates opportunities for good."
Many historians believe it was his support for Poland's free trade union Solidarity after he became pope in 1978 that helped the union go on to form the East Bloc's first free government.
NAZI "BESTIALITY"
The pope, whom Jews have credited with improving Catholic relations with them more than any pontiff in history, also reflects on Nazism, which he calls a "bestiality."
"The Lord God allowed Nazism 12 years of existence ... evidently this was the limit imposed by Divine Providence upon that sort of folly," he says.
"The full extent of the evil that was raging through Europe was not seen by everyone, not even by those of us who were living at the epicenter. We were totally swallowed up in a great eruption of evil," he says.
"Both the Nazis during the war and, later, the Communists in Eastern Europe, tried to hide what they were doing from public opinion. For a long time, the West did not want to believe in the extermination of the Jews," he writes.
The pope's royalties from "Memory and Identity" will go to charity as have his previous titles.
Yes, God allowed the evil of communism for a time. He may have allowed it for several reasons, of which we can only surmise. For God can use evil for His own good purposes.
For instance, He may have allowed Nazism to recreate the state of Israel by it's persecution of the Jews. He may have allowed communism to eliminate Nazism and to expose the depravity of mankind's bureaucracy when it alienates itself from God.
Never forget that once Adam and Eve turned over this world to the evil one, evil is the norm, not the exception. All mankind was sold to the evil one and God totally justified to do whatever he wills in dealing with fallen mankind. God was just in saving Noah and his family and wiping out the world at that time, just as He is in allowing communism for a time in the modern era.
God's goodness can also be seen the fall of the Berlin wall and the repeal of communism's stronghold over the majority of this world for the present time. It is only God that does 'good' in this world and no one will question His goodness when the panoply of history and his works are revealed to all at the end of the world.
>>, Pope John Paul III says in his new book.<<
Pope John Paul THREE? Oh, great, ANOTHER sequel.
The title is totally misleading. The term "necessary evil" implies that Communism, bad as it was, still provided a better alternative to anything else. That is clearly NOT what the Pope said.
Well that's the conundrum I always face when thinking about the crucifixion. I mean, we have to accept the means God used to redeem us (human incarnation, suffering, and death). I wonder if the way He chose was 'necessary' based on the nature of how man fell and what man was/is, or if he could have just come down as a big old ball of light and said "I pushed the reboot button - you're all okay again"?
I admit it's hard understanding any evil as necessary yet not a denial of free will. I have to read up on it myself. I know in Exodus it says that God made pharoah obdurate show Moses could display the glory of God.
Don't bother explaining...
The anti-Catholic bigotry spewed by some FR member is absoultely astounding.
Facts don't get in the way of these perpertual Pope- and Church-bashers. They'll still slam us and the Pontiff regardless.
I'd suggest to all fellow Catholic Freepers to just ignore these people, leaving them to wallow in their ignorance.
Rape produces an abortion
So, where do you draw the line between no development at all (the envirowackos' position), and environmental havoc spurred by uncontroled development???
Try understanding the Pope's statements in the light of the prophecies of Fatima, wherein Our Lady told the children that if the world did not repent, there would be a war that would overshadow even the terrible world war the earth was them enroiled in, and that Russia would turn itself over to the hordes of atheists and nihilists, and would spread its evil across the globe.
God is not the CAUSE of the evil, but he did PERMIT it, for the chastisement of his children who have disobeyed him. God permits evil because it is necessary for humans to be able to freely choose to follow him.
God allows bad things to happen. The world was given to us and we gave it away to satan from a bible perspective--at least for now until god forcibly takes the deed back.
God put physical and metaphysical processes in place that are still running today. He also allowed US free will to govern our god to human, human to human, and human to nature interactions. 95% of the bad that happens in this world is the result of someone's choice (5% accounts for natural disasters and "acts of god").
Although communism is evil, there were alot of wrong " that led to terrible results:
-unworthy leaders, rich, greedy folks that angered the people
"foolish" or uninformed people who believed those demon-inspired leaders who had this notion of "utopia"
-once these demonic leaders got power, some people probably made choices in taking on fellow countrymen who didn't go along with the revolution and because of their silence, compliance, or fear, allowed them to be killed
-in other parts of the world, leaders were making choices not to help stem this pestilence because it didn't affect them.
How blind are we about history? This is happening right now....the same old evil shows up in new forms in every generation. It is really all about choices. Some of America's elites are so evil and have evil intentions for this nation and its people so that they can amass money and power with no constraints. They want to bring about a government that will strip away the god-inspired protections our brilliant founding fathers put in place. Some of America's citizens are also so rebellious and/or foolish that they don't try to really understand or seek the truth regarding these people and their plans so will willy nilly help them to get into power.
If John Kerry is elected, it will not be God's "perfect will" but his "permissive will" because he will allow the people of America to choose and to choose badly if they desire. The old testament is filled with examples of this. They had hundreds of years of bad rulers. He will allow America to reap what it sows and experience the consequences of those choices--regardless of the fact that many of us don't agree with them. Then we will just have to find the courage to make good choices and thwart their efforts--like we did in the Clinton years.
sorry for the lecture but i hate to see God get a bad rap for our choices.
I take it you haven't read much of the Old Testament prophets who talked at length about God purposely dispersing the Jews and punishing them for their disloyalty.
I may be wrong on that account, but to me Nazism, Communism and Terrorism are not part of God's plans for us but proof of our imperfection and our need to live according His words. Not something God planned specifically, but some great evil that comes from our own free will that He gave us.
You are correct, but we're not debating about what God plans, but what He allows. God permits all things. He permitted the persecution of Job. He permitted the building of the atomic bomb. He permitted 9/11. All for a higher purpose. Without the lessons learned from the evil of communism, would benign secular atheism have destroyed religion with "science" by this point? We don't know. It's all about faith. We have to trust that God, in His wisdom, did not intervene to stop the fruition of Communism and Nazism for the purpose of bringing about good. Don't forget, the United States - the defender of democracy - became an unchallenged superpower because of WWII and the Cold War. The Pope is declaring the fruit that God brought forth from the evil of these tyrannical political systems. He's not endorsing it. He's not promoting it. He's not qualifying Communism and Nazism as good things.
BTTT
bookmark to respond later
There is a vast difference between a "necessary evil" and a "good thing." Evil is not good. But if your grandfather cannot understand how something as evil as the Soviet Union can be used to help bring about the salvation of man, he can never understand why evil exists. Ask the Jews who call their own slaughter, "holocaust." (The word means, "a holy offering.")
Sustainable development = sustained poverty. The opposite of sustainable development is free enterprise and private property.
If you get rid of all the private property (except for the global elitists of course) and you destroy free enterprise through environmental and other regulation, you end up getting no development at all and the utter destruction of the principles on which the United States was founded.
In my view there is no trade off. Sustainable development is 21st century communism. People have died because of it, a lot more people will die because of it the more entrenched it becomes.
I like it, but could we change the name to Pope Leo XIV, I'm experiencing John Paul fatigue.
I'm glad you bring up Fatima.
The fact this Pope is going to the great Dramatic lengths of returning Kazan to Russia confirms that he is either in the service of communist deception strategy or just another Useful Idiot only too willing to take part in the "greatest peace movement the world has ever seen."
Who is this historian?
school - read for later
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