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.
Please see post #35 and here's another short article (a little of it I posted below): "Pius XII as Scapegoat" on the subject of Pius XII and the Nazis - it's well worth reading. Pius has been unfairly excoriated by many in the last few years.
"From the beginning of his papacy in 1939 until well after his death in 1958, Pope Pius XII was honored with unfeigned warmth by Jewish leaders around the world. Golda Meir was uncommonly effusive in her praise of him. Trees were planted in Israel in his honor. In 1955, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra flew to the Vatican to give a special concert to show the nations gratitude. In 1940, Albert Einstein wrote a tribute in Time. At his death, tributes were universal and eloquent, especially by those Jewish groups closest to his efforts.""A later generation, in contrast, has been exceedingly harsh. Why this stunning reversal? Whose interests are served? As it turns out, the spectrum of those who benefit by denigrating Pius XII is very broad."
you bring up a really good point and that is God's sovereignty...using both the evil and the good to accomplish his plans in the world yet I can see why people object to the term "necessary evil" with regards to the holocaust. i consider a necessary evil something minor like a shot maybe or a diet but not when millions of people are murdered.
It may have been a "necessary evil" to save the world from itself down the line...
Alas, I don't remember. It was a historical magazine in my doctor's waiting room !
"From an evil human act, God brought forth a good greater than the evil which men did."
How could the good be greater than the original state of grace and knowing that existed before the fall? That is unless it is in the striving you view the greatness.
I ask because the historian was most likely a fraud.
According to the Catholic understanding, Adam and Eve were immortal before the Fall. They would have lived forever in Eden. A wonderful state, indeed.
Through their sin, men became mortal and subject to death - the wages of sin.
Christ's redemption of fallen man does not make us all earth-dwelling immortals in Eden.
It gives us something better than the earthly paradise, it gives us a heavenly paradise to dwell in - the New Jerusalem.
Adam's sin lost us Eden, Christ's grace won us the New Jerusalem - an even greater state.
If he(the Pope) did say this then the Popes God is STUPID...
Pity.. he could'nt think up a better God..
Thanks.
Very informative and well sourced.
>> I consider a necessary evil something minor like a shot maybe or a diet but not when millions of people are murdered.<<
Your faith in the love and power of God, in the face of evil is only as strong as your ability to comprehend that God would permit such evil. I hope and am confident that your faith is stronger than you portray it to be.
Did you read 33??
It depends on what time it is on God's clock, remember, things are done on his time and on his plan.
Sheesh. Hard to stay Catholic when I read this.
Could God have prevented the Holocaust from happening? If not, He would not be all-powerful. If He could, why did He not? The only possible answer is that He allows evil so that greater good may come.
Remember that the greatest good is eternal life with God, not temporal happiness. The difference between eternal life with God and earthly happiness is the difference between the infinite and the finite. There is no comparison. Therefore, the Holocaust in some way must have served to bring more people to eternal life with God, which is God's ordaining Will for all men.
1 Timothy 2:3-4This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved...
Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen with Hitler and Goebbels
Little Dollfuss (Dictator of Austria) with Cardinal Innitzer on the right, witnessing the proclamation of the new Clerical-Fascist Constitution in 1934.
The Spanish Catholic Hierarchy giving the Fascist salute at Santiago de Compostela in 1937.
Franz Von Papen
Vatican agent Franz Von Papen:..."The Third Reich is the **First Power,which not only recognizes...but puts into practice...[THE HIGH PRINCIPLES OF THE PAPACY] ( Der Voelkischer Beobachter,Jan.14.1934)
Comment:
To be fair..I should root around and post on the Corrupt Russian Orthodox Church..which conspired to see the Czar brought down....looted him 7 ways from Sunday of his Kingdoms wealth...then cut deals with the Communists.
If you were Jewish in that time....it was like book ends of death between the 2 corrupt religious systems which made cooperation with madness,cruelty and greed a new definition.
Like the U.N. of today...its.."We didn't know....we did not have the power to stop it"..blah blah.
And to make everything on the square...we cut to present day reality...where **Jewish leaders roll over and aquiese in regards to Jewish wealth stolen in WW-2...
Bronfman and the World Jewish Congress....grinning as **Arthur Andersen Accounting Switzerland div finds just a few Jewish accounts in Zurich....close the books now..everyone go home.
"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.")"
First, my grandfather has been gone for nearly 27 years. You had no way of knowing that, but it is irrelevant anyway.
Second, I am Jewish. You are wrong in your assessment of why the Nazi's attempted genocide of the Jews has been referred to by a word that means "holy offering." There was nothing holy about it, nor was it an "offering" of any type. I (among many others) would suggest that the word "Holocaust" is highly inappropriate, and that those Jews who use it are religiously ignorant. The correct term is "Shoah," which means "calamity." For more details, see http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/Holocaust.html Go down to the very beginning of the text to see an explanation.
I also disagree that the full extent of Nazi or Soviet-perpetrated evil is necessary for the "salvation of man." This is because each of us obtains our own salvation (or not) depending on our own actions and choices. The vast, vast majority of people don't need to see or hear about tens of millions of other people being slaughtered in order to be able to contrast Good and Evil. In view of that fact, I find it difficult to believe that such an event was allowed by G-d to proceed in order to save a few spiritually dense people. We will probably never know the true reason or reasons for the Shoah - or any similar events - until G-d decides to let us know Himself.
As opposed to what? That life is meaningless and that their sorrow and death was totally without meaning or hope?
Why did Judas commit suicide and thus condemn himself to hell rather than seek forgiveness and repent like Peter?
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