Posted on 06/04/2006 11:02:13 PM PDT by goldstategop
"Where was God in those days?" asked Pope Benedict XVI as he stood in Auschwitz last week. "Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?"
It is the inevitable question in Auschwitz, that vast factory of death where the Nazis tortured, starved, shot, and gassed to death as many as a million and a half innocent human beings, most of them Jews. "In a place like this, words fail," Benedict said. "In the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did *you* remain silent?"
News reports emphasized the pope's question. Every story noted that the man who voiced it was, as he put it, "a son of the German people." No one missed the intense historical significance of a German pope, on a pilgrimage to Poland, beseeching God for answers at the slaughterhouse where just 60 years ago Germans broke every record for shedding Jewish blood.
And yet some commentators accused Benedict of skirting the issue of anti-Semitism. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League said that the pope had "uttered not one word about anti-Semitism; not one explicit acknowledgment of Jewish lives vanquished simply because they were Jews." The National Catholic Register likewise reported that he "did not make any reference to modern anti-Semitism."
In truth, the pope not only acknowledged the reality of Jew-hatred, he explained the pathology that underlies it. Anti-Semites are driven by hostility not just toward Jews, he said, but toward the message of God-based ethics they first brought to the world.
"Deep down, those vicious criminals" -- he was speaking of Hitler and his followers -- "by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone -- to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world."
The Nazis' ultimate goal, Benedict argued, was to rip out Christian morality by its Jewish roots, replacing it with "a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful." Hitler knew that his will to power could triumph only if he first destroyed Judeo-Christian values. In the Thousand-Year Reich, God and his moral code would be wiped out. Man, unencumbered by conscience, would reign in his place. It is the oldest of temptations, and Auschwitz is what it leads to.
"Where was God in those days?" asked the pope. How could a just and loving Creator have allowed trainload after trainload of human beings to be murdered at Auschwitz? But why ask such a question only in Auschwitz? Where, after all, was God in the Gulag? Where was God when the Khmer Rouge slaughtered 1.7 million Cambodians? Where was God during the Armenian holocaust? Where was God in Rwanda? Where is God in Darfur?
For that matter, where is God when even one innocent victim is being murdered or raped or abused?
The answer, though the pope didn't say so clearly, is that a world in which God always intervened to prevent cruelty and violence would be a world without freedom -- and life without freedom would be meaningless. God endows human beings with the power to choose between good and evil. Some choose to help their neighbor; others choose to hurt him. There were those in Nazi Europe who herded Jews into gas chambers. And there were those who risked their lives to hide Jews from the Gestapo.
The God "who spoke on Sinai" was not addressing himself to angels or robots who could do no wrong even if they wanted to. He was speaking to real people with real choices to make, and real consequences that flow from those choices. Auschwitz wasn't God's fault. He didn't build the place. And only by changing those who did build it from free moral agents into puppets could he have stopped them from committing their horrific crimes.
It was not God who failed during the Holocaust or in the Gulag, or on 9/11, or in Bosnia. It is not God who fails when human beings do barbaric things to other human beings. Auschwitz is not what happens when the God who says "Thou shalt not murder" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is silent. It is what happens when men and women refuse to listen.
That's why thankfully we have that small voice within us. The description in the Elijah theophany in the Bible is remarkable for conveying to us we truly hear God when we stop to listen to the conscience implanted within us that commands us to continue on the strait and narrow path in this life. That is the greatest gift God has given Man and there are the few in whom it is void and they are evil and should be put down without mercy so the world can endure.
good post, although, in my opinion, the conscience is not implanted, there are some, sociopaths, whom do not have a conscience. It has a preordained , or vestige to make a conscience possible, if and when it is developed. What happened at Auchwitz and other places, to me, since evil has no bounds, is a result of the devil and his legions being able to ursurp the power of undeveloped consciences. ? word games, perhaps, but, to me, mercy is in the judgement of God, as to your statement of no mercy, but I know what you mean, emotions prevail over justice, but watchout, as emotions prevailed then, or rather through the written word of Langbehn and LeGarde, who convinced the northern German, the Volk, who were into New Age sort of religion anyway, their minds were led to believe certain things.
There are a few people, the Children Of Darkness, the sociopaths in whom it is missing or deficient. The Bible knew their kind and that's why it extorts evil-doers to be dealt with harshly. Its too bad we've gotten soft to the point that we're soliticious of murderers' tender psyches. No, my dear friend, if they are not put to death promptly, more innocent people will die. The only way to defeat evil is to destroy evil people wherever they exist.
I am German on my fathers side, and wondered why at the age of almost 60, I will still, at times, catch myself saying, "I am a stubborn, authoritative person, the only thing wrong with that is I am always right!" egad, where did that come from? looks like alot of Germans had the same idea over there back then, is this kind of false pride in our genes or something? The Pope feels incriminated, a doer of this evil because he is German and was in the Youth movement then for awhile, he is human, and did not have on his mind what people wanted to hear from him at that time, he had human , internal feelings, wound up over decades. If you are not German you don't know what I mean, sorry, but I am convinced that the Huns, Saxons, Vandals and other ancient tribes , left some of their barbarism in generations to follow, through the dna.
I am German through my mother's side. My father's side was Romanian Jewish. The way I see it, is we're all responsible for our own behavior. Our parents' past does not follow us nor do our actions as children reflect upon our parents. The question of what kind of life a person leads is a matter of individual choice - and at that, a freely willed choice.
Personally, I think what was done to Jesus, tells us all we need to know about human nature. Let me be clear- I'm not saying anything about the Jews. As I read the story, several groups of people could have stopped Jesus's crucifixion, but didn't. Starting with Judas- who was Jesus's own disciple. The Romans could have stopped it, the people in the crowd could have stopped it- but nobody did. Of course, it had to happen that way to save us from ourselves.
The Nazi's had no God . As the Bible says: Without God, we are nothing. They (Nazi's)did terrible things. But with all due respect to the Pope- the people in the Concentration camps were set free. We had to go to war to do it, with great loss of life, but it was done. What gave "the Greatest Generation" the courage to go to war and make such heroic sacrifices? Also from what I've read of the history of WWII- there were times when we were only one step ahead of the Nazi's- in fact at the beginning of the war- we were losing. There were certain key events that HAD to go our way, or we would have lost. (Where did the liberals or anyone get the idea of an "easy war"?) I believe that God must have been helping us out back then.
Maybe it goes back to Genesis, when man was first tossed out of the Garden of Eden- we have to toil here, in this fallen place, and try to make something of it. We have knowledge of Good and Evil so we have the responsibility to to use this knowledge to give glory to God or to use it for evil. This place is sort of a neutral ground, and the battle between good and evil goes on continuously, in major and minor ways.(I seem to have said what you said- but with much less eloquence.)
Off subject, but, same theme- I've gone to Church on many Sundays where we pray for the troops in Iraq-which is great, and necessary- but, I'd like to hear more of people praying FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE MISSION IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN too. (just my two-cents)
A bit of blame shifting by the Pope. Why did the current Pope help to smuggle Nazi officers out of Germany after WWII. He needs to take his own inventory and not God's...
Here is a very good piece that speaks to some things that actually went on with the Vatican and Pope Pius XII during WW2.
http://piusxii.hismercy.ca/index.html
Oops! On rereading your post I see that you are referring to Pope Benedict. I have never heard any of those stories. Do you have a link? Thanks.
bookmark
Sounds like you have evidence that the pope was part of ODESSA. I'd be interested to see the facts, can you direct me to them please? thank you.
The Nazis' ultimate goal, Benedict argued, was to rip out Christian morality by its Jewish roots, replacing it with "a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful." Hitler knew that his will to power could triumph only if he first destroyed Judeo-Christian values. In the Thousand-Year Reich, God and his moral code would be wiped out. Man, unencumbered by conscience, would reign in his place. It is the oldest of temptations, and Auschwitz is what it leads to.
Sounds like the Democrat party
bump
Or could it be that I'm making the fundamental mistake of trying to comprehend God's actions/inactions by trying to think of Him through the lens of a mere human's understanding? Yes, I believe that's it.
I believe it was preordained, too. However, this also implies that those on Earth whom history regards as responsible for Jesus' death, were not really responsible for His death at all since it was meant to happen the way that it happened.
Chiefly, the hyper-inflation that occurred within the German economy after their nation was found [by the victorious alliance of nations] to be responsible for the destruction from WWI and made to pay reparations for that destruction.
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