Pope John Paul II wasn't afraid to bend to others' sensitivities.
Posted on 08/03/2010 9:50:38 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
With every passing day, the dispute over the planned Islamic Center near Ground Zero grows more acrimonious. These feelings will probably only get worse today, when the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission is expected to remove another hurdle by ruling against landmark status for the undistinguished old building the center will replace.
So maybe it's time to look beyond the lawyers and landmark preservation commissions and regulatory agencies. When we do, it will be hard to find a better example than the grace and wisdom Pope John Paul II exhibited during a similar clash involving another hallowed site on whose grounds innocents were also murdered: Auschwitz.
In the 1980s, Carmelite nuns moved into an abandoned building on the edge of the former Nazi death camp to pray for the souls taken there. As with the dispute over the mosque near Ground Zero, the convent's presence escalated into a clash not only between different faiths but between competing historical narratives. As with today's clash too, it seemed intractable until the Polish pope stepped in.
For Jews, Auschwitz is a symbol of the Shoah, and the presence of a convent looked like an effort to Christianize a place of Jewish suffering.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Pope John Paul II wasn't afraid to bend to others' sensitivities.
The Nazi death camps weren’t a Christian act but the 911 attacks were jihadist holy war against America.
It is hard to find anyone in NY who speaks English, NY puts their blessings on the one’s who want us dead.
Exactly.
This is not at all the same. Neither the nuns nor the Catholic Church was attacking the Jews; in fact, this particular order lost several members (Jewish converts) to the Nazis. Many religious orders in France, Italy and Holland sheltered Jews; the Catholic Church gave refuge to Jews and certain Catholic countries, such as Spain, took in large numbers of refugees and protected other Jews in their embassies.
The Catholic Church did not attack the Jews. The Muslims did attack the US, and they still want to conquer us.
This mosque does not belong there.
The article is a poor analogy and not relevant to the topic at hand.
When are they going to allow a Neo-Nazi info booth at Auschwits?
Let's be frank here, the Mosque/Center, which is funded by untraced cash, will be a center of contact for future terrorists/rable-rousers that the FBI, CIA, etc... will have to infiltrate to keep an eye on things.
The mosque is also named after the Western capital of Islamic conquest.
A more apt question for the author is when can these nuns open up a convent in the segregated cities of Mecca and Medina?
He got that part right. Carmelites were being murdered en masse by pagan utopians 150 years before Auschwitz -- nor did Nazis shrink from martyring them as well, including at Auschwitz.
JPII caved to pressure by groups seeking to "own" the moral high ground of all who suffered at Nazi hands. Not his finest hour.
We know 6 million Jews were murdered in these camps but there were 7 or 8 million non Jews killed there too, I see nothing wrong with Catholic nuns on the site of these concentration camps.
However I feel strongly that these Muslims wanting to build a mosque at ground zero has nothing to do with wanting to comfort the souls of the )/11 victims. What greater insult than to have the WTC destroyed by muslims and then bulding a Mosque there. The idiot politicians of which frigging Bloomberg is the greatest would sell their own souls instead of standing up for America.
Or, occasionally, to trample them. The former actor was a bit of a ham all his life and never lost his weakness for playing to the house. He had a healthy ego and wasn't always shy about backing his own agenda.
First of all, it is a signed editorial at the Wall Street Journal published today. It is relevant. If you read the whole thing, McGurn is saying that the imams should prevail upon this group to move the mosque and cultural center to avoid stepping on raw feelings in NY. I’m sorry that you missed his point.
See #14. I totally agree with you on Auschwitz and the nuns, ExPat.
One of the problems here at FR is the requirement that we have to abbreviate articles from certian sources. Many people never click on the link to read the whole thing. I’m not accusing you of that, but I know that many do not.
The difference between editorial writing and news reporting is that the kernal of the article should be contained in the first sentence in a news article (who, what, when, where, why). An editorial has more latitude to roam around a topic before making its point in the last paragraph.
McGurn was aiming his admonition at the Muslim imam, not New Yorkers in general.
Not that I expect the highly charged public to pay any attention.
I have known several Eastern European Catholics who were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. One recently died, age 95 — only survivor of it, from a well-to-do Polish Catholic family.
Moderate Muslims are a figment of the imagination, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Exactly, the Nazi camps were the results of a humanist who did not believe all humans were created in the image of God but rather was strongly influenced by the relatively new “survival of the fittest” writings.
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