Posted on 03/18/2003 4:56:14 PM PST by Canticle_of_Deborah
CANTON, Mar 18, 03 (CWNews.com) -- An American Catholic bishop has forbidden his flock from participating or cooperating in military action against Iraq, under pain of mortal sin. Bishop John Michael Botean, the head of the Romanian Catholic eparchy (diocese) of St. George in Canton, Ohio-- which has jurisdiction over all Byzantine-rite Romanian Catholics living in the US-- invoked the full measure of his authority in a Lenten Letter to his people. The bishop declared with "moral certainty" that the proposed attack on Iraq "does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just-war theory."
The bishop announced that he "must declare to you, my people, for the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin."
Bishop Botean acknowledged that the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2309) identifies public authorities as the final judges of whether military action is justified. But he argued that "the nation-state is never the final arbiter or authority for the Catholic of what is moral." An unjust law or order should not be obeyed, he observed.
Writing with obvious emotion, the Romanian Catholic prelate admitted that "I would much prefer to keep silent." And he pointed out to his people: "Never before have I spoken to you in this manner, explicitly exercising the fullness of authority Jesus Christ has given his apostles." However, he said, he felt a moral burden to guide his people.
Arguing that a military assault on Iraq does not fit the criteria of the just-war tradition, Bishop Botean concluded in stark terms: "Thus, any killing associated with it is unjustified and, in consequence, unequivocally murder."
I disagree, but no biggie. Sharing his name on a world-wide forum will not make my statement any more true.
"If there is a priest who said that he's wrong. " I agree. We had a lively debate for about an hour. Later in the car I was having a private conversation with the Lord and asked Him if it would be possible to have that type of debate/theological discussion exchange on a regular basis...it was envigorating. The next night I was at my Christian book store where I go regularly. I was very quickly scanning the book shelves. I quickly looked at one particular shelf that I had scanned many time previously and out of nowhere jumps the book "Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Agreements and Differences" by Norman Geisler. Quite like the Lord. It is a very interesting and disturbing book.
I am glad we are in agreement. Are you of the Catholic variety? :)
What blasphemy. You need not regard anything else he says.
It could make it seem less false. You can claim a priest or minister told you anything, but that doesn't make it true.
Not true. The Romanian Catholic church is one of the Eastern Catholic rites, in union with Rome:
The Romanian Rite, centered in Romania with a significant population in the United States, reunited with Rome in 1697 and uses Modern Romanian in their liturgy; in 1948, they were forced to join the Romanian Orthodox Church in Romania, but since the fall of communism, the Catholic Romanian Rite has regained independence. The Russian Rite, located mainly in Russia and China with congregations in Europe, Australia, and North and South America, reunited with Rome in 1905 and uses Old Slavonic as a liturgical language.
The truth is the majority of my baptist general conference church is made up of one time catholics that have become disenchanted with that religion and recognized it as hollow...and it is. Service without Christ is not service to Christ. There are a few born-again catholics that I know of, but they struggle to introduce true Christian doctrine into that church. And no, I won't post their names here either. On the flip side, I can't begin to count the number of born-again Christians at my church who put Christ and scripture first and have no care about the religious political leanings of our modern day Pharisee catholic church.
Sorry but Romanian is one of the different traditions/rites within the Roman Catholic Church.
You only need to consider what he says if you are a BYZANTINE Rite Catholic. The Vatican has said no such thing, so most Roman Catholics won't be affected by this.
PIUS XII SAVED MORE JEWS THAN SCHINDLER
L'Osservatore Romano
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Interview with Historian Rabbi David Dalin of New York
You have labeled historians who have criticized Pope Pius XII as revisionists. Why?
Today there is a new generation of journalists and experts determined to discredit the documented efforts of Pius XII to save the Jews during the Holocaust. This generation is inspired by Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Vicar", which has no historical value, but levels controversial accusations against this Pope. However, Eugenio Pacelli's detractors ignore or neglect Pinchas Lapide's enlightening study.
[Lapide] was consul general of Israel in Milan and met with many Italian Jews who survived the Holocaust. In his work, Lapide documents how Pius XII worked for the salvation of at least 700,000 from the hands of the Nazis. However, according to another estimate, this figure rises to 860,000.
Why, then, has there been this change in appreciation?
I call today's critics revisionists because they reverse the judgement of history, namely, the recognition given to Pius XII by his contemporaries, among whom is Nobel Prize [winner] Albert Einstein, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Israel, Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett; and, in Italy, people like Raffaele Cantoni, who at the time was president of the Italian Union of Jewish Communities. But many articles published at different times in Boston's Jewish Advocate, The Times of London, and The New York Times can also be perused.
What did Pope Pacelli do for the Jews?
We have much documentation, which shows that in no way did he remain silent. What is more, he spoke out loudly against Hitler and almost everyone saw him as an opponent of the Nazi regime. During the German occupation of Rome, Pius XII secretly instructed the Catholic clergy to use all means to save as many human lives as possible.
In this way, he saved thousands of Italian Jews from deportation. While 80% of European Jews died in those years, 80% of Italian Jews were saved. In Rome alone, 155 convents and monasteries gave refuge to some 5,000 Jews. At any given moment, at least 3,000 were saved in the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo, being freed from deportation to German concentration camps.
For nine months, 60 Jews lived with the Jesuits at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and many others were hidden in the basement of the Biblical Institute. Following Pius XII's instructions, risking their own lives, many priests and monks made possible the salvation of hundreds of Jewish lives.
But the Pope never publicly denounced the anti-Semitic laws and persecution of the Jews
His silence was an effective strategy directed to protecting the greatest possible number of Jews from deportation. An explicit and severe denunciation of the Nazis by the Pope would have been an invitation to reprisals , and would have worsened attitudes toward Jews throughout Europe.
Of course one can ask: What could be worse than the extermination of 6 million Jews? The answer is simple and terribly honest: the killing of hundreds of thousands of other Jews. The revisionist critics of Pius XII know that both Jewish leaders as well as Catholic bishops, who came from occupied countries, advised Pacelli not to protest publicly against the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
We have evidence that, when the bishop of Munster wished to pronounce himself against the persecution of the Jews in Germany, the leaders of the Jewish communities of his diocese begged him not to do so, as it would have caused a harsher repression against them.
Don't you think that the excommunication of Nazis would have helped?
Yes, I would like to think so and deep down I think that at least there should have been an attempt to pronounce a papal excommunication. However, despite these sentiments, the documents suggest that the excommunication of Hitler would have been a merely symbolic gesture.
Would it not have been better than silence?
On the contrary. History teaches that a formal excommunication could have achieved the opposite result. Father Luigi Sturzo and the former chief rabbi of Denmark, for example, were specifically afraid of this. The Nazis themselves interpreted Pius XII's Christmas 1942 address as a clear condemnation of their regime and a demand in favour of Europe's Jews. The anger among the Nazis could have elicited catastrophic reactions for the security and fortune of the papacy itself in the years following the War.
A papal condemnation of the Nazis implied the well-founded and diffused suspicion at the time that Hitler would have sought vengeance in the person of the Pope himself, by attacking the Vatican. Rudolph Rahn, the Nazi ambassador in Rome, confirmed the existence of these plans, which he himself helped to forestall.
In your writings, you propose a new historiography written by Jews on the "Pius XII case". What do you mean?
I think the time has arrived on the Jewish side to get to work on a new reconstruction of the relation between Pius XII and the Holocaust. This reconstruction, closer to the facts, namely, of what Pius XII really did for the Jews, would arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions to the gratuitous ones of John Cornwell's book, "Hitler's Pope".
Pius XII was not Hitler's Pope, but the greatest defender that we Jews have ever had, and precisely at the time when we needed it.
This new work of historiography should be based in the judgement that his contemporaries made of the efforts, successes and failures of Pius XII, as well as of the way in which the Jews who survived the Holocaust evaluated (or revaluated) his life and influence in the succeeding decades.
Pope Pacelli was righteous among the nations, who must be recognized for having protected and saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. It is difficult to imagine that so many world Jewish leaders, in such different continents, could have been mistaken or confused when it came to praising the Pope's conduct during the War. Their gratitude to Pius XII lasted a long time, and it was genuine and profound.
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