Posted on 04/13/2009 8:09:17 PM PDT by PanzerKardinal
In an Easter sermon that has drawn widespread criticism, the Catholic bishop of Augsburg has linked the crimes committed under Nazi and Communist regimes to atheism. Atheist groups have reacted with fury and accuse the cleric of rewriting history.
A Catholic German bishop has come under fire for his remarks condemning atheists. In a sermon given on Easter Sunday, the bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, warned of rising atheism in Germany. "Wherever God is denied or fought against, there people and their dignity will soon be denied and held in disregard," he said in the sermon. He also said that "a society without God is hell on earth" and quoted the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."
Most controversially, he linked the Nazi and Communist crimes to atheism. "In the last century, the godless regimes of Nazism and Communism, with their penal camps, their secret police and their mass murder, proved in a terrible way the inhumanity of atheism in practice." Christians and the Church were always the subject of "special persecution" under these systems, he said.
[...]
The Easter sermon was not the first time that Mixa has made comparisons to Nazism for rhetorical purposes. In February, the bishop compared the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust with the number of abortions performed over the past decades, according to a newspaper report. The bishop's spokesman also responded to criticism of Mixa from Germany's leading Green Party politician, Claudia Roth, who called the bishop a "crazy über-fundamentalist," by comparing her words to Nazi propaganda.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
” 70: The Roman Army destroyed Jerusalem, killed over 1 million Jews and took about 100,000 into slavery and captivity.
* 113: Jews in Cyprus, Cyrene, Egypt and Mesopotamia revolted against the Roman Empire. This caused “the death of several hundreds of thousands of Romans and Jews.” Judaism was no longer recognized as a legal religion.
* 132: Bar Kochba led a hopeless three-year revolt against the Roman Empire. Many Jews had accepted him as the Messiah. About a half-million Jews were killed; thousands were sold into slavery or taken into captivity. The rest were exiled from Palestine and scattered throughout the known world in what is called the “Diaspora.”
* 135: Serious Roman persecution of the Jews began. They were forbidden, upon pain of death, from practicing circumcision, reading the Torah, eating unleavened bread at Passover, etc. A temple dedicated to the Roman pagan god Jupiter was erected on temple mountain in Jerusalem. A temple of Venus was built on Golgotha, just outside the city.
* 200: Roman Emperor Severus forbade religious conversions to Judaism.
What? At the time of Herrod, the population of Jerusalem was only 25-30,000.. and Jerusalem was a big city. Where are you getting your “millions” and “hundreds of thousands” figures from?
Roman occupation of Judea was extreme because the Jews continually revolted against Roman rule. The Jews were a conquered people... they just couldn’t accept it. Their continued revolts were the impetus for harsh treatment. During this time, the Pax Romana was in full swing... Rome pretty much ruled the known world... and there was pretty much peace throughout the known world.
Did we kill ALL Iraqi Muslims because SOME of them were rebels?
Did ALL Jews in an area (children? women?) deserve death because SOME of them were rebels against Rome?
Pacification comes in many quises.
Interesting. Can you reference original material on this?
I know von Schirach was a homosexual who prior to joining tha Nazi party had been part of the Wandervogel movement.
I think it shows where Hitler wanted the Nazi movement to go in terms of religious beliefs thathe had two athiests in a row lead the Hitler Youth - after all the Hitler Youth were the future of the Nazi society.
Speculative but one can also speculate using similar rational that Hitler wanted the German males to develop in a manner similar to that of the Spartans.
In the meantime, Hitler allowed people of all religious backgrounds (except Jews of course) to join the Nazi party or serve the regime (including Muslims and even a few Jews in odd circumstances)
Yes except it was done for more practical reasons of replacing losses and showing numbers. When you look closer at the SS, it was a religious order.
Because such system results in no guilt on the part of the liar. Sort of like it's ok for a muslim to lie to an infidel.
One thing to remember when discussing atheism, there is no single definition. Many consider an atheist to be someone rejecting the Christian God but who still believes in all manner of "eternal cosmic forces". Such atheist (Nietzsche) can reject the Christian God while accepting Bhuddism, Hinduism or other religions.
Another definition of atheist is a person rejecting any concept of a spirit world. I fall into this camp
Since there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere to... aside from a rejection of a Christian God, it's important to state ones personal understanding of atheism before entering into discussion of the topic. In my case, I view atheism as the rejection of any spirit world.
I can see where the argument can be made that Nazism also had some pagan influences, but it cannot be denied that Nietzsche's atheism influenced their actions.
In the case of Nietzsche, his "eternal return, "will to power" and "Übermensch" probably made their way into Nazi ideology.
Eternal Return is an ancient pagan belief common throughout the World and still present today in Eastern and New Age/Neo Pagan religions.Will to Power was a common theme for Nazi's and can also be found in Scientology and assorted New Age beliefs. Ever hear of the classic Nazi film Triumph of the Will (German: Triumph des Willens) made by the Nazi propagandress Leni Riefenstahl?
Übermensch. Central to Nietzsche, Wagner and the Nazi's. For the Nazi's, there was an ancient race (Aryan) that came to Earth from another planet. These Aryans while supermen were genetically similar enough to humans that they could interbreed and began doing so. Over time, so much interbreeding had occured that the original Aryan race had lost nearly all vestiges of its former greatness with the the most genetic lines still manifest in the Nordic Peoples. German racial purity laws were intended to prevent further degredation of the remaining Aryan lines and to rebuilt the race to its former power.
Wagner's operas from Norse mythology were a huge factor (and also based on Nietzsche's "superman" theory).
The Wagnerian opera that appeared to influence Hitler the most was Parsifal which was a grail based opera.
However, even within the realm of paganism, Norse mythology is a particularly brutal and "godless". Plus remember the term "mythology" indicates that people have long since stopped believing it.
Here you apply godless to Norse mythology. Certainly not a Christian god, Norse paganism was full of spirit. Odin (Norse)and Wotan (Germanic) were most definitely Gods in pre-Christian Europe. Valhalla/Walhalla was the Norse/German concept of heaven.
Nazis tried to make THEMSELVES into Norse gods and, in my opinion, at its core atheism IS NOT about the non-existence of God, it is about trying to make YOURSELF a god.
Again, I think you are using a definition of atheism that rejects a Christian God while accepting other gods or spirit world. Given the multiple understandings of atheism, it's really important to make sure when discussing this topic that we are on the same page with everyone else.
The Nazi movement was decidedly pagan/occultic and anti-Christian.
Top Nazi's were deeply into occultism. They only tolerated Christianity so long as there existed so many of them.
and went to war with Crosses painted on their vehicles.
The Malta cross had long been the emblem of Germany. What was new were the swastikas on everything. The swastikas came from the Nazis who in turn took it from ancient paganism.
The Nazi SS belt-buckle said (in German) “God is with Us”. Not exactly an atheistic sentiment.
Sorry but you are wrong. The Nazi SS belt buckle said "Meine Ehre heisst Treue" ("My Honor is Loyalty." The Germany Wehrmacht (Army) belt buckle said "Gott Mit Uns" ("God is with us") and was a uniform carryover from at least WWI.
If you read much of Hitlers writings you would know that he respected the power of Christianity as Christianity had been able to overcome the weaker Norse/Germanic paganism. This is also why Hitler wasn't nearly as enamoured with Nordic paganism as Himmler was.
This doesn't mean Hitler liked Christianity, he respected it for its power to overcome Norse/Germanic paganism while simultaneously despised it as being soft. When studying the occult aspects of Nazism, you will find that considerable energy was spent by the Nazis digging into non-Nordic paganism in search of Aryan knowledge and powers missing in Nordic paganism that the Nazis intended to introduce into their Norse-Nazi hybrid.
I would agree but neither has being a muslim been an impediment against killing other muslims or, Jews killing Jews or pagans killing pagans.
European history serves as a strong example of why there should be a separation between church and state. When the church is the state, the only path to power for a wannabe tyrant is up through the church.
Do you have a source for your contention that crosses were replaced by swastikas in German churches or that Bibles were replaced by Mein Kampf?
Here's one. Nazi Churches
Perhaps you should read the Bible. It's full of such examples.
Very true as there is no solid definition of atheism. Some view it as the rejection of a Christian God while allowing for gods and spirits from other religions. Others view it as a complete rejection of any spirit world.
Without first agreeing on what they understand as being atheism, two people can have real problems discussing atheism.
So far as I know McCarthy never called anyone an atheist. But in his day, it was assumed that hardly anybody would want to be an atheist.
References to "atheistic communism" weren't attacks on atheists but on communists who were made to look even worse by the "atheist" label, and today it's assumed the Bishop's primary attack is against atheists when it may not be. I'm not making any kind of a judgement with that. It's just an observation of how much things have changed.
If you really want to know what it means, there's something called Google. And while you're at it you should also google the word snarky and the word troll.
Whatever, troll, I don't know where you're coming from, and don't really care.
Thanks again for providing interesting information.
My pleasure. The Left has done a remarkable job of whitewashing this aspect of history and I just try to set the record straight whenever I can.
Should you ever decide to research the topic in more detail, there is plenty of original source material to go through.
You wrote:
“Interesting. Can you reference original material on this?”
Not off the top of my head, but I bet you can find it in any in-depth book about either the Hitler Youth of Nazi persecution of the Church.
“Speculative but one can also speculate using similar rational that Hitler wanted the German males to develop in a manner similar to that of the Spartans.”
True enough.
“Yes except it was done for more practical reasons of replacing losses and showing numbers. When you look closer at the SS, it was a religious order.”
No, I think it was more of a quasi occultic nature. Himmler supposedly very deliberately copied the time frame of the Jesuit novitiate when building his SS officer cadre.
Stepinac was a Panzer Cardinal.
What, not a Nazi storm trooper with NOTHING beside him (atheism)?
Not a Nazi storm trooper with ODIN beside him (pagan)?
A Nazi storm trooper with Jesus the Christ beside him.
“God is with us” they cried as they drove off to war in equipment with a cross painted on it. Now years later some try to claim they were either atheists or pagans; simply ANYTHING other than what they thought of themselves as.... Christians. Not good ones mind you, rather shoddy anti Semitic ones, easily led by a Socialism espousing madman; but they still thought that a Nazi storm trooper needed Jesus the Christ beside him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.