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 ...
“Gott mit uns”...very interesting fact..thanks! I tend to believe that the German soldiers tended to be Christians, but did not consider their mission a “religious war”...magritte
Was God with them?
Obviously not.
I disagree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gott_mit_uns
Seems the phrase was as “religious” as saying “God bless you” when someone sneezes.
A cultural convention.
good-bye
1591, from godbwye (1573), itself a contraction of God be with ye, infl. by good day, good evening, etc.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=good-bye
From wikipedia:
('God with us') was a battle cry of the late Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Empire[1]. In the 17th century, the phrase Gott mit uns was used as a 'field word', a means of recognition akin to a password[2],
Here are some quotes delivered PUBLICLY by Hitler. No doubt some second hand quotes delivered secretly seem more relevant to you; but these were the words that Hitler used to inspire the Nazi's to hate and kill Jews. He identifies himself as a Christian, and gives the typical justifications that antisemitic “Christians” have used historically.
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 65. )
“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.” Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press, 1942, pp. 19-20.
Politicians employ religious words, when doing so works to their advantage.
Politicians stir up animosity of one group to another, when it serves their purpose.
Just look at Obama.
Thus the Nazi's were inspired by the thought of “avenging our saviors blood upon the cross” given to them by Hitler as a reason for the “Final solution”.
One may as well claim that the Russian pogroms against Jews were also not carried out by Christians. Not very good Christians I will allow; but they certainly considered themselves Christians, and sold their animosity couched in terms of Christian grievances against the historic actions of the Jewish people.
“On our heads be it. Ours and our descendants.”
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions"
(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)
Does that make all the Germans socialists?
Nationalist Socialists German Workers Party.
The Nazi's were anti atheists in their actions and philosophy, and said so after cracking a few atheists heads (”stamped it out” Hitler claimed).
The Nazi's used Christian symbols on their uniforms and military equipment.
The Nazi's went to Church on Sunday to pray to God and Jesus the Christ. Too bad more didn't listen with a discerning ear, that the message of Christ is love and redemption, not vengeance and hate.
You need to see this......
Back then lots of unChristian people disliked Jews
I see. You consider people who don’t practice Christianity to be “Christians.”
Doesn’t change the many PUBLIC pronouncements that Hitler made to the Nazi’s and the German people that cited “the blood upon the Cross” as the reason to hate and kill the Jews.
What reason do pagans have for hating Jews? Their book (not that they have one) doesn’t call Jews God’s chosen people, neither was their titular head killed by any sort of Jewish actions; those are the #1 and #2 reasons that antisemitic Christians hate Jews.
Why would a pagan hate a Jew?
Did the Nazis stop going to Church on Sunday? They thought they were practicing their religion. They thought their religion was Christianity. But I guess you know better what religion they held in their heart?
The “No true Scotsman” fallacy?
If the Nazi party was so Christian, why were Christians persecuted and killed by the party?
Why were churches ordered to replace the crosses at their altars with swastikas and the Bible with Mein Kampf?
Nazis were most DEFINITELY not Christian. But it’s a nice fallacy of the left.
Being a Christian has not historically been much of an impediment to killing or persecuting other Christians. It should have been, but wasn't.
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?
The Nazi's went to Church on Sunday, prayed to Jesus, and used Christian religious symbols on their uniforms and military equipment.
Recognition of this will hopefully prevent the dark undercurrent of antisemitism present in European Christianity from rising again. Hard to treat the disease if you are intent on misdiagnosing the problem.
Persecution of Jews by Roman Pagans
70 AD: The Roman Army destroyed Jerusalem, killed over 1 million Jews and took about 100,000 into slavery and captivity.
http://www.shofars.org/persecution/default.htm
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.