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 ...
There were no Roman screeds on Jews eating children's blood, being responsible for the fall of the republic, or a need to avenge the sacrifice of a God.
The Romans liked the Jews just fine, as long as they shut up and paid their taxes and didn't start any trouble.
None of which changes the simple fact that Hitler used Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric to inspire the Nazi's to kill Jews. Hitler didn't sell the German people the “Final Solution” based upon paganism, but based upon “avenging our saviors blood upon the Cross”.
Ask the Jews.
Persecution of Jews by Roman Pagans
* 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.
Next question?
No.
Didn't Hitler claim Jews were racially inferior?
Didn't Hitler inflame German envy of successful Jews? (Just as his "brother" socialists and "brother" communists did!)
After all there were anti-Semitic doctors, lawyers, school administrators, mayors...etc.
ETC.
ETC
LOL!
Yes, there was a large anti-Capitalist “Jews and bankers” screed that Hitler and the Nazi's liked to use as well as the “avenging the Saviors blood upon the cross” tactic.
But I figure Hitler would have used anything that would have instilled a nationalistic sense of pride, blamed all problems on Jews, providing him a convenient scapegoat and a ladder to greater power.
That being said, one of the main tactics that Hitler DID use to drum up Jew hatred, was talk about them being responsible for Christs crucifixion.
mass murders of Jews in Arab lands
occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews
Hatred/envy/fear of Jews goes far beyond Christianity
Since Hitler said that, blame Hitler.
I said that pagans had no specific religious reasons for hating Jews. Christians do not have any GOOD reasons, but have usually gone with envy (them being God's people, and not Germans or whatever else), and vengeance (them being blamed for the crucifixion of Christ).
Islamists are not pagans.
None of which detracts one iota from the historic fact that Hitler used the traditional Christian rhetoric of Jew hatred to inspire his followers to hate and kill Jews.
With regard to the Protestants of Germany, there is something of a cloud on their attitude towards Jews due to Martin Luther's diatribes against them late in his life. However, German Protestantism had largely become liberal in the 19th Century, as German seminaries were the home of the Higher Criticism movement that derided the authenticity and reliability of Scripture, as well as other liberalizing tendencies. Thus, the German Protestant church had largely drifted away from a Biblical viewpoint by Hitler's time, even though they maintained the Reformation era liturgies. The Lutheran north and east of Germany, Berlin and Hamburg excepted, was the strongest area of Nazi support under the Weimar Republic. It is important to note that the Reformed (Calvinist) minority in western Germany was unenthusiastic about Hitler, even less than the Catholics of western and southern Germany, who by the way never gave Hitler an electoral majority while that nation still had democratic elections. Dispensational groups like the Plymouth Brethren (Corrie ten Boom's denomination) were persecuted by the Nazis.
A professedly Christian country being led by a largely non-Christian or nominally/culturally Christian elite existed in Germany between 1933 and 1945. We can say the same thing of America today. The difference is that our elite is not as dangerous as those who led Germany.
Leftists love that screed, too.
A World Without Jews (Paperback), by Karl Marx
LOTS of people used the Jews as scapegoats.
Sorry, Charlie. You can't blame all anti-Semitism on Christians.
People all over the place have been (wrongheadedly) anti-Semitic.
Communism is THE evil empire.
Therein lies the problem of categorizing everyone into groups.
I doubt that Ayn Rand, an atheist and ideological opponent of religion, would accept culpability in the Stalinist atrocities that she fled from, just as I would expect that an American Catholic would not accept blame for the actions of Torquemada.
I'm glad someone here is capable of noticing this. The levels and minutiae of non-belief can be as varied as those of religious people.
Blaming objectivists and agnostics for Stalin is like blaming the Jains and Druze for the Inquisition.
Yep. Hitler used any excuse he could find to promote his goals. Ane he used many excuses.
Hitler's first anti-Semitic writing. ((September 16, 1919))
Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.He says they are inbred, a threat, and they value materialism only. Nothing about killing Christ.In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.
Well, the twentieth century also saw an exponential rise in killing efficiency but I agree with atheists—declared and de facto—must accept some responsibility. However, be careful, don’t focus on the danger of Communism and ignore its generic form: big government. Few people would accept “communism” these days but far too many countries are accepting socialism and, when the going gets tough, socialism can easily morph into communism in effect, if not in name.
As a non-believer, I accept absolutely no responsibility whatsoever in the murder, genocide, or oppression of any other human being, or group of human beings.
I am opposed to authoritarianism and murder in all of its forms, and no part of my belief systems supports anything of the sort, nor would I ever in any case need to resort to such methods to live by those beliefs.
Okay, I’ll take your word for it. DO you exonerate Christians or other religious groups from genocide and other such atrocities, even those supposed perpetrated under the name of various religions if the religious leaders themselves deny culpability?
Augsburg - beautiful place, stationed there for 5 years. The Christians in Augsburg had a ring side seat to the end result of what the good bishop was saying - Dachau and all the sub camps that were all around Augsburg. More power to you Bishop!
But in action, its irrelevant. I don't have legal authority to go around assigning blame to individuals for all of the world's crimes.
I will defend non-belief however every time I hear someone say that people who don't believe in ancient texts are responsible for Stalin and Pol Pot.
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