Posted on 10/16/2013 2:33:05 PM PDT by NYer
Following yesterday’s thwarted funeral, some reaction in Italy:
The head of Rome’s Jewish community praised protesters who blocked the funeral of a convicted Nazi war criminal as Italy marked on Wednesday the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from the Rome ghetto.
Erich Priebke’s final resting place is now unclear after the protesters forced a suspension of his funeral on Tuesday in the Italian town of Albano Laziale. His body is lying at a military airport near Rome pending a decision from the authorities.
The former German SS officer died aged 100 last week in Rome, where he had been serving a life sentence under house arrest for his role in the killing of 335 civilians in 1944 in caves near the capital, one of Italy’s worst wartime massacres.
At a ceremony in Rome’s main synagogue, the head of Rome’s Jewish community drew loud applause as he lauded the citizens and mayor of Albano Laziale for resisting Priebke’s funeral.
“For this we feel proud to be Romans,” the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, said at the event to mark the anniversary of the Nazis’ rounding up of 1,000 Jews from Rome’s centuries-old ghetto and their deportation to Auschwitz. Only 16 of them survived.
“I do not even want to say his (Priebke’s) name, not to profane this sacred place,” said the head of Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Renzo Gattegna.
“He never repented of his crimes and repeated the most incredible arguments denying the Holocaust.”
Italian lawmakers debated on Wednesday a bill to outlaw denial of the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews perished. Several other nations already have such a law.
Meantime, Catholic News Service has more:
Bishop Marcello Semeraro of Albano, secretary of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals, told Rome’s Corriere della Sera newspaper Oct. 16 that the church would never prohibit prayers for someone, but canon law does allow a bishop to deny a public funeral to a “manifest sinner” when it would scandalize the faithful.
In Priebke’s case, he said, “the crime was public and notorious, the lack of conversion was public and notorious, and the scandal it would have raised in the Christian community was public and notorious.”
After agreeing to host the funeral, the Italian district of the Society of St. Pius X issued a statement on its website saying, “A Christian who was baptized and received the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist, no matter what his faults and sins were, to the extent that he dies reconciled with God and the church, has a right to the celebration of the holy Mass and a funeral.”
The statement said the SSPX condemns “every form of anti-Semitism and racial hatred, but also hatred under all its forms. The Catholic religion is one of mercy and forgiveness.”
The SSPX has a history of comments by its leaders expressing suspicion or hostility toward Jews. In 2009, after now-retired Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the society’s bishops, there was widespread outrage at revelations that one of the four, Bishop Richard Williamson, had denied the gassing of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. The SSPX later ousted Bishop Williamson.
The New York-based Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism, issued a statement Oct. 15 saying it was “shocked” that a “fringe Catholic sect” would agree to host the funeral of a “notorious Nazi war criminal.”
It makes perfect sense.
No one objected to burying him; they objected to a public funeral in a church, something the Pope said he should not have.
I don't know if Priebke repented at the moment of his death, but very shortly before he died, he wrote a letter (released by his lawyer after his death) in which he not only asserted his own innocence, he denied that the Holocaust had happened (he claimed that the crematoria at Auschwitz were actually ovens for feeding the prisoners).
“According to the BBC, “Correction 16 October: An earlier version of this story mentioned Don Floriano Abrahamowicz and inaccurately described him as a St Pius X priest. He has in fact been expelled by the order.”
Thank-you for pointing that out. A simple google search shows he was expelled from the SSPX almost 4 years ago. But that won’t stop people like Abe Foxman, Deacon Kandra, et al to attack the SSPX without a simple fact check.
Nothing the Catholic church does surprises me any more.
Nor are the excuses FRoman Catholics make for it, sadly.
The only unforgiveable sin in the eyes of the Catholic church is becoming a Protestant.
It sure doesn't seem that any other sin, no matter how abominable or heinous or depraved, stops them as much as a person converting to Protestantism.
This is ironic coming from the group that sneers at faith alone as *easy believism*. A Catholic can sin all they want as much as they like as long as they live and at the end, just make a confession and the priest will forgive their sins and give them a Catholic funeral and it’s all good.
Can anyone say *hypocrisy*?
The SSPX has a history of comments by its leaders expressing suspicion or hostility toward Jews. In 2009, after now-retired Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the society’s bishops, there was widespread outrage at revelations that one of the four, Bishop Richard Williamson, had denied the gassing of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. The SSPX later ousted Bishop Williamson.Y'know, not because they'd been unaware, but because he'd been outed.
The only unforgiveable sin in the eyes of the Catholic church is becoming a Protestant.
You can't be serious. Either that or you are grossly misled. I am a Catholic and I can tell you that the Church loves Protestants. It impersonates them at every turn and uses their music and forms almost exclusively. After all, we completely threw out our ancient liturgy so we could use one which Protestants might like. No, the only unforgivable sin in the Church today is that which the SSPX have committed. It is to deny modernism and pursue traditional Catholic piety. This is simply unacceptable. The pope will publicly praise and embrace homosexuals and atheists, but you will never see these gestures for the SSPX or their ilk. No, they are damned. Just consider that parishes all over the country are so liberal as to be puke-inducing, and they are never corrected. Puppet Masses, Barney Masses, Clown Masses; these are all just hunky-dory. They can teach any liberal idea, and promote all the Protestant concepts they like, and nobody will do anything but praise them. But, if they were to decide to offer the Traditional Latin Mass they would be gone so fast your head would spin. No, this is the unforgivable sin in the modern Church, and woe to the one who commits it.
St. Dismas -- a.k.a. "The Good Thief" -
Deathbed (or in this case, crossbound) conversions. I don't think they're to be sneered at.
That's why we should keep praying for people. There's the hope that even the very worst, at the very last minute, would come to Christ.
It does appear that way doesn’t it? Even the Muslims are better since they are first.
CCC841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.
Or even those who don’t believe in Jesus but just need to follow “his own understanding”.
1260 "Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery." Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.
But that’s all different than the ones who believe you have to be Catholic to be saved including a supposedly infallible statement.
• Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam: “We declare, say, define, and pronounce [ex cathedra] that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” "If, therefore, the Greeks or others say that they are not committed to Peter and to his successors, they necessarily say that they are not of the sheep of Christ, since the Lord says that there is only one fold and one shepherd (Jn.10:16). Whoever, therefore, resists this authority, resists the command of God Himself. " — Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam (Promulgated November 18, 1302)
But then they say it’s not Peter that the RCC is built on but his confession.
CCC424 Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.'8 On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church.9 "To preach. . . the unsearchable riches of Christ"10
And believe it or not that is all clear to Catholics so we have been told.
You know, when I relate all the doctrine I recall being taught as I was growing up Catholic, pre Vatican 2, I keep being told that I am (was) poorly catechized, and even have been accused of lying in stating that I was baptized and raised Catholic.
Interesting that they the modern RCC rejects both traditional Catholicism as well as most Protestantism and Evangelicalism. The only Protestantism it really accepts is the Episcopalian, as their priests can become Catholic priests and remain married. And most Evangelicals I know reject Episcopalian as being way too liberal. I can’t speak for mainline Protestantism.
I have problems with *puppet ministries* etc in church as well. One of my main areas of dissatisfaction with many Protestant/Evangelical churches is a lack of respect and awe of being in the presence of God. Honestly, the way people behave in churches and let their children run wild just grates on me.
I see your point.....
The issue isn’t the deathbed conversion.
Re-read what I posted. The hypocrisy is being condemned by certain RC’s while they’re busy applauding their own church for doing the same thing they condemn in non-Catholic denominations.
It's a hard thing to get quite right--- at least, it is for me --- because one can err on either side of it: presumption (No fear! No matter what, I'm saved!) and despair (No hope. No matter what, I'm damned.) We err by judging; we err by failing to judge.
There is an exactly right way to do this-- we can see it in Our Lord -- but we, in this life, find it so easy to become caricatures, with one garbled and fragmentary version of the truth, or the other.
Thank you for correcting me.
“The person who tried to hold this funeral is not a priest in good standing with the Catholic Church or with the SPPX.”
A likely excuse. The Pope and Magisterium obviously were going to sic the order of Albino assassin Monks on him if he didn’t do as they secretly wanted.
It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Freegards
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that part.
This is what I don't understand. Today, he says, marks the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the residents of the Rome ghetto. But seventy years ago today Mussolini had already been removed (July 25), Italy had surrendered (September 8), and had actually joined the allies (October 13). Why would the new Allied government begin deporting Jews four days after declaring war on Germany?
“The only unforgiveable sin in the eyes of the Catholic church is becoming a Protestant.
It sure doesn’t seem that any other sin, no matter how abominable or heinous or depraved, stops them as much as a person converting to Protestantism.”
No truer words...at least on FR anyway. lol
I thought it was eating meat on Fridays.
Who knows really??
It is always something.
I always thought it was suicide but have been divested of that by some here.
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