Posted on 11/03/2003 8:27:06 AM PST by Brian S
November 3, 2003
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
When a private viewing of Mel Gibson's ''The Passion of Christ'' was completed at a Washington hotel 10 days ago, my wife and I along with a dozen other invited guests were emotionally frozen into several minutes of silence. The question is whether public presentation of the film four months hence shall be welcomed by tumultuous demonstrations outside the theaters.
Hollywood actor Gibson, who spent more than $25 million of personal funds to produce ''The Passion,'' has finally found a distributor to begin its showing Feb. 25 -- Ash Wednesday. A campaign by some Jewish leaders to radically edit the film or, alternatively, prevent its exhibition appears to have failed. This opens the door to religious conflict if the critics turn their criticism into public protest.
That is not because of the content of ''The Passion.'' As a journalist who has actually seen what the producers call ''a rough cut'' of the movie and not just read about it, I can report it is free of the anti-Semitism that its detractors claim. The Anti-Defamation League and its allies began attacking the movie on the basis of reading a shooting script without having actually seen the film. The ADL carries a heavy burden in stirring religious strife about a piece of entertainment that, apart from its artistic value, is of deep religious significance for believing Christians.
The agitation peaked in early August when New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind told a rally: ''This film is dangerous for Jews all over the world. I am concerned that it would lead to violence against Jews.''
Hikind had not viewed the film. After an ADL representative viewed a rough cut, longtime ADL director Abraham Foxman on Aug. 11 declared the movie ''will fuel hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism.'' Foxman called on Gibson to change his film so that it would be ''free of any anti-Semitic message.''
This renews the dispute over the Jewish role in the crucifixion of Christ, the source of past Jewish persecution.
''The Passion'' depicts in two hours the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life. To watch him beaten, scourged and crucified so graphically is a shattering experience for believing Christians and surely for many non-Christians as well. It makes previous movie versions of the crucifixion look like Hollywood fluff. Gibson wants to avoid an ''R'' rating, but violence is not what bothers Foxman.
Foxman and other critics complain that the Jewish high priest Caiphas and a Jewish mob are demanding Christ's execution, but that is straight from the Gospels.
Father C. John McCloskey, director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, told me: ''If you find the Scriptures anti-Semitic, you'll find this film anti-Semitic.''
Complaints by liberal Bible scholars that ''The Passion'' is not faithful to Scripture are rejected by the Vatican. Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who heads the Congregation for the Clergy, called the film ''a triumph of art and faith,'' adding: ''Mel Gibson not only closely follows the narrative of the Gospels, giving the viewer a new appreciation for those biblical passages, but his artistic choices also make the film faithful to the meaning of the Gospels.''
As for inciting anti-Semitism, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos contended ''the film does nothing of the sort.'' This Vatican official is denying that Gibson violates the 1965 papal document Nostra Aetate, which states: ''What happened in [Christ's] passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.''
No such libel is committed by ''The Passion,'' where the mob's Jewish identity is not specified. As a Catholic convert, I was taught we are all sinners who share in guilt for the crucifixion.
At the heart of the dispute over ''The Passion'' is freedom of expression. Liberals who defended the right to exhibit Martin Scorsese's ''The Last Temptation of Christ,'' which deeply offended orthodox Christians, now demand censorship of ''The Passion of Christ.'' As a result, Abe Foxman and his allies have risked stirring religious tensions over a work of art.
If the church has a "doctrinal inability" to see Jews as worthy as Christians, then be assured that it is a human failing on the part of some Christians, and not a teaching that has been given from Christ.
You and your bretheren clearly have a good heart about this, but my question is--what will prevent us from going back to reading Matthew just as it is written, once the holocaust is just a dim footnote in history books? Please go back to post #52 of this thread and think about the dilemma with a bit more of an eye for the potential for renewed agony that hides in the details of the Gospels. In the long run, there is no point in being good, if you also aren't being smart. God gave us a brain, as well as a heart. If the Catholic church can wrestle with this problem out in the open, everyone else can too.
Except that it didn't. It went on throughout the entire war. Oh, they covered it up more effectively, but it still happened.
Your entire screed is based on historical falsehoods like this.
Did or did not the eugenics program come to an official end as a result of the Pope's intervention? Did or did not the catholic church suffer extreme repercussions as a result of the Pope exercising the Voice of Jesus in this matter? Do you, or do you not, ever intend to come to grips with the point of my argument?
Either that, or it's not particularly outrageous. I have read nothing in this websites rules that forbids having an adverse opinion of a church or a church practice. I have read something in the rules that forbids incindiary racist comments. This accords with my sense of righteousness.
Yes he did, in fact, his first official pronouncement in the Voice of Jesus contains a strong anti-racist, universalist polemic. And Hitler's personal antagonism toward the jews was of a common brand of anti-semitism, however, SS propaganda rhetoric and posters and Hitler's speeches frequently appealed to the anti-jewish sentiments that the church had unabashedly fostered since time out of mind. Being generally opposed to racism, just like being a really nice guy, is not really a defense against the specific charges here. Being vaguely opposed to racism does not stop the hand at the oven, excommunication does, if that hand is catholic, and it will give pause, even if that hand is lutheren, and we have just covered about 90% of the population of Germany, and the German army. Beyond that, the churches direct, official, specific opposition to a program casts a meaningful shadow on the legitimacy of that program in all eyes, in a country with an electorate that is mostly christian. That's why the eugenics program was stopped--suddenly the SS found it's political capitol at risk. You might want to ask yourself why, in a supposedly "unchristian" nazi germany.
ADOLPH HITLER SAID: "I am personally convinced of the great power and deep significance of Christianity, and I won't allow any other religion to be promoted. That is why I have turned away from Ludendorff and that is why I reject that book by Rosenberg. It was written by a Protestant. It is not a Party book. It was not written by him as a Party man. The Protestants can be left to argue with him ... As a Catholic I never feel comfortable in the Evangelical Church or its structures. That is why I will have great difficulty if I try to regulate affairs of the Protestant churches. The evangelical people or the Protestants will in any case reject me. But you can be sure: I will protect the rights and freedoms of the churches and not let them be touched, so that you need have no fears about the future of the Church." Hitler was also ready to discuss with the Bishop his views on the Jewish question: "As for the Jews, I am just carrying on with the same policy which the Catholic church has adopted for fifteen hundred years, when it has regarded the Jews as dangerous and pushed them into ghettos etc., because it knew what the Jews were like. I don't put race above religion, but I do see the danger in the representatives of this race for Church and State, and perhaps I am doing Christianity a great service."
Post number please.
During World War II Poland suffered greatly under five years of German occupation. Nazi ideology viewed "Poles"--the predominantly Roman Catholic ethnic majority--as "subhumans" occupying lands vital to Germany. As part of the policy to destroy the Polish resistance, the Germans killed many of the nation's political, religious, and intellectual leaders. They also kidnapped children judged racially suitable for adoption by Germans and confined Poles in dozens of prisons and concentration and forced labor camps, where many perished.
German forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Polish troops fought valiantly in the face of vastly better equipped forces, with fierce engagements around Warsaw. Exhausted of food and water, the besieged capital surrendered on September 27, and fighting by regular Polish army units ended in early October.
Hitler's pretext for military expansion eastward was the "need" for more Lebensraum,"living space," for the German nation. On the eve of the invasion he reportedly stated in a meeting of high officials:
I have issued the command--and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by firing squad--that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness--for the present only in the East--with orders to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space that we need.
In 1939 Germany directly annexed bordering western and northern Poland, disputed lands where many ethnic Germans(Volksdeutsche) resided. In contrast, the more extensive central and southern areas were formed into a separate "General Government," which was ruled by German civil administrator Hans Frank. Cracow became the capital of the General Government, as the Germans planned to turn the Polish capital of Warsaw into a backwater town. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Germany also seized eastern Poland. (This territory had been invaded and occupied by the Soviets in September 1939, in accordance with the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 that divided Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union.)
One aspect of German policy in conquered Poland aimed to prevent its ethnically diverse population from uniting against Germany. "We need to divide [Poland's many different ethnic groups] up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible," wrote Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, in a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East," dated May 25, 1940. According to the 1931 census by language, 69% of the population totalling 35 million inhabitants spoke Polish as their mother tongue. (Most of them were Roman Catholics.) Fifteen percent were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, 4.7% Belorussians, and 2.2% Germans. Nearly three fourths of the population were peasants or agricultural laborers, and another fifth, industrial workers. Poland had a small middle and upper class of well-educated professionals, entrepreneurs, and landowners.
In contrast to Nazi genocidal policy that targeted all of Poland's 3.3 million Jewish men, women, and children for destruction, Nazi plans for the Polish Catholic majority focused on the murder or suppression of political, religious, and intellectual leaders. This policy had two aims: first, to prevent Polish elites from organizing resistance or from ever regrouping into a governing class; second, to exploit Poland's leaderless, less educated majority of peasants and workers as unskilled laborers in agriculture and industry.
Terror Against The Intelligentsia And Clergy.
During the 1939 German invasion of Poland, special action squads of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) were deployed in the rear, arresting or killing those civilians caught resisting the Germans or considered capable of doing so as determined by their position and social status. Tens of thousands of wealthy landowners, clergymen, and members of the intelligentsia--government officials, teachers, doctors, dentists, officers, journalists, and others (both Poles and Jews)--were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prisons and concentration camps. German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of Volksdeutschealso participated in executions of civilians. In many instances, these executions were reprisal actions that held entire communities collectively responsible for the killing of Germans.
During the summer of 1940, the SS rounded up members of the intelligentsia in the General Government. In this so-called A-B Aktion(Extraordinary Pacification Operation), several thousand university professors, teachers, priests, and others were shot. The mass murders occurred outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry, and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.
As part of wider efforts to destroy Polish culture, the Germans closed or destroyed universities, schools, museums, libraries, and scientific laboratories. They demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes. To prevent the birth of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that Polish children's schooling end after a few years of elementary education. "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans....I do not think that reading is desirable," Himmler wrote in his May 1940 memorandum.
In the annexed lands, the Nazis' goal was complete "Germanization" to assimilate the territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. They applied this policy most rigorously in western incorporated territories--the so-called Wartheland. There, the Germans closed even elementary schools where Polish was the language of instruction. They renamed streets and cities so that Lodz became Litzmannstadt, for example. They also seized tens of thousands of Polish enterprises, from large industrial firms to small shops, without payment to the owners. Signs posted in public places warned: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs."
The Roman Catholic Church was suppressed throughout Poland because historically it had led Polish nationalist forces fighting for Poland's independence from outside domination. The Germans treated the Church most harshly in the annexed regions, as they systematically closed churches there; most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. The Germans also closed seminaries and convents, persecuting monks and nuns. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members of the Polish clergy were killed; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps, 787 of them at Dachau.
Expulsions And The Kidnapping Of Children.
The Germanization of the annexed lands also included an ambitious program to resettle Germans from the Baltic and other regions on farms and other homes formerly occupied by Poles and Jews. Beginning in October 1939, the SS began to expel Poles and Jews from the Warthelandand the Danzig corridor and transport them to the General Government. By the end of 1940, the SS had expelled 325,000 people without warning and plundered their property and belongings. Many elderly people and children died en route or in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice, Smukal, and Torun. In 1941, the Germans expelled 45,000 more people, but they scaled backed the program after the invasion of the Soviet Union in late June 1941. Trains used for resettlement were more urgently needed to transport soldiers and supplies to the front.
In late 1942 and in 1943, the SS also carried out massive expulsions in the General Government, uprooting 110,000 Poles from 300 villages in the Zamosc-Lublin region. Families were torn apart as able-bodied teens and adults were taken for forced labor and elderly, young, and disabled persons were moved to other localities. Tens of thousands were also imprisoned in Auschwitz or Majdanek concentration camps.
During the Zamosc expulsions the Germans seized many children from their parents to be racially screened for possible adoption by German parents in the SS Lebensborn("Fount of Life") program. As many as 4,454 children chosen for Germanization were given German names, forbidden to speak Polish, and re-educated in SS or other Nazi institutions, where many died of hunger or disease. Few ever saw their parents again. Many more children were rejected as unsuitable for Germanization after failing to measure up to racial scientists' criteria for establishing "Aryan" ancestry; they were sent to children's homes or killed, some of them at Auschwitz of phenol injections. An estimated total of 50,000 children were kidnapped in Poland, the majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands. Infants born to Polish women deported to Germany as farm and factory laborers were also usually taken from the mothers and subjected to Germanization. (If an examination of the father and mother suggested that a "racially valuable" child might not result from the union, abortion was compulsory.)
The Zamosc expulsions spurred intense resistance as the Poles began to fear they were to suffer the same fate as the Jews--systematic deportation to extermination camps. Attacks on ethnic German settlers by members of the Polish resistance, whose ranks were filled with terrorized peasants, in turn provoked mass executions or other forms of German terror. Throughout the occupation, the Germans applied a ruthless retaliation policy in an attempt to destroy resistance. As the Polish resistance grew bolder in 1943 after the German defeat at Stalingrad, German reprisal efforts escalated. The Germans destroyed dozens of villages, killing men, women, and children. Public executions by hanging or shooting in Warsaw and other cities occurred daily. During the war the Germans destroyed at least 300 villages in Poland.
Forced Labor And Terror of the Camps
Between 1939 and 1945 at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for labor, most of them against their will. Many were teenaged boys and girls. Although Germany also used forced laborers from western Europe, Poles, along with other eastern Europeans viewed as inferior, were subject to especially harsh discriminatory measures. They were forced to wear identifying purple P's sewn to their clothing, subjected to a curfew, and banned from public transportation. While the actual treatment accorded factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, Polish laborers as a rule were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than western Europeans, and in many cities they lived in segregated barracks behind barbed wire. Social relations with Germans outside work were forbidden, and sexual relations with them were considered "racial defilement" punishable by death. During the war hundreds of Polish men were executed for their relations with German women.
Poles were prisoners in nearly every camp in the extensive camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. A major camp complex at Stutthof, east of Danzig, existed from September 2, 1939, to war's end, and an estimated 20,000 Poles died there as a result of executions, hard labor, and harsh conditions. Auschwitz (Oswiecim) became the main concentration camp for Poles after the arrival there on June 14, 1940, of 728 men transported from an overcrowded prison at Tarnow. By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles. In September 1941, 200 ill prisoners, most of them Poles, along with 650 Soviet prisoners of war, were killed in the first gassing experiments at Auschwitz. Beginning in 1942, Auschwitz's prisoner population became much more diverse, as Jews and other "enemies of the state" from all over German-occupied Europe were deported to the camp.
The Polish scholar Franciszek Piper, the chief historian of Auschwitz, estimates that 140,000 to 150,000 Poles were brought to that camp between 1940 and 1945, and that 70,000 to 75,000 died there as victims of executions, of cruel medical experiments, and of starvation and disease. Some 100,000 Poles were deported to Majdanek, and tens of thousands of them died there. An estimated 20,000 Poles died at Sachsenhausen, 20,000 at Gross-Rosen, 30,000 at Mauthausen, 17,000 at Neuengamme, 10,000 at Dachau, and 17,000 at Ravensbrueck. In addition, victims in the tens of thousands were executed or died in the thousands of other camps--including special children's camps such as Lodz and its subcamp, Dzierzazn--and in prisons and other places of detention within and outside Poland.
Polish Resistance
In response to the German occupation, Poles organized one of the largest underground movements in Europe with more than 300 widely supported political and military groups and subgroups. Despite military defeat, the Polish government itself never surrendered. In 1940 a Polish government-in-exile became based in London. Resistance groups inside Poland set up underground courts for trying collaborators and others and clandestine schools in response to the Germans' closing of many educational institutions. The universities of Warsaw, Cracow, and Lvov all operated clandestinely. Officers of the regular Polish army headed an underground armed force, the "Home Army" (Armia Krajowa--AK). After preliminary organizational activities, including the training of fighters and hoarding of weapons, the AK activated partisan units in many parts of Poland in 1943. A Communist underground, the "People's Guard" (Gwardia Ludowa), also formed in 1942, but its military strength and influence were comparatively weak.
With the approach of the Soviet army imminent, the AK launched an uprising in Warsaw against the German army on August 1, 1944. After 63 days of bitter fighting, the Germans quashed the insurrection. The Soviet army provided little assistance to the Poles. Nearly 250,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives. The Germans deported hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to concentration camps. Many others were transported to the Reich for forced labor. Acting on Hitler's orders, German forces reduced the city to rubble, greatly extending the destruction begun during their suppression of the earlier armed uprising by Jewish fighters resisting deportation from the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943.
Daily Life For Poles Under German Occupation
We were...survivors of a period in which every able-bodied person aged 14 and up had to work ten hours a day, six days a week. Otherwise, we would be shipped to Germany, to forced labor camps, or to work in factories of the German war machine. We were given rations of food so most of us went--often--hungry. We were decimated by disease--typhus and typhoid fever were prevalent....We were terrorized by continuous dragnets--lapanka we called it in Polish. You walk on a street from your house to your aunt's house and suddenly the street is closed by the gendarmes on both sides and all the people are surrounded and asked to show their papers. 'Are you working somewhere? Who are you? What's your occupation? What are you doing now?' Whoever appeared not employed in a meaningful way that involved supporting the German war effort was being singled out, put on a truck, and shipped to the railroad station and put on a train and shipped to Germany. There were hardly any families that did not feel the tragedy of war.
--A young Polish Catholic who emigrated to the United States after the war, Wallace Witkowski, describes the harsh conditions in wartime Poland. He served as a courier for the Polish resistance.
Conclusion.
The Nazi terror was, in scholar Norman Davies's words, "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe." Reliable statistics for the total number of Poles who died as a result of Nazi German policies do not exist. Many others were victims of the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and of deportations to Central Asia and Siberia. Records are incomplete, and the Soviet control of Poland for 50 years after the war impeded independent scholarship. The changing borders and ethnic composition of Poland as well as vast population movements during and after the war also complicated the task of calculating losses.
In the past, many estimates of losses were based on a Polish report of 1947 requesting repatriations from the Germans; this often cited document tallied population losses of 6 million for all Polish "nationals" (Poles, Jews, and other minorities). Subtracting 3 million Polish Jews victims, the report claimed 3 million non-Jewish victims of the Nazi terror, including civilian and military casualties of war.
Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German occupation policies and the war. This approximate total includes Poles killed in executions or who died in prisons, forced labor, and concentration camps. It also includes an estimated 225,000 civilian victims of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, more than 50,000 civilians who died during the 1939 invasion and siege of Warsaw, and a relatively small but unknown number of civilians killed during the Allies' military campaign of 1944-45 to liberate Poland.
800,000 Saved by Pius XII’s ‘Silence’
DONALD DEMARCO
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The 1963 play, "The Deputy" by Rolf Hochhuth, which presents Pope Pius XII’s silence during the holocaust as criminal, inhuman and cowardly, almost certainly generated the largest controversy in the history of drama. In response, to the controversy stimulated by The Deputy, Jewish historian Pincus Lapide researched the matter and concluded that as many as 800,000 Jewish survivors owe their lives to the pontiff's leadership. Contrary to what Hochhuth and some other critics continue to say, the Holy Father's silence is what allowed him to remain alive and act covertly to put the resources of the Church at the service of the persecuted Jewish people. A good resouce on this topic for high school students of any age.
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Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy, had its world premier in Berlin in the year 1963.
The Deputy is Pius XII, the “deputy” or vicar of Christ. The play was soon translated into English and imported to Broadway in New York City. The playwright contends that Pope Pius XII, when he was the sovereign pontiff of the Catholic Church, might have prevented deportations and the mass murder of so many Jewish people had he spoken out against the Nazi extermination camps. His “silence,” according to Hochhuth, was criminal, inhuman and cowardly.
The storm of controversy The Deputy generated and continues to generate is almost certainly the largest ever raised by a play in the history of drama. Hochhuth himself, an instant celebrity at age 31, added to the storm's intensity when he came to the United States in 1964 accompanied by an unusual amount of press and radio-TV coverage, together with a great outpouring of emotion.
In reviewing the play in 1964, The New York Times stated that its “facts may be in dispute; the history imperfect; the indictment too severe.” America condemned the play as “an atrocious calumny against the memory of a good and courageous world leader occupying the Chair of Peter during one of the great crises of humanity.” Cardinal Francis Spellman called the play “an outrageous desecration of the honour of a great and good man, and an affront to those who know his record as a humanitarian who love him and revere his memory:”
In response to the play's contention that the pontiff was criminally responsible for the death of countless Jews, Jewish historian Pincus Lapide set to work researching the matter. The result was his book, Three Popes and the Jews, in which he defended Pius XII. According to Lapide, as many as 800,000 Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust owe their lives to the pontiff's leadership.
The pope may have been silent, but he was not inactive. In order to be effective in assisting the Jews, he had to act surreptitiously. Had he been too outspoken, he most likely would have invited swift and severe retaliation from both the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany. When Hochhuth was asked in an interview whether the pope should have protested publicly, granted that his opposition would have retaliated, his answer was categorical: “Absolutely.”
In The Pope and the Holocaust, researchers John Bader and Kateryna Fedoryka provide evidence that both Pope Pius XI and XII were targeted by Hitler because of their pro-humanity efforts which included stern repudiations of anti-Semitism. It was only too clear that the pope could be most helpful if he remained alive and acted covertly. It is now well known how nearly all Catholic convents in Europe were hiding Jews and that the Vatican was instrumental in forging thousands of documents, especially in southern France, to facilitate their emigration.
The pope was involved in the systematic work done by nuncios throughout Nazi-occupied Europe of enlightening the heads of governments in Catholic countries about the true and murderous meaning of the word “resettlement.”
The Jewish community has not been silent about what Pius XII did for his persecuted brethren. In October 1945, the World Jewish Congress made a financial gift to the Vatican in recognition of the work the Holy See performed in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions. Dr. Israel Goldstein of the same World Jewish Congress said, on the occasion of Pius XII's death, “The Jewish community told me of their deep appreciation of the policy which had by the pontiff for the Vatican during the period of the Nazi-Fascist regime to give shelter and protection to the Jews, whenever possible.
Hochhuth and his supporters alleged that Pope John XXIII would have acted differently had he been the pope instead of Pius XII. They cited with admiration Roncalli's (John XIII's surname) rescue record as apostolic delegate in Istanbul. But Roncalli never failed to point out that the reportedly heroic things he did then were done with the approval and even on orders from the Vatican.
The glib way in which thoughtless or uninformed writers condemn Pius XII for his “silence” is a good example of the very propaganda and prejudice that the Nazis themselves exemplified in spreading their doctrine of anti-Semitism.
The “data smog” of endless sound-bites and factoids that our information superhighway supplies often clouds reality. Education is not the mere accumulation of information, but an integrated and often complex understanding of how things really are or truly have been.
One cannot begin to take steps to eradicate prejudice by exchanging an old prejudice for a new one. Factoids travel faster than truth. This itself is a truth that cannot be ignored in the continuing fight against prejudice.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
DeMarco, Donald. “800,000 Saved by Pius XII's `Silence'.” Catholic Register (May 18, 1998).
Donald DeMarco is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Jerome's College, Waterloo, Ontario. He has written hundreds of articles for various scholarly and popular journals, and is the author of ten books, including The Heart of Virtue (Ignatius Press) and The Many Faces of Virtue (Emmaus Road Publishing) and Biotechnology and the Assault on Parenthood. Donald DeMarco is on the Advisory Board of The Catholic Educator's Resource Center.
The rules of our society make no differentiation between race and ethnicity. As a matter of fact, protection from religious discrimination is the founding block of this nation. The only problem I have with questioning the religious beliefs of others on this website is it is divisive and not in keeping with the motives of its creators. But if you feel the need to do so, I guess that's your right. Where I have a problem is when people come here specifically to slander the Catholic Church with lies and exagerations. That sort of attack is unique to the Catholic religion and the attackers are protected.
In particular, your inability to register the fact that Jewish leaders that actually lived through the Holocoust publicly thanked Pius and expressed enormous gratitude for his aid loudly, publicly, and often, indicates an unwillingness to deal with history that varies from your point of view that borders on disorder.
Apparently, you are fixated on some notion of what you would have done if you were Pope; any child can engage in the game of "if I were king...". Given the circumstance of the day, which were a apparently a lot more complex in the real world then in yours, Pius did what was considered quite admirable by the people that he saved. That's not my opinion, that's the opinion of the founders of Isreal, who stated as much many times in public, in private, on the public record, and in their own notes and letters. Got a problem with that? Take it up with Golda..
You simply repeat the same attack without condidering the weight of what the folks who lived through the Holocoust said. Apparently you believe that your opinion is simply more important than theirs; if the historical record and the opinions of major players that actually lived through the awful events of the day differ from yours, well, they're, wrong you're right, that's that. Hey, it's a free country - you can have any opinion that you want, but that attitude of yours borders on foolishness. Hense the term shrill. Do you prefer adolecent?
Finally, I don't care how long you have been posting, or what religion you were, are, or will be. A disrupter is categorized by behavior, not personal experiances. Please do not bother responding...OK? Life's too short
Then let's consider Matthew 27:25. The crowd did indeed reject Jesus, the Messiah. They thought so little of the one who had come to redeem him that they were willing to accept responsibility for his death. Of course, literally, they were not the ones who killed him. The Romans, in league with the Sanhedrin, did that. Yet they clearly rejected Him and didn't care whether they were held responsible.
Some commentators believe that the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. (about 40 years or one generation later - 40 years is thought of as a time of testing in the Scriptures) was the direct fulfillment of Matthew 27:25(and a direct fulfillment of Matthew 24:1-3.) Jerusalem fell, the Temple was destroyed, and the Old Covenant era came to an end.
God alone has the perogative to give and take life as He sees fit. This is not a perogative of mankind. So we can use this verse to discuss Israel's tragic rejection, as a nation, of the Messiah (though of course not every individual Jew rejected Jesus - some receive Him even today.) But to say that this means it is okay for Hitler to kill 6 million Jews, or for Christians to hold Jews responsible today for the crucifixion of Jesus is, to say the least, a real stretch.
Of course it all worked out for God's glory. If Jesus had not been crucified as the Passover lamb there would be no forgiveness of sins. And then no one could be saved.
I was not aware of that, but rumor has it that Jewish theater owners like money as much as the rest of us. Once they see that this movie is selling out in the theatre across town, I'm sure they look into running it. Plenty of Catholics like myself expect to see it in the theatre multiple times.
So you are opposed to having an army or a death penalty for traitors and serial murderers?
So we can use this verse to discuss Israel's tragic rejection, as a nation, of the Messiah (though of course not every individual Jew rejected Jesus - some receive Him even today.) But to say that this means it is okay for Hitler to kill 6 million Jews, or for Christians to hold Jews responsible today for the crucifixion of Jesus is, to say the least, a real stretch.
Being "a real stretch" didn't prevent the Popes from issuing vile encyclicals against jews, and sparking pogroms from the pulpit during Holy Week.
Of course it all worked out for God's glory. If Jesus had not been crucified as the Passover lamb there would be no forgiveness of sins. And then no one could be saved.
...and so it goes. No one who is an orthodox jew who wishes to walk in the path of righteousness of his fathers and their fathers before them, since time out of mind, can be saved, by the lights of the church. Hence, an orthodox jew in a country governed by christian law must expect, sooner or later, to be a second class citizen--just has happened throughout Europe under the foresight of the Catholic Church.
Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
Exactly.
The rules of this website make a distinction between religeous affiliation and race-&-ethnicity.
As a matter of fact, protection from religious discrimination is the founding block of this nation.
Along with the freedom of speech. Including especially speech opposed to some religeous foundation. The witch trials, the pogroms, and the persecutions of Bruno & Galileo had no small impact on the educations of our founding fathers.
The only problem I have with questioning the religious beliefs of others on this website is it is divisive and not in keeping with the motives of its creators.
You are welcome to any private thoughts about religion you may have. You are not welcome to such protections regarding the impactful public actions of church officials, and the theological bases for them. Such are, quite obviously, fair game for FR.
But if you feel the need to do so, I guess that's your right. Where I have a problem is when people come here specifically to slander the Catholic Church with lies and exagerations.
Religeous threads are pretty minor sidenote to me; I have not come here specifically to slander the Catholic Church, and I have not done so--truth is an adequate defense against charges of slander. I have committed a few wrongs on the numbers against PIUS XII, but the basis of my charges regarding the accords, in Matthew, the rest of the Gospels, the doctrine of salvation through the crucifixion and resurrection vs. the shema, and the behavior of the catholic church and the christian countries of Europe, right up to the time of the Holocaust, remain largely unaddressed, because, basically, it's well-known historical truth, and it's unanswerable. That is why my interlocutors here are fixated on PIUS's reputation--because it's safe ground. Sort of like the joke about the guy looking for his keys on the football field, instead of the grating the street where he dropped them...because the light is better on the football field.
That sort of attack is unique to the Catholic religion and the attackers are protected.
It is not unique, and the attackers are just as subject to being questioned and condemned in these threads as the attackees.
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