Anti-Catholic pastor who endorsed McCain likened to Farrakhan

Washington DC, Mar 1, 2008 / 03:43 am (CNA).- The endorsement of Senator John McCain by a Catholic-bashing Texas minister won swift rebuke from the president of the Catholic League and a Jewish leader concerned about his “vicious and inflammatory” anti-Catholicism.

On Wednesday Pastor John Hagee endorsed Senator John McCain’s bid to become the Republican presidential candidate in the 2008 election.

Senator McCain responded to the endorsement by calling Hagee “the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement,” praising Hagee’s pro-Israel stance.

President of the Catholic League Bill Donohue harshly criticized the endorsement.

“There are plenty of staunch evangelical leaders who are pro-Israel, but are not anti-Catholic. John Hagee is not one of them,” Donohue said on Thursday. “Indeed, for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system’.”

Donohue said that in Pastor Hagee’s latest book the minister claimed Hitler was a Catholic who murdered Jews while the Catholic Church did nothing. “The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself,” wrote Hagee, according to Bill Donohue.

Donohue criticized the remarks, saying, “For the record, Hitler persecuted the Catholic Church and was automatically excommunicated in 1931—two years before he assumed power—when he acted as best man at Joseph Goebbel’s Protestant wedding. Hitler even bragged about his separation from the Church. As for doing nothing about the Holocaust, Sir Martin Gilbert reminds us that Goebbel denounced Pope Pius XII for his 1942 Christmas message criticizing the Nazis (the New York Times lauded the pope for doing so in an editorial for two years in a row). Much to Hagee’s chagrin, Gilbert also says that Pius XII saved three quarters of the Jews in Rome, and that more Jews were saved proportionately in Catholic countries than Protestant countries.”

Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, echoed Donohue’s criticisms. In a Friday statement, Rabbi Kula said, “Just as Jews and other people of good will have appropriately demanded that Barack Obama unambiguously renounce and reject the endorsement of Minister Louis Farrakhan because of his bigotry and rabid anti-Semitism so Jews and other people of good will should demand that John McCain renounce and reject the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee because of his vicious and inflammatory anti-Catholicism.”

Rabbi Kula said Pastor Hagee’s position on Israel “does not mean he should be given carte blanche to denigrate and malign another religion.” He continued, saying, “Barack Obama showed his integrity when he rejected Minister Farrakhan’s hate whatever the political costs and sensitivities. John McCain is also a man of integrity. He needs to similarly reject Pastor Hagee’s hate whatever the political calculations and consequences.”

In a Friday statement Bill Donohue said Senator McCain’s opponent for the nomination, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, had expressed “disappointment and surprise” that Hagee had not chosen him. Donohue also compared Hagee to Louis Farrakhan, wondering why the candidates were fighting over the endorsement of such a figure.

“Just this week, McCain repudiated the remarks of talk radio host Bill Cunningham,” Donohue said. “He should now repudiate Hagee’s long record of bashing Catholicism. After all, George W. Bush apologized for speaking at Bob Jones University, and Hagee makes Jones look like a lightweight in the ring of bigotry."

Someone needs to get their story straight —

Someone needs to learn their history. The Bishops of Germany excommunicated all Nazis in February of 1931 and all German Catholics were told that they could not vote for a Nazi in the 1932 election. "Belonging to the National Socialist Party of Hitler is irreconcilable with the Catholic Conscience." Osservatore Romano, 11 October 1930. Hitler and the Nazis received the votes of protestants while the Catholic vote went to Hindenburg, on average nearly 70%, who was a staunch protestant.

While a ferendae sententiae excommunication of Hitler is what some argued for, a latae sententiae excommunication is just as valid. History has shown us that ferendae sententiae excommunications rarely produce the desired result and often cause much greater harm than the intended correction of the individual in question. Learn your history and find out what resulted from the excommunications of people like Louis IV of Bavaria, Queen Elizabeth I, Napoleon and his Grand Armee. At the time the fear was that if Pius XII excommunicated Hitler ferendae sententiae, as he wanted to, then even more Jews as well as Catholics and even protestants would have been exterminated.

One need look no further than the words of Marcus Melchior, former chief rabbi of Denmark and holocaust survivor, to understand what would have resulted when he said "it is an error to think that Pius XII could have had any influence whatsoever on the brain of a madman. If the Pope had spoken out, Hitler would probably have massacred more than six million Jews and perhaps ten times ten million Catholics, if he had the power to do so."
"The Myth of Hitler's Pope" Rabbi David G. Dalin, p 78.

You should also learn what effect the pastoral letter concerning the treatment of the Jews that was distributed by the Dutch Bishops in July of 1942 had on the Nazis. It made things much worse if you were Jewish, or Catholic for that matter. When the Bishop of Munster, Clemens August von Galen, wanted to condemn the Nazis for their treatment of the Jews, local Jewish leaders implored him to remain quiet. In addition, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the Catholic, German military officer who played a major role in the attempted assassination of Hitler, sought and received permission from the Bishop of Berlin, Konrad Graf von Preysing, to try and kill Hitler.

In light of your deficient knowledge of this topic I wonder if you would make the same demands of the government to release all of Roosevelt's musings, along with Cordell Hull and the southern Democrats who threatened to withhold support of FDR in the 1940 election, on what his rationale was for preventing the SS St. Louis, which was loaded with Jewish refugees, from docking at an American port. Many of those people people ended up dying in the Holocaust. You might also be interested to learn why FDR didn't bomb all the rail lines leading to the death camps.

Lest you or any other member of the revisionist "Hitler was a Catholic" cabal here have any remaining doubts I want you to take into consideration his own words and then tell me with a straight face that the Fuhrer indeed remained a Catholic.

"The Third Reich does not desire a modus vivendi with the Catholic Church, but rather its destruction with lies and dishonor, in order to make room for a German Church in which the German race will be glorified."
"Hitler, the War and the Pope", Ronald J. Rychlak, p. 93.

Dear The Ghost of FReepers Past,

We don’t agree with his theology, but I don’t think we’d say of him, as he says of us:

“...For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system’.”

Although all non-Catholic/non-Orthodox Christians are material heretics (except for those in the process of being received into the Church), the Church recognizes them as Christian, and does not consider their ecclesial assemblies to be “apostate churches,” “The Great Whore,” or “false cult systems.”

There is no comparability in our views toward Mr. Hagee’s theology and his views toward ours.

sitetest

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