JCC Pope watch MMXIII (MMXXV Edition)

historically and anthropologically speaking the church both has the capacity to change and inevitably will. religions are the most ossified and slowest changing aspects of culture, but they change all the same, especially the big honkin' ones. change in catholocism that would previously been seen as heretical has occurred, is occurring beneath the surface right now, and will occur in the future

here's hoping that doesnt embitter you too much when you realize im right

 

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Between a tacit thumbs up for all fascist regimes in Europe during the pre-War period (especially the Nazis, for their persecution of left wing elements including Jews, gays and gypsies) to child shagging to criminal negligence that is "hey, Africans! Condoms are a sin" the last century of the Catholic Church has been busy keeping its hands soaked in blood. This however does not suggest a recent surge in ambitious evil in the Vatican; we could point back to the intentional mistranslation of the Qu;ran to justify war to witch trials to any number of acts to confirm it.

In short, the Catholic church causes, has caused, and will continue to gleefully cause, suffering and death for no damned good reason, and the planet would benefit immensely if it curled up and died.

 

I agree. If the Catholic Church wants to survive and continue to be relevant, it MUST adapt to the times.[/quote]

 

Tacit thumbs up? What kind of historical revisionist bull**** are you reading?

Pope Pius XII hid thousands of Jews in Rome, furnished them with false baptismal certificates and passports, and instructed local bishops in the Third Reich to assist the Jewish populations. He didn't condemn the specific atrocities openly because he felt it would be hypocritical to do that without condemning Stalin's comparably horrific behavior in Russia. No, people in the Church are not always perfect, but the Jewish leaders of his time applauded and supported Pope Pius XII. The man deserves to be a canonized saint. This revisionist idiocy is novel.

The Church is nearly the only one standing up against Western Society's shameless slaughter of its unborn children. For now, we have many of the American heretics on our side, but who knows how long that will last. 40% of the hospital beds in the United States are run by the Catholic Church. The Church openly condemns the xenophobic attitudes of many Americans towards its indigent neighbors who have come here seeking a better life, and instructs us to welcome them with open arms. The Church is the largest charitable institution in the world.

You do not want to see a world without the Catholic Church. You may think you want to, but it would not be a kinder, gentler world.

 

Oh man, unironic use of the word "heretic"! I'm almost at Bingo.

 

OZK, you are, flatly speaking, wrong. The Church may want to pat themselves on the back with one hand whilst rewriting history to suggest Pius himself stopped Hitler to convince the faithful of their Goodness; but the body of evidence does not back this up. I'm not just talking about works written by eminent Holocaust scholars like Michael Marrus, Colin Tatz or Yehuda Bauer. I'm talking about the watered down findings of the Vatican itself in their "Reflections on the Shoah" piece. We could have seen more, but the Vatican denied the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission access to its archives. Nothing suspect there.

In your post above, you fail to correctly reference the tacit thumbs up bit. Fascist regimes were absolutely a-ok by the Holy See's standards. And why not? They championed paternalism, faith, and social conservatism whilst strongly opposing Bolshevism and homosexuality. Marrus elaborates further in The Holocaust in History if you're interested; forgive my being glib, but I suspect your Catholicism is too important to you, thus you are not interested.

Similarly - and, I should disclose I did study Genocide history under Colin Tatz - I know of numerous examples of Pius interceding through diplomatic channels to stop the mentally handicapped or ill being executed in Germany and Poland. He never once used this channel for the Jews, though. Stalin wasn't killing Jews, but he was happy to bump anyone off regardless of mental health state. I think worrying about being perceived as hypocritical is long past being relevant now, don't you?

But you're right, we should lionise and canonise a man who wrote to a bishop protesting the deportment of Jews that, regarding these non-Aryans in German territory, "Unhappily in the present circumstances, We cannot offer them effective help other than through Our prayers."

Yet, the mentally ill hardly fit the Aryan model, and he could help them?

Incidentally I note that the church's campaign against the euthanising of non-Aryans drove it underground in Nazi Germany circa 1941, 1942. I guess they were too tired from being so shamelessly hypocritical here that they had nothing left but prayers for the Jews.

Are you aware of how, by contrast, the Swedish government managed to save most of Sweden and Norway's Jews? Or that the Danish royal family was able to have scores of non-Jewish Danes wear the yellow star? Their position was no less tenuous than the Holy See, but they were able to show courage, leadership, and defiance - three things your precious Vatican has never heard of.

 

meme status: generated

 

Nothing makes me more angry than genocide denials. HEAR THAT, TURKEY?

 

comin' fo yo azz, kemal

 

OZK, the only one I see being a revisionist is you.

Sorry dude, I'll still support you when you're being bullied over the IGM, but what you're saying about the Catholic church and WW2 is a massive pile of bovine turd.

 

I guess I'll be pope.

 

You should know that the witch hunting frenzy was primarily in Protestan countries, the Spanish and Roman Inquisitons in fact helped to stop the witch hunts and trials from getting out of hand in their respective jurisdictions. The numbers generally cited for death caused by the Inquisition are greatly exaggerated and have been discredited.

 

As a gay Catholic this news is great, but sadly it looks like the Catholic LGBT community doesn't have too much to look forward to. The least homophobic Cardinal being flaunted around the media is Marc Ouellet but he still said he wouldn't baptize the adopted children of homosexual couples.

 

I just read this.

Could you provide an example? What was the before and after.

 

Does the name Galileo mean anything to you, Darth_Maestro?

 

When the choice is between having an abortion or dying from a miscarriage?

Ender_Sai, I hate to disappoint you, but the whole thing about all Danes wearing yellow stars is just an urban legend.

And mind you, there WERE individuals in the Catholic church who aided people trying to escape the Nazis -- Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, for one. (Of course, he was Irish. Irish people are cool) Pius XII? Not so much. He was in a position to have done much more, and he failed. He could have spoken out publically, and said, SCREW YOU, HITLER!!! But he didn't.

 

Wait, why can they refuse baptism for infants based on the choices of their parents?? I don't agree with infant baptism anyway, but that just doesn't sound right...

 

Yes, Galileo Galilei, of whom Urban VIII was an ardent supporter. And it's another urban legend that Galileo was found to have committed heresy in his findings; the highest that the Inquisition ever determined of his research was that it was suspect of it. So that would not technically fit the criteria of a heresy before, orthodoxy after.

This is not to dispute that the proscription of Galileo's works was wrong. It was. The bans were lifted about 100 years after Galileo wrote them, and a formal apology was given by the Church in the 1990s if I remember right. Secular communities have taken long periods to issue apologies, too; the Australian government only apologised for its treatment of the native Aboriginal population about four years ago, and the country's been around for 200 years.

The other thing to remember is that Popes do not claim to be infallible except in very limited circumstances, of which there's been maybe three declarations over the past seventy years or so, all on what might be regarded as somewhat obscure theological questions. Just as with all men and women, they have both good and bad to them. Urban VIII can be condemned for proscribing Galileo and engaging in heavy nepotism under the Church's banners - but against that, you have to weigh in his patronage of the arts, the fact he gave Bernini room and funding to do some of the finest art of the face of the planet, and his 1638 Papal bull that natives in North/South America were not subject to enslavement if they were part of mission communities. This latter point was made to assist the Jesuit Order, which was engaged in missionary work in South America and which in many cases was the only force standing between the indigenous populations and slavery from the secular traders who worked those countries with a free hand. Saying an institution is wholly evil or wholly good is a caricature, as is doing so to a Pope -- or anyone.

 

Yyyyeah, the issue I have with that is that there were several heavily-armed countries neighbouring Germany that tried that. They were walked over by the Wehrmacht shortly therafter.

Leaving the issue of Judaism to one side, it's not hard to visualise an Axis-led column of troops marching into the Vatican without a lot of resistance being put up. The Swiss Guards were not exactly the Fremen. I would have then anticipated the wholesale destruction of the Vatican's massive treasure houses of art and historical documents, perhaps culminating in a massive book-burning in the middle of St. Peter's Square, perhaps. Hitler could have drawn on any number of medieval justifications for propaganda justifying sacking Rome, just as he drew on Nordic or Viking images to gee up his people in support of his ambitions. Perhaps that played into his thinking or diplomacy.

As to the issue of Judaism: Pius XII is sometimes described as mercurial, and he may have been thinking along the lines of the old, old (and now specifically abandoned) idea that Judaism as a whole bore the guilt for Christ's death. Let me be explicit about it: this is not the Catholic Church's current position, hasn't been so since at least Vatican II back in the late fifties if not earlier.

To me, the more telling feature is that, in Poland at least, it was Polish Catholics who overwhelmingly were involved in efforts to get the Jewish population out, or at least as many of them as could be saved. St. Maximillian Kolbe -- a Catholic priest who died after giving his life for another prisoner in a concentration camp no less -- was explicit about it when he was asked if a Jew should be assisted: "Yes, it is necessary to do this because all men are our brothers." By and large, those sorts of efforts were driven by Catholic teaching and Catholic belief systems, not a vague generalised sense of humanity as such.[/quote]

 

It's doubtful that the Third Reich would've invaded the Vatican. For one thing, Mussolini was heavily dependent upon Catholic support. For another, Germany has a large Catholic population. There most likely would've been (increased) reprisals against priests and monks and such (and that was what AFAIK the Vatican was actually afraid of), but the Pope himself? That's stupid. The international outrage and hundreds of millions of angry Catholics wouldn't have been worth silencing his criticism of the Holocaust.

And I dispute that Catholic priests necessarily helped Jews because of Catholic teachings. The diverse list of people who were Righteous Among the Nations, including those associated with Axis governments, points to their human decency being the major factor.

 

I like that you ignore the bits about your faith's complicity with the holocaust to focus on this. Pie Iesu domine, and all that crap.

 

I think the idea that Hitler and/or Mussolini would have (let alone could have) destroyed the Catholic church had it spoken out against the holocaust is fantasy. The Nazis said they had God on their side. The Vatican didn't think to disagree with that until half a century later.

 

Bull. ****.

That's so naive, disingenuous... I get it makes Catholics feel like lesser scumbags for remaining aligned with an institution who, at its centre, intentionally let Jews go to the slaughter en masse. So you seek to rationalise it with the historically vapid "but liek, teh Vatican could have been attacked!!1!" but when I pointed out that pressure from the Church had demonstrable effects on Nazi policy (to the point of pushing Euthanasia underground) and that Pius used diplomacy to protest the killing of the mentally handicapped in Poland... Come on, you're blinkered or just not even trying. This was an act of unrepentant evil, and you're offering a fig leave to cover it up.