Sunday Sermonette: Pope Ratz blames God for Holocaust

The pope blames God for the Holocaust:

Benedict said it was almost impossible, particularly for a German Pope, to speak at "the place of the Shoah." "In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence which is a heartfelt cry to God -- Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Now that's what I call chutzpah.

Comments

[almostinfamous]

this from the man who was in the hitler youth?

i dont know whether to laugh or cry...

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Yeah, unlike God, Ratz was well-accounted-for during the Holocaust.

[norbizness]

I didn't even pursue that angle; I thought it was funny that God has become the "Not Me" of the Vatican Family Circus.

[The Phantom]

Yes, he joined the Hitler Youth when he was 14. You'll say that, in his shoes, you would not have done the same?

You think it fair to bring this up in 2006, his actions as a 14 year old to join the ( evil ) organization, as he was legally compelled to?

The alternatives would have been to basically go into hiding or to join whatever tiny opposition may have existed in his province, if he could have had any way of finding them, or even knowing that they existed.

Don't think that this is a fair thing to expect of any 14 year old, in any time, in any nation, much less in Nazi Germany.

[nonnymoose xian]

I think his question is fair enough. He's received a much different answer from that of an atheist, but you can bet plenty of others have asked the same damn thing.

As for the Hitler youth point: low blow. Let's be more constructive and ask (and full disclosure here: I'm Catholic): why is it that the last two Popes have felt the need to make high-profile visits to concentration camps, not in their role as Poles or Germans, but as leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, in full clerical attire, with television cameras and photographers in tow? (See also JP2's beatification of Edith Stein, which raised all sorts of difficulties.)

The valid question to raise is the ongoing need of Christianity (and I'm broadening my scope outside of Rome here) to seek exculpation for -- no, inclusion in -- the Holocaust, when it has no license to do so. The Christianization of the Shoah, and the re-scripting of Naziism as the logical, philosophical, and (theological) outgrowth of "scientific positivism," as Benedict alluded to, should be of greatest concern.

This was Henri de Lubac's thesis fifty years ago, and it still needs refutation today.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Nonnymoose, I agree with what you're saying. However, I don't think it's a low blow to point out that Ratz has a less than stellar personal connection to this chapter of history. If he were a true moral leader, he might reflect on the nature of complicity, or human failing, or institutional inertia, or residual anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church. Instead, he's being disingenuous.

Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul had a brilliant post about the difference between http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/the_german_shep.html>Ratzinger and Romero and their implications for moral and theological leadership in the Catholic Church.

I have no idea whether I would have been complicit in a great crime like the Nazi movement. One of my main goals in life is to try to grow to be the sort of person who could reasonably expect that they wouldn't cooperate. I've had the privilege of meeting a few people who know what they did under similarly trying circumstances, and who did the right thing.

Who knows what I would have done at the age of 14 in Nazi Germany. If I had joined the Nazi youth or its equivalent, you'd better believe that I'd be ashamed of myself for the rest of my life. (Ratz, IIRC, said he joined because he was forced to, not because he truly believed in the Nazi cause.)

If I knew I was coerced into that kind of compromise, I'd never excuse what I did on the grounds that "anyone would have done it," or that "I'd had no choice." In fact he had a choice and he made a rational, self-serving decision. If he's a good man, he's been tormented by it ever since.

I certainly wouldn't have the chutzpah to show my face in Poland and ask were God had been during the Holocaust. It's cheap and phony and disgusting. I'm not saying that Ratz committed any great crimes. He did what an ordinary person would do. However, he ascended to a position of great moral responsibility which is supposed to be reserved for people of extraordinary character. From that post, he's unwilling to train his celebrated intellect on one of the greatest moral puzzles in the history of the modern Catholic Church.

[Hunter Morrow]

The popes were complicit in this and are desperate to frame Nazis as atheists when they clearly were very much Christian. Gott Mit Uns!

[Matt McIrvin]

The Christianization of the Shoah, and the re-scripting of Naziism as the logical, philosophical, and (theological) outgrowth of "scientific positivism," as Benedict alluded to, should be of greatest concern.

I recall Jacob Bronowski being particularly concerned about dispelling the idea that the Holocaust was the product of the scientific worldview run amok. He argued that the Nazis had something more like the opposite of a scientific worldview.

[The Phantom]

" In fact he had a choice "
Yes, the choice that a fourteen year old boy realizes that he has.

None of us would like to have been complicit in this great crime, but a 14 year old is almost by definition not complicit, not with responsibility as we may understand it. It wouldn't even necessarily involve " coercion " or " compromise "--14 year olds, don't know a lot. Almost any 14 year old in a regimented society such as that, would have done so without questioning, without knowing what questions there were to ask.

There's a big difference between the responsibility that I'd expect from an 18 year old, in say, modern America, and that I expect from a 14 year old in Germany in that time.

[John Emerson]

Not every 14 year old joined Hitler Youth, but Ratzinger did.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

>God has become the "Not Me" of the Vatican Family Circus

Let's give credit for "quote of the day" where it's due.

As to the question of whether all Hitler Youth were culpable, there are documented incidents of members of the Hitler Youth and the Bund Deutscher Maedchen (the female equivalent) acting defiantly toward the regime. I believe that Hans Scholl of the White Rose movement was a Hitler Youth at first, until he saw firsthand what it was all about, and he was eventually guillotined because of his opposition to Hitler. If there's no evidence of war crimes or complicity besides the uniform, I'm inclined to withhold judgment. Pope Ratzenberg can seem like a very ruthless person, but of course, his power to do good or evil now far eclipses his power to do so as a 14-year-old. Maybe this is a photo op. He'll prove his nature soon enough, one way or another.

>Gott Mit Uns!

Here we go; Lindsay will probably roll her eyes at the post I'm going to make (how I annoy her), so sorry about that, but:

If this is the evidence of the great religiosity of the Nazis, I have to disagree: like most Nazi iconography, "Gott Mit Uns" came from the Second Reich, not the Third. That statement was cast on belt buckles in the First World War (where the Swastika also made its first appearance, on Imperial German airplanes). The Death's Head of the SS can be clearly seen on the shakos of the Imperial Death's-head Hussars (if you look, you can find a picture of Wilhelm the 2nd wearing one of these shakos). The eagle also goes back long before Hitler. Hitler wasn't exactly a church-going conservative.

There is quite a bit of evidence of churchly opposition to the Nazis. The Abwehr, the German military intelligence branch reporting to the Armed Forces High Command, was a hotbed of resistance to Hitler, largely on grounds of Christian kindness. Oskar Schindler spied for this group before the war, incidentally (though I don't know how religious he was), and Abwehr officers were the ones who intervened to free him from the Gestapo when he was taken in. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was responsible for helping hundreds of Jews to escape the Reich, was also with the Abwehr. General Oster and Admiral Canaris, head of the Central Section of the Abwehr and of the Abwehr itself, respectively, both were put to death, with Bonhoeffer, for suspicion of treason and of being involved in the July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler, and Abwehr people were involved in many other plots against Hitler. Canaris, Bonhoeffer and Oster were said to have strong objections to Hitler's inhumanity, based on their Christian beliefs.

Pastor Martin Niemoeller ("First they came for the Communists; but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak up.") also fought with Hitler on grounds of Christian kindness, and spent the war in a concentration camp because of it. Hitler said to him: "you worry about the church. Leave the German people to me." Niemoeller replied: "we also, as Christians and churchmen, have a responsibility to the German people. Neither you nor anybody else has the right to take that from us."

Now, according to Peter Padfield, Himmler was a gung-ho Catholic as a child, so read into it what you want. There was also plenty of church apathy to go along with the action. But there were thousands who resisted the Nazis based on their religious beliefs. Also, of course, claiming the Nazis were "very much Christian" leaves you to explain Himmler's state religion, which was a pagan, pre-Christian, Germanic religion, complete with runes, woodlore, and ritual. The Church may have shown apathy in the face of Nazism, but Nazism was in no sense a Christian movement.

(Disclaimer: The following in no sense indicts paganism, which in my experience is almost wholly a tradition of kindness toward others and toward nature; nor do I claim that Christianity is without its crimes. But Nazism wasn't a Christian movement.)

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

Another long post; now no-one will read it. When will I learn?

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

And that should read "the foregoing," not "the following"

[Left_Wing_Fox]

I seem to recall a group of Jewish survivors putting God "on trial" for the holocaust, and declaring God guilty.

Might be an urban legend though.

[Aeolus]

If God is omniscient and omnipotent, then surely God is totally responsible for the Holocaust. God designed the universe so that the Holocaust would happen -- and so that Benedict would ask why He was silent. God is also responsible for Barry Bonds surpassing the Babe's home-run total. And don't give me that free-will nonsense. Even if we have free will, God is still totally responsible for everything we do, since He could have designed reality such that we would freely choose to do otherwise, or so that 2 + 2 = 7. God is a bastard. But of course, that's only from our perspective. From His perspective, He's a compassionate, fun-loving, Giants fan.

[nonnymoose xian (um, at the new school!)]

Lindsay,

Okay, I understand what you mean now by the Family Circus aside.

You stole what probably would have been my second post in what you said:

"Who knows what I would have done at the age of 14 in Nazi Germany. If I had joined the Nazi youth or its equivalent, you'd better believe that I'd be ashamed of myself for the rest of my life. (Ratz, IIRC, said he joined because he was forced to, not because he truly believed in the Nazi cause.)"

I would never accept any episcopal post, anywhere, anyhow. Nor would I write theological tomes, work at Vatican II, or visit concentration camps with the world press, you can be sure of that. You can be damn sure I wouldn't have the gall to walk around the type of ground he did today.

Keeping with the theme of your blog, wouldn't his energy would be better spent on the inertia within the Church of this time, building a contemporary resistance movement to two, three many totalitarianisms, especially those from, uh, across the pond?

I'm ever so glad he's so concerned about what occurred seventy years ago. Perhaps Benedict the 20th -- or whatever -- will look back to the disaster of today and make similar apologies.

This is why, well, 1984's comments and defenses of various historical figures notwithstanding, the incarnational Church of our time is a moral nullity and non-entity. One must speak to the signs of the times, not to those of prior times.

Anyway, to the present: you're raising your voice here, so keep it up.

[Dabodius]

"...Nazis ... were very much Christian."
Hunter Morrow, look at this SS pamphlet on Rassenpolitik.
At least some Nazis recognized and rejected the Christian doctrine of Imago Dei (which is the Jewish doctrine of Tzelem Elohim), and the unity of humankind it entails, as insidious and threatening to their purposes because it subverted the "god-ordained" hierarchy of "races." There are a few more references to the divine in the pamphlet, including a strikingly Gnostic affirmation by Meister Eckhart: "The divine is in me, I am a part of it; I can recognize God's will without the help of priests." The formula then would be less "G-tt Mit Uns" than "G-tt in mir" or "Ich bin G-tt." Alas, Luther backslid to "the Jewish teachings of the Bible."
As for finding the Nazis' roots in "scientific postivism," the pamphlet shows that the Nazis blended their scientism with pseudoscience in much the same way their Stalinist contemporaries did, and with genetic fallacies as grotesque ("The The Jewish philosopher Spinoza ...".) You can use the prestige of the sciences to sell a counterfeit of them, in this case a zoology of humanity.
Btw, how about those pictures? The problem with the Slavs was clear ;) : they either had no pride or weren't as anal-compulsive as Germans!

[Dabodius]

Left Wing Fox, the story of a Bet Din (rabbinical court) trying G-d for a delict is older than the Holocaust, though Elie Wiesel's retelling is plainly "about" it.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

>From His perspective, He's a compassionate, fun-loving, Giants fan.

Except when I'm attending a game (I sometimes feel that if they wanted a perfect season, all they'd need to do would be to prevent me from coming to the park).

Dabodius, that's interesting, the SS pamphlet. The bit about the French Revolution, where the pamphlet objects to the slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" reminded me of a time when I saw some coins from occupied France. What stood out, aside from the light weight of the coins (wartime scarcity of metal, I'm sure) was that instead of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, the Germans had put another three words on them: Travaille, Famille, Patrie (Work. Family. Country.). Yeah, that'll go over. As blood-stirring as Liberty, Equality and Fraternity is, Work, Family and Country felt just that dead.

[almostinfamous]

I would never accept any episcopal post, anywhere, anyhow. Nor would I write theological tomes, work at Vatican II, or visit concentration camps with the world press, you can be sure of that. You can be damn sure I wouldn't have the gall to walk around the type of ground he did today.

in the words of Ratzie himself, Amen.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

Probably the most succinct and pertinent sentences from the link that Dabodius provided:

Our people's thinking was misled by the forces of the Church, Liberalism, Bolshevism and Jewry. Only the victory of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist world view enabled the German people to think racially.

Thanks nonnymoose--I suppose that the heart of the matter is this: it may be that it's only to individuals, and not to big hierarchies or systems like the church's, that we can look for dynamic, constructive acts. But if anyone has the power to swing an entire such hierarchy or system to do some good, the Pope must be one of those people. If he uses his levers of power to do good for the world, regardless of the religion, race or sexual preference of those benefitting, then his acts will renounce Nazism. On the other hand, if he neglects people, or does anything with badwill or violence, then its effects will probably outstrip anything he did as a child in the Hitler Youth. The truth will out.

[Republic of Palau]

All the while Ratzo swans about Poland in his Prada shoes, washing his hands of any papal or Vatican collusion in the Holocaust, Radio Maryja is building for a new Shoah with the tacit approval of the Church...

And I wonder when we'll see Ratzo do the same in Rwanda, where his own priests and nuns joined in the mass killings?

[mudkitty]

If there is a god, then the buck stops with him.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

>Radio Maryja

I guess Poland has its own Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson. Take note of the fact that one of the parties associated with this anti-Semitic figure is called "self-defence." Whenever someone attacks someone, they plead self-defence.

It seems that for some of eastern Europe, anti-Soviet reaction has translated to support for Nazism. The former East Germans seem to support Nazism much more than the West Germans do. A shame. Let's hope that Poland rejects the anti-Semitic message.

[Rhymes With Right]

You folks want to make much more of this question than there is -- either making it into an indictment of God, and indictment of the Church, or an indictment of PBXVI personally.

In doing so, you miss what it actually is -- the asking of one of the most confounding theological questions that exists. The question is one that every believer has framed in different ways, but boils down to this -- "How can an all-powerful God allow bad things to happen?"

It is the ultimate question of the existance of evil -- whether the generic, impersonal evil of an earthquake or tsunami, or the individual acts of evil that makes for 9/11 or the Holocaust -- or for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old.

I won't let loose into all the theological discussion here -- I'll simply note that this is one of those theological topics over which much ink has been spilled. Ultimately, though, I believe it comes back to the concept of man's free will -- for how can we really choose to be good if we are prevented from choosing to do evil? And if God takes away our capacity to do evil, is there anything moral or laudable about doing good?