I know the whole world is abuzz about this, but I’m gonna have my say anyway. Pope Benedict XVI (formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) said:
Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.
“As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.
BBC: Row after Pope’s remarks on atheism and Nazis
(via David Forbes)
The Beeb piece mentions that Ratzinger was in the Nazi Youth when he was a teenage – a point I don’t think is terribly relevant. It fails to mention:
1. Adolf Hitler was a member of the Catholic Church until his death (and for the occultniks and conspiracy analysts out there: even what Nazi Mysticism there is evidence for had an expressly Christian element.
2. Ratzinger conspired to cover-up the activities of his global child rape gang.
3. The Catholic Church’s relative silence on the matter of the holocaust while it was occurring.
So what’s the bigger threat to the world? Atheism or Catholicism? (If the Pope really wanted to make a point about atheism, he could have invoked the suppression of religion in Soviet Russia).
This sort of thing drives me bonkers – as innocent people were being sent to prison as part of the Satanic Panic, priests and Boy Scouts masters were actually out raping children and covering it up. And this creep has the gall to blame one of the worst genocides in history – one that was carried out in the name of Christianity! – on atheism?
September 18, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Good article, and I definitely agree with many of your points. Although I don’t think the Nazi party could really be classed as a Christian movement though. They didn’t challenge the church when the movement was in it’s infancy, but upon coming to power actually were incredibly anti clerical, they removed many priests from their positions and defiled many churches. Even replacing Christian holidays with their own. I also believe that they saw the movement as Neo Pagan not Christian, a return to Greek Hellenistic religions that existed before the spread of Christianity which they regarded as an effeminate “Jewish” religion. I think they stole aspects from other religions but regarded the Third Reich as a political religion in it’s own right, replacing any need for the church. The only cult that mattered was the cult of the Fuhrer…
September 20, 2010 at 7:49 am
I can walk around shooting people in the head and yelling I’m a Christian/Atheist and it doesn’t mean that Christianity/Atheism is to blame. It just means I’m a crazy. Atheists love blaming any religion for all the ills of the world. Often this is done based on naive and ill-informed arguments, most notably that they always remove the human element from the argument (“Oh he was a Christian, that’s why he did it” not, “Oh, he was an evil sod, that’s why he did it”)
Now evidently, when the shoe’s on the other foot, you start to understand why Christians or other religions get so worked up about being accused of things? How many other evils in this world are committed by people who, in the process of their evil, exterminate and oppress all religion (Stalin and Mao spring to mind)? Religion is powerful, and if you’re a Despot/sheep using/hooked into religion for your own ends/unthinkingly, then religion is not the problem, the people are.