Benedict at Auschwitz

Remembering Auschwitz

Andrew Sullivan recently offered these comments about Pope Benedict’s speech at Auschwitz:

I was unimpressed by his speech. It was a function of resilient denial – denial that the German people had en masse backed Nazism long after its true nature had become known; and denial of the criminal silence and acquiescence of the Vatican hierarchy during that period of time. Money quote about the Germans:

It is a duty before the truth and the just due of all who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor of Pope John Paul II and as a son of the German people — a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honor, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power…

The Germans abused by the Nazis?? They created, empowered and were the Nazis. Then this:

Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?

How about a simpler and more accountable question: where was the Church hierarchy? Where was the Pope? That is neither rhetorical nor unanswerable. And where is the expiation of the original sin of Christianity – anti-Semitism – that played a part in preparing the way for Nazism? Why was Benedict silent? Even today?

The Daily Dish

May 29, 2006

Memorial Day: Feelings of Remorse

They are finally at rest

The earth may run red with other wars

But they are now at peace

In the midst of battles, in the roar of conflicts

They have found the serenity of death.

 

In Devoted Memory to:

My Grandfather (World War I)

My Father (World War II, The Berlin Airlift, The Vietnam War)