Reply #36: made up minds

[reorg]

Dear Tinoire,

I have great respect for all you have written here in this forum over the years, you provide lots of good sources and most often I agree with your positions and opinions.

I am not an historical expert nor a member of the Catholic Church, nor do I have a desire to promote certain, let alone readily "made up" opinions on the role of the Churches during the rise of Nazism in Germany. I merely pointed out that in the context of your quotes this seems to be a pertinent issue, although your quotes neglect to deal with it.

Why did the Catholic Zentrum party vote for the Enabling Act? Why were so many German Catholics "good Germans" and chose to switch their vote to Hitler in the early thirties (my own grandmother being one of those)? How is it possible that Pacelli made a pact with Hitler right at the time when the first anti-Jewish laws were enacted and Jews were removed from their positions in universities and public office? Not to mention the internment of many communists and social democrats. For me this is only explicable by the fact that the Vatican was always anti-communist and anti-liberal first. Only when their own role and established positions in society were being attacked they were finally talking back to the Nazis.


You quoted this for an example of the pope's "condemnation of racism and the totalitarian State":

"Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community--however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things--whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds."


But this is a far cry from what you purport it to be. Only when "these notions" (according to your interpretion they would probably include "racism", I'm not so sure they include "totalitarianism") are raised "above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level" the encyclical states them to be "far from the true faith in God". Fair enough, but then again I have to ask: What about those of us who don't care so much for the "true faith in God"?

Are there any fundamentals OUTSIDE of the Catholic Church that have to be adhered to, no matter what one may or may not believe about Jesus, Mary and the presumably infallible Pope?

The answer to this question which Kardinal Ratzinger gave in a recent debate with the eminent German philosopher and sociologist Habermas, is actually: no, impossible, you need the authority of the Catholic Church in order to preserve and uphold fundamental values.

And this is where I strongly disagree.