Is That Legal?

You may be writing similar things, but you beat him to publication. :D

[And besides, he doesn't even point out what you noticed about Saint Stein.]

A possible thought in defense of the pope: there's still a lot of anti-Semitism in Poland. Might the comments about the taproot of Christianity been a way to directly address the attitudes of the Poles by reminding them how their modern anti-Semitism was un-Christian?

I still see the objection to his comments, especially because the the anti-Semitism of the Nazis was of a different character than that in Poland, but the thought did come to mind that perhaps that's why he chose to make his point as he did.

Within the historical community, channeling Prof. Goldhagen would not be a badge of honor by any sort. Most historians stand with Christopher Browning as a quality historian over the excessive generalizations and misdirections that mark Goldhagen's work.

ELM: I didn't claim it as a badge of honor, David. I merely noted that on this issue he and I were saying more or less the same thing. I'm aware of the objections to his work that you refer to.

Do you think Goldhagen accurately parses the passage from the Pope's speech? This isn't a challenge: I wonder if my low regard for Goldhagen's historiography is unduly influencing my assessment of his comments.

ELM: Goldhagen parses it the same way I do. Doesn't make him right, but I do agree with his reading here.

As a very good friend once wrote in describing how a conversation with our boss usually went, "enough about you, let's talk about me."

The pope approached the Holocaust the same way.

"Enough about the Jews. This is all about us, the Christians. Don't you get that?

"Just look at all the churches the Nazi's razed.

"And how 'bout those Cardinals, Archbishops, priests, and ministers who marched arm in arm with those . . . I'm forgetting . . . ah, those Jews on their way into the gas chambers.

"What about the trains. Don't you remember all those trains carting Christians to their gas-induced death."

I could go on but why bother.

The pope gave us a nice window into his past.

Pretty ugly stuff.

ELM: Goldhagen parses it the same way I do. Doesn't make him right, but I do agree with his reading here.

How does the old saying go?

"If one person calls you an ass, laugh it off. If three or more people who seem to be fairly sound thinkers in most other respects call you an ass, buy yourself a saddle."

Given the number of people I quoted who saw the same subtext, I think the Pope ought to check his ears...

Using Goldhagen is a clear indication of your take on this issue, Muller. It quickly will marginalize you as an anti-Catholic bigot.

Rabbi David Dalin has demolished Goldhagen, noting that Goldhagen "identifies Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, as the preeminent source of anti-Semitism in the world--ancient, medieval, and modern. While indicting Pius XII as an anti-Semite and a collaborator with Nazi Germany--and ignoring any contradictory evidence--Goldhagen goes on to attribute anti-Semitism to the entire Catholic Church and its leadership, even the present-day Church under John Paul II."

Read Rabbi Dalin's criticism of Goldhagen here: http://www.catholicleague.org/research/history_as_bigotry.htm

If you're going to lie down with anti-Catholic bigots, don't be surprised if you get up with fleas. Again, I can't say I'm surprised: another day, another secularist law professor slams the Catholic Church. Ho fricking hum.

I don't normally read "progressive" blogs, and this series of posts on Pope Benedict's speech at Auschwitz reminds me why that is.

Mr. Muller's analysis and dazzling insights are, upon reading a transcript of the entire speech . . . well . . . stupid. First, he utterly fails to understand what the Holy Father's purpose was in giving the speech, he fails to understand to whom he was speaking, and he fails to understand the underlying world view from which the words were expressed.

The speech was about the nature of evil and warning against it. He was not absolving the German people of responsibility in noting they were led by a ring of criminals through lies. From the Catholic perspective, ALL evil of this sort is based on lies. Moreover, calling those who fall for those lies or adopt them abused and used also does not absolve them of all responsibility for their own actions. From the Catholic perspective all sin (or evil if you prefer) is abusive not only of its victims, but of the sinner as well. To take an example to which most of your progressive readers will object, if a woman has an abortion, she is morally culpable for that act. She is also, however, a victim of sin and used and abused by the lie that her choice has no moral consequences and the liars that promote it.

Had you fully described the speech you might have noted that it culminated with a call to all people not to fall into such lies, be they based on religious fundamentalism or the secular belief of substituting man for God. In this context, his comments about the Nazis and lies make a lot of sense.

Finally, the comment on St Edith Stein that Lis Riba finds so clever is again - ignorant. She was a martyr, ALL martyrs die FOR someone. In fact, in a way, they die FOR all of us. This is all about the idea redemptive suffering and Christian sacrifice. This does not mean that her life was more precious than anyone else’s, but that that the nature of her death as a Christian martyr has a special meaning, particularly to Christians as Christians. You may not agree with the idea, but don’t twist the Pope’s words to mean what they do not.

I'm sorry the Holy Father didn't grovel for you Mr. Muller or explain his ideas in sufficiently secular terms, but I'm sure you are in his prayers every day - as are we all

Sean, if Eric fails to understand Pope Benedict's purpose in giving the speech or fails to understand to whom the Pope was speaking, it seems to me it's for a good reason. Neither is clear. The Pope went to speak at Auschwitz. His speech, you argue, was about the nature of evil and in warning against it. That's fine, he's welcome to address that topic. I'm sure his words on it hold special significance for many. But the words he chose at the forum he chose were particularly distressing to those of us for whom his judgment and history are in question.

Eric's critique--and Goldhagen's critique--is valuable because it demonstrates the magnitude of the missed opportunity. In choosing to dismiss what the German people did as being tricked and misled, he denied their agency in the Holocaust. This not only diminishes moral blame where it should belong, but similarly diminishes the courage and goodness of those who refused to participate or actively resisted.

Finally, I don't see your point regarding Edith Stein. The problem isn't only suggesting that she died for the Jews who were there--a remarkably arrogant suggestion in my mind, but--but more that he, like you, seem to regard her 'sacrifice' as somehow different from all those around her, as if it was somehow more valuable. If that is the case, Auschwitz was a bad place to choose to send that message. At the very least, the Pope is guilty of very poorly choosing his words on an occasion that demanded very careful consideration. But it seems that, as Eric said, if this was the best message the Pope could give, he should have given it somewhere else.

Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, who regularly writes on the Catholic church, has weighed in on the pope's speech

JPII visited the Yad Vashem Museum, Jerusalem, in March, 2000. The Vatican record of his speech is here, the Yad Vashem record of a lengthier commentary, which includes most aspects in the speech is entitled We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (immediately following the brief introductory letter).

Too, under JPII and the auspices of a Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, a document entitled Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed contains the following graph, introduced with a quote by then Cardinal Ratzinger, not Pope Benedict:

"Thus, in the contemporary context, which cannot ignore the appalling slaughter of the Shoah in the 20th century, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, introducing this document, asks the question: "Did not the presentation of the Jews and of the Jewish people, in the New Testament itself, contribute to creating a hostility to this people which the ideology of those who wanted to suppress it has encouraged?". The document honestly admits that many passages in the New Testament that are critical of the Jews "served as a pretext for anti-Jewish sentiment and, effectively, have been used for this purpose" (n. 87). A few years earlier, Pope John Paul II himself had said that "in the Christian world - I do not say on the part of the Church as such - erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and their alleged culpability have circulated for too long, engendering feelings of hostility towards this people" (Address to Participants in a Symposium on "The Roots of Anti-Judaism in the Christian Milieu", n. 1, 31 October 1997; ORE, 5 November 1997, p. 1). So it was that "sentiments of anti-Judaism in some Christian quarters, and the gap which existed between the Church and the Jewish people, led to a generalized discrimination" towards the Jews over the centuries, in particular in Christian Europe ..."

Nothing Benedict (Ratzinger) said recently superceded or in any way muted anything which he or JPII previously indicated. That should be obvious enough.

Or, take the reflection upon Edith Stein and the spin placed upon the phrase "she accepted death with her people and for them."

This comes into view because Benedict had gone through an entire litany of inscriptions written in different languages, "... inscriptions in Belarusian, Czech, German, French, Greek, Hebrew, Croatian, Italian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Romani, Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Ukrainian, Judeo-Spanish and English." Then continuing:

"All these inscriptions speak of human grief, they give us a glimpse of the cynicism of that regime which treated men and women as material objects, and failed to see them as persons embodying the image of God.

"Some inscriptions are pointed reminders. There is one in Hebrew. The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth."

Shortly thereafter, he invokes the inscription in Polish, recalling John Paul II:

"Then there is the inscription in Polish. First and foremost they wanted to eliminate the cultural elite, thus erasing the Polish people as an autonomous historical subject and reducing it, to the extent that it continued to exist, to slavery."

So his speech is formalized around all these inscriptions. He recounts the one written in Sinti and Roma, then the one in Russian, noting:

"There is also the inscription in Russian, which commemorates the tremendous loss of life endured by the Russian soldiers who combated the Nazi reign of terror; but this inscription also reminds us that their mission had a tragic twofold aim: by setting people free from one dictatorship, they were to submit them to another, that of Stalin and the Communist system."

The final inscription he invokes, as Benedict is himself German, in the German inscription, an inscription which evokes Stein:

"I felt a deep urge to pause in a particular way before the inscription in German. It evokes the face of Edith Stein, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: a woman, Jewish and German, who disappeared along with her sister into the black night of the Nazi-German concentration camp; as a Christian and a Jew, she accepted death with her people and for them."

The notion that the word "for" in the final sentence is used to connote more value is pure invention and construal. It's used to invoke sympathy, empathy and representation in that sense, not at all to invoke "more value," a construal which takes an almost willful obtuseness to imagine.

Introductory line in 8:20 AM post should read "now" instead of "not," as follows:

"... then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict:"