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Post by Noelfitz on Oct 30, 2008 18:46:32 GMT
Saintstephen
Thank you for all your contributions to this debate.
I did not read in detail the reference you gave.
Do you think it interesting/significant that the Church never excommunicated Hitler|?
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Post by Noelfitz on Oct 31, 2008 18:46:32 GMT
Saintstephen,
You really keep discussions going here.
You wrote: “The newer path to enlightenment is exhortation rather than excommunication and currently two American figures exhorted by the Conference of Bishops is Senator Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi whom are both Catholic and have made public errors with the Doctrine of the Faith.”
You do not give references, so I am not sure what you are getting at.
I did some Google searches and I cannot find where Bishops or the Pope “exhorted” Biden or Pelosi.
Would you please give us some details?
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Post by Noelfitz on Oct 31, 2008 18:53:02 GMT
I read in today's Irish Times (31 Oct):
"Meanwhile, it emerged that Pope Benedict may put the canonisation process for wartime pope Pius XII on hold until the entire Vatican archive relative to the pontificate of Pius can be opened up to independent scholars and historians.
Rabbi David Rosen, leader of a delegation from the International Jewish Committee for Inter-Religious Consultations, said the pope had confirmed the possibility during a meeting in the Vatican yesterday."
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Post by ezigboututu on Nov 1, 2008 18:54:20 GMT
We have two separate questions here: (1) Pius XI and Pius XII signed the Concordat with the Hitler government because they believed it would give them diplomatic leverage to protect the German Church. They were quite mistaken in this because they didn't realise the extent of Hitler's untrustworthiness. Most of the pro and anti-Pius apologetic is extremely onesided and talks past its opponents. From my own desultory reading I believe that Pius XII did all he could to help the Jews and didn't speak out more openly because he feared it would prejudice his overall efforts. I think a reasonable case can be made that he was mistaken but it's not possible to decide one way or another. Michael Burleigh has some interesting material on this in one of his recent books. The Vatican has published 14 volumes of documents on Pius's wartime activities but do not yet allow access to the full archives for the period. I think this is a mistake; if they produce a selection they must have done it on the basis of some criterion and they should allow others to test its validity. (2) There is I am sorry to say a long and shameful tradition of Catholic anti-semitism. This is not comparable to Nazi exterminationism, nor its only source (Hitler's Table Talk is full of rants against Catholicism) but it is quite bad enough. Under the Papal States Jews in Rome received the same sort of treatment as Irish Catholics under the penal laws - they enjoyed a de facto toleration but were subject to all sorts of harrassment and pressures to convert. Daniel O'Connell drew attention to this parallel. Then there is the vicious nineteenth-century strain within French Catholicism which blamed the Jews for all the ills of modernity and found an Irish representative in Fr. Denis Fahey, who still has his disciples. (I think he would make a very good subject for the Formosus treatment - i.e dug up and retrospectively excommunicated.) Vatican II and John Paul II made formal acts of repentance for past sins against the Jewish people and they were right to do so. This is a separate issue from Pius XII - don't use him as a scapegoat! I've assembled a lot of information on this topic including buying Hitler by Ian Kershaw which at €30 is not a cheap book. I have also ordered Cornwells book on Eugenico Pacelli. However I don't see the point of taking a part in a debate which will just be censored by the pro-catholic moderator by being deleted if it does not go the Catholics way as has happened on two occasions now including one where Idefix was arguing brilliantly and logically with the ravings of a mentally disturbed member of your flock who thinks the world is only six thousand years old. Of course at the end of the day if Eugenio has been caught red handed driving Jews to the gas chamber it would not make one whit of difference to the mandarins in the Vatiacan. If they want to call him a saint they will and all the objections of mere mortals will not make one whit of difference.
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Post by Noelfitz on Nov 1, 2008 19:53:26 GMT
Ezigboututu
I enjoy our debates here. Hibernicus was very fair in his comments.
However I do not think your post is helpful.
Have I in my posts been unreasonable?
I think we can all benefit from courteous and respectful discussions.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 1, 2008 23:32:58 GMT
Ezigboututu Reasonable discussion depends on accepting one another's sincerity until otherwise established. I joined in criticising Redmond's ravings, so it wasn't Catholic v. atheist.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 1, 2008 23:35:58 GMT
BTW I think Saintstephen's comment about Rabbi Rosen had a nasty edge to it. So far as I can see the Rabbi merely made a reasonable expression of concern to the Pope rather than setting himself up as some kind of judge. On the whole I think it would be a good idea to suspend the canonisation process until the archives are publicly available. BTW the Vatican archives are underfunded and this is probably the main source of delay.
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Post by ezigboututu on Nov 2, 2008 13:12:49 GMT
Ezigboututu Reasonable discussion depends on accepting one another's sincerity until otherwise established. I joined in criticising Redmond's ravings, so it wasn't Catholic v. atheist. No it wasn't your doing. It was the moderators. Ezigboututu I enjoy our debates here. Hibernicus was very fair in his comments. However I do not think your post is helpful. Have I in my posts been unreasonable? I think we can all benefit from courteous and respectful discussions. Re Pius XII and the Nazis the subject is worth a discussion especially in the light of the fact that the Vaticaners want to make him a Saint. It is wrongly claimed that Catholics in Bavaria (a predominately Catholic part of Germany) supported Hitler from the start. They didn't. It was even considered moving the HQ of the National Socialist further North because of that fact at one stage. (see Hitler by Ian Kershaw Penguin 2008)But so what, there's not much point in wasting page after page discussing it here. I can ask atheist.ie to set up a completely separate section where you'd be welcome to discuss every aspect of the situation regarding the canonisation of Pius XII. You won't get anything but a reasonable discussion and at least you'd be free of the lunatic fringe, the toleration of whom and the banning of others just puts reasonable Irish people like yourselves in a bad light.
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Post by ezigboututu on Nov 2, 2008 13:14:18 GMT
BTW I think Saintstephen's comment about Rabbi Rosen had a nasty edge to it. So far as I can see the Rabbi merely made a reasonable expression of concern to the Pope rather than setting himself up as some kind of judge. On the whole I think it would be a good idea to suspend the canonisation process until the archives are publicly available. BTW te Vatican archives are underfunded and this is probably the main source of delay. I think you'll find they are about to release all of the archives.
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Post by ezigboututu on Nov 2, 2008 13:26:48 GMT
Saintstephen, You really keep discussions going here. You wrote: “The newer path to enlightenment is exhortation rather than excommunication and currently two American figures exhorted by the Conference of Bishops is Senator Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi whom are both Catholic and have made public errors with the Doctrine of the Faith.” You do not give references, so I am not sure what you are getting at." Dear Noel, The first editorial to read is found at:http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=29340 14 Bishops Have Corrected Senator Biden's Error By Tim Waggoner 9/16/2008 Catholic Online (www.catholic.org) "It is plainly false to assert that the answer to the question of when human life begins is limited to the realm of personal and private faith and that therefore there is no basis for preferring one position over another." The second editorial concerning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is at this site: newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2008/08/26/fnc-catholic-leaders-respond-pelosis-abortion-claFNC: Catholic Leaders Respond to Pelosi's Abortion Claims By Brad Wilmouth (Bio | Archive) August 26, 2008 - 21:25 ET * This is a perfect example of the fact that SS is little more than a raving loony and a pathological liar. He's claimed to be no less than a computer expert: irishcatholics.proboards56.com/index.cgi?board=catholics&action=display&thread=249&page=2I have been using a computer for over 25 years and do have experience with security programs. Catholic Exchange can admit you or block you as they will. If you cannot login it is only because CE's security program is blocking you. If you do not believe that, you will continue to be blocked until you get a security clearance from CE admin. irishcatholics.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=catholics&action=display&thread=249&page=3I run three software programs ie: Mac, Windows and Linux and have no problem with any of those. I also worked IT for seven years at the largest corporation in the world General Electric. But he is so ignorant of the basics he can't figure how to use quote tags.. You may not be aware but in one of his previous incarnations as Royalodipstick he told so many lies he had to change his name a couple of times and finally come back as SS. Previously he has claimed to be a war hero with so many decorations they don’t fit on his jacket.... this being more medals than most generals get if they spend their WHOLE life in the army. Yet he has not spent his entire life in the army because he also claimed to be a medical scientist, a teacher, a person who has worked with mentally challenged kids, a roadie for several bands, a member of a very successful band himself, a husband to a playboy mansion reject, a millionaire real estate developer and a cancer victim who underwent a miraculous recovery which science has been unable to explain. He also claimed it took 15 doctors to perform a biopsy on him which would qualify for the Guinness Book of Records. He claims to have half a neck as a result of his cancer but I don't think it was his neck they cut in half. People like Redmond and SS are not Irish Catholics but rather products of American Protestant extremism. They're the same ignorant lunatics who are building museums with models of dinosaurs being chased by humans and attacking every scientific advance by mankind.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 4, 2008 1:44:54 GMT
I do not think it is a question of the Rabbi "reviewing" the case; he merely expressed concern that everything should be out in the open. He wasn't asking to be given some sort of formal judicial role or veto.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 4, 2008 1:56:03 GMT
The concept of innocent until proven guilty applies in criminal trials. I'm not sure it is really applicable here as we are talking about the public record of a historical figure. Pius XII has already met a Judge who knows all, and nothing any of us say will change that. The question is (a) whether he is worthy of public veneration (b) whether it is expedient to proceed in the matter at this time until all possible cause of scandal has been removed. BTW for an interesting exception to the rule that it is conservatives who defend Pius and liberals who criticise him see Philip Justus Lawler's book whose title I forget. Lawler (this is not the Lawler who used to edit CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT) is so liberal I have my doubts about calling him Catholic, and has a lot of criticisms of Pius as Pope, but he shows up quite a few dubious statements by critics. (For example, Susan Zuccotti refuses to accept the statements of Italian clerics who rescued Jews that they acted on the Pope's orders, on the grounds that there is no written contemporaneous record of such orders and that later oral statements could be influenced by other considerations; Lawler points out that this is exactly the "reasoning" process which David Irving uses to deny Hitler ordered the Holocaust.)
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 5, 2008 0:21:34 GMT
SAintstephen: Pius XII belongs to the Catholic Church, yes, but surely Jews are entitled to express an opinion on his actions (whether that opinion is correct is another matter). Your view would logically imply that even if the worst accusations against him were all true Jews would not be entitled to object to his canonisation.
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Post by Hemingway on Nov 6, 2008 12:28:19 GMT
Believe it or not, there are those who would like to put Pius II on criminal trial even though he is dead which brings me to another point of law which is the accused's right to face his accusers which he can no longer do in his stately repose of sanctification. Hi ya Stephen! In the spirit of your above statement, I'm back to face my accusers!
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Post by Hemingway on Nov 6, 2008 14:25:58 GMT
Dear Hemingway, Bravo for you. You are back although you can never win until you confess your departure from the Catholic faith as an error in judgment. Eternal Life will not present itself to you when your mindset is finite. At the end of a finite life, you lose. Catholics however will live infinitely as they hold to their precepts. Well if that’s the case, bravo for you Sir! Needless to say, I don’t believe in anything after death. I am of the opinion that the lights will go out and that’s it. All the evidence appears to point to this eventuality as far as I can surmise. I have examined the iron age writings that has become known to us as the bible in some detail, and there is no evidence within it that would lead me to the conclusion that it was written or even inspired by a greater power. As I have said on this forum before there is no mention of DNA or Electricity or indeed anything that could not have been known by an Iron Age Individual, never mind an Omniscient being. However, I do not look down upon you in any way for believing as truth the things contained within the bible. Indeed, I wish you the best. I just for the life of me cannot understand why a rational person would believe such things once they have analysed the data. I see it as Unfortunate that some people of faith only ever take on board one side of any argument (the religious side) and also accept "Faith" as a virture. It may well be a virtue in some (but not all) cases, however, faith has also been described thus: "Faith is believing something you know ain't true." ....Mark Twain However, for my part, I dont intend to go tip-toeing through life just to arrive safely at death. Ohhhh.... I think I've strayed off topic a tad. Please forgive me. I dont think Pius XII should be canonized. There are doubts in my mind as to his suitability.
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