In the news this week ...

Carl Trueman writes on evangelical and reformed success at Reformation 21:

https://www.reformation21.org/blog/2011/09/the-sweet-smell-of-success.php

And if someone could explain to me whether the html code for a link will or won't work in 'Preview' mode, that would be great; all the link is doing for me in preview is linking back to this W&T page.

Andrew, I thought I'd throw out a 'Carl' quote before the next one from 'Tom': the countdown's getting lower everyday.

Peter, If you want to put a link in a post, you can try this way-
Click this link & scroll to heading- HTML Link Syntax.
Once you add the Url & text & go into preview, right click your mouse to open link in new tab to check everything's ok

Ryan, thanks; but that's the weird thing - the link syntax you have referenced is the one I am using, and have been able to use in the past. I can't figure out what is happening. I've tried just clicking the link in Preview and right clicking and opening in a new tab/window, and I just keep coming back this page; so I'm reluctant to go ahead and post the comment with the link. Maybe I've overlooked a space or an arrow or something.

Not that it a real bother, it just looks nice.

Nice? Is that a real word!

:-)

Re Dawkin's & the journalist's assertion "What about the idea that the public square is open to all, religious included, in a democracy?"

The "Public Square" should be Secular- an umbrella of protection provided to everyone, similar to the Singaporean idea. Religions should then be accountable to the same laws that come with that democracy. There should be no exemption from civil rights law. All religious Institutions should be subject to a secular rule of law in an increasingly diverse society. There should be no Sharia courts in the UK for example.

Peter, do you still put the " infront & after the url ? As in: "url"

Peter

Andrew, I thought I'd throw out a 'Carl' quote before the next one from 'Tom': the countdown's getting lower everyday.

You've got some nerve. I'm the one who posts links to Trueman on this blog!

I've lost track of the Tom countdown, how many days left now?

It's true what they say, you should be careful what you wish for.

Bishop Daly need look no further than 1st Timothy Chapter 3 (KJ Authorized version)
v1 This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.

v2 A bishop then must be ..., the husband of one wife, ...............................

v3 Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;

v4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;

v5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)

v6 Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.

v7 Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

The bible makes good common sense first proved in own house how he runs it, his children are subject to him and of course, as the children are his, has a wife, one wife.

Irrespective of celibacy in the priesthood, unmarried bishops are contrary to the bible, contrary to the word of God ( if you believe the whole bible IS the word of God)

BTW Richard Dawkins new book "The Magic of Reality" released this week.

One aspect of reality which Dawkins will not find very 'magic' is the fact that his grubby strain of aggressive secularism has lethal effects on Christianity, but will be completely impotent in the face of Islam. The best these comedians can hope for is a very short-lived, utterly pyrrhic victory.

Dontcha just love Fatwa Envy?

Paul James

Lol. Your post is probably the best ever example of 'less is more.' Really made me laugh. Ta.

Ryan #5

Yes, the " is there. (isn't it odd how it's better to put a " between two space rather than two "s!)

Perhaps it's a copy/paste problem - formatting getting messed up, or something. But thank's for your replies.


Andrew #6

"You've got some nerve. I'm the one who posts links to Trueman on this blog!"

Well, OK; but I was only trying to shore up my 'reformed' credentials before quoting something more heretical. If you're not careful, I'll quote something from Peter Enns!

"I've lost track of the Tom countdown, how many days left now?"

I've lost track too; but that doesn't really matter because understood in the context of 2nd Temple Judaism there's a sense in which the quote has already been posted. :-)

paul james;

"Dontcha just love Fatwa Envy?"

Never heard of him. Unless he's the fellow i'm thinking of, who used to play for West Ham.

@13
There you go

The Orange Order is a disgrace. A lodge makes a complaint against two people who attended the funeral of a Catholic and the complaint gets treated seriously. I thought Diamond Dan was the decent sort who, as well as being "the kind of person who offers his seat on a crowded bus to an elderly lady", would have no qualms about going to a Catholic mate's funeral. This is sectarianism writ large.

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14920403

I'm beginning to find Dawkins tiring...

I hope the orange order expels them, it'll be doing them a favour

On the topic of philosophical counselors teaching philosophy, it is worth noting that 49 academics and writers, including Julian Baggini, AC Grayling, Professor Laurie Taylor and Terry Jones, have writtten a letter to the 'Guardian', calling for the introduction of philosophy lessons in the classroom, maintaining that it would have immense benefits in term of boosting children's reasoning and conceptual skills and thus better equipping them for the complexities of life in the 21st century. You can read the letter at:

https://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/sep/13/teach-philosophy-in-our-schools

I have written on the topic in 'Humanism Ireland'. See the article, Philosophy Class, at:

https://www.humanistni.org/filestore/image/philosophy%20class.pdf

Paul James

Loving it!

Canon Dr Giles Fraser on this morning's Thought For The Day reflects on the brutal beating and death of Baha Mousa at the hands of British soldiers in Iraq. He refers to Sir William Gage's report on the matter in which a Catholic chaplain was identified as "a poor witness to the brutality going on around". He also refers to a report that found that 54% of American Christians thought that torture is often or sometimes justifiable.

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00khf94

Peter

Well, OK; but I was only trying to shore up my 'reformed' credentials before quoting something more heretical. If you're not careful, I'll quote something from Peter Enns!

Old Tom isn't heretical, it's just he meanders of the beaten track every now and then. Enns is different, he is going down a bad road.

Which, of course, is why Trueman et al had to get rid.

I've lost track too; but that doesn't really matter because understood in the context of 2nd Temple Judaism there's a sense in which the quote has already been posted. :-)

Does this mean the countdown is a hopelessly failed paradigm incapable of accounting for what was actually the case?

Andrew

”Old Tom isn't heretical”

Don’t worry, I was only being facetious; as you know, I really appreciate Wright’s work.

The Enns issue is more interesting. I haven’t kept up to date with what he is saying or doing, nor have I read the Inspiration and Incarnation book which provoked so much controversy, so I can’t make much comment about the road he is on; however, in reading a little about the debate, I wasn’t convinced that the objections were as cut and dried as some suggested. Part of the trouble seems to be that the popular evangelical understanding of biblical inspiration and inerrancy doesn’t really get passed some vague notion of automated writing, or such like, and it’s a debate which we probably should have. Surely Christians ought to have some idea about how the bible works/worked in history? At least Enns was raising some worthwhile questions.

In contrast to this, it seems to me that a more immediate problem for reformed and evangelical churches is the one raised (again) by Trueman in the article I added - give me an Enns over a ‘multi-site, internet marketed, mega-church, multi-media, hip and ever so wearyingly trendy, son of a baby-boomer, pastar' (that wasn’t a spelling mistake) any day; at least I’d have something to disagree with - as it is, the hollow fibre filling in the tip-up seats of the church auditorium would be easier to digest than...

Contemporvant

The Enns issue is more interesting. I haven’t kept up to date with what he is saying or doing, nor have I read the Inspiration and Incarnation book...

Enns is now with Biologos. So he's gone down the theistic evolution route, which is a natural fit with Inspiration and Incarnation. To some extent that issue can be bracketed but his work with Biologos has concentrated on denying the historicity of Adam and dealing with the theological consequences of such a denial. His book on the subject is soon to be released but there has already been substantial interaction with his views. But we'll see how the book turns out.

Part of the trouble seems to be that the popular evangelical understanding of biblical inspiration and inerrancy doesn’t really get passed some vague notion of automated writing, or such like, and it’s a debate which we probably should have.

That might be true but at the time Enns critics were people like Greg Beale, D.A. Carson, John Frame and Carl Trueman whose views are more sophisticated than popular theology.

The popular view is, no doubt, in need of correction. But if there is such a thing as erring on the side of caution the automated view is maybe not so bad. It's better to say, 'thus saith the Lord' than 'hath God said?'.

In contrast to this, it seems to me that a more immediate problem for reformed and evangelical churches is the one raised (again) by Trueman in the article I added

That's definitely a more immediate problem for churches but Enns views, and those like him, are going to run and run. Given the choice I'd plague both their houses.

#23 Should have been addressed to Peter

Nick Xenophon names alleged rapist priest in the Australian Senate. More rapist priests are referred to in the article.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/nick-xenophon-names-alleged-abuse-priest/story-fn59niix-1226136267259

A very interesting interview with Pam Spees (Center for Constitutional Rights) and her organisation's attempt to bring 4 Vatican officials (Pope Benedict, Bertoni, Sodano and Levada) before the International Criminal Court. It's that thorny issue of jurisdiction again! (Starts in the 10th minute)

This is immediately followed by an interview with Arthur Jones, the man who broke the stories of paedophile priests in the United States in 1985 and whose knowledge of Vatican cover-ups is second to none. He reminds us of how difficult it was at first for parents to pursue justice and how brave parents and victims who pursue justice are. Also, he said: "The second largest denomination in the United States, if you can call it that, is former Catholic" and believes that Rome has "pretty much given up on the West".

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b014krhg

"The government has said it is committed to changing the law in England and Wales to allow gay marriage by 2015"

Does the future have a (Protestant) Church? - a survey with accompanying definitions of 'The Tribes of Protestantism'. It reads a bit like a FTSE for christians!

Not sure that I’d ‘draw the lines’ where the survey draws the lines, but interesting reading. (if you’re into that sort of thing!)


Andrew, in light of our earlier conversation, I'm wondering what you’d make of...

I guess this means we're at zero!

Will,

Thanks for the interesting article on philosophical counselors. It’s good news. I do agree with Elliot Cohen, in that “the tools of philosophy should be integrated into mainstream therapy.” He defends his opinion with the point that the tools of philosophy would reach and benefit a wider audience/more clientele, rather than “focus on an elite part of the population.” However, I saw no strong disagreement between the two thoughts, and no reason why both practices cannot exist simultaneously (philosophical counselors and traditional therapists using philosophy). (Christian degreed counselors exist. What's the diff?)

I have seen an overlap in some psychology/self-help books, in which authors refer to ideas from the great thinkers. Some counselors already expand their methods in such a way, post-degree.

The article mentioned the overwhelming reliance on antidepressants in America. It is…sad...disappointing...to witness the many people (friends and colleagues) on anti-depressants. (I live in a Christian-heavy zone, and the ones I'm thinking of on meds all happen to be either devout or evangelical.)

When I went through a hard time, I realized that I too could be headed to medication, and therefore I fought my own way out with every effort. If the depression isn’t clinical, it can be overcome with the right resources, determination, and hard work.
(I could list my personal recommendations that have helped me immensely, but I think it wouldn’t be appropriate. Interestingly enough, none of them are Christian, as far as I can tell. If any were, the psychologists or authors didn’t reveal it, as their religion was a non-issue.)

From the article…Patricia Anne Murphy: “Not everyone needs to be medicated.” Amen to that.

I apologize if any reader is offended. I know people do the best they can. I know a few people, who haven’t official diagnosis of mental illness, who function better with the meds, no question. The only possible response from my arm-chair: “Well, if it helps you, it’s good.”

What I detest is the plethora of pharmaceutical commercials over here in the US. It’s disgusting. Americans are being programmed to think there’s something wrong with their bodies and minds. (And if it’s a medication for a real condition, why can’t our doctors tell us, or why can’t we just search around for it? Why is Big Pharma sponsoring the news?) I wonder how the commercials affect the youth. They didn’t exist when I was young. Now they even advertise compliment drugs for drugs. It’s brainwashing.

Great read Marie, reminded me of a Chris Rock sketch
This sums it up pretty well-

Comedian Chris Rock referred to this trend, noting that drug companies keep naming symptoms until they find one that you have:

Are you sad, are you lonely, are you hot, are you cold? You gotta take this pill! And they don't even tell you what the pill does… they just keep naming symptoms. I saw a commercial the other day that said, "Do you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning?" I got that! I'm sick, I need that pill!"

America's big pharmaceutical companies push their drugs on the public harder than any street corner dealer – and it's proven to be a highly effective and lucrative strategy.

In 2009, for example:

Merck (NYSE: MRK) earned $12.9 billion on sales of $27.4 billion.
Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) earned $8.6 billion on revenue of $50 billion.
Novartis (NYSE: NVS) earned $10.3 billion on sales of $44.3 billion.

30. Thanks Ryan.

Lol.

Do you lol? We have just the pill....
------------------------

At post 29, I forgot to add:

“The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reach us. So it is with great people who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiation of their personalities.” –Kahlil Gibran

Turned out to be self-referential. :)

Definitions of Philosophy:

* A blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat....that isn't there!

* Getting to know more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing!

(The above is intended as a small dash of humour, not as an imsult!)

However, I do suggest that the most reliable philosophy is based on the timeless wisdom of the Bible, the Word of God.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"

pastorphilip (@ 33) -

However, I do suggest that the most reliable philosophy is based on the timeless wisdom of the Bible, the Word of God.

Very true. Although there is the small problem of how we are supposed to interpret the "Word of God". For that we need to investigate our philosophical presuppositions. For example, the NT speaks against the philosophy of gnosticism, which taught that salvation is based on having the right "gnosis" or knowledge. It sounds a lot like some forms of evangelical Christianity, with adherence to certain doctrines being "essential" for salvation.

I know that some Christians think they are immune to the influence of philosophy (thanks to the rather conceited "us and them" nature of some forms of the religion), but dig around under the surface, and you will find that we are all philosophers, whether we like it or not, no matter how much we may pretend to hide it under Christian and biblical language.

So I guess that means that we are all "blind men in a dark room looking for a black cat... that isn't there!" according to your "humour", Pastor Phil!!

Pastorphilip:

Here's a little more humour. Your post (33) reminds me of the wise words of Mark Twain:

“It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand”.

Read Zephaniah, for example. It’s a frightening slaughterfest. Take this bit:

"I will sweep away everything in all your land," says the LORD.  "I will sweep away both people and animals alike. Even the birds of the air and the fish in the sea will die.  I will reduce the wicked to heaps of rubble, along with the rest of humanity," says the LORD.  "I will crush Judah and Jerusalem with my fist and destroy every last trace of their Baal worship.  I will put an end to all the idolatrous priests, so that even the memory of them will disappear.  For they go up to their roofs and bow to the sun, moon, and stars.  They claim to follow the LORD, but then they worship Molech, too.  So now I will destroy them!  And I will destroy those who used to worship me but now no longer do.  They no longer ask for the LORD's guidance or seek my blessings."   (Zephaniah 1:2-6 NLT).

Isn’t it a pleasure to cast one’s eyes over such timeless wisdom and humanity!

brianmcclinton (@ 35) -

...It’s a frightening slaughterfest...

How does that compare with the "frightening slaughterfest" generally approved of by so-called "humanists" (*cough* *cough*), i.e. the one involving the most helpless and the most vulnerable members of the human race (namely, those unfortunate enough to be in the womb)?

I think you people ought to get your own moral house in order before passing judgment on the Bible.

Pastor Philip

Like LSV, I have no desire to disagree with you when you say, ”However, I do suggest that the most reliable philosophy is based on the timeless wisdom of the Bible, the Word of God.”

All well and good, but we have to do a bit better than just state it!

For example, if I were an atheist (in fact every Christian should do this too), there are any number of questions I could ask: ‘Why do you suggest this?’, ‘Why is the Bible the Word of God?’, ‘How do you know?’ ‘How do any of us know?’, ‘On what basis do we come to these conclusions?’, ‘What does it mean for God to speak into human history?’, ‘What claims does Jesus make about himself?’

Of course there are other questions which follow, but we in the church don’t do questions very well. Sometimes it seems like we spend most of our time insulating ourselves and others from them; but simply saying that the Bible is the Word of God doesn’t get us a free pass any more; and this is exacerbated when Christians say (and I’ve heard this on a number of occasions) that they don’t need theology, they just need to know God (ref LSV and gnosticism, never mind the contradiction of the words). But almost everyone has some kind of question/s, and that includes the most accepting of Christians, and we have a duty to be informed of them and attempt some kind of answer.

Mere quiescence is no longer the default mode of society (nor should it be), and the church is failing to engage the culture if all it does is begin every sentence with, “The Bible says in...”



Brian # 18

Perhaps the inclusion of ‘Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities’ in the NI curriculum is a step in this direction.

@PastorPhilip

HL Mencken's version hits the spot:

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

35-"I will sweep away everything in all your land," says the LORD. "I will sweep away both people and animals alike. Even the birds of the air and the fish in the sea will die"
Which reminds me, if anyone wants to give a worthwhile Christmas present this year, you can help a hardworking horse, donkey or mule with painkiller kits, portable water troughs & vaccination packs through Brooke. Oh, & remember to feed garden birds that don't migrate for winter!

Meow.

I once was blind, but now I hear.

Perhaps the dark room is a Schroedinger's box & the black cat that 'isn't there!', 'isn't alive' & as such the blind man doesn't recognise the cat as being there- because it isn't 'there', it's somewhere else

grokesx (@ 38) -

HL Mencken's version hits the spot:

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

Although I think the LSV version is an improvement even on that one...

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it, because he correctly worked out that it was there all along, and that the philosopher was working on a set of faulty presuppositions.

Hmmm. Finding what - is not there.

If it isn’t there, how can he correctly work it out that it is?

Another non-sighting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQcsWUIAvqc

LSV:

Thanks for reminding me of the baby bashing in the Bible. Here’s a flavour, indicating that the Bible was no respecter of foetuses either:

“The people of Samaria must bear the consequences of their guilt because they rebelled against their God. They will be killed by an invading army, their little ones dashed to death against the ground, their pregnant women ripped open by swords" (Hosea 13:16 NLT).

"The congregation sent 12,000 of their bravest men there and commanded them, “Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword; also the women and the little ones” This is what you shall do: every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall devote to destruction” (Judges 21: 10-11).

Not forgetting, of course, the infamous psalm 137:

"O daughter of Babylon, Happy shall they be who pay
you back fort what you have done to us!
Happy shall be they who take your little ones
and dash them against the stones!"

In the end, of course, we’re all doomed, men, women and children. No distinction is made in the last judgement. Note those wise and compassionate words of Jeremiah:

“In that day those the LORD has slaughtered will fill the earth from one end to the other.  No one will mourn for them or gather up their bodies to bury them. They will be scattered like dung on the ground”   (Jeremiah 25:33 NLT).

So, let's have no lectures about Humanist attitudes to 'the most helpless and the most vulnerable'. We're mere amateurs in cruelty compared to the ancient Bible scribes. At least, we don't advocate slaughtering all our enemy's pregnant women and children.

@LSV

You are a treasure. You illustrate Mencken's point beautifully.

Oh. I think the assumption for some here is that philosophers are by definition atheists, or at least that all philosophers begin at atheism (i.e., looking for something they believe doesn’t exist).

I disagree with those assumptions.

marieinaustin (@ 43) -

Hmmm. Finding what - is not there.

If it isn’t there, how can he correctly work it out that it is?

Trouble is... how does anyone know that it's not there?

"It's not there" is a conclusion that is masquerading as a premise. That conclusion rests on certain premises, so what are they?

And what if those premises that led to the conclusion that "it's not there" turn out to be faulty?

And who was observing the philosopher in action to discern that he was looking for something that was not there? Wasn't the observer also himself a philosopher?


brainmcclinton (@ 44) -

Oh, so we are all as evil as each other then. Good. Well at least that puts paid to any claim to self-righteousness, whether of the Christian or atheist variety.

Now that you have successfully damned the Bible (well done!), what's your great alternative? And how is your moral philosophy so obvious from the philosophy that underlies atheism, namely, naturalism?

While I acknowledge that the judgments of God as described in the Bible are often of a corporate nature (and I admit that I don't find that easy to stomach), these judgments are at least a response to evil within the framework of a definition of evil. In other words, the Bible affirms that we live within a moral reality, which is more than can be said for atheism, which can present nothing more than a totally subjective understanding of ethics.

You may be able to quote great chunks of the Bible (some of it badly out of context, such as the reference from the Psalms), but this should not be a smokescreen to hide the moral bankruptcy of your own philosophy.

So perhaps we are all in the same boat?

Hey Peter

Andrew, in light of our earlier conversation, I'm wondering what you’d make of...

I like N.T. Wright. A lot of what he says is very helpful. There's also plenty he says with which I disagree. Same applies to the linked interview.

One reason I am harder on Enns is because he is roughly from the same tradition I identify with. And I suspect his end point will not be a good one.

I guess this means we're at zero!

Not zero, just muddled in.

Re post 46 that finally came through….


Here’s a reason why I disagree. Were they looking for a cat, or not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_philosophers

logica_sine_vanitate

If you believe the killing of women, children, and babies, by God in the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis 6-8) is ''at least a response to evil within the framework of a definition of evil,'' then, anything goes. Morality, as we understand it, has no meaning.

Without an independent standard of moral or immoral acts against which to measure God, you have no way of knowing if the biblical God is good or a moral or righteous being. He could be evil God and you would have no way of knowing.

How can you say that God is good and just or the foundation for morality without first defining what morality or good is? We can only talk about God's good in our sense of good and if this is taken away, then their can be no meaning to the word good at all.

WilliamBurns (@ 50) -

There is a long thread on another blog on this difficult subject, and I had my say here (as you can see, my moniker on that blog is EtymologicalEvangelical).

I am not going to regurgitate all that here, so you can read it if you like.

By the way... how do you justify your ideas of morality?

LSV (47):

You say that the judgments in the Bible in which God orders his chosen people to slaughter their enemies, including pregnant women and children, are ‘at least a response to evil within the framework of a definition of evil’.

Hmmm. The Nazis said exactly the same thing - that Jews were evil - as a prelude to the ‘final solution’ conducted by the master race. And they were supported by Catholic bishops. Bishop Berning told Hitler that the Catholic Church had always regarded the Jews as parasites and had banished them into the ghetto. He (Hitler was merely going to do what the Church had done for 1500 years” (Lucy Davidowicz: ‘The War against the Jews’,p50). In 1941 Archbishop Konrad Grober said much the same thing. Never once between 1933 and 1945 did any German Catholic bishop speak out publicly on behalf of the Jews.

Methinks, biblical morality as interpreted by you is somewhat twisted in its logic and can justify any ‘evil’ under the sun.

Buddhist monk charged with raping young girl.

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14977807

brianmcclinton, #52;

"Never once between 1933 and 1945 did any German Catholic bishop speak out publicly on behalf of the Jews."

According to Wikipedia, this claim puts you at odds with a number of recognised experts in the field, including:

'Rabbi David G. Dalin, Ph.D. [who] described [Archbishop Michael von Faulhaber of Munich] as "a famous opponent of the Nazis". Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a noted American voice for the Jewish cause during the war, called Faulhaber "a true Christian prelate", saying he tried to protect Jews when he "had lifted his fearless voice".'

In addition,

'In his sermons of Advent 1933 he defended the Old Testament against Nazi and anti-semitic readings, especially those advanced by Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg. He admonished, "God always punishes the tormentors of his Chosen People, the Jews."
[At the same time he also] preached: "Let us not forget that we were saved not by German blood but by the blood of Christ!" in response to Nazi racism. The SS interpreted the sermon as an intervention in favour of the Jews.
In 1934 an unknown person fired two shots at the cardinal's study. In 1935 some Nazis called in an open meeting for the killing of Faulhaber. In 1949 the council of the Landesverband der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde in Bayern (Regional Union of Israelitic [Jewish] Communities in Bavaria) thanked Faulhaber with the following words:
"As representatives of the Bavarian Jewish synagogues, we will never forget how you, honourable Mister Cardinal, in the years after 1933, with unseen courage, have defended the ethics of the Old Testament from your pulpits, and how you saved thousands of Jewish persons from terror and lethal violence."'

logica_sine_vanitate

The point is not how I understand morality or right and wrong but how do you justify your ideas of morality considering the profoundly inconsistent nature of the Bible? If you're honest, the only way is to cherry-pick the text and to agnore the obvious.

How can the Bible be the source of morality when it contains contradictory ethical views. This is the book that supports slavery, genocide, and eternal suffering.

In terms of the Catholic Church- Most historians consider the 1933 Reichskonkordat "an important step toward the international acceptance of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime". Guenter Lewy, political scientist and author of 'The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany', wrote:

"There is general agreement that the Concordat increased substantially the prestige of Hitler's regime around the world. As Cardinal Faulhaber put it in a sermon delivered in 1937: "At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth, through the Concordat expressed its confidence in the new German government. This was a deed of immeasurable significance for the reputation of the new government abroad."

Raised a Catholic, Hitler went to a monastery school, walking past a stone arch with the monastery's coat of arms which featured a swastika. Much of his philosophy came from the Bible & the Christian Social movement - The German Christian Social movement which resembles the Christian Right movement in America today- The Vatican's Pope & bishops never disowned him; in fact they blessed him.

Hitler's noted for saying - "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

And stating- "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."

Rjb, does this have a familiar ring to it- The case of the Rev. Franz Reinisch:

Banned from preaching because of his critical stance toward the Nazis. The church, instead of backing Father Reinisch, expelled him from his Pallotine order, and he was executed in 1942 after refusing to swear loyalty to Hitler and join his army

There's also

A chillingly dispassionate entry dated Nov. 26, 1942, from the Austrian Bishops' Conference, that skims over the mass deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps by noting that over one year, "33 transports of 1,000 each have gone to Poland." By that time, some bishops were signing off with "Heil Hitler" on official letters and priests were authorized to display the swastika.

Influential Jesuit Mario von Galli describing Jews as "God's murderers" who deserve persecution. In 1940, as Gypsies started joining the Jews on death trains packed to suffocation point, the Vienna archdiocese urged all parishes to do their utmost to "combat the Gypsy chaos" in the Austrian capital by reporting Gypsies to the police.

The 'stoicism' & 'bravery' of a German Catholic Heirachy prepared to save life:

-Archbishop Konrad Gröber of Freiburg was known as the “Brown Bishop” because he was such an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis. In 1933, he became a “sponsoring member” of the SS

-Bishop Wilhlem Berning of Osnabrück sat with the Deutsche Christen Reichsbishop in the Prussian State Council from 1933 to 1945, a clear signal of support for the Nazi regime

-Cardinal Adolf Bertram ex officio head of the German episcopate also had some affinity for the Nazis. In 1933, for example, he refused to intervene on behalf of Jewish merchants who were the targets of Nazi boycotts, saying that they were a group “which has no very close bond with the church.”

-Bishop Buchberger of Regensburg called Nazi racism directed at Jews “justified self-defense” in the face of “overly powerful Jewish capital.”

-Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg said that the true Christian religion “made its way not from the Jews but in spite of them.”

Phayer places responsibility with the Vatican, remarking "a strong papal assertion would have enabled the bishops to overcome their disinclinations" - that they could've done more to save the Jews & other life. However, perhaps as much emphasis should be placed on the individual conscience of Bishops to save life rather than Nazi support & acquiescence.

newlach,

The story about the Buddhist monk reminds me of an article about what goes on in some Buddhist temples in the US.

https://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-24/news/ct-met-monk-sex-cases-20110724_1_thai-monks-buddhist-monks-paul-numrich

Some of it sounds uncomfortably similar to Catholic church practices. Pressure to silence abuse victims, paying people to stay silent, and the religious hierarchy washing their hands of any responsibility. Replace 'monk' with 'priest' and 'temple' with 'church' and you could almost be talking about some country in the Irish republic.

Ryan

To add to the list you provide, we can also see the support the Vatican gave to more recent Fascist dictatorships in South America. One of the most powerful members of the Roman Curia, Cardinal Sodano:

https://www.remember-chile.org.uk/comment/vatican.htm

These people watched their own Bishops and priests being murdered by these dictatorships, and said nothing!

John XXIII saw what was going on in the Church during and after two World Wars. He was in no doubt that changes had to be made and that's why he called Vatican II Council. These people are presently dismantling that Council and rewriting it.

They have accorded a sainthood to Escriva, founder of Opus Dei and friend of General Franco. They have welcomed holocaust denier Bishop Williamson - a Tridentinist - back to the fold. They are presently fast tracking a sainthood for Pius XII.

Their imposing of a Latinate Mass on the English speaking world (by one of the Cardinals mentioned in the link above) is nothing what so ever to do with 'spirituality.' It is political.

They are anti-Kingdom, anti-Christ. Their present behaviour illicited this comment from an ordinary Catholic woman. It expresses succinctly the utter frustration of millions of ordinary Catholics around the world:

"Where are the priests and Bishops who, like us, desire the simple freedom and grace to lead good prayerful lives in the Catholic community, embedded in the wider community we love? Why arent they protesting against this empty pomp and imperialism? Why must we be expected to pretend to our ordinary brothers and sisters, that we can even begin to go along with such a travesty, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Good News of the Scriptures?"

Business Secretary Vince Cable played a blinder in his speech to the Liberal Democrat conference yesterday:

"The progressive agenda of centre-left parties cannot be delivered by bankrupt governments."

The whole thing can be viewed on the BBC's Politics page under the headline "Daily View", 'Commentators dissect Vince Cable's economic recovery plans'. Funny as well as clever.

Theophane (54, 55):

Is this the same Cardinal Faulhaber pictured in Daniel Goldhagen’s ‘Moral Reckoning’, at p178, marching between rows of SA men at a Nazi rally in Munich?

Or the same Faulhaber quoted in Guenter Lewy (‘The Catholic Church in Nazi Germany’, at p90, who boasted in a sermon in 1937 how much the Church with its Concordat had buttressed Nazism:

“At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth (sic, in more ways than one), through the Concordat expressed its confidence iun the new German government. This was a deed of immeasurable significance for the reputation of the new government abroad”.

Indeed, for it gave a stamp of moral approach to Nazism and it was never revoked.

And is this the same Faulhaber, again quoted in Lewy, who in October 1943 was still willing a Nazi victory and who declared:

“Nobody in his heart can possibly wish an unsuccessful outcome of the wart. Every reasonable person knows that in such a case the State and the Church, and organised society altogether, would be overturned by the Russian chaos”?

Brian

Theophane's pals were indeed close friends and supporters of the Jews. What else would explain the words in the solemn Good Friday liturgy:

"We pray for the insidious Jews...."

They are presently rewriting the Second Vatican Council making it say the polar opposite to what it actually said. Changing what some Nazi sympathising Cardinals and Bishops said during the war, or airbrushing out certain 'uncomfortable' truths, is easy for them.

58 PeterKlaver

That is a quite shocking story of sexual abuse by monks. The method of cover up will be familiar to almost everyone reading the Will and Testament blog. If these monks gave as much attention to rooting out child molesters as they do to avoiding stepping on bugs the world would be a much better place.

Some readers might be interested in a programme broadcast last night on Radio 4 on the subject of bisexuality - Tom Robinson: It's My Story. The producer of the programme has written a short piece about the programme and on the difficulty of getting a mainstream broadcaster in the UK to do the programme.

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/

Some of the religious might be interested in a nun called Hildegard von Bingen who features on Matthew Parris' Great Lives.

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014q00c

And in a short interview on yesterday's PM programme Richard Dawkins swots a proponent of ID (starts in the 34th minute). I know that merely to mention the name of Richard Dawkins on this blog can unleash uncontrolled religious fury, so I'll quote something he said in the hope the religious extremists stay calm.

"I'm in favour of teaching religious studies."

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014pw4t

Theophane:

Following RJB’s reference to some uncomfortable truths, I haven’t finished with Faulhaber. I stated in post 52 that that never once between 1933 and 1945 did any German Catholic bishop speak out publicly on behalf of the Jews. Let us see what Faulhaber actually said.

In his advent sermons of 1933 Faulhaber defended the Jewish religion and the Jews who lived PRIOR to Jesus, but he made it clear that those Jews were to be distinguished from the Jews who lived AFTER Jesus, a group which, of course, included contemporary Jews. When, the following year, foreigners misrepresented his words by asserting that Faulhaber had championed German Jews, Faulhaber emphatically denied this.

See Goldhagen: ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’, page 109.

There is no reason to believe that Faulhaber’s opinions were in any significant way different from Archbishop Grober, whose pastoral letter of March 1941, by which time Germans had already inflicted enormous harm on Jews, was replete with anti-semitism. He placed the blame upon the Jews for the death of Jesus, which he implied justified what Germans were then doing to the Jews. “The self-imposed curse of the Jews, ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children’, has come true terribly until the present time, until today” (quoted in Lewy: ‘The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany’, p294).

brianmcclinton (@ 52) -

Methinks, biblical morality as interpreted by you is somewhat twisted in its logic and can justify any ‘evil’ under the sun.

Well perhaps you're right then.

Since you are obviously opposed to the idea of justifying any 'evil' under the sun (as I am, as it happens), then perhaps you would like to explain what your *great alternative* is that does not attempt to justify any 'evil' under the sun?

Let's say that you have successfully rubbished the Bible. OK. So we 'repent'. Then what...?

Please explain.

And let's see whether your ideas stack up. (What is your objectively valid standard of morality by which you judge other moral ideas? How do you define the word 'evil'?)

Rjb 62,

They are presently rewriting the Second Vatican Council making it say the polar opposite to what it actually said. Changing what some Nazi sympathising Cardinals and Bishops said during the war, or airbrushing out certain 'uncomfortable' truths, is easy for them.

This may have been easier in the past, it's a little difficult to airbrush history caught on camera

Despite popular usage of the term 'airbursh'! The availability of photo & film are universal, not limited & subject to distortion by a Vatican cabal.

60, "The retrogressive agenda of the religious far-right cannot be delivered by morally bankrupt religious sects."

Ryan

Airbrush it from their own heads - would have been more accurate. I stand corrected.

Howevvah, the Vatican IS utterly above such things as solid evidence.

A commentary on Michele Bachmann & ....

66 logica_sine_vanitate

Instead of dealing with the profoundly immoral nature of the Bible - which is not to say that it has no good or worth - you continue to demand from the sceptic how h/s defines morality.

Saddled with the repugnant or rotten aspects of much of Bible, I can certainly understand your reluctance to forward the Bible as a perfect moral guide.

WilliamBurns (@ 72) -

Instead of dealing with the profoundly immoral nature of the Bible - which is not to say that it has no good or worth - you continue to demand from the sceptic how h/s defines morality.

What do you mean by the word "immoral"? You are surprised that I enquire as to the "sceptic's" morality, but can you blame me, considering that "sceptics" keep judging the Bible to be "immoral"? Well how can they use such a word unless they define it? And how do they define it without a morality of their own? And if they have a morality of their own, how do they justify it within their own philosophy?

(You will notice that I put the word "sceptic" in inverted commas, the reason being that I consider myself a sceptic. It is just that my scepticism has led me in a different direction to those with whom the word is more usually associated).

Saddled with the repugnant or rotten aspects of much of Bible, I can certainly understand your reluctance to forward the Bible as a perfect moral guide.

Who said that I was using the Bible as a "perfect moral guide"? This is a typical assumption made about Christians, that we just "follow the Bible", as if Christianity is nothing more than a moral philosophy, and therefore "God" is just a mental construct who is the personification of this philosophy. I don't scour the Bible to find "principles" to apply (although admittedly some Christians do actually do that), and that is why (as I explained in one of my posts on the other blog) certain events in the Bible do not justify genocide. There is nothing about these events which tell us: "this is what you should do". We don't know the extent of the depravity of some of the nations who were judged, and for whom corporate judgement became a tragic necessity, but it is clear that there is a specific context to these (admittedly difficult) passages.

But as you seem to have a wonderful alternative, which I assume covers every eventuality in our messy world, please let's hear it. I could use the words "rotten" and "repugnant" to describe a particular philosophy that reduces human beings to the status, not only of animals, but even soulless machines without any meaning at all. So why don't you cut out the moral indignation, and start having a long hard look at your own worldview?

William Burns, as way of an explanation: Perhaps the Bible could- ultimately- be a test to expose the 'real' goodness in people. That those who actively search for the goodness in others & the world detect it in the Bible & are able to disseminate love, acceptance, peace & grace. While the 'religious' who approach it with harsh minds & little understanding of love detect its darkness, using its words as sword to usher in pain, misery & separateness- Exposing the 'pharisee' with an honesty that can only be seen through the filter of biblically self-righteous pride- with all the pageantry of self-assured confidence that cloaks those speaking on 'God's behalf'.

It offers no hiding place to anyone who approaches the book with evil in their hearts & provides society a warning guage to show these people for what they are. It's up to society as a whole whether they heed these warnings in good conscience or allow themselves to descend & be subjected to animalistic fear, enslavement & cruelty.

If the Bible becomes associated only with fear, prejudice & hate, it will be rejected in favour of another 'spiritual anchor' by those who seek progress, morality & goodness in humanity

73 logica_sine_vanitate

You say, ''who said I was using the Bible as a ''perfect moral guide''? Does this mean you don't consider ''God's Word'' to be a ''perfect moral guide'' ?

If this is what you believe, then I fully agree! It's anything but PERFECT.

Some years ago while a student in seminary, I wrote a paper entitled Homo-Schisms. The abstract was extremely simple as I demonstrated the greatest threats against unity and growth within mainstream Protestant organisations in the 21st Century were issues surrounding same sex attraction. Originally written in 2007, after the debates surrounding the “rights and wrongs” of Gene Robinson consecration as a Bishop within the Episcopal Church in America, the paper demonstrated that a major reason for decline among mainstream denominations within America in the late 20th and early 21st Century centred upon the churches reactions to same sex attraction. When writing the assignment, I never imagined that the debate would reach the conservative shores of Northern Ireland so quickly.

A as a pastor ministering in a non-mainstream church in Northern Ireland, many might think the current conversation regarding Dean Gordon’s civil partnership, as well as the refusal to allow Frankie Dean to volunteer as a youth worker in Balinamallard Methodist Church would be of no concern to me as it is outside my church remit. Traditionally, those of us who belong to independent, non-conformist and “come out” groups have reacted to the debate in one of three ways. The majority have simply declared from the pulpit that the bible says homosexuality is wrong and have drawn a line regarding all of the issues at that point. Some have taken their belief in this statement to the level of protesting on the streets, while others have opted for a non-confrontational approach by using the mantra “God loves the sinner but hates the sin” in order to demonstrate some sort of Christian compassion. However, because the issues in question have not become personal to us in our local congregations, our responses have stopped with those mentioned above. As a result we are in danger of sleeping through this crisis and missing some valuable lessons that may help us when these issues surface within our churches.

It is my belief that non-mainstream evangelical churches must begin preparing a compassionate and informed response to same sex attraction. The naïve response which says “because one is small, evangelical and holds to the inerrancy of Scripture, then such problems will not face them” need to understand that this issue will not go away, but intensify!

With the possibility of same sex marriage being introduced in the UK within 4 years, debates being raised in Westminster in regard to the rights of people of same sex attraction having their unions blessed in rel

Here is a short interview with Hans Kung. He reflects on the future of the Catholic Church and compare the current phase it is going through to a sort of "Putinization". I do not think it will win him an invite to Castel Gandolfo any time soon!

"Luther didn't want to divide the Church, but the pope and the bishops were blind. It seems that a similar situation applies today."

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,787325,00.html

73 logical_sine_vanitate

The Bible can be judged by itself. If ''God is love'' (1 John 3:8) for example, he should fall into the definition of love as revealed in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-6, where it says: ''Love is kind and patient, never jealous, bostful, proud, or rude. Love isn't selfish or quick-tempered. it doesn't keep a record of wrongs that others do. Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil. love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting. Love never fails!'' (CEV). And in Romans 13: 10, ''No one who loves others will harm them'' (CEV).

Yet God's behaviour throughout the Bible makes a mockery of this fine definition. The story of the flood is a case in point, where God so loved the world that he drowned everybody in it except for 8 people (Genesis 6-8; 2 Peter 2: 5). No one in their right mind could believe in this God's love after reading this.

WilliamBurns (@ 75) -

You say, ''who said I was using the Bible as a ''perfect moral guide''? Does this mean you don't consider ''God's Word'' to be a ''perfect moral guide'' ?

If this is what you believe, then I fully agree! It's anything but PERFECT.

Well, it depends what you mean by "moral guide"? I don't feel the urge to go out and commit genocide because "the principle" is apparently there in the Bible!!

And also, of course, you need to define "perfect" anyway, which comes back to the question I asked you, which is: what is the basis of your morality, by which you feel able to judge other actions to be "immoral"? Clearly you must have in your mind some moral "measuring stick" by which you measure other people's (or God's) morality. (No wriggling now...)

In the absence of such a "measuring stick", it's not clear to me how you are defining your terms.

It would actually be quite useful if you could clarify this point, if you don't mind. Thanks.

to be continued...

...continued from post #79...

WilliamBurns (@ 78) -

It's interesting that you should bring up the question of God's love. Presumably you don't agree with the definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, because how can "anyone in his right mind" believe such a lying book, if your position is to be believed!

As it happens, if "love" has no moral content, and it was just a matter of "do what you like, no matter what the consequences" (which seems to be the humanistic idea of "love"), then I suppose you would have a point. But then "love" as a concept would be meaningless (no different from the string of phonemes represented by the symbols "h-a-t-e"). It's just a word.

Is it loving for God to judge evil people? I tend to think it is, since "love" actually means something. I suppose God could have just done nothing about the rampant violence and depravity in the earth, and let the entire human race destroy itself. Yep. God should have listened to the humanists, since they know everything!

I'm personally rather glad that God did intervene to deal with evil, rather than allow the human race to destroy itself in a wave of satanic violence, but perhaps you see things differently.

Whatever the difficulties of understanding every instance of God's judgments, one thing is abundantly clear from the Bible, and that is that God does not judge willingly, but out of necessity. I would rather follow such a God than listen to a bunch of atheists who tell us that life has no meaning anyway, we are all just soulless machines (i.e. zombies), magically thrown together by chance, and there is certainly no basis for any kind of morality at all! Nihilism doesn't really inspire me, I'm afraid, but everyone to their own, I guess...

80 logica_sine_vanitate

Judging ''evil people'' is one thing but to drown ''everybody'' on the earth (with the sole exception of 8 people (Genesis 7: 21-23; 2 Peter 2: 5) is just plain sick! Everybody, would include babies, children, women, pregnant women, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally impeded - and not forgetting the blamless animals not on board Noah's Ark. Being ''rather glad'' that God did this says a lot about how you view what's right and wrong.

We wouldn't tolerate such behaviour in people nor should we in God. If it's wrong for us; then it should be wrong for him. Otherwise, we have a being that is above our common understanding of morality. If something is bad or immoral, it is bad and immoral, period, regardless of who commits the deed.

The God of 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 in not in this worldwide flood! Be honest! And bear in mind, it was this same so-called perfect God who designed people imperfect in the first place. We sin because of his design.

Well, I suppose if we’re proof texting this evening -

1 Peter 3:19-20

Ryan (51) and brianmcclinton (61 and 65);

Obviously, your refusal to accept the view of the council of the 'Landesverband der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde in Bayern' (Regional Union of Israelitic [Jewish] Communities in Bavaria), who thanked Faulhaber with the following words in 1949:

"As representatives of the Bavarian Jewish synagogues, we will never forget how you, honourable Mr Cardinal, in the years after 1933, with unseen courage, have defended the ethics of the Old Testament from your pulpits, and how you saved thousands of Jewish persons from terror and lethal violence."

...is a matter of ideology. Nazism was evil: your agenda is to discredit organised religion; therefore all German Catholic Bishops must be tarred with the same brush. Was there some way in which representatives of the 'Regional Union of Israelitic [Jewish] Communities in Bavaria' didn't know what they were talking about? In 1949, would it still have been possible to coerce Jews into praise of Germans who did not in fact deserve it?

(Continued) Both Lewy and Goldhagen are described as "political scientists" in Wikipedia; uniquely well-placed to turn their hands to polemic. In his 2003 review of "A Moral Reckoning", entitled 'History as Bigotry: Daniel Goldhagen's slander against the Catholic Church' Rabbi David G. Dalin wrote;

"Despite my fury at Goldhagen's misuse of the Holocaust to advance an anti-Catholic agenda, I had hoped to join the vast conspiracy of silence in which most Holocaust scholars have, delicately and politely, pretended that A Moral Reckoning doesn't exist. But the book hasn't quite disappeared with the same speed with which, say, H.G. Wells's 1943 Crux Ansata: An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church fell down the memory hole. Rather, A Moral Reckoning--like Paul Blanshard's 1949 diatribe American Freedom and Catholic Power--is carving a permanent niche for itself out on the far edges of American culture.

Where Blanshard was a much-reprinted staple for the old anti-Catholic Evangelical world, Goldhagen seems to be turning into a staple for leftists whose hatred of Catholicism derives from the Church's opposition to abortion and the rest of the liberationist agenda. The huge outpouring of books in recent years attacking the wartime pontiff Pius XII--from John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope to Garry Wills's Papal Sin--were bad enough (and Goldhagen, who seems in A Moral Reckoning never to have consulted anything except secondary sources, relies heavily upon them). But when Goldhagen extends that attack to the demand that the Catholic Church, as we know it, be abolished as a disgrace and a danger to us all, he establishes a new marker for just how bad it can get--and the maddened anti-Catholics have responded by taking him to their breast, for his diatribe is more vicious and extreme than that of any other recent papal critic.

(Continued) WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, it is perhaps worth putting on record some of the failings of A Moral Reckoning. Indeed, Goldhagen invites the reader to "acknowledge the incontrovertible facts and plain truths contained in this book." It's an invitation he shouldn't have issued. In the June/July 2002 issue of First Things, Ronald J. Rychlak published an extensive and damning list of errors in the New Republic article--astonishingly few of which Goldhagen has bothered to correct.[...]

...there's the caption that identifies a photo as "Cardinal Michael Faulhaber marches between rows of SA men at a Nazi rally in Munich"--except that the man in the picture isn't Faulhaber but the papal nuncio Cesare Orsenigo, the city isn't Munich but Berlin, and the parade isn't a Nazi rally but a May Day parade. Oh, and the fact that the irascible Faulhaber was a famous opponent of the Nazis. In October, a German court prevented publication of A Moral Reckoning until the slander against Faulhaber was corrected.[...]

The Holy See's 1933 concordat with Germany has long been a key instrument for critics of Pius XII, and indeed there are grounds on which to criticize it. But Goldhagen can't accept mere criticism: "Nazi Germany's first great diplomatic triumph," he has to label it, forgetting that the Four Powers Pact between Germany, France, Italy, and England preceded it, as did League of Nations recognition. Pacelli's concordat "helped to legitimate the Nazi regime in the eyes of the world and consolidate its power at home," Goldhagen insists.

But soon after the concordat was signed, Pacelli wrote two articles in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, unequivocally arguing that the Church had negotiated a treaty and nothing more--a treaty that implied no moral endorsement of Hitler or Nazism. While it's true that Hitler initially thought he would be able to use the concordat to harness the Church, he soon came to regret it--as his frenzied diatribes in his "Table Talk" reveal--precisely because it was being cited by Catholics as a legal basis on which to resist Nazism.[...]

(Continued) In short, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's polemic against Pius XII, John Paul II, and the Catholic Church fails to meet even the minimum standards of scholarship. That the book has found its readership out in the fever swamps of anti-Catholicism isn't surprising. But that a mainstream publisher like Knopf would print the thing is an intellectual and publishing scandal."

I also think it is important, brianmcclinton, to highlight the inherent fallacy in your claim that;

"There is no reason to believe that Faulhaber’s opinions were in any significant way different from Archbishop Grober"

Catholics are well aware that in fact only St. John Fisher, of all the Bishops of England and Wales, actually paid with his life to uphold the primacy of Rome in the reign of Henry VIII. Cardinal Faulhaber, similarly, appears to have been exceptional at least in the degree of his hostility to nazism. The point being, though, that it is bogus to surmise that one Bishop's views are "unlikely to significantly differ" from those of another. No doubt Bishop Edward Daly could help you to understand that.

As an afterthought. It seems possible that when, as a society, the full horror of our gruesome hatred for life in the womb has finally dawned on us, the ideological descendants of some of the posters on this blog might just use the current silence of many of our Christian leaders, in order to blame Christianity for that carnage too.

Peter

Well, I suppose if we’re proof texting this evening

I thought proof texting was par for the course around these parts.

William

Judging ''evil people'' is one thing but to drown ''everybody'' on the earth (with the sole exception of 8 people (Genesis 7: 21-23; 2 Peter 2: 5) is just plain sick!

Well this is just an assertion absent an argument.

We wouldn't tolerate such behaviour in people nor should we in God.

A fundamental tenant of Christian theology is the Creator/Creature distinction. God is God and you are not.

Tolerating God's behaviour isn't in your ken.

If it's wrong for us; then it should be wrong for him.

That doesn't follow.

Otherwise, we have a being that is above our common understanding of morality.

Again, doesn't follow.

And bear in mind, it was this same so-called perfect God who designed people imperfect in the first place. We sin because of his design.

This isn't an entirely accurate way of stating the issue. There is an extensive literature on the relationship between human ability and responsibility, and which ever side one comes down on the arguments are more sophisticated than the ho-hum 'we sin because of his design'.

And this isn't just a problem for Christians with a classical understanding of God. Libertarian accounts of the will are often undermined by materialistic determinism. And if human ability requires libertarian free will, and if human ability is a necessary condition of moral responsibility, then if materialistic determinism is true, men cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. Of course, you might have an account of free will which is not undermined by materialism, you might reject materialistic determinism or, perhaps, you're a compatabilist. But since you cannot avoid taking some such position in grounding your own moral theory you cannot, consistently, deny the Christian the same privilege.

Theo, you misconstrued my comment about Faulhaber-
Many historians agree with Faulhaber- that the '33 Reichskonkordat was an important step toward the international acceptance of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. There's agreement with Faulhaber that the Concordat increased the prestige of Hitler's regime around the world. Faulhaber has implicated the Catholic Church as complicit in making the Nazi regime legit in the eyes of other Catholics. Given your unwavering stance behind Vatican protocol- rewind the clock back 78 yrs & you'd be defending the Concordat- to you- it would be right up to snuff.

"At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth, through the Concordat expressed its confidence in the new German government. This was a deed of immeasurable significance for the reputation of the new government abroad."

There has been protest in Berlin against the Pope's visit & re the 'Reichskonkordat' -as the treaty is still in force today. Pope Benedict faces toughest visit yet to sceptical German homeland

Here's the Reuter's article re the Reichskonkordat Protest- German actors recall 1933 papal pact with Nazis in pre-visit protest

Theophane:

You say that “Cardinal Faulhaber, similarly, appears to have been exceptional at least in the degree of his hostility to nazism”. I think this is putting it too strongly. In the 1920s he did oppose the Nazi Party, but this opposition largely evaporated after 1933 and was replaced by a policy of appeasement. In his own words, the Concordat displayed Hitler’s ‘statesmanly breadth of vision’ (quoted in Michael Burleigh: Sacred Causes, p176).

Then, again, in his New Year’s Sermon of 1938 he copngratulated the Nazis for their anti-smoking and anti-drinking campaign and said: “One advantage of our time: at the highest levels of the government we have the example opf an austere-and nicotine-free life-style”. (quoted in Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, p187).

I agree that he wasn’t as enthusiastic about Nazism as some of the Catholic hierarchy but, as I quoted before, he believed that it was bulwark against ‘atheistic communism’ and therefore hoped for a Nazi victory against Russia in WW2.

I repeat: never once did a member of the Catholic hierarchy in Germany, including Faulhaber, speak out against the Nazi treatment of the Jews. This is an absolutely damning indictment and your hostility to Goldhagen, Cornwell et al, cannot disguise this fact.

You say that Lewy and Goldhagen are polemicists. Perhaps you should also point out that they are Jews.

PS.

I am aware of the dispute about the photo on p109 of Goldhagen’s book. But whether or not it is Faulhaber in the picture, the fact is that there is a member of the Catholic hierarchy in it and he was doing what most of that hierarchy did, namely, support the Nazis.

LSV (80):

Let’s get this clear. Apparently, in your view, the morality derived from the Bible is an objective standard. Why, then, does it change from the Old to the New Testament? (for the better, let me hasten to add). ‘Love your enemies’ is a long way off ‘slaughter your enemies including their women and children’. If the latter is a judgment of god, then he is a bit of a monster.

As for the idea that anything who suggests that the Bible is not an objective standard is an arrogant know-all whose morality is ‘anything goes’, it is the real arrogance, for it dismisses 2,000 years of progress in knowledge about us and the world around us.

Let us look again at this ‘objective’ standard to which you are referring. The Old Testament is largely a history of slaughter by the Israelites against the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites and other enemies. Eve and all women are punished for seeking knowledge; nearly all living things are destroyed in a flood because the God who created them is angry at his own mistake;  Abraham offers to sacrifice his own son Isaac; Lot offers up his daughters to be raped;  God incites Moses and his army to attack the Midianites, kill all the boys and rape the girls who are still virgins; and gives similar orders to Joshua in Jericho where “they enforced the curse of destruction on everyone in the city; men and women, young and old, including the oxen, the sheep, and the donkeys, slaughtering them all”  (Joshua 6:20-21). And that’s only the first six books!

A morality based on alleged divine commands which are in reality the obsolete dictates of primitive priests and ruthless tyrants has little to offer a modern civilisation. In our more sane moments, we recognise these codes as barbaric, proving that the ancient world was more cruel and nasty than ours. The western Christian world treats Joshua as a hero, whereas in truth he was not much different from nasty Assyrian kings like Ashurnasirpal or Ashurbanipal, who boasted in stone tablets how they had tortured their enemies and covered the valleys and mountains with their corpses.

The western world used to own members of other races as slaves, treat women as objects, kill one another in wars of religion, send children down the mines, slaughter animals at will, burn ‘witches’ and gays, and abandon  millions  of its own people to poverty and disease. We no longer do these things, at least not ‘openly’, partly because we would be ashamed of them.

The reason is that our morality has expanded in the way that Lecky in his History of European Morals outlined: “At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world”. 

In other words, this expanding circle of morality is an indication that we have evolved better meanings for life. Being ‘soulless machines’ is certainly not one of them (if you were a slave or an animal in more religious times, this is exactly how you were treated).

So, yes, humanist morality has improved upon ‘the good old days’. It is not nihilist but is based upon human needs and concern for life in all its forms. It does not treat the world as our ‘oyster’ or other living things as made purely for us, but believes that we should in balance with the earth and what is on it.

The idea that 'anything goes', as you put it, is more fitting to the morality you are forced to ascribe to a god whose ethical code punishes anyone who doubts him, kills prawn eaters, demands human sacrifices, and slaughters any tribe who gets in the way of his 'chosen' one.

Andrew

I thought proof texting was par for the course around these parts.

Yep.

And here's a fun way to do it.

brianmcclinton, #92;

"You say that “Cardinal Faulhaber, similarly, appears to have been exceptional at least in the degree of his hostility to nazism”. I think this is putting it too strongly."

You may think so, but the representatives of the Bavarian Jewish Synagogues, in 1949, did not (see posts 55 and 83). With all due respect, i know which view i'd consider to be better informed. My contention is that Cardinal Faulhaber simply recognised that he was not free to express his deep-seated hostility to the nazis after they came to power in 1933. He decided that he did not wish to provoke the authorities into taking action against him and/or the wider Catholic community. He did what he could to protect Jews and damp down the flames of anti-semitism, but maintained an outward show of loyalty to the regime - partly, it must be said, out of a genuine fear of soviet bolshevism. Yes, Lewi and Goldhagen are Jewish, as of course are Rabbis Dalin and Wise, mentioned in #54. It should come as no surprise that Jewish voices carry the most authority in these matters.

Theo

Any chance of giving us an opinion about Cardinal Law being tolerated and supported by the Pope? Many people feel that his presence there shows that the Vatican doesnt really care about children. Care to comment?

Theo

Why did the Good Friday solemn Catholic Liturgy make reference to the "pervidious Jews", if what you are arguing is true?

Here's an article that reminds us how close humans are to other primates-
The talking gorilla who longs for a baby

Theophane (#95):



I see that you are determined not to let the facts get in the way of a deep-seated prejudice, even when Faulhaber’s own words and actions are quoted to you. Let me recap and contruct a fuller picture.

In 1920, as Bishop of Speyer, Faulhaber attacked the Weimar Constitution because it extended legal recognition to all religious denominations and therefore “granted the same rights to truth and error” (Lenten Pastoral Letter, 1920). Wow!

In 1924 he praised the Nazis for the ‘pure spring’ of their new movement’, but added that Hitler knew better than his underlings that the resurrection of the German nation required the support of Christianity (this speech to students and academicians was published in Munich in 1925 in ‘Deutsches Ehrgefuhl und katholisches Gewissen’). Wow!

In April 1933 he issued an order to the clergy to support the new Nazi regime in which he ‘had confidence’. Wow!

This confidence was repeated in his approval of the Concordat. In a letter to Hitler he wrote: “What the old parliaments and parties did not accomplish in 60 years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months. For Germany’s prestige in East and West and before the whole world this handshake with the papacy, the greatest moral power in the history of the world (sic), is a feat of immeasurable blessing”. (Faulhaber to Hitler, July 24th, 1933). Wow!

This approval of the Concordat was repeated in 1937.

As I quoted, he approved of the Nazi regime‘s attack on smoking and alcohol.

He supported a Nazi victory in World War Two, as quoted earlier. He called for “a successful end of the war and the defeat of bolshevism” (‘AB Munich’ December 23rd, 1941). Wow!

Continually, the Catholic Church in Germany condemned any attempt at revolt against Nazi rule. Faulhaber played a full part in this. When a Swiss Catholic in June 1936 was reported to have asked children to pray for Hitler’s death, Faulhaber declared in a sermon: “A lunatic abroad has had an attack of madness…. Catholic men, we will now pray together a paternoster for the life of the Fuhrer” (Sermon on 7th June 1936, ‘AB Munich’). Wow!

I think that some Jews, including those you quote, were far too generous to Mr Michael Faulhaber. In my view, his support for the Nazis, not totally unqualified, certainly, but support nevertheless, is clear from his own words from the early 1920s right through to the 1940s.

As for anti-semitism, while he did say that the Jews before Jesus were okay, he failed to say anything in public to defend Jews after Jesus.

I repeat: both his support for the Nazis and this failure publicly to defend the Jews are damning indictments, even though he was not the worst of the German Catholic bishops/Cardinals at that time.

Thieving vicar sent to jail.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2041310/Vicar-Vaughan-Leonard-stole-funeral-wedding-money-to-poor-jailed.html