More Catholic Idiocy
While in Israel, pope Benny
said:
“Those deeply moving encounters brought back memories of my visit three years ago to the death camp at Auschwitz, where so many Jews – mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends – were brutally exterminated under a godless regime.”
Yeah, “godless”.
Now, I’m no historian, and my knowledge of religion in Nazi Germany
comes from such places as
Wikipedia
and
The Straight Dope,
and it looks as though the situation is about as clear as mud: yes,
there were people like Martin Niemöller, but there were also Catholic
priests and bishops who didn’t seem to have a problem with the Nazi
regime. And Hitler certainly paid lip service to religion a lot. And
as far as I know, no one was ever excommunicated for participating in
the Holocaust.
Oh, and, of course, there’s the matter of Benny’s own membership in
the Hitler Youth.
At any rate, the situation is certainly nowhere near as clear as “Nazi
Germany was a godless regime.” In fact, one could easily make the case
that Nazi Germany (and the Soviet Union) had a lot of the uglier
aspects of religion: cult of personality, adherence to dogma, sworn
fealty to the authorities, and so forth.
But maybe The Ratz is simply using the word “godless” as synonymous
with “evil”. In which case, I hope he won’t mind if I use “Catholic”
as a synonym for “pederast”.
On a lighter note, Jesus and Mo
informs us
that Catholics have
condemned
reiki
(aka magic massage):
But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine in late March dismissed reiki as superstition incompatible with Christian belief or scientific teaching, and said it is inappropriate for use in Catholic institutions, including hospitals, retreat centers and schools.
From the Catholic Committee on Doctrine’s
Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy:
[F]rom the time of the Apostles the
Church has interceded on behalf of the sick through the invocation of
the name of the Lord Jesus, asking for healing through the power of
the Holy Spirit, whether in the form of the sacramental laying on of
hands and anointing with oil or of simple prayers for healing, which
often include an appeal to the saints for their aid.
[…][A] Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating
in the realm of superstition, the no-man’s-land that is neither faith
nor science.
(emphasis added)
Clearly, “faith” here means “the good kind of superstition”.