Dialog International

German homeschoolers granted political asylum in US

In the US, parents has the right to homeschool  their children. The outcomes of the homeschooling movement are decidedly mixed.  While some homeschooledl children do receive an excellent, well-rounded academic experience, others - especially the children of fundamentalist Christians - are provided with substandard and distorted perspectives on history and science.  Many fundamentalists are teaching their children that dinosaurs and humans cohabited the earth just 3 thousand years ago (the "young earth" believers) or that America is a nation chosen by God to spread "freedom" and Christianity throughout the world.  Fundamentalist Christian families in Germany do not have the option to (mis)educate their children at home because of compulsory education laws (Schulpflicht), for them, the United States is seen as a sacred refuge.  Now one such German family achieved a huge legal victory - in the heart of the Bible Belt:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A German couple who fled to Tennessee so they could homeschool their children was granted political asylum Tuesday by a U.S. immigration judge, according to the legal group that represented them.

The decision clears the way for Uwe Romeike (roh-MY-kee), his wife and five children to stay in Morristown, Tenn., where they have been living since 2008. Romeike says his family was persecuted for their evangelical Christian beliefs and for homeschooling their children in Germany, where school attendance is compulsory.

The decision has energized the Christian right movement in the US, which often views Europe as a godless cesspool of secularism.  The World Net Daily - a Web site of the lunatic fringe of right-wing extremism - is jubilant: 

It's recognition that the German state is persecuting homeschoolers. We are pleased to have been able to support this courageous family and we hope and pray that this decision will have a decisive effect on German policy makers who should change their laws to recognize a parent's right to educate their own children.

As things stand now, Germany is unworthy of membership in the European Community, or to speak on Human Rights in the international arena. The shadows of the Third Reich and the ideology of Adolf Hitler – if not worse – still drift over Germany.

According to Der Spiegel, there is little chance that the compulsory education laws in Germany will be overturned: 

Hinter der Schulpflicht steckt "die Überlegung, dass das gemeinsame Lernen in der Schule der Vermittlung sozialer Kompetenzen dient", sagt Martina Elschenbroich, Schulrechtsexpertin der Kultusministerkonferenz. So könne der Umgang mit Andersdenkenden als Grundlage einer demokratischen Gesellschaft eingeübt werden. (Compulsory education is "based on the premise that learning with others in schools serves to build and strengthen social competencies," said Martina Eischbreich, expert in educational rights in the Ministry of Culture. Exposure to different points of views provides a basis for a democratic society.)

What is troubling is what happens to these homeschooled Christian children once they leave home.  Some end up at right-wing "madrassas" such as Patrick Henry College in Virginia, where they kneel before posters of Jesus and Ronald Reagan, and are taught that George W. Bush invaded Iraq under orders from God.  As far as I'm concerned, the US needs its own Schulpflicht. 

Gerhard Schröder on the Minaret Debate

Social Europe Journal has published an English translation of ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder's op/ed piece on the Swiss vote to ban minarets.  The piece was originally published in Die Zeit: Das Recht auf Türme. Needless to say, the social democrat Schröder is highly critical of the vote and the message of intolerance it sends.  Schröder fears that this will simply further marginalize the Muslim minority communities in Europe:

On the surface this may have concerned a building ban, but the core issue was a different one: Minarets make crystal clear the deep-seated change our society is undergoing, through the immigration of people with different cultural backgrounds and religions. Those who ban the building of minarets want this social change to stay invisible. They are ignoring reality and hoping that Muslim believers will continue to exercise their religion behind the scenes, in prayer rooms in back-to-back houses or out of the way on industrial estates. This attempt to drive it to the proverbial margins of society represents would be exclusion.

Earlier I wrote about how Henryk Broder had celebrated the Swiss vote as the proper response to religious intolerance in Arab and other Islamic countries.  Schröder has a good response to Broder and his fans:

Now an argument is often advanced in the debate about the construction of mosques and minarets. It runs: »As long as nobody is allowed to build Christian churches in Islamic countries, we should not allow any mosques to be built here.« What this argument forgets is: Millions of Christians live for example in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. But even where Christian parishes are being created from scratch, the building of churches is permitted, for example in the ambitious Gulf states or in Indonesia. There is an undeniable lack of religious freedom in some Islamic states, but they cannot serve as an excuse to restrict rights in our own country. We perceive ourselves as an enlightened society. And enlightenment does not mean repeating the shortcomings of other societies in our own. Freedom of religion is of great value, which is why it is rightly protected under our Basic Law.

Predictably, Gerhard Schröder's piece provoked a strong reaction from right-wing Islamophobes.  The hate site Politically Incorrect noted that  Schröder had refused to say "so help me God"  (so wahr mir Gott helfe) when he took the oath of office - so that disqualifies him from commenting on any religious issue.  The German-Turkish commentator Necla Kelek accuses the former chancellor of incredible naïveté for not seeing that minarets are giant phallic symbols and that Islam is not really a religion, but rather an ideological "system".   For the right-wing author Ralph Giodarno Gerhard Schröder is simply another cowardly German politician („feige, deutsche Politiker) who refuses to face the truth about Islam. And last not least, Leon DeWinter took time out from his racist criticism of President Obama to attack all Muslims (in tne NZZ).

«Viele Menschen haben genug davon zu hören, dass der Islam eine Religion des Friedens und der Toleranz sei, während ein großer Teil der islamischen Welt aufstöhnt unter Tyrannei, Rückständigkeit, Frauenhass, Armut» (Many people are fed up with hearing that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance when a large part of the Islamic world is groaning under tyranny, backwardness, misogyny and poverty) 

As usual, it is the voices of hate and intolerance that receive most of the media coverage, while the ex-chancellor's reasoned argument is largely ignored.

Vatican welcomes bigoted Anglicans

This week Pope Benedict XVI announced that the Vatican laws would be amended to make it easier for Anglicans to become Roman Catholics.  With this bold move the pope is looking to take advantage of the deep schism in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of women and gay men.  I blogged about this on Daily Kos and there was a strong response by people with many different religious perspectives (including atheists).

One of the better commentaries on Benedict's power-grab is this piece by Matthias Dobrinski in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Dobrinski points out that this program simply reinforces what the Vatican means by "ecumenical dialogue":  all Christians are welcome "home" as long as they submit to the primacy of Rome, as then Cardinal Ratzinger made clear in his 2000 document Dominus Iesus:

In Absprache mit der anglikanischen Kirche kommt nun der Vatikan jenen entgegen, die in ihrer Kirche keine Heimat mehr haben, aber auch nicht einfach katholisch werden wollen. Aus römischer Perspektive ist das Angebot großherzig. Die Großherzigkeit geht auch in Richtung der Piusbrüder: Seht her, wer zu uns zurückkehrt, muss nicht unbedingt die eigenen Traditionen aufgeben. (In agreement with the Anglican Church the Vatican now welcomes those who no longer feel they have a home in their church, but don't just want to become Catholic. From the perspective of Rome this is a generous offer.  This generosity was also extended to the Pius Brothers: See here, whoever wants to come back to us does not necessarily need to abandon his own traditions.)

What Benedict evidently envisions is a confederation of Holocaust deniers and misogynistic traditionalists, united under the leadership of the papacy. A global, multi-faceted church of intolerance and reaction.

Many of us were disappointed by the weak reaction to the announcement by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who obviously was taken completely by surprise by Benedicts move. The leader of Anglican Communion missed an opportunity to restate the commitment to inclusion and the practice of Christian faith in the real world of the 21st century. Clayboy speaks for many in this blog post on "what Rowan should have said" (thanks to Wounded Bird blog for the link):

In the meantime I say only this: to all of you who are seeking reform in the search for a papacy exercised in charity and collegiality, to all of you who are seeking a faith that continues to update and renew itself from its ancient springs in the light of reason and the contemporary experience of God’s Spirit, to all of you wish to pray in your own language without being forced to conform to the past glories of a dead tongue, to all of you who seek to exercise ministry in service rather than power, to all of you who prefer the vesture of humility to arcane Renaissance pomp as re-envisioned by Prada, to all of you I say a warm welcome always awaits you around our altar tables. For however you treat us, we will still try to treat you as our brothers and sisters.

Caritas in veritate - Charity in Truth

Pope Benedict has issued his third encyclical - Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) - which addresses the global economy and its inequalities.  It is a long, dense piece and can be downloaded from the Vatican's Web site (English,Deutsch) . The encyclical is sure to generate a great deal of controversy, since the pope is calling for nothing less than a new economic order based on economic justice and a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Its publication is obviously timed to coincide with the G8 and the summit’s focus on economic repair, aid to poor countries, food security and climate change.

Economics, Pope Benedict writes, is not just the pursuit of profits, but must be based on an ethical pursuit of the "common good".

Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.

He decries the "corruption" of the political class (not just in the wealthy countries) and the unethical behavior of financiers and their institutions as well as the exploitation of workers by multinational corporations.

Corruption and illegality are unfortunately evident in the conduct of the economic and political class in rich countries, both old and new, as well as in poor ones. Among those who sometimes fail to respect the human rights of workers are large multinational companies as well as local producers. International aid has often been diverted from its proper ends, through irresponsible actions both within the chain of donors and within that of the beneficiaries. Similarly, in the context of immaterial or cultural causes of development and underdevelopment, we find these same patterns of responsibility reproduced. On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care. At the same time, in some poor countries, cultural models and social norms of behaviour persist which hinder the process of development.

In a passage sure to displease the editors of the Wall Street Journal, the Pope calls for an equitable distribution of wealth and protection of workers' rights in every nation:

Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country's international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.

It is important to emphasize that Pope Benedict is not calling for a wholesale socialization of the world economy: he recognizes the power of markets in wealth creation. But he is highly critical of the neo-liberal ideal of the unfettered markets. Markets must be regulated in a "God-centered" economy for the common good.  Benedict even goes so far as to advocate a new supranational governing body to oversee and enforce a more just global distribution of wealth and protect poorer nations.

This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority

Pope Benedict has written a very provocative piece with his Third Encyclical.  I don't agree with everything here, but the central argument strikes me as correct and just - far more radical than any "solutions" put forward by US politicians - Republican OR Democrat (who would dare speak openly about wealth redistribution?).

Caritas in veritate lacks the passion and visionary power of Deus caritas est (God is Love - Benedict's first encyclical), and I miss the broad discussion of Western philosophy of the second encyclical (Spe Salvi - In hope we are saved).  But I disagree with the assessment of Matthias Drobinski in Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Der weltfremde Papst .  Dobrinski calls this encyclical a "disappointment" (Enttäuschung) and sees Benedict as being "out of touch" (weltfremd). On the contrary, Caritas in veritate displays an impressive grasp of complex economic issues - from hedge funds to globalization and business process outsourcing.

Atheists on the Bus

The Giordano-Bruno-Foundation, which promotes "evolutionary humanism", has sponsored a bus tour throughout Germany. The details can be found at Buskampagne.de.

The sign on the bus is translated as "There is no God. A fulfilled life is possible without faith."

The organizers have not been welcome with open arms everywhere.  Their plan to have advertising plastered on city buses in many cities was rejected by many municipal transportation authorities.  So they resorted to Plan B:

Wir möchten aber gesehen werden – und zwar in ganz Deutschland. Deshalb haben wir einfach einen großen Doppeldeckerbus gemietet und mit unseren Werbesprüchen beklebt. Mit diesem „gottlosen“ Gefährt machen wir eine große Deutschland-Tour und bieten an vielen Stationen thematische Stadtrundfahrten an. Denn es gibt doch viel mehr Spannendes zu erfahren über Aufklärung, Wissenschaft, Religionsgeschichte und Atheismus als die paar Zeilen, die außen auf den Bus passen! Begleitend soll es abends Veranstaltungen geben, bei denen Unterstützer unserer Kampagne mitwirken. (We want to be seen - everywhere in Germany.  So we've simply rented a double-decker bus and put our campaign message on the side.  With this "godless" vehicle we will be making a big tour throughout Germany and, at many stops, we'll include thematic local city tours.  For there are a lot of exciting things to learn about enlightenment, science, religious history and atheism - more than we can fit in a few lines of text on the side of a bus! In conjunction with the tour there will be events each evening involving the sponsors of our campaign.)

The Catholic Church is fighting back.  In Dortmund some of the buses (evidently with the approval of municipal authorities) have signs that read "Don't Worry: God Exists.  Hava Nice Day!"

Church-Going Christians for Torture

A poll of American Christians released last week confirmed my worst suspicions:

"The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did."

One can only ask: what are these evangelical Protestants hearing at the services they attend that would encourage them to support torture?  Susan Brook Thistlethwaite of the Chicago Theological Seminary has a possible explanation: 

"White Evangelical theology bases its view of Christian salvation on the severe pain and suffering undergone by Jesus in his flogging and crucifixion by the Romans. This is called the "penal theory of the atonement"--that is, the way Jesus paid for our sins is by this extreme torture inflicted on him."

I touched upon this in an earlier post. The sado-masochistic fixation on Jesus' suffering on the cross is the final result of a distorted God-image based on fear.  The American variety of evangelical Christianity posits God as moral lawgiver who is on the side of some humans but against others.  The "other" is an embodiment of Satan and must be eliminated - or, at the very least - waterboarded.  Once again, Eugen Drewermann has a good response:

"Against the pietistic perversion of the Cross into an ideology of the mysticism of suffering one cannot forecully enough repeat: Jesus did not want to die on the Cross and he never thought to declare inhumanity and torture to be signs of a true trust into God.  To the contrary: he lived so that humans would receive back their dignity as creatures of God, so that they would regain their innocence and uninhibitedness in relation to God, and so that the uncreasing suffering which afflicts humans because of God as portrayed in the religions of human history would find an end." (Eugen Drewermann, Das Markusevangelium)

Bishop Mixa: Atheists Have Created "Hell on Earth"

In his Easter sermon, Bishop Mixa of Augsburg lays the blame for mass murder by the Nazis and Stalin at the feet of "atheists".  A summary of the sermon is still posted on the bishop's Web site:

„Wo Gott geleugnet oder bekämpft wird, da wird bald auch der Mensch und seine Würde geleugnet und missachtet. Eine Gesellschaft ohne Gott ist die Hölle auf Erden“, sagte Mixa bei seiner Predigt am Sonntag in der Augsburger Marienkathedrale. (Whereever God is denied or attacked, then so also will human beings be denied and abused.  A society without God is hell on earth," said Mixa in his Sunday sermon in the Augsburg Cathedral.)

„Die Unmenschlichkeit des praktizierten Atheismus haben im vergangenen Jahrhundert die gottlosen Regime des Nationalsozialismus und des Kommunismus mit ihren Straflagern, ihrer Geheimpolizei und ihren Massenmorden in grausamer Weise bewiesen“, sagte der Augsburger Bischof. Immer seien in diesen Systemen die Christen und die Kirche besonders verfolgt worden. (The inhumanity of atheism in practice proved itself in a most brutal way in the last century with the godless regimes of National Socialism and Communism and their prison camps, secret polic and mass murder," said the Bishop of Augsburg. Systems like these always single out Christians and the Church for special persecution.)

The problem with Mixa's analysis is that in Nazi Germany Christians were not singled out for prosecution and most Nazi's considered themselve devout Christians.  Hitler was a practicing Catholic who, in Mein Kampf wrote that he would finish the mission that Jesus Christ was not able to ( "Die Aufgabe, mit der Christus begann, die er aber nicht zu Ende führte, werde ich vollenden.“ ) Individual Catholics and Protestants, such as Die weisse Rose student protest group, were motivated by their faith to resist the tyranny and paid the ultimate price. But the mainstream Christian churches - both Catholic and Protestant - carried on with tacit and overt support of the regime. In an earlier post I mentioned Doris Bergen's book Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich.  Mixa deliberately distorts history by blaming atheists for the terrible course of German history in the last century and shows that the Roman Catholic Church still has a long way to go with its Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

Christianity Debate: Forget the Cross

 Just in time for Good Friday, the popular TV and radio preacher Burkhard Müller stirred up controversy in Germany by denying a central tenet of Christian faith:

»Ich glaube nicht, dass Jesus für unsere Sünden gestorben ist«, (I don't believe that Jesus died for our sins.)

And Burkhard Müller is hardly alone at condemning the church's fixation on the Cross.  The Dutch writer Theo Kars put it this way:

Ein Vater, der seinen Sohn für Verbrechen und Untaten anderer hinrichten lässt, damit die wirklich Schuldigen straffrei ausgehen, würde überall auf der Welt strafrechtlich verfolgt, wenn seine Tat ans Licht käme. ... Und dennoch bildet ein derart primitives, brutales, grundloses Verbrechen die Grundlage des christlichen Glaubens. (A father who allows his son to be executed for the crimes and misdeeds of others, so that the truly guilty ones can get away with the their crimes, would be condemned and prosecuted anywhere in the world, if his act came to light.... And even so this kind of brutal, primitive, and baseless crime is the foundation of Christian faith.)

Does the Passion negate the fundamental message of the Gospels of God's love? The conservative evangelical Web site idea.de has been quite active in condemning Müller and others for their rejection of the Cross:

Die Vermutung liege nahe, dass Müller Jesus Christus aber gar nicht als Gottes Sohn, sondern lediglich als einen herausragenden Menschen verstehe und die Sünde und auch das Gericht Gottes über die Sünde nicht ernstnehme. (It would seem tha Müller understands Jesus Christ not as the Son of God at all, but rather as an exceptional person, and doesn't take seriously God's judgment over sin.)

Some of the most interesting thoughts on the meaning of the Cross can be found in the writings of Eugen Drewermann, the pyschologist-priest who was thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church. Drewermann does not in any sense reject the Cross, only how it has been interpreted by the church through the ages.  For Drewermann, the Cross is has the potential for being a therapeutic cipher of redemption for the whole human person.  Instead, it has often been used as a sodomasochistic tool for moral asceticism:

"This is how things are as long as Chirstianity understands the doctrine of the the redemptive death of Christ externally:  it serves not redemption but alienation, not liberation but opporession, not humanization but repression.  Does this have to be this way? ... It is an outrageous and scandalous state of affairs that the religion of Jesus, born from the struggle against the authoritarian suppression of humans in the name of a despotic God has been the subject of the last 150 years to the well-supported suspicion and exposed to the often corroborated reproach that it is basically othing more than the ideology of this kind of morally garnished sadism, a form of institutional external direction and fear, a grotesque new edition of just that scribal mentality which Jesus with the power of his whole person wanted to overcome."  (Eugen Drewermann, Das Markusevangelium (1990))

German Evangelicals Seek US Asylum

For years, American conservatives and evangelicals have been warning us about how Europe is an evil and godless place.  Now they have their proof:

(MORRISTOWN, Tenn.) Homeschooling is so important to Uwe Romeike that the classically trained pianist sold his beloved grand pianos to pay for moving his wife and five children from Germany to the Smoky Mountain foothills of Tennessee.

Romeike (roh-MY'-kee), his wife Hannelore, and their children live in a modest duplex about 40 miles northeast of Knoxville while they seek political asylum here. They say they were persecuted for their evangelical Christian beliefs and homeschooling their children in Germany, where school attendance is compulsory.

The whole event is being celebrated by American Wingnuttia.  The right-wing Web-site WorldNetDaily writes about how the Romeike family is being subjected to "Nazi-like" persecution and how in the German public schools the children were being forced to learn about sex and witchcraft:

The parents want to provide their children's education because of the propaganda included in modern German textbooks that violates the family's religious beliefs. This includes explicit lessons on sex, the promotion of the occult and witchcraft and an effort to teach children to disrespect authority figures, the family said.

"Propaganda" no doubt includes lessons on evolution which is anathema to the US Christian homeshool movement.

At issue in Germany is the "compulsory education" law - or Schulpflicht - which has a tradition that predates the NS-period: 

Deutschland hat eine völlig andere Tradition: Die allgemeine Schulpflicht - in Preußen schon im 18. Jahrhundert eingeführt - gilt für alle Kinder ab dem sechsten Lebensjahr und hat sich historisch mehr als Recht auf Bildung denn als Zwang entwickelt. Unzufriedene Eltern können allenfalls eine Privatschule gründen, brauchen dafür aber die staatliche Anerkennung. Wer seine Kinder einfach zu Hause unterrichtet, macht sich strafbar. (Germany has a completely different tradition: compulsory education -  introduced in Prussia in the 18th century - which applies to all children from the age of six and has generally been seen as a right to education rather than an imposition.  Unhappy parents can only try to start a private school, but need approval of the state to do so.  Those who simply try to teach their children at home are subject to prosecution). 

In the US it is estimated that that 1.5 million children are receiviing "Christian home schooling".  The "curriculum" does not meet even the minimum standards of public education. Children are taught that the earth is six thousand years old and that early human beings roamed the earth with the dinosaurs.  They learn that former president Bush was "chosen" by Jesus Christ to lead America - God's chosen nation - , while President Barack Obama is a representative of the Anti-Christ. The brightest of these home-schooled kids are then sent on to Patrick Henry College, where students kneel and pray before portraits of Jesus and Ronald Reagan.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how the court in Tennessee rules on granting the Romeike family politcal asylum in the US.  Germany is one of America's closest democratic allies, so granting political asylum would be unprecedented.

German Catholics Divided

Pope Benedict XVI threw the Catholic Church in Germany into turmoil when he lifted the excommunication of the bishops from The Society of St. Pius X .  For many, Catholics, this signaled a retreat from the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and from the movement towards more openness in the Church and dialogue with other faiths. For the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) completely rejects Vatican II as well as any dialogue with other faiths. Basically, SSPX is a deeply anti-Semitic sect that has been a haven for Holocaust deniers. The SSPX members reject all democratic institutions and long for a return of Vichy France.

Last week the German Catholic BIshops conferenced in Hamburg, and there was some hope that they would criticize Benedict for his apparent zeal to undo the Vatican II reforms.  As the Tagesspiegel reports, these hopes were not realized:

Die Einheit der Kirche ist wichtig, das ist das Signal. Diese Einheit ist wichtiger als der Vertrauensverlust bei den eigenen Leuten und in der Welt. Es wird zwar die entstandene „Unsicherheit“ über den Weg der Kirche bedauert. Aber an der Verunsicherung seien nicht etwa die Kirchenoberen schuld, sondern die anderen, die eben nicht genau hinhören, was der Papst sagt. (Church unity is important: that is what they signaled.  Unity is more important than the lost of trust from the people and in the world. Yes, they express some regret for the 'uncertainty' concerning the path of the Church.  But the Church leaders are not to blame for this uncertainty. Rather it is fault of those who are not listening closely to what the pope says.)

The rebellion from below in Germany is being led by Wir sind Kirche (We are the Church), a group of lay Catholics who want the German Roman Catholic Church to play a positive role in a modern, democratic society. In response to the German bishop's conference they released the following petition (English - German):

We believe that the close correlation between the excommunication’s cancellation and the 50th anniversary of the calling of a General Council of the Church by Blessed Pope John XXIII gives a clear indication of the direction which the present Papacy wishes to take.  We sense a desire to return to a pre Vatican II Church with its fear of openness to the breath of the Holy Spirit, a positive appreciation of ‘the signs of the times’,  and the values of democratic institutions.

We are very concerned that this act of rehabilitation heralds a turn-around on important documents of Vatican II, for example, the decree on ecumenism “Unitatis Redintegratio”, the declaration on non-Christian religions “Nostra Aetate”, the declaration on religious liberty “Dignitatis Humanae” and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, “Gaudium et Spes”. Such an act will have a disastrous effect on the credibility of the Roman-Catholic Church.  For Catholics who love their Church, the price is too high!

But there are other Catholics in Germany who embrace the SSPX, and would like Church to follow their model.  The Web site Kreuz.net mocks the German bishops and even criticizes Pope Benedict XVI for "buckling under to the Jews". The editors of this site are outraged at the pseudoreligiöse Holocaust-Konzept, the heresy which replaces Christ with Auschwitz as the central ontological axis of the West:

Der nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungslager seien eine Art „Golgatha des 20. Jahrhundert“, bei dem die „Kreuzigung von sechs Millionen“ geschehen und die Heilserwartung von Christi Erlösungstod implizit auf die Juden übertragen werde. (The Nazi death camps are considered to be a kind of "Golgatha of the 20th Century", where the "crucifixion of 6 million" took place and the promise of salvation through Christ's redemptive death is implicitly transferred to the Jews.)

The SSPX revives the notion that the Jews were (and are still today) guilty of Deicide. The fact that this reactionary brand of Catholicism is being welcomed back into Church is very disturbing indeed. The Bishop Williamson controversy was just the beginning.