Dialog International

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.

Joseph Ratzinger's Black List

Via the Wounded Bird blog: In his previous position as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, previously known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition under Pope John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger officially excommunicated or otherwise silenced a number Church leaders, including some of the most brilliant minds in Catholic theology.  The list is as long as it is remarkable:

Fr. Jacques Pohier: A French Dominican priest, he was the first theologian to be disciplined by Pope John Paul II. In 1979 Pohier, the dean of the theology faculty at the Dominican theological school near Paris, lost his license to teach theology, was banned from saying Mass or participating in any liturgical gatherings. The Vatican objected to his views on Christ’s resurrection. He left the Dominicans in 1984.

Fr. Hans Küng: A Vatican investigation into the writings of this Swiss-born theologian began in 1975. He lost his license to teach Catholic theology in 1979 after the Vatican found fault with his views on papal infallibility. He continued to teach at the University of Tübingen as a professor of ecumenical theology.

Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx: A Belgian Dominican, he was the theologian of the Dutch bishops at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and has endured several Vatican investigations. He was initially investigated in 1968 for questioning the virginity of Mary. The Dutch hierarchy, clergy and laity rallied to his defense, and Fr. Karl Rahner, who himself would be investigated, convinced the Vatican of Schillebeeckx’s orthodoxy. In 1979, a trial or “procedure” was convened to investigate his writings on Christology. In the face of an international campaign of protest against the trial, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dropped the matter in 1980. He has since received several “notifications” from the congregation that his writings remain in conflict with church teaching.

Pope Benedict XVI and the Jews

I have long admired Benedict/Joseph Ratzinger as a thinker, theologian and writer, but I am perplexed by many of his actions as head of the Roman Catholic Church. (Just for the record, I am not Catholic). With respect to the Church's relationship to the Jewish faith, the most charitable characterization is that the Pope has a tin ear. Last spring Benedict added (or reinstated) two sentences in Latin in his Good Friday Prayer pertaining to the conversion of Jews, sentences which many Jews found hurtful, and which had long ago been discarded.  And Benedict/Ratzinger has spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on the Beatification of Pope Pius XII, the controversial pontiff who has been accused of doing next to nothing to intervene on behalf of Jews and other victims of the Nazis.

But those actions pale next to what just happened over the weekend: 

The Vatican stirred a diplomatic maelstrom yesterday when it announced that it had lifted the excommunication of four rebel bishops, including the British Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson.

The decree repealing the 20-year-old Vatican punishment, imposed after the traditionalist French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated the four as bishops in defiance of the Pope's authority, was signed on Wednesday by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops. This coincided with the broadcast on Swedish state television of an interview with Mr Williamson in which the breakaway bishop denied the Holocaust.

"I believe there were no gas chambers... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers," he told SVT television in an interview that was recorded in Germany last November. "There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!"

It is inconceivable that the Vatican did not know of Williamson's views on the Holocaust.  So the repeal of the excommunication is viewed by Jewish organizations around the world as a huge betrayal. Andrew Sullivan has more, including a clip of an interview with Williamson. 

But leaving Williamson aside, what does the this embrace of the ultra-conservative renegades say about Pope Benedict's vision of the church?  The organization of dissident church members Wir Sind Kirche is alarmed: 

"Das Bild, das Bendikt XVI. vermittelt, ist keineswegs zukunftsorientiert, sondern es klebt an der Vergangenheit. Viele engagierte Christen und Christinnen aus allen Teilen der Welt wurden exkommuniziert, weil sie ungewollte Handlungen setzten, um die Kirche 'ins Heute' zu holen. Ihnen gelten die ausgestreckten Arme des Papstes nicht, sie heißt er nach wie vor nicht willkommen" (The vision that Benedict XVI is putting forward is in no way oriented towards the future, rather it clings to the past.  Many engaged Christian men and women around the world have been excommunicated, because they attempted to bring the Church into the present day. But the Pope refuses to extend his arms to them; they are still not welcome.) 

While Pope Benedict welcomes reactionaries and Holocaust deniers back into the fold, original thinkers such as Eugen Drewermann, expelled from the Church in 1992, must remain outside the Church. In his writing and speeches, Drewermann has tirelessly worked against Christian anti-Judaism while advocating in favor of interfaith dialogue and reconciliation.

UPDATE: The (excommunicated) theologian Uta-Ranke Heinemann is appalled:

"Dass ein deutscher Papst einen Holocaust-Leugner wie einen heimgekehrten Sohn väterlich umarmt, das ist für alle Deutschen in besonderem Maße untragbar und beschämend", sagte Ranke Heinemann, die selbst 1987 exkommuniziert wurde.

Eugen Drewermann on Christian Just War Theory

Beginning last spring Nordwest Radio in Bremen started a series of programs with the theologian and psychologist Eugen Drewermann.  The first program was a call-in show on the topic of War and Peace and it is well-worth downloading and listening to (it is a two-hour program). Drewermann is a provocative thinker and mesmerizing speaker; he is a thorn in the side of the Catholic Church. Eugen Drewermann was a Roman Catholic priest whose license to preach was revoked by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1992.

In the program, Drewermann discusses his first break with the Church over the issued of conscientious objection to war.  In the 1950s the Catholic Church in Germany prohibited non-participation in a "just war" scenario. This got the young Drewermann interested in the pyschological origin of war and the role of religion in promoting war.  He also wanted to find answers for why the most destructive wars of modern history - and the development of weapons of mass destruction - originated in ostensibly "Christian" nations.  The war-impulse is deeply embedded in the human psyche and once war happens religion is powerless to stop it.  So the church promotes and rationalizes war with actions and theories - such as "just war". War evolves out of the human "spiral of fear", shaped by the struggle for survival of early humans, fear of biological death. There is in human beings a tendency to seek "final solutions" : only the eradication of the "other" can eliminate fear. Christianity, Drewermann asserts, has the potential to act therapeutically in promoting a peaceful human attitude toward life. On the other hand, the sadomasochistic theologies of the cross only serve to fuel the fears that manifest themselves in war.  Drewermann has written extensively about the confluence of war and Christianity in his 1982 book Der Krieg und das Christentum (which I have put on my 2009 readling list). Unfortunately, very little of Drewermann's extensive work has been translated into English. 

In the radio program Drewermann has harsh criticism of the United States as the instigator of current wars.  He points out that a huge percentage of America's GDP is tied up with the development and perfection of weapons of mass destruction and training young men and women in the practice of killing other human beings. In general, the Darwinian, neo-liberal vision of globalized, unfettered market capitalism exacerbates the fears and insecurities that lead to new wars.

I look forward to listening to the other Drewermann programs in the series, which cover such topics as Evil, The Power of Money, Depression, Fears, and Death.

Benedict XVI on the Limits of Interfaith Dialogue

Pope Benedict XVI took time out from his efforts to beatify Pius XII - the pope who stood by while six million were murdered in WWII - to warn against putting too much stock in interfaith dialogue:

Papst Benedikt XVI. schreibt im Vorwort eines am kommenden Dienstag erscheinenden Buches, dass ein interreligiöser Dialog „im engen Sinn des Wortes“ nicht möglich sei, „ohne den eigenen Glauben in Klammern zu setzen“. Weiter schreibt der Heilige Vater, dass auch der Begriff der „Multikulturalität“ eine „innere Widersprüchlichkeit“ besitze. Zugleich betrachtet der Pontifex die „Multikulturalität“ als politisch und kulturell nicht umsetzbar. Die Aussagen des Papstes sind Teil des Vorwortes eines Buches, das der ehemalige italienische Senatspräsident und Philosophieprofessor Marcello Pera geschrieben hat. (In a forward to a book that will appear on Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI writes that an interfaith dialogue "in the strictest sense of the word" is not possible "without putting ones own faith in parentheses".  The Holy Father furthermore writes that the concept of "Multiculturalism" contains in "internal contradiciton". At the same time, the pontif believes that "Multiculturalism" cannot be realized, politically and culturally.  The staements of the pope are part of a forward to a book written by the former Italian senate president and professor of philosophy Marcello Pera."

Nobody believes that interfaith dialogue would lead to a ecumenical utopia and melting pot of the world's religions. Still, the pope's statements seem to imply that faith rests on a set of static doctrines, immutable and set by the Vatican.  I also find the relentless attack on multiculturalism tiresome.  We live in a globalized, multicultural world.  What is the realistic alternative to multiculturalism?

The static thinking of the Roman Catholic Church was very evident in the recent presidential election in the US. Once again the bishops rallied around a single issue: abortion. They warned sternly against the "sin" of voting for Barack Obama because of his support of a woman's right to choose.  This time American Catholics simply ignored the message of bishops: Fifty-four percent of Catholics voted for Obama, to 45 percent for GOP nominee John McCain, according to surveys of voters as they left their polling places. Catholics made up 27 percent of the U.S. electorate. Exit polls seem to indicate that Catholic voters have a more expansive view of the Gospels than the bishops, putting more emphasis on issues such as poverty, war, the environment and human rights.

Still, there is cause for hope that change - albeit very slow change -  is possible even for the Vatican:  this week the Vatican announced that it had forgiven John Lennon for his 1966 comment that the "Beatles are more famous than Jesus".