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:
„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.
We have to fight these people, who are always trying to reconstruct history in their favor.
Posted by: Hattie | April 21, 2009 at 12:00 PM