Dialog International

Is Heroic Resistance Possible Without a Transcendent Ethos?

The FAZ has an interesting interview with Klaus von Dohnanyi about his father Hans von Dohnányi, who was an important member of the anti-Nazi resistance. Hans von Dohnányi was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and was executed - along with his brother-in-law, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer - in April 1945, just days before the collapse of the Third Reich.

When asked whether the current generation would have the same courage to resist tyranny as his father and the others in the anti-Hitler resistance Klaus von Dohnányi answered as follows:

Ich weiß nicht, ob die heutige Generation so tapfer wäre wie die Generation, die nach 1933 Widerstand geleistet hat. Wird eine solche moralische Kraft heute noch vermittelt? Und kann man Anstand lernen? Die Demokratie kann die Fundamente nicht schaffen, auf denen sie steht, so etwa schreibt Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Braucht diese Kraft vielleicht doch eine transzendente Substanz? Etwas, das nicht rational zu erschließen ist? Wenn es in den zehn Geboten heißt, du sollst nicht töten, dann heißt das eben, du sollst nicht töten! Wenn Sie aber die zehn Gebote nicht kennen, dürfen Sie dann aus „guten“ Gründen töten, wie im materialistischen Sowjetsystem?

("I'm not sure that today's generation would be as brave as the generation of the resistance after 1933.  Is such a moral force even mediated today? Can a person be taught decency?  Democracy is not capable of creating the foundation required for such a stance - as Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde writes. Doesn't such a powerful motivation perhaps require a transcendent substance? Something that can't be completely explained rationally? When the Ten Commandments declare Thou Shalt Not Kill, that means simply you should not kill! If however you are ignorant of the Ten Commandments then there may be "good" reasons to kill, like in the materialistic Soviet system.")

By referencing the Ten Commandments Klaus von Dohnanyi seems to be referencing Christian faith.  The younger generation seems to have drifted away from organized religion, as evidenced by the empty pews in German churches.  He seems to imply that this absence of religious faith would result in cowardice in the face of evil.

Surely Klaus von Dohnany's father knew the problem with this point of view.  Under the the NS-Regime and the "Deutsche Christen" movement  the Protestant -and to some extent the Catholic Church - had become a perversion of Christianity - with a  dejudicized Jesus.  

By chance I happen to rereading Bonhoeffer's Letters & Papers from Prison, where he talks extensively about his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi and mentions visits by Klaus and his siblings. In the preface to the American edition Bonhoeffer holds the Church accountable for not resisting the NS-regime.

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?"

The Church had failed.  In response Bonhoeffer came to advocate a "religionless Christianity" that would embrace an unmediated "true discipleship" of Jesus:

"Only the one for whom the final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these, when in faith and sole allegiance to God he is called to obedient and responsible action: the responsible person, whose life will be nothing but an answer to God’s question and call."

So perhaps von Dohnanyi's pessimism about the younger generation is unwarranted.  Plenty of people have left the traditional religious institutions asking themselvs "are we still of any use?" But they could still embrace an Ethos that is aligned with that of Bonhoeffer and others who resisted Hitler.

Martin Luther and the Nazis: Love Thy (Aryan) Neighbor

In 2017 we are celebrating the 500 year Jubilee of the Reformation.  It was in 1517 that Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses that marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation , a schism in the Catholic Church which initiated profound and lasting social and political change in Europe.  But it is also a moment for remembering the darker aspects of Luther's legacy.  In this connection the Topography of Terror Foundation and the German Resistance Memorial Center are putting on an exhibition in Berlin that examines the importance of Martin Luther in National Socialist ideology.  Luther was claimed by both the Nazis and their fascist Deutsche Christen movement and the Bekennende Kirche ("Confessing Church"), a resistance movement led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

"What was the Nazis’ position on religion and the church—and specifically on Martin Luther? How did Christians in Germany during the Nazi period deal with the reformer and his ”legacy”? And how did the relationship between church and state evolve during those twelve years? These questions are explored in the exhibition. While 1933 saw celebrations marking Luther’s 450th birthday, it also saw conflicts between the ”Confessing Church” and the ”German Christians.” References to Luther’s late anti-Jewish works increased markedly in the period up to 1938. Also during the Second World War, Luther was ”claimed” by various players: some to justify the war—others to back up their right to resist this unjust regime"

I am familiar with Luther's influence on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology - especially in his book Nachfolge ("Discipleship").  But Luther's impact on the Nazis was far more profound.  Martin Luther's late work Von den Jüden und iren Lügen is a blueprint for Kristallnacht and reads like an issue of Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer - the Nazi anti-Semitic hate weekly.

Excerpt from Luther's Von den Jüden und iren Lügen

Unsern Oberherrn, die Juden unter sich haben, 
wünsche ich und bitte, daß sie eine scharfe Barmherzigkeit 
gegen diese elenden Leute üben wollten, obs doch etwas, 
wiewohl es mißlich ist, helfen wollte, wie die treuen Ärzte 
tun: wenn das heilige Feuer in die Knochen gekommen ist, 
fahren sie mit Unbarmherzigkeit zu und schneiden, sägen, 
brennen Fleisch, Adern, Knochen und Mark ab. Also tue 
man hier auch. Verbrenne ihre Synagogen, verbiete alles, 
was ich droben erzählt habe, zwinge sie zur Arbeit und 
gehe mit ihnen nach aller Unbarmherzigkeit um, wie 
Moses in der Wüste tat, der dreitausend totschlug, daß 
nicht der ganze Haufe verderben mußte. Sie wissen 
wahrlich nicht, was sie tun, wollens dazu wie die 
besessenen Leute nicht wissen, hören noch lernen. Darum 
kann man hier keine Barmherzigkeit üben, sie in ihrem 
Wesen zu stärken. Will das nicht helfen, so müssen wir sie 
wie die tollen Hunde ausjagen, damit wir nicht, ihrer 
greulichen Lästerung und aller Laster teilhaftig, mit ihnen 
Gottes Zorn verdienen und verdammt werden. Ich habe 
das Meine getan; ein jeglicher sehe, wie er das Seine tue. 

(I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people, as suggested above, to see whether this might not help (though it is doubtful). They must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. They surely do not know what they are doing; moreover, as people possessed, they do not wish to know it, hear it, or learn it. Therefore it would be wrong to be merciful and confirm them in their conduct. If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all the their other vices and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated.)

"Burn down their synagogues" -  Yes, no wonder the Nazis embraced Luther.

Movie #Spotlight: Priestly Celibacy and Child Rape

We went to see the feature film Spotlight, in my opinion the best American movie of 2015.  Spotlight is about the team of investigative reporters at the Boston Globe who wrote a series of articles that exposed the role of Catholic Church in covering up a massive scandal of priests sexually abusing children.  What I especially appreciated was the way the movie showed the reporters doing their jobs - no heroics, no melodrama - just the hard work of reporting: doggedly interviewing victims and perpetrators, poring over phone directories, hanging around courthouses and lawyers' offices.  And also noteworthy is the role of the managing editor, who, instead of publishing sensational articles about individual pedophile priests, waited until there was enough evidence to reveal the systemic criminal cover-up of crimes that could be traced to the Vatican. The movie is not fiction; read the story behind the Spotlight movie. 

Spotlight also raises the uncomfortable question: why the epidemic of child rape among Roman Catholic priests?  Not just in Boston, but everywhere the Church has a presence - even Germany. One of the characters in Spotlight - a psychologist who works with pedophile priests - states bluntly that Church doctrine, namely the celibacy requirements for priests, is a root cause of sexual abuse of children. 

Church officials and their apologists always deny a connection between celibacy and child rape by priest, but two highly respected German theologians - Hans Küng and Eugen Drewermann - have been consistent in their criticism of the celibacy requirement.  Küng sees celibacy as a contributing factor; it reflects the Church's distorted view of human sexuality:

Nicht zu bestreiten ist zwar, dass solcher Missbrauch auch in Familien, Schulen, Vereinen und auch in Kirchen ohne Zölibatsgesetz vorkommt. Aber warum massenhaft gerade in der von Zölibatären geleiteten katholischen Kirche. Selbstverständlich ist nicht allein der Zölibat schuld an diesen Verfehlungen. Aber er ist der strukturell wichtigste Ausdruck einer verkrampften Einstellung der katholischen Kirchenleitung zur Sexualität, wie dies auch in der Frage der Empfängnisverhütung und anderem zum Ausdruck kommt.

And Küng had harsh criticism for his former classmate and friend Josef Ratzinger for his pivotal role in covering up the worldwide sexual abuse scandal, essentially allowing these priests to move from Diocese to Diocese where they raped other children:

"There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties"

Eugen Drewermann is a former priest and trained psychotherapist who is not as well known in the US as Hans Küng.  Drewermann has psychoanalyzed the priesthood and written extensively on what he considers the dehumanizing aspects of Catholic Church doctrine.  His seminal work Kleriker: Psychogramm eines Ideals (1991) has unfortunately not been translated into English, but many of his key ideas can be found in A Violent God-Image: An Introduction to the Work of Eugen Drewermann by Matthias Beier (2004). Drewermann sees the celibacy requirement as one component of a cruel system of psychological oppression which, in some priests, will manifest itself in deviant sexual behavior:

"A system which (for centuries!) has forced people again and again to choose between God and the love of a human being - what is this system but a really inhuman and ungodly system, because it is literally loveless and caught up in the purely external structures of power and administration! It is not disloyal priests who were courageous enough to 'lose' themselves to a woman against all the censorship of the superego who need to confess and repent before the system of the Catholic Church, but the Catholic CHurch itself is accused and has to confess before humans (and then also before God) its intentional inhumanity and mental cruelty."

 Pope Francis has shown some refreshing willingness to discuss openly the need for fundamental reforms in the Church.  It is unlikely, however, that priests will be allowed to marry anytime soon.  Until the celibacy requirement is abolished, children will continue to be at risk and lives will be damaged.

Pope Francis vs. Ludwig Erhard

 

Pope Francis shocked many conservative Catholics last week with his Apostolic Exhortation, which was a severe indictiment of capitalism.  In particular, Francis criticized one of the main tenets of neo-liberal thinking- "trickle-down economics":

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

This went too far for Gabor Steingart, managing editor of the Handelsblatt.  Each morning I receive Steingart's Morning Briefing in my in-box, and here is Steingart's take on Pope Francis: 

"Apropos Marx: Dessen Nachfolger heißt nicht Oskar Lafontaine, sondern Franziskus und ist von Beruf Papst. Unter dem Titel "Evangelii Gaudium" nennt er das herrschende Wirtschaftssystem "in der Wurzel ungerecht". Die Welt lebe in einer neuen Tyrannei des "vergötterten Marktes". Wenn an den Missständen eine Nation unschuldig ist, dann Deutschland. Wir werden dem Papst nachher eine Übersetzung von Ludwig Erhards Bestseller in den Vatikan schicken. Dessen Titel könnte Franziskus mühelos zum Motto der Weihnachtspredigt erheben: "Wohlstand für alle". "

("Speaking of Marx: his successor isn't Oskar Lafontaine, but rather Francis, who is the pope by profession.  Writing in his "Evanelii Gaudium" he calls the prevailing economic system "unjust at its very roots."  The world is subjected to the tyranny of the "idolatry of the market." If any nation is innocent with respect to these injustices, it is Germany.  We will send a translation of Ludwig Erhard's bestseller to the Vatican.  Francis could easily appropriate its title for the theme of his Christmas sermon: "Prosperity for All") 

It will be interesting to watch how this papacy plays out.  Francis is a thorn in the side of those who woship the unregulated free market, and not just in Germany.

 

Pope Francis Pulling the Church to the Left?

Many, if not most, progressives and people on the left are atheists who view the Catholic Church as a barrier to positive social change.  Pope Benedict was more interested in doctrinal orthodoxy than promoting causes of social justice.  As Cardinal Ratzinger he hounded those who wanted change out of the church. A particular target were the priests in Latin America who, in accordance with Liberation Theology, made a common cause with the poor in an effort to effect political change.   In 1984 Cardinal Ratzinger issued his Instruction on certain aspects of "Liberation Theology", forbidding the political activism of the priests:  

"The acute need for radical reforms of the structures which conceal poverty and which are themselves forms of violence, should not let us lose sight of the fact that the source of injustice is in the hearts of men. Therefore it is only by making an appeal to the 'moral potential' of the person and to the constant need for interior conversion, that social change will be brought about which will be truly in the service of man. [33] For it will only be in the measure that they collaborate freely in these necessary changes through their own initiative and in solidarity, that people, awakened to a sense of their responsibility, will grow in humanity. The inversion of morality and structures is steeped in a materialist anthropology which is incompatible with the dignity of mankind."

As a consequence, the Church stood on the sidelines or stood with the autocratic rulers who resisted any eoncomic reforms.  The Catholic Church has lost much of its moral authority throughout the continent, and is struggling to keep its flock from defecting to fast-growing Evangelical Christian groups.

However, with the new pope - Francis - things are changing at a fast pace.  Pope Francis has not explicitly embranced Liberation Theology, but he has made social justice and the plight of the poor the central focus of his papacy.  He is - up to now, at least - the anti-Benedict. 

For some on the Left, such as Roberto de Lapuente, Francis is a pope that they can work with to effect progressive change: 

Es geht doch nicht darum, wie er von diesen Menschheitssorgen spricht, sondern einzig darum, dass er es tut. In Zeiten, da die Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber den Armen zunimmt, in denen der Kapitalismus uns als Naturgesetz verabreicht wird, kann sich die politische Linke keine atheistische Arroganz mehr leisten. Wenn Menschen einen Gott oder dessen Statthalter auf Erden benötigen, um sich für das Soziale und Ökologische zu sensibilisieren, dann muss das der Linken recht sein.

Dieser Papst schwebt nicht über den Sorgen dieser Erde und flüchtet sich, wie seine Vorgänger, in die Theorie seines Glaubens hinein. Er ist Praktiker, brennt als Salz in Wunden und sucht die Vergessenen und Benachteiligten unmittelbar auf. Muss man als Linker nicht auch die Coolness haben, diese Leistung anzuerkennen, auch wenn der Mann aus einem geistigen Milieu kommt, das die politische Linke gerne verspottet und verachtet?

(It doesn't really matter how he talks about the concerns for humantiy, but just the fact that he does it. In time when there is growing indifference to the poor, in which capitalism is codified as a law of nature, the political Left can no longer retreat to atheistic arrogance. For if people require a God or His representative on earth to become aware of social and ecological causes, then the Left must accept this.

This pope doesn't turn from the concerns of this earth and flee into the theory of his faith like his predecessor. He is pragmatic, burns like salt in the wounds and seeks out the forgotten and the disadvantaged.  Don't we on the Left need to have the coolness to recognize this achievement, even though the man comes from a spiritual milieu that the political left likes to ridicule?)

 

German Homeschoolers Denied US Asylum

Over three years ago I wrote about Romeike family, who left Germany to seek sanctuary in the American Bible Belt so that they could Christian homechool their children.  They appealed to the US for political asylum, since homeshooling is not permitted in Germany. 

Now a federal court has denied the Romeikes asylum status.  Further proof that Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist sympathizer who is out to destroy Christianity. 

The U.S. grants safe haven to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, but not necessarily to those under governments with laws that simply differ from those in the U.S., Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the court’s decision.

“The German authorities have not singled out the Romeikes in particular or homeschoolers in general for persecution,” he wrote for the three-judge panel in the case, Uwe Romeike v. Eric Holder, Jr.

More than two million American children are Christian-homeshooled in the United States.  This way parents can keep their children away from those dark-skinned children of immigrants who sometimes aren't even Christian.  Homeschooled children learn that the earth is 6000 years old, that baby Jesus played with the dinosaurs and President Obama is the incarnation of Satan. 

The Right-WIng Noise Machine in the US - led by Fox News - is predicatably outraged that the Romeikes will be forced to return to Germany, where their children will be taken from them and sent to Theresianstadt - where they will be forced to study evolution. 

“Germany continues to persecute homeschoolers,” said Mike Donnelly, the HSLDA’s director of international affairs. “The court ignored mountains of evidence that homeschoolers are harshly fined and that custody of their children is gravely threatened—something most people would call persecution. This is what the Romeikes will suffer if they are sent back to Germany.”

I just have one question: how many homeschooled American children are able to find Germany on a map?

National Poetry Month: Pope Francis' Favorite Poet

Who would have thought I had anything in common with Pope Francis?  The new pope is more comfortable speaking Spanish and Italian, but in his first address as pope he included a German phrase: "Es ist ruhig, das Alter, und fromm" ("Old age is quiet and devout.") This turns out to be a line from a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) (a poem to his grandmother: Meiner verehrungswürdigen Großmutter Zu ihrem 72. Geburtstag). 

In his book recently released in German - Mein Leben. Mein Weg - Francis talks about a few of his favorite things, including his favorite poet - Friedrich Hölderlin (number two on my list of the Top Ten German Poets).  At first glance, Hölderlin might seem an odd choice for a pope, since the poet found more inspiration in the Greek gods than in the Bible.  But Hölderlin found transcendence in nature, and his exquisite verse is always seeking to express the sense of divinity in the here and now.

So let us honor Pope Francis and mark the end of National Poetry Month with one of Hölderlin's shortest and most beautiful poems:   Hälfte des Lebens ("Half of Life" or "Life's Midpoint").  Here the first stanza, brimming with natural beauty and life is contrasted with the second, where the lyric I stands alone in a harsh manmade world of walls and weathervanes, where even his voice is taken from him ("sprachlos").  

Hälfte des Lebens

Mit gelben Birnen hänget
Und voll mit wilden Rosen
Das Land in den See,
Ihr holden Schwäne,
Und trunken von Küssen
Tunkt ihr das Haupt
Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.

Weh mir, wo nehm ich, wenn
Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo
Den Sonnenschein,
Und Schatten der Erde?
Die Mauern stehn
Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde
Klirren die Fahnen.

(The Middle of Life

With yellow pears the land
And full of wild roses
Hangs down into the lake,
You lovely swans,
And drunk with kisses
You dip your heads
Into the hallowed, the sober water.

But oh, where shall I find
When winter comes, the flowers, and where
The sunshine
And shade of the earth?
The walls loom
Speechless and cold, in the wind
weathercocks clatter.)

 

Transl. by Michael Hamburger

Pope Francis and the Poor

"How I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor," Pope Francis told a group of journalists the other day in Rome.  And, indeed, his apparent humility and sympathy for the poor has resonated with many.  Does it signal a new direction for the Catholic Church?

Probably not.  Care for the poor is not the same as the desire to eliminate poverty and create a more just society - a "kingdom of heaven" on earth, where all human beings can live with some modicum of dignity.  But that would mean addressing the root causes of poverty and social injustice. And brings us closer to Liberation Theology, which holds that Jesus was committed to making society address the needs of the poor, not just giving them charity. Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara, a Brazilian Roman Catholic priest and archbishop once said:

"When I give food to the hungry they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor are hungry they call me a communist."

It was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who excommunicated or punished any priest who followed Liberation Theology teachings and tried to build social and political movements that could create lasting change.  His solution to the murderous, authoritarian regimes in Latin America?  Let the dictators repent before God: 

Sein einziger ernst gemeinter Vorschlag war, die Priester sollten die Diktatoren und die Auftragskiller dazu bringen, ihre Nächsten zu lieben und sich in Selbstkontrolle zu üben: „Soziale Veränderungen, die wirklich im Dienst des Menschen stehen, wird man nur erreichen, indem man an die Ethik der Person und an die beständige innere Umkehr appelliert.“ Ganz bestimmt bekamen es die Generäle und ihre Todesschwadronen bei solchen Worten mit der Angst zu tun.

(His (Ratzinger's) only serious suggestion was that the priests should instill love and self-control in the dictators and contract killers: "Social changes that genuinely serve people can only be achieved when one appeals to a person's ethics and inner conversion."  No doubt these words put fear into the hearts of the dictators and death squads)

And Pope Francis?  We don't yet have the complete story of his role during the brutal military junta that ruled in Argentia during the late 1970s, but we do know that he also condemned those priests who preached Liberation Theology in the slums of Beunos Aires:

Nun behauptet er, er wünsche sich „eine Kirche für die Armen“. Heißt das, dass er den Armen Brot geben will? Oder geht es ihm auch um die Ursachen der Armut? Die Diktaturen Lateinamerikas führten Kriege gegen die Armen. Vielerorts setzte sich die Unterdrückung auch nach dem Zusammenbruch der Diktaturen fort. Die verschiedenen Fraktionen der katholischen Kirche standen sich feindlich gegenüber. Was diejenigen, die die Befreiungstheologie unterdrückten, auch immer zu ihrer Verteidigung zu sagen haben: De facto waren sie Verbündete von Tyrannen, Landräubern, Sklavenhaltern und Todesschwadronen. Seiner demonstrativen Bescheidenheit zum Trotz – Papst Franziskus stand auf der falschen Seite.

(Now he maintains that he wants "a church for the poor."  Does that mean he wants to give bread to the poor? Or is he concerned about the root cause of poverty? The Latin American dictators waged war against the poor.  In many places the oppression persisted after the collapse of the dictatorships. The different factions of the Catholic Church stood in opposition to one another. Whatever those who suppressed Liberation Theology have to say in their self-defense: they were de facto allies of tyrants, land thieves, slaveholders and death squads.  His obvious modesty notwithstanding - Pope Francis stood on the wrong side.) 

Pope Francis and the 'Dirty War'

I'm not a Roman Catholic, so I don't really have any stake in who the new pope is.  Like others, I was astonished by the media's fixation on the conclave and 'white smoke' given the diminished authority of the church in the US and Europe.  I certainly did not expect that the cardinals, every one of which was complicit in some way with the cover-up of the massive child rape epidemic among priests, would choose a pope that would take the church in a new direction - or rather the promising direction promised by Vatican II. 

Pope Francis made a positive initial impression.  Certainly his humility and sympathy for the poor is welcome.  However, Francis will continue the church policies - hating on the gays, subjugation of women, priestly celibacy that distorts human sexuality, etc. - which have led the church on the path to perpetual crisis.  More troubling  was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio's role in the fascist junta which ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

Recent blog posts here have dealt with complicity of Germans in the Nazi dictatorship.  Here too we see the contradictory role of the Roman Catholic Church.  On the one hand, we have the example of Bishop Clemens August von Galen, the "Lion of Münster", who spoke out from the pulpit against the Nazi practice of euthanasia.  On the other, we have Pope Pius XII, "Hilter's Pope", who stood by while millions of Jews were murdered across Europe. 

Evidently Bergoglio follewed the path of Pius XII rather than von Galen in collaborating with an oppressive regime.  Here is Latin American observer Colin M. Snider:   

However, his election is more than a little surprising, given his past. Bergoglio was the head of the Jesuits in Argentina during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, during which the military murdered upwards of 30,000 people (as well as kidnapping hundreds of children whose parents the regime had tortured and murdered). Unlike Catholic officials in neighboring Chile and Brazil, where priests, bishops, and even cardinals spoke out against human rights abuses and defended victims of abuses, in Argentina, the Catholic Church was openly complicit in the military regime’s repression. Bergoglio was not exempt from this involvement: military officers have testified that Bergoglio helped the Argentine military regime hide political prisoners when human rights activists visited the country. And Bergoglio himself had to testify regarding the kidnapping of two priests who he stripped of their religious licenses shortly before they were kidnapped and tortured. This isn’t just a case of Bergoglio being a member of an institution that supported a brutal regime; it’s a case of Bergoglio himself having ties, direct and indirect, to that very regime. For those who hoped for a Pope who might represent a more welcoming and open path for the Catholic Church, the selection of Bergoglio has to be a let-down.

No doubt more will come out about Pope Francis and his past.  But the first impression is: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."  

Update: Was Borgoglio present at the torture of the two priests?  Read the whole transcript.                                                                                                                                  

Eugen Drewermann on priestly celibacy

As Pope Benedict XVI leaves office today, his adversary Hans Küng, the German theologian, has a hopeful op/ed piece in today's New York Times.  Küng holds out some hope that a new pope might bring some positive change to the church.  He points out that the early church was not the authoritarian institution it is today, and that some of the most destructive doctrines, such as priestly celibacy, were not instituted until the 11th century:

"It was not until the 11th century that a “revolution from above,” the “Gregorian Reform” started by Pope Gregory VII, left us with the three enduring features of the Roman system: a centralist-absolutist papacy, compulsory clericalism and the obligation of celibacy for priests and other secular clergy."

Also in the New York TImes, columnist Frank Bruni sees celibacy as the root cause of the child rape epidemic among priests around the world: 

"The promise of celibacy most likely factored into the church’s child sexual abuse crisis. Many years ago, when I wrote a book about it, more than a few mental health professionals told me that men trying to vanquish a sexual attraction to kids might well drift toward the priesthood in the hope that extra prayer and an intention of chastity would make everything right. One Catholic archbishop, Daniel Sheehan, who has since died, told me: “It could well be that a person with this kind of a hidden psychosexual problem could escape to the seminary and the like, thinking in some way that this would be a way of sublimating this problem.”

No one has written more about the psychology of the priesthood than Eugen Drewermann, a brilliant theologian and pyschologist who was forced from the priesthood by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.  In his 1990 study Kleriker: Psychogramm eines Ideals [Clergy: Psychogram of an ideal) Drewermann deals extensively with the church's distorted views on human sexuality and its destructive impact on priests.  For Drewermann, none of the reforms hoped for by Hans Küng can happen until the celibacy requirement is eliminated:

"A system which (for centuries!) has forced people again and again to choose between God and the love of a human being - what is this system but a really inhuman and ungodly system, because it is literally loveless and caught up in the purely external structures of power and administration! It is not disloyal priests who were courageous enough to 'lose' themselves to a woman against all the censorship of the superego who need to confess and repent before the system of the Catholic Church, but the Catholic CHurch itself is accused and has to confess before humans (and then also before God) its intentional inhumanity and mental cruelty."

Read the open letter to Pope Benedict by sexual partners of priests.