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Mair Argues Religion with Tyee Readers

Focus: Catholic hierarchy.

Rafe Mair 29 Oct 2007TheTyee.ca

Rafe Mair writes a Monday column for The Tyee. Read previous columns by Rafe Mair. To register for free to hear Rafe Live, Mair's new webcast, visit www.rafelive.com.

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Pope Pius VII: Napoleon's buddy.

It's not often that replies to an article segue into another, but here goes. On Oct. 22nd appeared my article "Sex, Religion and, Yes, Politics," the point of which was that religions have an utterly appalling record when it comes to following the teachings of Jesus. I make the distinction between the Church of God and that of man.

God, or a higher authority, if such exists, cannot be blamed for the serial horrors perpetrated by those who abuse his name.

One reader of my last column, I would guess a Catholic, made the following observations:

"There's a lot of condoms being thrown at Africa right now. It's our substitute for policy. I'm not convinced lack of access to condoms is the cause of AIDS in Africa, any more than it is in latex-saturated gay male communities in North America. Besides, not having sex never killed anyone. Whatever their merits, can you honestly claim that Christian sexual ethics are the real problem on that continent? Gimme a break."

Of course I can make that claim -- that's easy. What isn't easy is to make an intelligent, rhetoric-free answer. The Roman Catholic Church condemns the use of condoms as a matter of policy which directly relates to the high birth rate in Africa and the horrendous plague of AIDS. After it's condemned the means by which these horrors can be much lessened, the same church comes in with its help and nostrums.

"And the RC Church does not teach that the Bible is the literal word of God from cover-to-cover. Enough Catholic-bashing at The Tyee please. Get your facts straight."

The simple answer to this is that I didn't say it did. The reader should learn to read. In fact in many ways the doctrines of the Catholic Church on homosexuality and unwanted children is far more damaging than the nonsense peddled by fundamentalist Christians. These doctrines, incidentally, are the results of Papal decisions not from Biblical pronouncements.

Another reader...

"Although I don't believe for a second Rafe would defend anyone's religious rights, that sentence is just window dressing to excuse hate propaganda."

Hate propaganda is directed at doing violence or asking that it occur. I, with five Roman Catholics in my immediate family, am hardly doing that. This reader falls into the traditional pose of martyrdom when his beliefs are challenged.

Another reader...

Seems to me that Rafe was a member of the W C Bennet (sic) regime, that old master of BS was quoted to say that God was on his side! Did Rafe resign?

I was not a member of the W.A.C Bennett government which ended in August 1972. I was elected a member of the Bill Bennett government in December, 1975, and during 5 years in cabinet heard not a word about religion.

Now that you mention it...

I will today be more critical of the Roman Catholic Church and assert that I have every right, legal and moral, to examine the world's largest Christian religion. And I start with the proposition that the Catholic Church's handling of cruel dictators has been appalling.

Perhaps we should start with the Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII that reestablished the Roman Catholic Church in France. Napoleon took the initiative in negotiating this agreement; he recognized that reconciliation with the church was politic. It would help consolidate his position, end the royalist-clerical rebellion in France, reunite the clergy, which had been divided since the French Revolution, and win the support of the large majority of peasant-farmers.

By its terms Roman Catholicism was recognized as the religion of most French citizens. Lest anyone be fooled by false history taught in school, Napoleon I was a monster whose years in power saw hundreds of thousands of deaths by soldiers and civilians for no loftier ideal than satisfying Napoleon's brutal greed.

Hitler and the pope

Fast forward to 1933 when Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, made the 1933 Concordat with Hitler. Though only made eight months after Hitler assumed power, there was little doubt of where Hitler was going. Pius XII has been both attacked and praised for his wartime actions and I'm not going to get into that other than to say that despite innumerable breaches of the agreement by Hitler, the Pope did not cancel the concord. The actions, or lack of them, of Pius XII during the war have been the subject of many books and a well known play. I simply say this -- Pius XII is responsible for making a deal with Hitler, which Hitler turned to great propaganda effect.

But this subject cannot be passed over this lightly. Here is what Article 16 of the Concordat said

Before bishops take possession of their dioceses they are to take an oath of fealty either to the Reich representative of the state concerned, or to the President of the Reich, according to the following formula:

"Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise, as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the State of . . . . I swear and promise to honor the legally constituted government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it. In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interests of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it."

In March 1933 Hitler demanded of the Reichstag that they pass the Enabling Act giving him and the Nazi's dictatorial powers. Here's how the London Telegraph of the day reported it.

According to National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen, a liberal Catholic and student of Vatican history:

"[O]n 23 March 1933, the Nazi government put forward the Enabling Act, which would allow Hitler to create new laws without parliamentary approval. This was after the Nazi-staged Reichstag fire; after the banning of the huge Communist party and subsequent arrest of thousands of communists and other anti-Nazis; and amidst a campaign of violent anti-Semitism. To become law, the Enabling act needed a 2/3 parliamentary vote ...

"The Social Democrats fiercely opposed the Enabling act. Hitler needed a 2/3 majority, so the balance lay with Zentrum, the Catholic Center Party. Zentrum leader Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, a close friend and advisor to Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, addressed the Reichstag. Far from attacking the Enabling act, or disputing Hitler's claim that Nazism was based on Christianity, Kaas called for a 'yes' vote. The Zentrum faction did vote 'yes,' and the act became law.

Kaas acted in co-ordination with the German bishops. Four days later, on March 28, the German bishops rescinded their ban on Nazi party membership ... To most Catholics, it looked as if the church wanted a modus vivendi with Hitler."

John Paul II

Much has been written about John Paul II's courage in Nazi-occupied Poland and my research shows that he indeed behaved bravely. There is no doubt that he, even more perhaps than Lech Walesa, led the Polish revolution against the Communist government. It's after he became Pope when he needed all the public relations he could get.

For example, with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the Vatican immediately recognized the new country of Croatia, which had been a Nazi satellite in World War II, within which Serbs were brutally treated. While John Paul II sought to protect the rights of Catholic Croats, he was indifferent to the plight of the Serbian Orthodox population of Krajina. He was silent when Roman Catholic Croat troops, with NATO and U.S. help, ethnically cleansed over 350,000 Krajina Serbs in 1995. This was the largest single act of ethnic cleansing during the Balkan conflict.

Down through the ages the Catholic Church supported any government that would go easy on the Church. For instance, when, in the 1980s, Catholics in Nicaragua tried to modernize the church's teaching and embrace things like land reform -- still a central issue of basic justice in countries where 99 per cent of both land and wealth are controlled by less than one per cent of the people -- they were vigorously opposed by Jean Paul II with the backing of the United States. Even when El Salvadoran Cardinal Oscar Romero (later assassinated under mysterious circumstances) went to Rome to brief the Pope he was told to "stop stirring up the masses."

Then when the Pope traveled to Nicaragua in 1986 he told the crowd to give up "unacceptable ideological commitments."

Blind eye to molestation

Then there's the utter indifference of John Paul's Vatican to priestly molestation of children under their care, as summed up by the Boston Globe, in 2002, thusly:

"In the case of almost every predator priest, church officials had reports of abusive behaviour but allowed the priests to remain in ministry, documents show. In many cases priests were sent for brief periods of psychological evaluation then returned to parishes -- where they abused again."

One report from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York revealed that 10,667 children were allegedly abused by 4,392 priests from 1950 to 2002. But the reports said the figures depend on self-reporting by American bishops and were probably an undercount.

I forbear, for the moment, mentioning the late Pope's atrocious behaviour towards women in his church and against homosexuals in or out of the church.

I challenge those who would defend The Roman Catholic Church to deal with these charges not with personal attacks on me but fact by fact. Tell us about the culture of cruelty and deal with the conquest of Latin America, the Inquisition, the execution of "heretics," the suppression of knowledge, the anti-Semitism, the homophobia, plus the matters I have raised today. The Roman Catholic Church cannot escape criticism by painting it as anti-Catholic. I'm not vilifying Catholics -- they have no more control over who's in charge of the Church than I do as to who will be the Archbishop of Canterbury. I attack the public position then and now of the Catholic Church.

It's past time that the Roman Catholic Church came out from behind their curtains of mystery and pompous pose as God's sole representation on earth, admit its sins, ask for forgiveness, and turn over a new leaf.

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