German Cardinal Compares Abortion to Holocaust

[Kellanved]

The arch-bishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner has attracted hefty criticism following his Epiphany sermon in which he compared the practices of abortion and euthanasia to the Holocaust.

Addressing his congregation, Cardinal Meisner said "first
there was Herod, who ordered the children of Bethlehem to be killed, then there was Hitler and Stalin among others, and today unborn children are being killed in their millions".

President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel fired back at the arch-bishop, slamming his statements as a insult to millions of Holocaust victims. In an interview with news agency dpa, Spiegel said that Meisner should "distance himself immediately from the unacceptable comparison." He added such statements have, in the past, forced public figures out of office.

But a spokesman for the Cologne archbishopric defended the controversial sermon. "The Cardinal made a connection between abortion and major crimes in history. He did not denigrate the Jews, but denounced the crimes of Hitler and Stalin," he said.

...
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1452747,00.html

Just great, why do we get all the "competent" cardinals?

I've posted this here first, but it won't be long until someone posts it in LBN and/or GD...

[DemBones DemBones]

1. Do you disagree that abortion has taken millions of lives while

the world looks the other way? That is similar to the way masses of people were killed by Hitler and Stalin, as the cardinal suggested. "Similar to" does not equal "the same as."

Deaths by legalized abortion have been compared to the Holocaust before and also to slavery, with Roe v. Wade compared to Dred Scott (both flawed decisions, both denied the human nature of an entire group of people.) Such statements are intended to make people think about the horror of abortion by making them recall the horror of the Holocaust or the horror of slavery.

The cardinal also invoked the horror of Herod's decree following his learning of the birth of the Mesiah, the King of the Jews; he gave an order that all the male infants in the area of Bethlehem should be killed, infants up to the age of two years. The newborn Jesus, of course, escaped death because his father Joseph was visited by an angel who told him to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt until danger passed. We Catholics have just (December 28) observed the day of the Holy Innocents, which memorializes the young Jewish boys who were massacred by Herod's men.

It's ridiculous to say that no one can ever compare other events to the Holocaust. Hitler was not the first tyrant to order people killed, nor the first to specifically order Jewish people killed. No one historical event is exactly like another but a comparison takes note of similarities, which are certainly to be seen.

What's wrong with the statement quoted below?

"Addressing his congregation, Cardinal Meisner said "first there was Herod, who ordered the children of Bethlehem to be killed, then there was Hitler and Stalin among others, and today unborn children are being killed in their millions".

It states that Herod ordered the killing of the children of Bethlehem, that Hitler and Stalin ordered killings, and that unborn children are being killed by abortion today. What part of the statement is untrue?

[Kellanved]

2. Of course I do disagree

A German Cardinal has no business relating the Holocaust to anything.

Insulting the Holocaust Victims and putting women - many in extreme situations - in the line of Hitler is not what a churchman should do. Especially considering that the press is never far, where a cardinal goes.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. How does it insult Holocaust victims to compare

other instances of massive killings to the Holocaust? The word "holocaust" existed long before Hitler's atrocities took place but, capitalized, it has come to specifically refer to the slaughter of Jews (and Roma or gypsies, Catholics, union members, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals) by the Nazis. But are the victims of Pol Pot's regime less dead? Or Stalin's victims? Were those killings not as horrific? Isn't all killing wrong?

In comparing the killing of abortion to the killing of death camps, the idea is to make people aware that society has legitimated killing. It's not that women who have abortions or doctors who perform them are Nazis, it's that many societies today condone the killings at abortion clinics, or in death chambers, just as German and other societies during the Nazi era condoned or ignored what went on in the death camps.

We must never forget the Holocaust, but we must not ignore new holocausts.

[Kellanved]

4. Do you put choosing women in the same league as Hitler and Stalin ?

He did, I don't.

[DemBones DemBones]

5. No, I don't, and I don't read his comments that way, either.

Forty years ago, no one thought about abortion as "a woman's right to choose" but as an unacceptable action, though abortions were sometimes performed in hospitals when health reasons were seen to be serious. Such abortions were rare, though.

Then, some thirty-five or thirty-six years ago, abortion got a press agent, you might say, and its public image was polished up. But the Catholic Church has never bought into abortion's new image. The Cardinal in this article is stating Catholic teaching that abortion is murder, and it is a cardinal's job to teach Church doctrine.

Women have been encouraged to believe abortion is "choice" because "choice" sounds and feels a lot better than "killing" or "murder." Ditto for "reproductive rights," another nice euphemism for killing an embryo or fetus. Just as Germans were able to turn a blind eye to what went on in the Nazi death camps, many people are able to turn a blind eye to what goes in the abortion clinics. Those turning a blind eye are not Hiitler or Stalin, they're the people who've bought into the lies told by Hitler, Stalin, or, today, the promoters of abortion.

Some early promoters of abortion have left the "pro-choice" movement and joined the "pro-life" one, so we've learned something about the lies of the "pro-choice." For example, the woman involved as the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade now admits that she and her lawyers lied when they claimed her pregnancy resulted from rape. A physician who formerly performed abortions and was a key member of the early NARAL now admits that the "statistics" that supporters of legal abortion quoted about numbers of illegal abortions performed per year were completely made up. The promoters of legal abortion are to blame for convincing people with their lies, for influencing millions of women to seek abortions.

[DemBones DemBones]

6. Perhaps you don't support the Church's position on abortion?

Many Catholics find it difficult to support because they've been convinced that women must have "the right to choose." The social conditioning has been very strong. I bought into it for a long time myself, but always had a nagging doubt, which finally blossomed into opposition to abortion.

Since I oppose abortion, it's unlikely we'll agree about this if you support abortion. There are other thing we can agree on, though.

[Kellanved]

8. There are positions I can respect

The catholic church in Germany, lead by Bishop Lehmann, used to have a very sensitive position regarding abortion. Not supporting it, but not condemning women either.

The pope, at the request of Ratzinger and Meisner, put a stop to that - so instead of the very liberal church lead by Lehmann we had in the 90s, we now have an extremely conservative one lead by Meisner and Ratzinger.

[DemBones DemBones]

9. As a German Catholic, you certainly know more about

Church politics in Germany than I do. For the rest of it, I just don't find his comments as offensive as you do, and I don't hear him condemning women in what is quoted. Obviously, you may know of other comments he's made that do condemn women.

Whatever anyone else may think, I don't blame women for widespread abortion, rather, I blame the whole of society. We women don't get pregnant without men, we don't find ourselves in situations in which having a child is extremely difficult without others helping to make it so, and for more than thirty years we've had pro-abortion messages aimed at us constantly. I also suspect that most women who "choose" abortion have more than one person encouraging them to make that choice, making it a group decision more than an individual one.

[Princess Turandot]

7. There's a difference..

the embryo/fetus/whatever one calls it in utero, does not experience the intellectual and emotional horror, humiliation and pain that a 5 to 75 year old living sentient Jew did (or gay, or gypsy or loudmouth priest) when shoved in a railroad car with barely no food and no bathroom facilities, knowing that they were on their way to direct execution or to a horrible extended death of disease & malnutrition.

The Holocaust is in a class by itself. For one thing, it occurred in the 20th Century; I believe most people think that humankind became more civilized with the passage of time. Secondly, it was a deliberate and planned attempt to annihilate an entire race of people, solely for the reason that they existed. Thirdly, a country and a good part of the civilized world stood by and let it happen, because it was just Jews who were being murdered.

To have a Catholic Bishop make such a comment is disgusting. To have it come from a German one just proves that anti-Semiticism is alive and well in Europe and elsewhere.

The reasons women have abortions are quite varied, but I dare say that few of them have them simply out of a desire to kill.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. There are several differences. It's an analogy, it's not

intended to say two events are identical.

[AngryOldDem]

11. It's a poor analogy