How Holy got added to Roman Empire

I have previously written how the Nazi Third Reich was (in part) an attempt at a modern restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. [See Adolf Hitler, Charlemagne, and the Holy Roman Reich]

One interesting historical tidbit is about the name itself. For centuries western European mass murderers (I mean kings, or emperors) just used the name Roman Empire to designate their fancy that they rightfully ruled the entire world. We usually distinguish a Western Roman Empire from the Eastern Roman Empire that existed at Constantinople [Istanbul] from the time of Saint Constantine (aka Constantine the Great), but they just called it the Roman Empire.

Constantine's successors made the Empire a Christian theocracy. When the Popes and another mass murderer, Charlemagne, revived the empire in the west of Europe it was Roman Catholic, the Popes having made up some stories about their theological supremacy since the beginning of the Dark Ages.

But this neo-Roman Empire, with the Pope in charge of theology and the Emperor in charge of killing anyone who disagreed, only got the tag "holy" during the reign of Frederick I. He used it in a letter sent in 1157 to his vassals asking them to follow him over the Alps to massacre the Lombard (northern Italian) cities that thumbed their noses at this pretensions to being their ruler.

Frederick did not consistently use the term "Holy Roman Empire." His successors used it on occasion for generations, until by the time of Charles IV it was used consistently and was adopted by most of Europe, even by those resisted the idea that it granted any right to boss around distant kingdoms like France, England, and Spain.

No constitutional changes in the Empire came about with the name change. It may have been a ploy to give the Emperors a leg up in their struggle with the Popes. The Popes claimed to be supreme by their direct connection to God, and the right to recognize or not recognize the Emperor and the Christian kings of Europe. The Emperors believed or at least proclaimed they received the crown directly from God, so that the Pope was in effect their chaplain, a guy they could hire, fire, and disagree with within their royal powers.

Adolf Hitler was a Roman Catholic, put in power partly by a Pope who wanted Hitler to slaughter the atheists (socialists and communists included) of the world. When Hitler was defeated (mostly by the Communists, with some minor help from America and the British Empire) the Pope [Pius XII] tried to pretend he hardly even knew Hitler. Their occasionally vehement disagreements (about the curriculum in schools, for instance) are often trotted out by historians to obscure the overall picture. Hitler was Catholic, and thought the Pope should obey him. The Pope had brought Hitler to power, bent Mussolini to his will, and also was recognized as supreme by General Franco. Their disagreements were among allies, not among enemies.

Holy indeed.

Rick Santorum for Pope?

Republican Party presidential hopeful Rick Santorum clearly believes that he has a good chance to beat out Mitt Romney for the nomination. Then, presumably, he plans to rally American voters around him to defeat the incumbent, Barack Obama. Mr. Santorum is now polling well among Republicans, despite being almost unknown 6 months ago, before other rivals of Mr. Romney imploded.

Aside from knowing he was not all that popular in his home state of Pennsylvania, where he lost a re-election bid to the U.S. Senate in 2006, and knowing he was "conservative," like most of the public I paid little attention to his positions or record until lately.

Rick Santorum is not conservative: he is reactionary. Conservatives may argue against same-sex marriage (which is an innovation) and abortion (which is an ethical dilemma). They may deny the reality of global warming, which after all as a science theory is less than 100 years old. Santorum goes further. He wants to prohibit birth control, and abolish the public education system. Given his public agenda, it is fairly easy to surmise what his hidden agenda is: to restructure the United States of America to resemble European nations during the Dark Ages.

I hope that shining the light on Santorum's unstable mental world will insure that his campaign implodes like Herman Cain's, Michelle Bachman's and others before him. On the other hand, the issue may not be decided by the time of California's presidential primary this June 5th. It is time for California Republicans to consider whether they really want an to undermine what remains of American industry and military might by destroying public education.

Do California Republicans really want to risk a socialist revolution by making it impossible, rather than merely unlikely, for our working class children to have decent economic opportunities?

People used to say that Santorum was looking for the Vice President slot. I think, given the age of Pope Benedict XVI, who is 85, that Mr. Santorum would do us all a favor by declaring he is a candidate for Pope. If successful, he would be the first American Pope.

Whereas in America even our Founding Fathers would have found Rick Santorum to be an unenlightened reactionary, in the Vatican he would fit right in. Benedict XVI has been a staunch advocate of taking the Roman Catholic Church back to the Dark Ages, with Latin as the language of choice and burning scientists as good moral instruction and monarchy as the only practical form of government.

Rick Santorum does not even seem to realize he is unbalanced in a way that even most Tea Party activists should find disturbing. Rick Santorum's program is not within the American tradition of freedom (and liberty, and justice) for all.

Adolf Hitler (who was a Roman Catholic) used his power to force (while he was alive) the Lutheran Church in Germany into a unified organization with the Catholic Church. That one-religion-fits-all view really is the inevitable end of the line of logic Santorum espouses. There is only one way to think, and that is Santorum's way, the Roman Catholic way.

Protestant Christians beware. You may think that Santorum is an ally against secularism, and for a while he may be. But you will find that if he defeats the modern, secular Americans with his crusade, he will not be satisfied. He will put pressure on Protestants to submit to the authority of the Pope. With five Roman Catholic judges already forming a majority on the Supreme Court, in a nation where only 1 in 5 citizens is even nominally Roman Catholic, you may wish you had worked harder to preserve the separation of church and state, rather than trying to bring it to an end.

Saint Peter Died in Beijing

Chinese scholars announced that Saint Peter, the leader of the 12 Disciples of Jesus Christ, ended his life in Beijing. A tomb containing his bones and a manuscript with the story of his life was unearthed during an excavation for a new skyscraper near the old royal palace. "It dated to approximately 85 A.D., when Beijing would have been the stronghold of a local warlord."

Christian scholars have always suspected that the idea that Saint Peter died in Rome was a 3rd century fabrication by the bishops of Rome. There is no record in the New Testament of the apostle Peter ever visiting Rome. The only letters in the Bible purported to be written by Peter were written from Babylon, which is a few days journey from Jerusalem. Acts of the Apostles has Peter living in Jerusalem long after the Christian religion had spread to other cities in the Roman Empire.

The Life of Peter, now being prepared for publication, appears to have been partly written in his own hand and partly written by an assistant who joined him in his trip. It records his three years with Jesus, then several decades of living in or near Jerusalem. Finally Peter decided to take the word of Jesus East. He stayed for two years in Babylon, then traveled through India, stopping and founding Christian communities which later disappeared. Finally he sailed to southern China, then worked his way up the coast to Beijing, where he died of natural causes. His assistant arranged with the local rulers for his tomb.

The Vatican immediately called the Chinese scientists and scholars, "A bunch of liars. The timing of this hoax, when the Church is trying to exert control over Chinese Catholic bishops, is particularly suspicious."

The Catholic Bishop of Beijing said it is too early to declare himself Pope. "We will need further confirmation by a wider team of archeologists and specialists in ancient languages. However, if God puts this responsibility on my shoulders, I will accept His burden."

Hillary Clinton reacted strongly to the news. "It's as if someone claimed Jesus, after he rose from the dead and departed Jerusalem, came to the Americas and preached among the Indians. If is just a fabrication to assert Chinese Communist power in the religious sphere."

Professor Moriarty, speaking for the Southern Baptist Convention, said "of course our scholars would be interested in anything that sheds light on the early Church. However, it has always been the position of Protestants that the Church should be governed by its members, not whichever anti-Christ happens to be Bishop of Rome at any given moment."

Franz von Papen, Adolf Hitler, and Two Popes

I was at Four-Eyed Frog Books in Gualala, California hoping that, despite the small size of the store, I would find something worth buying to read. I walked away with a copy of The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
by Robert Fisk in my hands. It is a 1112 page paperback, and was a bit shopworn, but the cover price was only $20.00. The cover says it is an international bestseller, and it deserves to be. Sales in the United States have not been exactly brisk, however. It is more reading than the average American would undertake in a year; it is more serious reading than most Americans get through in a lifetime.

And who should pop up on page 329? Why Franz von Papen. He gets only two sentences:

Franz von Papen, for example, was chief of staff of the Fourth Turkish Army during the 1914-1918 war and served as Hitler's vice Chancellor in 1933. During the Second World War, he was the Third Reich's ambassador to Turkey.

The context for this passage is an entire chapter on the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turkish governments (and aided by Germans, Kurds and others). The historical connections turned out to be more interesting than I had anticipated, but since this essay is on von Papen, I'll urge you to read the chapter in the course of reading this enlightening book.

Of course I cannot be sure when my eyes first saw the name "Franz von Papen," but my guess it was while reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
by William L. Shrirer. Unfortunately my folk singer friend Texas John borrowed my copy, so I can't quote you chapter and verse at the moment. My impressions of von Papen were that he was a powerful man from the German aristocracy. There were many right-wing German parties before Hitler came to power; most were way to the right of the Nazis, in the sense of being traditional rather than modernizing parties. Franz, like so many other of these powerful men, did not really like Adolf Hitler. But their own parties were not all that popular, and they needed the National Socialist voters block in parliament to set up their grand-right wing coalition. After Hitler made himself dictator most of them became Nazis, but many could not stomach being ruled by someone who started as a nobody, and an Austrian nobody at that, so they went back to their wealthy estates and grumbled while Germany was destroyed.

As detailed as Rise and Fall is, it leaves out a major theme. Franz von Papen was not just a right-wing leader. He worked closely with two Popes, Pius XI and Pius XII. And they were the ones who decided that Hitler was the man for the job. The real job was destroying socialism and communism, including the ultimately failed attack on the Soviet Union. The Roman Catholic Church thrilled as their guy, Hitler, liquidated over twenty million atheists. When the Catholics/Fascists lost World War II, however, suddenly the Popes pretended like they had never liked Hitler. They used to the political muscle of Catholics in the United States, who were almost all Democratic Party supporters, to make a deal to hush up their involvement with the Nazis. With the Cold War settling in shortly after the Nazis were defeated, suddenly Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Churchill and all wanted the Catholic Church to help stiffen up resistance against the global communist movement.

Rather than repeat myself, I refer you to Pius XI and the Rise of Adolf Hitler. Note that Pius XII was Pius XI's henchman in Germany during most of the period when the Nazis were rising to power.

And why is the Armenian Genocide issue so important in this context? Because the Catholic Church historians have gone to great lengths to pretend that they had nothing to do with the Jewish Holocaust. But Robert Fisk deduces, with good reason, that Hitler started planning to liquidate Jews (and Poles, and atheists, etc.) early on and discussed the methodology of such large-scale murder with von Papen, Max von Scheubner-Richter and others. So the Pope's guy was part of a gang that helped plan the Holocaust long before Hitler was anywhere near being in power.

Fisk's chapter on Armenia made me think about just how common genocide has been historically. It has been all too common, not the exception. The Jews record using genocidal methods against the Canaanites at the dawn of recorded history. The American Indians were the victims of genocide. Even the Angle-Saxons, after launching genocide against the Celtic inhabitants of the isles, found themselves victimized in much the same ways by first the Danes and then the Normans.

It really is way past time to put a stop to genocide, and war of all kinds. I hope you will join me and millions of others around the globe in demonstrating against the Barack Obama's war in Afghanistan, and war in general, this October. Check with your favorite peace group for details.

Franz von Papen Wikipedia page

Saint Peter Denied Jesus; Pope Denies Holocaust

"Saint" Peter famously denied knowing Jesus three times just prior to the Crucifixion [Bible, Mark 14:66-72], yet according to Roman Catholic lore he went on to become the first bishop of Rome, or Pope. The Catholic Church maintains that God made Peter and his successors His representative and Monarch on earth.

This week Benedict XVI, who was a teenage Hitler Youth, "healed a schism" in the Catholic Church by welcoming back four Bishops who are part of an ultra-conservative group that split from the Church in 1970 with archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Pope Benedict has not offered to reconcile with "liberal" Catholics that he and his predecessors expelled from the Church for the heresy of Liberation Theology, or even milder advocacy of reforms such as allowing female priests.

In the news media, the controversy is centered on Bishop Richard Williamson, who basically denied that the Holocaust was a purposeful attempt to exterminate Jews.

What is wrong with this picture?

Saint Peter denied Christ thrice. Apparently God forgave him and made him Pope. But ever since the Christians (later to split into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox divisions) obtained state power (became the sole church of the later Roman Empire) they have not been forgiving. They have killed everyone who disagreed with them that they could get their hands on. That is how the old Pagan religions were exterminated in the late Roman empire. You could even believe that Jesus was God, and just split a theological hair or two, and the Catholic Church would burn you at the stake if they did not kill you in war. They exterminated the Christians known as Arians (not related to the aryan racial concept), the Cathars (See also Albigensian Crusade), Hussites, and Wycliff's followers in England. They tried to exterminate the Lutherans and failed, thus giving rise to the modern forms of Christianity known as Protestants.

Maybe the Jews killed Jesus, maybe not, but the Christians recorded only a handful of the followers of Jesus were killed by Jews. Christians, and Roman Catholics, have killed tens of millions of Christians over the last 2 thousand years. Of course, they have also slaughtered millions of non-Christians.

This pattern did not cease in the 20th century. In Spain the Catholic Church's loyal son General Franco killed some 2 million non-Catholics in the late 1930's. Then the Catholic fascists Adolf Hitler and Mussolini started World War II. The Catholic Church was more than happy when Hitler improved on Mussolini by exterminating atheists instead of just beating them up. Many minority groups were exterminated or slated for extermination by Hitler besides the Jews, including Gypsies and Poles.

The insane horror of all that is what is really brought back by bringing Bishop Richard Williamson back into the Catholic Church. In the 1960's the Church did not admit its past wrong doing, but at least it tried to reform itself. In contrast John Paul II and Benedict XVI are evil men who are trying to bring back the fanatical terrorist church of the Dark Ages.

Look deeper at the Holocaust and Fascism and you find the true engineers: Popes Pius XI and Pius XII. A look at the facts (See series Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism) compels any reasonable person to see that Fascism, World War II, and the Holocaust were purposeful creations of the Church.

But Roman Catholics will deny that. After all, their sect was founded by the king of denial.

Israel, Pope Pius XII, and the Holocaust

There is currently a controversy, or renewal of a controversy, about the role of Pope Pius XII and the Jews in during World War II. It is usually posed by mainstream accounts as: did Pius XII do all he could to save the Jews from the Holocaust? Since the current Pope, Benedict XVI, was a member of the Nazi youth organization and is trying to get Pius XII qualified as a saint, now is a good time to get the facts about Pius XII.

"Politics makes strange bedfellows." Here I find myself siding with the State of Israel, whereas I am usually pro-Palestinian (the Palestinians have nothing to do with this particular controversy). Israel, and doubtless many Jewish organizations, don't want Pius XII canonized.

Pius XII, before he became Pope, was the Vatican Secretary of State. Born Eugenio Pacelli, as Cardinal Pacelli he was the right-hand man to Pius XI. To understand Pius XII you have to understand Pius XI, who chose to promote Pacelli to the second highest rank in the Roman Catholic Church.

I think it is fair to say that Pius XI, who became pope in 1922, was the architect of fascism. Of course this is a controversial hypothesis, and can be argued against on a number of fronts. Benito Mussolini would be the other candidate for the title. But it was Pius XI who made anti-Communism the first priority of the Catholic Church. Under the banner of Anti-Communism (and the Church was also openly against democratic forms of socialism, and even capitalist forms of democratic government), Pius helped first Mussolini, then other fascist leaders come to power. I know that is a shocking assertion to most people, but it is not difficult to paint that picture once the facts are at hand. First, however, I want to relate this to antisemitism and thus the Holocaust.

Adolf Hitler is usually portrayed as the architect of the Holocaust. His own antisemitism, in the consensus histories, is attributed to anti-semitic cults that he encountered as a young man living in Vienna. However, this does not hold up under analysis.

Hitler was born a Catholic (See Hitler's Catholicism) and was raised as a Catholic in a Catholic state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Antisemitism in Austria was rooted in the Catholic Church. There was a close alliance between the Hapsburg emperors and the Church, which ran the education system under the tender mercies of the Jesuits. When modern ideas began to penetrate the empire in the 19th century and some representative government was allowed, an Austrian Catholic Party (Later the Christian Social Party) was formed, with the Church's blessing. Because the Church itself was be abandoned by so many citizens in the empire, the party's leader, Karl Lueger, hit upon antisemitism as the primary selling point.

The antisemitism of the Holocaust grew out of the antisemitism promoted by the Catholic Church throughout its history. It became enshrined as a principle of fascist government because the Church wanted its prejudices to be backed by the power of the state.

To consider the idea that Pius XI was the architect of modern fascism, see the following essays (they are in linear order):

Pius XI and the Rise of Benito Mussolini
Pius XI and the Rise of Adolph Hitler
Pius XI and the Rise of General Franco
Pius XI, the Rise of Petain, and Fascist Vichy France

Pius XI and his Secretary of State were deeply involved in promoting fascism in other nations, notably Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria as well.

So when Cardinal Pacelli became Pope on March 2, 1939, he had been part of setting up a series of fascist regimes in Europe. Fascist movements, mostly but not exclusively Catholic, existed in many more nations of the world, including in the United States. He was a gung-ho anti-communist who believed that fascist dictators were the best bulwark against atheist communism, and against all rival creeds. Better still, except for Hitler, who had a large Protestant Christian population to deal with, all the dictators made the Catholic Church their exclusive religious partner. Cardinal Pacelli had never spoken out against anti-Semitism. He did not even speak out against mass-murder of non-Catholics, which had just been carried out by the Spanish fascists under General Francisco Franco. Here's what he said:

"With great joy we address you, dearest sons of Catholic Spain, to express our paternal congratulations for the gift of peace and victory, with which God has chosen to crown the Christian heroism of your faith and charity ... As a pledge of the bountiful grace which you will receive from the Immaculate Virgin and the Apostle James, patrons of Spain ... we give to you, our dear sons of Catholic Spain, to the Head of State and his illustrious Government, to the zealous Episcopate and its self-denying clergy, to the heroic combatants and to all the faithful, our apostolic benediction."

That said, I don't think that Pius XII agreed with the technical details of Hitler's extermination of the Jews. Hitler saw the Jews as not just a religion, but as a race of people. Pius XII and the Catholic Church had a long history of giving Jews (and other non-Catholics) the choice of conversion or death. I believe that if Pius XII had run Hitler's concentration camps for Jews he would have gone to great lengths to convert them to Catholicism. Hitler did not give the Jews that opportunity.

You might say that Pius XII does not sound like much of a saint, but you are using your own definition of a Saint, not that of the Roman Catholic Church. There are many Saints who were mass murderers. As long as they killed non-Catholics, with the idea in mind of converting the survivors to Catholicism, they are considered to be heroes of the church.

Bill Clinton, Pius XI, Hitler and Mussolini

No, this is not one of my blogs comparing famous historical persons, with shock value from the juxtapositioning of people Americans are trained to see as saints and demons.

I've added some serious essays to www.iiipublishing.com that have not been posted in this blog. I am just letting you know about them, in case you want to read them.

Yesterday I posted Clinton Era Memories. Remember President Bill Clinton, who was supposed to represent a return to liberalism after a decade of Reagan and Bush? I sure do.

Then there is Pius XI. I am going to be writing a lot more about him because I found a book by Avro Manhattan, The Vatican in World Politics, at a used book sale. This had been very helpful in filling in the factual details about the relationship of fascism to the Roman Catholic Church. Here are the links to the first two articles:

Pius XI and the Rise of Benito Mussolini
Pius XI and the Rise of Adolf Hitler

Look forward to future essays on Pius XI and the rise of fascism in Spain, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, and France. Then there is Pius XII, who helped Pius XI with all that and continued to support fascist regimes during World War II until it became clear that the Allies would win the war.

Goodbye, Pope

The Pope came to the United States. He raised money. He left. He's a celebrity, like Paris Hilton, but craftier and less honest.

Some 2000 years before the bishops of Rome [the ruling city of the Roman empire hated by Jews and early Christians alike] started peddling the idea that they were dictators-for-life of the Christian churches, Ikhnaton, an emperor of Egypt (Egypt ruled the upper Nile then, and what we now call the nations of Israel (or Palestine), Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) declared there was only one God, Aton, which he identified with all of nature. Eventually Ikhnaton was overthrown and other gods were given their due, but the idea of one god (but not the identity with nature) eventually spread to the Jews, the Christians, and the Moslems. Christians are a bit weak on the idea, with their three-gods-in-one theology, but however much the boys might argue among themselves, the Trinity has always been willing to smite all other gods.

The Pope is a fraud and just about everyone knows it, including many of the nominal Catholics in the U.S. He preaches morality, but if he were moral himself the first thing he would do is stop pretending there is any holiness in clawing your way to the top of the church hierarchy. He might try a few reforms, a little consistency within the framework of Catholicism. He might note that invoking Mary as the Mother of God, and then saying women can't be priests, is a bit off. He might acknowledge, as most Protestant Christians have done, that celibacy and sexual hypocrisy are linked. He might allow priests to marry.

When Luther challenged the Church and lived to tell about it (unlike his heretical predecessors, the Hus and Wycliffe), the Church hierarchy noted that any deviation from Catholic dogma would lead straight to atheism. They were wrong. Honest and truthful enquiry may indeed lead to rejecting the Catholic concept of God, but religious splits are usually thinly disguised political power struggles. Each new faction claims to represent the true God.

The major fascist powers (Germany, Italy, France, Spain), Catholic all, last systematically murdered non-Catholics in the 1930's and 1940's. But things are heating up. Much of the butchery in former Yugoslavia had religious tones as well as ethnic aspects. The possibility of another round of militant Catholicism is quite real.

I suppose if we were all taught to believe in Nature, and to try to be objective and ethical in our lives, someone would invent religion and it would spread like wildfire among the imbalanced personalities of the world. The thing I saw growing up Catholic was that the Church was an engine of craziness. It was designed to make people crazy. And yet it had to keep people somewhat functional. Too crazy of a congregation and no one is going to be together enough to tithe. Channeled craziness, that is what religious institutions are looking for. General Franco's soldiers saw no contradiction in thinking of themselves as good Catholics and shooting people in cold blood because their names were on lists of people who had not been attending Mass, compiled by priests who were supposed to be the protectors of their communities.

See my religion pages for more commentary.

Catholic Violence in Argentine Dirty War

I have been exploring the largely untold story of the relationship of the Catholic Church to modern Fascism (see Catholicism and Fascism). This modern history seems to be an extension of the period when the Church depended on kings to violently enforce its one-religion-fits-all model, and in turn the Church propped up the kings.

While official Catholic Church policy has been against violence since its politicians (Franco, Hitler, Mussolini) were defeated in World War II, many members of the Church hierarchy did not hear that message (or were told to ignore it). Today the New York Times reported on the trial of a priest who aided the Argentine government during its "dirty war" against democrats between 1976 and 1983 (See Argentine Church Faces ‘Dirty War’ Past). While specific to the trial of Father von Wernich, the article might serve as a template for the Church's support for dictators in central and South America after World War II.

News articles need to be placed in context. Many Catholic priests and laypersons have rejected the hierarchy's and Popes interpretation of the Christian faith over the nearly 2 millennia the Roman church has existed. In the past some times these movements were co-opted by the hierarchy (the Franciscans are a good example). At other times they were declared heretics and murdered (the Hussites, for example). The main Protestant sects (Lutheran, etc.) took the path of splitting from the Roman church.

While the hierarchy helped identify, pressure, torture and even exterminate economic and political democracy movements in the Americas, another trend developed that so far has stayed within the Catholic fold. Their gospel is called Liberation Theology, which identifies Jesus with the poor and powerless, rather than accepting the standard Catholic Model that Jesus is a King who protects the interests of Kings, the wealthy, and South American torture junkies. Under the present and prior Popes, bishops and priests who sympathised with Liberation Theology, or even just American style liberal interpretations of dogma, have been systematically replaced with conservative theologians.

In my book democracy is the best system of government. If citizens are sick of capitalism and want to try socialism, they should be able to do that through their political institutions. If someone sets up a dictatorship, or an oligarchy, people have a right to overthrow it, whether it is right-wing, left-wing, or not on that spectrum. If people in a democracy get tired of socialism, they can vote to try capitalism again, or at least move the needle on the dial to a setting they think will work.

Religion and politics is a dangerous mixture that almost always results in violence. Religious groups are intolerant by nature. We forget that in the United States of America because no one group has ever dominated here.

I hope the Catholic Church is fading away into history. But it is still a huge institution and the many Catholic nations only recently accepted the principle of freedom of worship, or freedom not to worship. I do worry that some nations, if not the world, could backslide into promoting state religions. I hold that critique for Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish states. I am also against state enforcement of atheism or agnosticism.

Catholicism Uber Alles

The Pope announced today that non-Catholic variations on Christianity are inferior to Catholicism. Leaders of other Christian sects announced they were shocked and also announced that they had the only true version of Christianity and that all other Christian sects are inferior.

Well, it may be a small step backwards towards intollerance, but Pope Benedict's current position is still very liberal compared to the Catholic Church of, say, 1400 which declared any deviation at all to be a form of atheism and devil worship. Back then the Inquisition made a sincere effort to torture people back to the True Faith and only burned you at the stake if you failed to confess your sins and kiss the Pope's feet.

Pope Benedict XVI (that's number 16, for you Latin feebs), formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ("The Rat"), was a member of the Hitler Youth when he was a child. He claims he did not really like Adolf Hitler even back then. So that is a bit of a fib. We know what happened to all of Hitler's opponents. They were killed. So Pope Benedict XVI was a get-along, go-along type of kid back then. Only as he grew powerful did he feel that he should bend other people to his will.

Hitler was Catholic. Most American's don't know that. Neither the American govenment nor the American Catholic Church wanted Americans to know that. Hitler was born Catholic and Hitler died Catholic. Most of the early Nazis, in Bavaria, were Catholic, though it was not a requirement for joining the party.

Of course Hitler was a bad Catholic. He did not give primacy to the Church. If he had been a good Catholic he would have given Jews the option of converting to Catholicism rather than being roasted. If he had been a good Catholic he would have made Catholicism the sole religion of Germany. If you look at history, that is where most Catholic nations come from. At some point some ruler made everyone convert to Catholicism, and killed those that resisted. That is how Mexico and Latin America became Catholic. In the 1930s Hitler's fellow Catholic, General Franco, killed people in Spain for not being Catholic. This is why Franco is considered to be a Good Catholic, but Hitler was a Bad Catholic.

Catholicism Uber Alles is the new keynote of the Catholic Church. The only reason to tolerate non-Catholics is to get them to knuckle under and pay their union dues to the Pope. I am sure Ratzinger wishes he had an army, like the Pope's did until a couple of centuries ago, to further what he now must try to accomplish by diplomacy.

More data:

Vatican propaganda site
The Vatican Rag

Latin Mass Comes Back!

Pope Benedict XVI is preparing to publish a document allowing for conducting Mass in Latin. Which is a relief here at the Vatican Rag; we were worried he was going to make German the international language of the Mass.

It is unclear when the early Latin Mass evolved out of earlier rights of communion and prayer. There is no doubt that the Mass was said in Latin when I was a child, and was changed to the local language (in my case, English) when I was in Catholic School in the mid 1960's. But the reformers of that era did more than that: they changed what was said in the mass. Apparently the Mass of my childhood is known as the Tridentine Mass and was formulated in the 1500's. Apparently it had some anti-Semitic elements, which is probably why it is a happy memory for Benedict XVI.

The Latin Mass has not actually been banned all this time. You could get special permission to say it, but a lot of bishops were against it. Since the Church hierarchy has been largely purged of the reformers in the last 30 years, this new Latin Mass is probably part of a larger game plan (secret code name: Pontiff Uber Alles).

But seriously, saying that God prefers Latin is kind of weird. Is the Catholic Church really trying to say that the Roman Emperors, who claimed to be Gods and Sons of Gods, were right? It seems to me that Jesus spoke Aramaic and maybe a little Hebrew if he went to Rabbi school, which he probably did. The New Testament itself was written in Greek, bad Greek according to those who could actually write good Greek.

Why not the Greek Mass? That is what they celebrate in the Orthodox Church, which predates the Latin Church. Peter is claimed to have established the Church in Rome (See my Was Peter the First Pope?). Maybe Peter went to Rome late in life; maybe he picked up a few words of Latin.

What Latin amounts to is tradition for tradition's sake.

There are so many things wrong with the Catholic faith, I see no reason to oppose Latin Masses. People were leaving the Church as fast as they could back in the 1960's. That was the real reason we got to hear the Mass in English after Vatican II. Hearing it in English made it relatively easy to understand. Which made it easy for me to leave, and for people with a different mentality to stay.

There is a lot of value in some of the old Latin writers, but there was even more in Greek. Just a century ago knowledge of Latin was considered to be essential to a scholar. It was, indeed, the language of the educated European. However, the Mass is not one of the great works in Latin. Given that you can get good translations of Cicero and Virgil in English and just about every other language, only a language or history specialist has much business learning Latin these days.

The Vatican Rag