Posted on 10/07/2004 7:40:19 AM PDT by carlo3b
New Pope Book Says Communism Was 'Necessary Evil'
Oct 7, 6:23 AM (ET)By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Communism was a "necessary evil" that God allowed to happen in the 20th century in order to create opportunities for good after its demise, Pope John Paul says in his new book."Memory and Identity," which is due to be published early next year, is the ailing 84-year-old pontiff's latest and perhaps last book intended for a mass circulation audience. All of his previous books have been international bestsellers.
In one chapter, the pope, who lived through both Nazism and Communism in his native Poland, reflects on the meaning of evil in life and in history.
"I have personally experienced the reality of the 'ideologies of evil'. It remains indelibly fixed in my memory," he says in the book, which is a series of conversations he had in Polish with fellow philosophers in the summer of 1993.
Excerpts of the book, which was announced Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair, were made available by the Italian publisher Rizzoli.
The pope, who has been credited with helping bring about the fall of Communism after his shock election in 1978, reveals that even an optimist like him had moments of pessimism during his life under Communist oppression.
"To me it was quite clear that Communism would last much longer than Nazism had done. For how long? It was hard to predict," he writes.
"There was a sense that this evil was in some way necessary for the world and for mankind. It can happen, in fact, that in certain particular human situations, evil is revealed as somehow useful inasmuch as it creates opportunities for good."
Many historians believe it was his support for Poland's free trade union Solidarity after he became pope in 1978 that helped the union go on to form the East Bloc's first free government.
NAZI "BESTIALITY"
The pope, whom Jews have credited with improving Catholic relations with them more than any pontiff in history, also reflects on Nazism, which he calls a "bestiality."
"The Lord God allowed Nazism 12 years of existence ... evidently this was the limit imposed by Divine Providence upon that sort of folly," he says.
"The full extent of the evil that was raging through Europe was not seen by everyone, not even by those of us who were living at the epicenter. We were totally swallowed up in a great eruption of evil," he says.
"Both the Nazis during the war and, later, the Communists in Eastern Europe, tried to hide what they were doing from public opinion. For a long time, the West did not want to believe in the extermination of the Jews," he writes.
The pope's royalties from "Memory and Identity" will go to charity as have his previous titles.
Why didn't Jesus just turn himself in and spare Judas from suicide and (probably) hell?
Finally someone beside Ronald Reagan equating Communism with Nazism. To this day the liberal left refuses to admit that there is a moral equivalence between the two. With today's leftist writers, producers & actors you'll never see a Hollywood movie about the uncounted tens of millions murdered by the Soviet Union & their surrogate states.
But Jesus knew the outcome and permitted an evil to occur for a higher purpose. He could have bound Judas, turned the Romans back at Gethsemane, brought death upon him... but chose not to. Unless you can argue that the betrayal of Jesus was not an evil, your argument doesn't hold water.
But didn't God give mankind free will, so He could judge us by our deeds ? I mean, ain't we supposed to strive to honor our Creator and make good use of what He has given us ?
But, don't forget, all of Job's terrible calamities were preceded by God saying to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?"
The head Rabbi of Rome became a Catholic after the war.
I don't think you read the post.
That must be some comfort to the millions murdered, maimed or enslaved by communism, and their relatives, eh? /sarcasm
I can promise you that it provided no comfort to my great grandfather, who had everything that he ever worked for stolen by the Communists when he was in his late 50's. This statement, I am certain, provided even less comfort for my grandfather, who was forced to flee his country of birth and leave most of his family behind at age 22 in order to simply survive. He never saw his parents or one of his brothers again, and only saw his remaining siblings for a couple of weeks in 1969.
Yes, Communism brought my grandfather to this country, and therefore my grandparents met and my father was born, leading to me and my kids. Good for me and them - but at what cost to my grandfather and his family? Those remaining behind lived in poverty and in constant fear of The State for the rest of their lives.
I find it impossible to label anything about Communism as a "good thing," except for its fall from power in the late 1980's in the former Soviet Empire. The voices of the tens of millions who were slaughtered by Lenin, Stalin & Mao, as well as all of the brutal and corrupt regimes and terrorist organizations (the legacy of which we are still seeing) supported by the Soviet Union and Red China, cry out in anguish about the evil - the utter lack of good - of that twisted and sick ideology. Sorry, the Pope is wrong. He may be perfect regarding Catholic theology, but he's off the mark on this one. Nonetheless, I salute him for having gone through what he did without losing any of his morality and decency. He's had a tough life (at least until he was elected Pontiff), and he deserves respect for that.
"I understand where the Pope is coming from. I have always said that Bill Clinton was a necessary evil so that we could all stop and realize just how 'bad' our society has become."
and about half the country agree with you, the other half enjoy the permission to be "bad" they received, Clinton did nothing wrong, after all it was only about sex.
I see your point...still, Christ made a personal sacrifice for the greater good of mankind - and still leaving open the possibility that we sinned, individually or collectively after His leaving this world.
I have trouble imagining a God specifically allowing (and, to take frog_jerk's word, planning) something like the Holocaust and Communism, with its dozens of millions victims.
I may be wrong on that account, but to me Nazism, Communism and Terrorism are not part of God's plans for us but proof of our imperfection and our need to live according His words. Not something God planned specifically, but some great evil that comes from our own free will that He gave us.
In this, the Pope is taking the position that all things are permitted by God for the perfection of the human race. His words may be shocking to some Americans, but would be readily understood by the Prophets (who said similar things about the Babylonian Captivity), the Church Fathers (who said such things about the Roman Empire) and Fatima visionaries (who prophesied such things would happen.)
All evil is permitted by God for a purpose.
Good post. It illustrates how narrow and shallow our viewpoint is compared to God's. God allows evil to exist for reasons we can't understand. Sometimes we can vaguely glipse the good that can come out an evil situation. There wouldn't be an Israel without the evil of the holocaust. In whatever happens God is in charge and does what he pleases whether it makes sense or not to us.
Amen. Excellent. I was taught God had a permissive and an active Will.
I know he may have been smeared, and maybe I'm influenced by this. Don't get me wrong, I think Pius XII was a fascinating character, and making the choices he had to face was certainly not easy when you had Communism and Fascism prospering at the same time.
Still, I regret he did not have the same words as his predecessor to condemn more firmly what Hitler did to the Jews AND to Christians, especially to Catholic priests.
I agree. I think that God and his plan for our world will decide who the next President will be. It depends on what time it is on the doomsday clock.
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