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Posted on 05/28/2006 7:31:33 PM PDT by streetpreacher
Pope: How Could God 'Tolerate' Holocaust?
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May 28, 6:13 PM (ET)
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
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OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI visited the Auschwitz concentration camp as "a son of the German people" Sunday and asked God why he remained silent during the "unprecedented mass crimes" of the Holocaust.
Benedict walked along the row of plaques at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex's memorial, one in the language of each nationality whose members died there. As he stopped to pray, a light rain stopped and a brilliant rainbow appeared over the camp.
"To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible - and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany," he said later.
"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"
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Benedict said that just as his predecessor, John Paul II visited the camp as a Pole in 10979, he came as "a son of the German people."
"The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the Earth," he said, standing near the demolished crematoriums where the Nazis burned the bodies of their victims.
"By destroying Israel with the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention."
Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust, during which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews.
As many as 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died at Auschwitz and Birkenau, neighboring camps built by the German occupiers near the Polish town of Oswiecim - Auschwitz in German. Others who died there included Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma - or Gypsies, and political opponents of the Nazis.
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Benedict did not refer to collective guilt of the German people but instead focused on the Nazi regime. He said he was "a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness."
He also did not mention the controversy over the wartime role of Pope Pius XII, who some say did not do all in his power to prevent Jews from being deported to concentration camps. The Vatican rejects that accusation.
Typically, Benedict did not mention his own personal experiences during the war. Raised by his anti-Nazi father, Benedict was enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a teenager against his will and then was drafted into the German army in the last months of the war.
He wrote in his memoirs that he decided to desert in the war's last days in 1945 and returned to his home in Traunstein in Bavaria, risking summary execution if caught. In the book, he recounted his terror at being briefly stopped by two soldiers.
He was then held for several weeks as a prisoner of war by U.S. forces who occupied his hometown.
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Earlier, the white-clad Benedict walked alone under the camp gate containing the notorious words: "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Sets You Free."
He stopped for a full minute before the Wall of Death, where the Nazis killed thousands of prisoners. He was handed a lighted candle, which he placed before the wall.
At the Wall of Death, a line of 32 elderly camp survivors awaited Benedict, most of them Catholic. He moved slowly down the line, stopping to talk with each, taking one woman's face in his hands and kissing one of the men on both cheeks.
Benedict then visited the dark cell in the basement of one of the buildings, the place where St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, was executed after voluntarily taking the place of a condemned prisoner with a large family in 1941. Kolbe was canonized by John Paul II in 1982.
Benedict stopped to pray again in the cell, standing before a candle placed there by John Paul during his 1979 visit.
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The visit is heavy with significance for Roman Catholic-Jewish relations, a favorite theme for Benedict and John Paul.
This was the third time Benedict has visited Auschwitz and the neighboring camp at Birkenau. The first was in 1979, when he accompanied John Paul, and in 1980, when he came with a group of German bishops while he was archbishop of Munich.
Benedict's stop at Auschwitz - his last before he left for Rome - was a somber close to a four-day trip that was otherwise upbeat, with some 900,000 people turning out for his Sunday mass in a meadow in Krakow, the city where John Paul II once served as archbishop.
Earlier, he urged 900,000 singing, clapping Poles gathered in a rain-soaked field to share their faith with other countries, saying it was the best way to honor their beloved John Paul.
The enormous, exuberant crowd chanted "Benedetto! Benedetto!" and sang "Sto Lat," or "A Hundred Years," wishing him a long life.
"I ask you, finally, to share with the other peoples of Europe and the world the treasure of your faith, not least as a way of honoring the memory of your countryman, who, as the successor of St. Peter, did this with extraordinary power and effectiveness," Benedict said as he concluded his homily during the Mass in the Blonia meadow.
"I ask you to stand firm in your faith! Stand firm in your hope! Stand firm in your love! Amen!" he concluded, speaking in Polish on the last day of his trip.
Predominantly Roman Catholic Poland joined the European Union only two years ago, 15 years after the collapse of communist rule.
"He told us that we should remain ourselves, that we should stay as we were before, attached to our traditions and Christian values," said Jacek Radon, 37, a Krakow businessman. "We should carry into the European Union our attachment to faith and to Christ."
A shadow was cast over the papal visit by Saturday's attack on Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, who was to say Kaddish, or the Jewish prayer for the dead, during the ceremony led by the pope.
Schudrich told The Associated Press he was attacked in central Warsaw after confronting a man who shouted at him, "Poland for Poles!" The rabbi said the unidentified man punched him in the chest and sprayed him with what appeared to be pepper spray. He was not injured.
Police said they were treating the incident as a possible anti-Semitic attack.
Schudrich, said the most important part of Benedict's message "was his physical presence at Auschwitz" but that some Jews wished he had gone further by directly addressing anti-Semitism.
"It was a very powerful statement and the words that we heard were powerful, but I'm sure some felt a glaring omission ... on the question of anti-Semitism. Jews are very sensitive to that and we are used to hearing the words of John Paul II."
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Los Angeles, California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated Press that Benedict's presence at the camp and his remarks were firm reminders that Holocaust deniers were not speaking the truth.
"He wore the uniform of the Hitler Youth. For him to now go there as the pope and acknowledge the horrors the Holocaust visited on the Jewish people and all mankind is important," he said.
Benedict, 79, has reached out to Poles by delivering parts of his speeches and homilies in Polish and by retracing beloved native son John Paul II's steps. He visited John Paul's birthplace, Wadowice, and Sunday's Mass was held on the same spot where John Paul also drew large crowds on his return trips to Krakow.
Benedict has been applauded during his visit to Poland for encouraging prayers for John Paul's canonization as a saint and for saying he hopes it will happen "in the near future."
It's ironic that a Pope would ask where God was during the holocaust...since presumably God has had the chance to ask a Pope where he was during the holocaust.
I replied in this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1639868/posts
""How could people who claim to know Me and be called by My Name allow this to happen."
Exactly, Satan is in charge and I am waiting for the Lords return.
I thought that the way he phrased the question was interesting. It reminded me of many of some of the PSalms and how they were conveyed.
Mayhap the Pope should acquaint (or reacquaint) his self with the book of Job!
Starting with the 3rd Chapter of Genesis would be even better.
It is a good question, but I disagree that it is "more valid" since God is omnipotent and man is not.
God had the power to stop it at the get go.
Oh, it's back. Thanks Moderator.
"How does an omnipotent and loving God allow evil in the world?
Why would an omnipotent and loving God have created biting flies, chiggers, mosquitos, and disease vectors?
If the son of God really came to this Earth 2000 years ago, how did the American Indians go 1500 years without hearing about it??
Etc. etc. etc.
All such questions boil down to the question of what the word "omnipotent" is supposed to mean. Does it mean 'having all the power which anybody could imagine', or could it possibly mean 'having all the power that there actually is'?
The one definition invariably leads to logical breakdowns; the other does not.
It is very obvious to me at least that the spirit world has very limited power to act within our physical realm.
Very true Jorge. But think of it this way; God has the power to stop "ALL" evil in the world if He wants to. Why doesn't He?
The Pope is not God.
We expect humans to fail.
God however does not fail. So it is a valid question why He would allow the Holocaust.
Good answer. Would to God that more would have resisted. God allows evil in as much as good men sit on the sidelines.
Ezek 22:30-23:1
30 "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. 31 So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD."
Isa 59:15-18
15 Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.
The LORD looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no one,
he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm worked salvation for him,
and his own righteousness sustained him.
17 He put on righteousness as his breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on the garments of vengeance
and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
18 According to what they have done,
so will he repay
wrath to his enemies
and retribution to his foes;
he will repay the islands their due.
(from New International Version)
The only answer I would have is that the day God stops all evil will be the Judgment Day.....and out of His mercy delays that day in order that all who might repent, can repent and be saved.
But that doesn't mean He is unable to stop specific acts of evil in the world, such as the Holocaust. He could have ended Hitler's life before this happened. It's a mystery.
But to me it is NOT a question of the goodness of God's nature and character. We CANNOT question that. Ever.
I don't know where you're coming from as far as belief systems but let me just say that I think you are on the right track and closer to what Biblical Christianity truly teaches although most today would dismiss it as heresy.
God's power is not limited in terms of raw strength. It is "limited" only in the sense that He has allowed to permit free will. Free will demands such limitations or else freedom is an illusion. Only the Calvinist or hardcore determinist will have a problem with this.
Let me be clear for everyone that might be a little misled here by a selective quote for any one that wanders into this thread. The Pope is using that question to get into the Psalms. Catholcics have a special place in their heart for the Psalms nad in fact they compromise most of the prayers that are in the Liturgy of the Hours. This is the official Prayer of the Church and all Priests and many orders and nuns are bound to pray it every day. The laity is encouraged to pray it also. What he is doing here and is quite smart is tackling this in a way that his Jewish audience can relate to also.
Here is the entire a revelant portion of the Homily today.
"How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?
The words of Psalm 44 come to mind, Israel's lament for its woes: "You have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness ... because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!" (Psalm 44:19,22-26).
This cry of anguish, which Israel raised to God in its suffering, at moments of deep distress, is also the cry for help raised by all those who in every age -- yesterday, today and tomorrow -- suffer for the love of God, for the love of truth and goodness. How many they are, even in our own day!
We cannot peer into God's mysterious plan -- we see only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history. Then we would not be defending man, but only contributing to his downfall. No -- when all is said and done, we must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature!
And our cry to God must also be a cry that pierces our very heart, a cry that awakens within us God's hidden presence -- so that his power, the power he has planted in our hearts, will not be buried or choked within us by the mire of selfishness, pusillanimity, indifference or opportunism.
Let us cry out to God, with all our hearts, at the present hour, when new misfortunes befall us, when all the forces of darkness seem to issue anew from human hearts: whether it is the abuse of God's name as a means of justifying senseless violence against innocent persons, or the cynicism which refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in him.
Let us cry out to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more violence -- a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the loser.
The God in whom we believe is a God of reason -- a reason, to be sure, which is not a kind of cold mathematics of the universe, but is one with love and with goodness. We make our prayer to God and we appeal to humanity, that this reason, the logic of love and the recognition of the power of reconciliation and peace, may prevail over the threats arising from irrationalism or from a spurious and godless reason."
Once again I will invoke “Job”. Read it, would explain much.
Actually I thought this was the best part in some ways
"Some inscriptions are pointed reminders. There is one in Hebrew. The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm: "We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the slaughter" were fulfilled in a terrifying way.
Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone -- to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world. By destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful"
The existence of evil doesn't prove that god isn't omnibenevolent, it is proof that we can choose to not be good. What would it mean to be good if we had no free will and couldn't be anything else?
I like this reaction from Michael Ledeen of National Review:
"Let us hope that no future Pope has to ask these questions about Western appeasement of evil in our own times."
To: SteveMcKing
If you read the whole piece, you would realize that was an introductory statement which he answers further in the speech.
It has been grabbed as a soundbite, but it isn't what he was asking. Read it!
_____________________________
How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?
The words of Psalm 44 come to mind, Israel's lament for its woes: "You have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness ... because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!" (Psalm 44:19,22-26).
This cry of anguish, which Israel raised to God in its suffering, at moments of deep distress, is also the cry for help raised by all those who in every age -- yesterday, today and tomorrow -- suffer for the love of God, for the love of truth and goodness. How many they are, even in our own day!
We cannot peer into God's mysterious plan -- we see only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history. Then we would not be defending man, but only contributing to his downfall. No -- when all is said and done, we must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature!
And our cry to God must also be a cry that pierces our very heart, a cry that awakens within us God's hidden presence -- so that his power, the power he has planted in our hearts, will not be buried or choked within us by the mire of selfishness, pusillanimity, indifference or opportunism.
Let us cry out to God, with all our hearts, at the present hour, when new misfortunes befall us, when all the forces of darkness seem to issue anew from human hearts: whether it is the abuse of God's name as a means of justifying senseless violence against innocent persons, or the cynicism which refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in him.
Let us cry out to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more violence -- a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the loser.
The God in whom we believe is a God of reason -- a reason, to be sure, which is not a kind of cold mathematics of the universe, but is one with love and with goodness. We make our prayer to God and we appeal to humanity, that this reason, the logic of love and the recognition of the power of reconciliation and peace, may prevail over the threats arising from irrationalism or from a spurious and godless reason.
The place where we are standing is a place of memory. The past is never simply the past. It always has something to say to us; it tells us the paths to take and the paths not to take. Like John Paul II, I have walked alongside the inscriptions in various languages erected in memory of those who died here: inscriptions in Belarusian, Czech, German, French, Greek, Hebrew, Croatian, Italian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Romani, Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Ukrainian, Judeo-Spanish and English.
All these inscriptions speak of human grief, they give us a glimpse of the cynicism of that regime which treated men and women as material objects, and failed to see them as persons embodying the image of God.
Some inscriptions are pointed reminders. There is one in Hebrew. The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm: "We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the slaughter" were fulfilled in a terrifying way.
Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone -- to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world. By destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful.
Then there is the inscription in Polish. First and foremost they wanted to eliminate the cultural elite, thus erasing the Polish people as an autonomous historical subject and reducing it, to the extent that it continued to exist, to slavery.
Another inscription offering a pointed reminder is the one written in the language of the Sinti and Roma people. Here too, the plan was to wipe out a whole people which lives by migrating among other peoples. They were seen as part of the refuse of world history, in an ideology which valued only the empirically useful; everything else, according to this view, was to be written off as "lebensunwertes Leben" -- life unworthy of being lived.
There is also the inscription in Russian, which commemorates the tremendous loss of life endured by the Russian soldiers who combated the Nazi reign of terror; but this inscription also reminds us that their mission had a tragic twofold aim: by setting people free from one dictatorship, they were to submit them to another, that of Stalin and the Communist system.
The other inscriptions, written in Europe's many languages, also speak to us of the sufferings of men and women from the whole continent. They would stir our hearts profoundly if we remembered the victims not merely in general, but rather saw the faces of the individual persons who ended up here in this abyss of terror.
I felt a deep urge to pause in a particular way before the inscription in German. It evokes the face of Edith Stein, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: a woman, Jewish and German, who disappeared along with her sister into the black night of the Nazi-German concentration camp; as a Christian and a Jew, she accepted death with her people and for them.
The Germans who had been brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau and met their death here were considered as "Abschaum der Nation" -- the refuse of the nation. Today we gratefully hail them as witnesses to the truth and goodness which even among our people were not eclipsed. We are grateful to them, because they did not submit to the power of evil, and now they stand before us like lights shining in a dark night. With profound respect and gratitude, then, let us bow our heads before all those who, like the three young men in Babylon facing death in the fiery furnace, could respond: "Only our God can deliver us. But even if he does not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up" (cf. Daniel 3:17ff.).
Yes, behind these inscriptions is hidden the fate of countless human beings. They jar our memory, they touch our hearts. They have no desire to instill hatred in us: Instead, they show us the terrifying effect of hatred. Their desire is to help our reason to see evil as evil and to reject it; their desire is to enkindle in us the courage to do good and to resist evil. They want to make us feel the sentiments expressed in the words that Sophocles placed on the lips of Antigone, as she contemplated the horror all around her: My nature is not to join in hate but to join in love.
By God's grace, together with the purification of memory demanded by this place of horror, a number of initiatives have sprung up with the aim of imposing a limit upon evil and confirming goodness.
Just now I was able to bless the Center for Dialogue and Prayer. In the immediate neighborhood the Carmelite nuns carry on their life of hiddenness, knowing that they are united in a special way to the mystery of Christ's cross and reminding us of the faith of Christians, which declares that God himself descended into the hell of suffering and suffers with us. In Oswiecim is the Center of St. Maximilian Kolbe, and the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. There is also the International House for Meetings of Young people. Near one of the old prayer houses is the Jewish Center. Finally the Academy for Human Rights is presently being established. So there is hope that this place of horror will gradually become a place for constructive thinking, and that remembrance will foster resistance to evil and the triumph of love.
At Auschwitz-Birkenau, humanity walked through a "valley of darkness." And so, here in this place, I would like to end with a prayer of trust -- with one of the psalms of Israel which is also a prayer of Christians: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff -- they comfort me ... I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long" (Psalm 23:1-4,6).
28 posted on 05/28/2006 9:50:21 PM EDT by Knitting A Conundrum (Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With God Micah 6:8)
We KNOW where the pope was...he was forced to enter the Hitler Youth, or did your anti-Christian attitude force you not to read that?<P.To the people that think the Catholic Church is anti-Semetic...it is NOT!! I am a cradle Catholic raised by a very Catholic father and mother, a convert, 12 years of Catholic schooling by nuns and priests and NEVER heard a negative thing about Jews except that they did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
I guess if He could tolerate the Inquistions He could tolerate the Holacaust. Man has Free will. Since the beginning he has chosen to exercise it and all hell has broken lose. Don't make God responsible for Man's choices.
I am surprised the Pope would ask such a question. Priests are always asked why did God let this or that happen by their flock. Kind of puts them in a peculiar position when the head poobah asks the same thing.
I am willing to believe and hope that the Catholic Church as such is not anti-semitic. But it is naive to ignore the fact that there is a strong anti-semitic current in many Catholic populations. It was stronger 50 years ago than it is today, but it still exists. I went to a Catholic high school, and can recall some vivid and surprising expressions of anti-semitism. I am a Protestant, and I cannot recall anything like that expressed by a Protestant.
But then if he did our lives would be pointless.
You know...
I created humans but I'll save them from their misdeeds whenever they misbehave.
Would you prefer heaven on earth perhaps?
You deserve heaven. The question is... Will you make the right choices to earn it?
God is surprised by Man's choices?
It might even be that we were originally intended to provide the spirit world with some level of instrumentality in this physical realm. To do that, a good system of communications is needed. In antediluvian times, that existed. God spoke directly with Adam, Eve, Cain and the rest. In OT times after the flood and the tower of Babel, God spoke to men through prophets and oracles. As the first paragraph of the book of Hebrews indicates, even those things had ceased to work at the time of Christ. Our present religion is thus faith based, as Christ indicated.
It was not God who made the Holocaust happen; it was Man. There is no need to ask "why." Human beings have free will; a choice between good and evil and life and death. If they did not have this God-like gift, they would be as dumb as the beasts with their inborn programming. It is our ability to transcend that for joy or grief, that makes us uniquely human.
I suppose this Pope, (assuming you are refering to Pius XII)would point to the numerous Jew directly saved by the Vatican, including the head rabbi of Rome, who converted due to the Church's example.
"God had the power to stop it at the get go."
But to do so would be to thwart our gift of free will, making a mockery of the way in which man is created in the Divine Image and likeness.
Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"
I can't believe that a man of his stature would ask God a question like that. Where is his wisdom?
Yeah, the new book, "The Myth of Hitler's Pope" details Pius XII's efforts. He saved thousands of Jews - harbored many at Castelgandolofo. He was universally lauded for his efforts by contemporary observers. Later, the slander began.
His wisdom is in not giving the right answer but asking the right question. There is much wisdom in that I'd say.
My "anti Christian" attitude? It is quite Christian (note the capitalization) to know about the failings of POPE PIUS to take aggressive action to stop the slaughter of Jews. Maybe you need to read more history before you spout.
You speak of the Papacy as an institution. I spoke of it as one man (Pius), the Pope who headed the Church during WW2. He is every bit as accountable as "God" for his inaction. God gives each of us the power do something on God's behalf. How ironic to blame God for our own inactions.
Tell it to the Jews. That the Vatican was "under siege" and this is why it was silent. Funny I do not remember the Germans taking over from Mussolini and surrounding the Vatican and threatening to torch it. Guess I missed that chapter of WW2 history.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/688537.stm
I supppose this Pope could say many things to try to ameliorate the uncomfortable historical fact that the Church of Rome was virtually silent as a world wide moral voice during the wholesale slaughter of 6 million Jews and other (in Nazi eyes) social undesireables. I suppose this might not affect lingering Jewish bitterness toward the Vatican. I suppose the Jewish children taken in, sheltered.... and by papal directive, not returned to non-parental Jewish relatives after the war because they had been baptized...would have mixed feelings about the vatican's actions.
His wisdom is in not giving the right answer but asking the right question. There is much wisdom in that I'd say.
So, you say that there is much wisdom is questioning God's actions? Sounds like you have a lot of wisdom!
It reminded me of Elie Weisel and his descent into unbelief.
The fact is, God gave the authority to man, Adam gave it up, and Jesus took it back. Now, it's up to Christians to impose the will of God in the earth and destroy evil.
Which is what happened in WW2.
So, why does the Pope even phrase it like that? We did our job, and we'll do it again. He has access to this greater revelation of the Kingdom, unlike the Psalmist, which you referenced.
Just my opinion- who am I to tell the Pope how to minister, but he probably would have gotten more mileage out of thanking God for the soldiers and leaders who He sent to stop the Holocaust, than wondering out loud why God didn't do anything.
God is omnipotent, but read Genesis. He made Adam the authority, he blew it, and finally Jesus took it back. Now it's up to us.
Oh, and He did stop it- once enough people got in line with His will, and through them, exercised His authority over the Nazis.
Why not the first chapter?
Someone send him a footprints poster.
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