Posted on 10/16/2013 2:33:05 PM PDT by NYer
Following yesterday’s thwarted funeral, some reaction in Italy:
The head of Rome’s Jewish community praised protesters who blocked the funeral of a convicted Nazi war criminal as Italy marked on Wednesday the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from the Rome ghetto.
Erich Priebke’s final resting place is now unclear after the protesters forced a suspension of his funeral on Tuesday in the Italian town of Albano Laziale. His body is lying at a military airport near Rome pending a decision from the authorities.
The former German SS officer died aged 100 last week in Rome, where he had been serving a life sentence under house arrest for his role in the killing of 335 civilians in 1944 in caves near the capital, one of Italy’s worst wartime massacres.
At a ceremony in Rome’s main synagogue, the head of Rome’s Jewish community drew loud applause as he lauded the citizens and mayor of Albano Laziale for resisting Priebke’s funeral.
“For this we feel proud to be Romans,” the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, said at the event to mark the anniversary of the Nazis’ rounding up of 1,000 Jews from Rome’s centuries-old ghetto and their deportation to Auschwitz. Only 16 of them survived.
“I do not even want to say his (Priebke’s) name, not to profane this sacred place,” said the head of Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Renzo Gattegna.
“He never repented of his crimes and repeated the most incredible arguments denying the Holocaust.”
Italian lawmakers debated on Wednesday a bill to outlaw denial of the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews perished. Several other nations already have such a law.
Meantime, Catholic News Service has more:
Bishop Marcello Semeraro of Albano, secretary of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals, told Rome’s Corriere della Sera newspaper Oct. 16 that the church would never prohibit prayers for someone, but canon law does allow a bishop to deny a public funeral to a “manifest sinner” when it would scandalize the faithful.
In Priebke’s case, he said, “the crime was public and notorious, the lack of conversion was public and notorious, and the scandal it would have raised in the Christian community was public and notorious.”
After agreeing to host the funeral, the Italian district of the Society of St. Pius X issued a statement on its website saying, “A Christian who was baptized and received the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist, no matter what his faults and sins were, to the extent that he dies reconciled with God and the church, has a right to the celebration of the holy Mass and a funeral.”
The statement said the SSPX condemns “every form of anti-Semitism and racial hatred, but also hatred under all its forms. The Catholic religion is one of mercy and forgiveness.”
The SSPX has a history of comments by its leaders expressing suspicion or hostility toward Jews. In 2009, after now-retired Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the society’s bishops, there was widespread outrage at revelations that one of the four, Bishop Richard Williamson, had denied the gassing of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. The SSPX later ousted Bishop Williamson.
The New York-based Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism, issued a statement Oct. 15 saying it was “shocked” that a “fringe Catholic sect” would agree to host the funeral of a “notorious Nazi war criminal.”
Ping!
7. Take care, Venerable Brethren, that above all, faith in God, the first and irreplaceable foundation of all religion, be preserved in Germany pure and unstained. The believer in God is not he who utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.
8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.
Well, well, well.
But there is always the possibility that the sinner who is sincere and contrite and makes a thorough examination of conscience and confession can be saved. The SSPX states the traditional position. Although earlier in his life the Nazi was certainly a manifest sinner, apparently he did not commit the unforgivable sin of final impenitence (”blasphemy of the Holy Ghost”).
In the 'testimony' which Priebke arranged to be published after his death, he expressed no regret for any of his actions in war
If so, and he did not recant the willful murder he committed for a neo-pagan cause, then he did not make a sincere Confession.
No way to know if the right thing was done or not.
IF he made a complete and genuine confession of his sins, and received the Eucharist, as SSPX states, then it would seem that he had a right to Last Rites and a funeral.
If it was still thought to be scandalous, then the funeral could have been held quietly in private.
Those are big ifs. The article also says that he never publicly repented his actions. That may or may not be true. Maybe he did not admit his wrongs at the trial, but repented later. And no way to know whether he made a good and valid confession, without a priest to testify as much.
He openly defied Church teaching throughout his life.
I would say that unless credible witnesses attest that he privately repented, he should not even be interred in consecrated ground.
That was what the Pope ordered: a private funeral, not held in a church. The SSPX decided to give him a church funeral.
The person who tried to hold this funeral is not a priest in good standing with the Catholic Church or with the SPPX.
How’d Teddy Kennedy get a public funeral?
I agree. It's awful, though, that this went on in the first place, and it's very unfortunate that it's not clear that the man had repented.
Ultimately, whatever rites were performed or not, God knows everything and decides his eternal fate.
I would think [as best as I can, anyways] the best way to send these Nazi bastards off would be to construct a creamatoria using bits and pieces from Dachau and Auschwitz, etc, fry ‘em up and toss the ashes in a river. [Been done already.]
You must ask his bishop.
This idolatrous level - does this apply to Obama or I can I feint at his presence in good conscience?
The Obama cult of personality is idolatrous.
By the way, if anyone is ever in Rome, you have to go to one of the Jewish restaurants there. Some of the best food I had in Italy.
In this case, the Jewish leaders should be told that this Nazi still deserves burial, and if they want for his body to be defiled, they should instead consider defiling the bodies of their Muslim enemies. Bury them in pits full of pig offal.
When they do this, then they will have the credibility to tell others to defile the dead.
Hey, if they give high mass to Ted Kennedy, why should this be a surprise?
This is what I was thinking. I’m trying to figure out what might be different between the sins of the two. Both may have very well have confessed and received absolution before death. However, if we believe that Kennedy should have made a public confession due to the public nature of his sins (supporting abortion), then I think we must be consistent and say that this man should have made a public confession as well.
I’m writing as I think, so I’m not sure if that made sense.
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