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.”
To headlines only. Jewish ‘leaders’ have too much gawlderned time on their hands. I don’t care what they do with a dead Nazi war criminal’s body, so long as he’s dead.
Maybe Mel Gibson will make an appearance.
Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam: “We declare, say, define, and pronounce [ex cathedra] that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” "If, therefore, the Greeks or others say that they are not committed to Peter and to his successors, they necessarily say that they are not of the sheep of Christ, since the Lord says that there is only one fold and one shepherd (Jn.10:16). Whoever, therefore, resists this authority, resists the command of God Himself. " — Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam (Promulgated November 18, 1302)
So them Catholics got a double standard going on or that pope guy wasn’t so infallible after all.
There are about as many Jewish people in Italy as in Iran.
‘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.”
I don’t get your point. I would guess many, many Israeli Jews would love to see their Muzzie enemies buried in pig offal, or just buried.
“It sure doesn’t seem that any other sin, no matter how abominable or heinous or depraved, stops them as much as a person converting to Protestantism.”
That’s such a religiously prejudiced crock.
“Thank you again. I am truly ashamed of myself for not knowing or remembering this.”
Now, now, it’s not necessary for you to keep apologizing and being ashamed. You’re being too hard on yourself. Instead study up on the WWII campaign in Italy with a good book on the subject. Head to Amazon and find a book about the Nazi’s in Italy to read and then you’ll know all and won’t have to apologize again as you will know all, lol.
What makes me especially ashamed is that is the campaign my late father was in.
After how many years of the truth about the evils of abortion and contraception not being preached in Catholic churches, we now also have a woman showing up for an abortion brandishing rosary beads and criticizing a prolifer who reminded her of Catholic teaching against abortion, as reported on the blog “California Catholic Daily.” Just a few days ago, the following post appeared on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLW6uI7EAxk. The narrator describes the rosary beads dangling from the windshield of the mom who had dropped off her daughter for an abortion. The narrator asks for prayers for the young woman, who left the clinic in an ambulance for the local hospital’s emergency room.
I think you and I might agree that a great deal of the scandal, suffering and sorrow of this world results from the failure to adhere to, preach and practice the faith and morals of the Catholic Church.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.