Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 08:16:06 -0800
To: •••@••.•••
From: Ed Deak <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: Carolyn Ballard: Executions in a Civilized Society?
Jan,
Why would Christian Churches, in this case Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist,
support a maniac like Hitler. Yet, they did from the pulpit, exhorting
against the Jews and later by providing padres for his armies.
Even most of the divisions of the Waffen SS had their usual contingent of
padres
from all of the above mentioned religions, with officer ranks. They were
exhorting the troops to " fight and die for the great leader with the cross
on his chest and those who fall will be sitting at the right hand of Christ
this very day".
How do I know? I saw them, I heard them and after the war I knew 2 Catholic
priests in the DP camps of Austria, who used to be SS captains, or
Hauptsturmfuehers. You never hear about this, only that a few of the clergy,
like Pastor Niemoller and some bishops have been in the KZ camps for their
opposition to Hitler, but the vast majority and the official policy were
enthusiastic supporters. Later, an alleged 50,000 war criminals escaped
Europe with Vatican passports, including Bormann and Eichmann. How did they
get them?
Beside this the advocacy of capital punishment is chickenfeed. I was
sentenced to death by the Hungarian army for "high treason and espionage",
unfortunately innocently, a few days after my 18th birthday, so I know what
it feels like. Luckily for me, the war ended the day after and I managed to
get away in the confusion.
Some fanatics can interpret anything and everything in religious/ideological
scriptures as justifications for the most hideous crimes. E.g. "Do not
kill........except........" Some of the biggest crooks and cruel oppressors
I have known never stopped thumping their scriptures to justify their
criminal actions, as "....written".
Cheers, Ed (Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC, Canada)
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At 07:39 AM 01/02/2000 -0400, Jan Slakov wrote:
***************************************************************
Dear Ed,
Thanks for your note....
Actually, I know that Carolyn shares with me some real frustration with many
Christian churches and (nominal) Christians too. ... We have come to the
conclusion that although I am not a Christian and she is, we are very close
in values and sympathies....who knows, maybe I am a "deep" Christian and
maybe Carolyn is a "deep" non-aligned free spirit!? :)
On reading your comments, I couldn,t help but think of some books I have
read telling of some marvellous reactions on the part of Christians to
Nazism. One is a book called _Conscience & Courage_ (forget the author,s
name... Another is Corrie ten Boom's _The Hiding Place_. And in Sybil
Oldfield's _Women Against the Iron Fist_ or Herman Vinke's _the Short Life
of Sophie Scholl_ you can read about the White Rose resistance movement,
which was also somewhat Christian inspired. (other books too of course...!)
Still, this does not in any way absolve most of the various Christian
Churches from the shame of their failure.
Always good to hear from you, Ed, way up in northern BC!
all the best, Jan
******************************************
From: "Carolyn Ballard" <•••@••.•••>
To: "Jan Slakov" <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Fw: death penalty article
Jan-
One of your wonderful list members very graciously pointed out to me an
error in a statistical citation in the feature article. You would probably
want to post a brief correction notice. [The error is as follows:
The word _percent_ was inserted twice, inadvertently I presume, when
referring to the murder rates in the following sentence:
In a study in 1997 comparing between states with the death penalty
and those without it, the majority of death penalty states have higher
murder rates than non-death penalty states - 6.6 percent per 100,000
population in death penalty states and 3.5 percent in non-death penalty states.]
<snip>
love,
carolyn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*****~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his
own blood." Friedrich Nietzsche
"Writing is the continuation of politics by other means." Philippe Soller
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