the media as comparing the persecution of the Jews under Hitler with the alleged persecution of the Catholic hierarchy in association with the ongoing pedophila scandals, currently raging in Germany and Ireland, after a solid debut in the U.S. and Canada.
These sentiments of the Pope's personal preacher (hereinafter "PPP"), the (allegedly) Reverend Raniero Cantalamessa, are not endorsed by the church itself and that makes sense, since this PPP certainly does not. First of all, the Jews were not being criticized in Gernmany, or elsewhere in the WWII era, for any valid reason. The German racists sought the destruction of the Jews simply because they were Jews. By contrast, a whole bunch of Catholic priests have been implicated in some of the worst criminal activity imaginable--the seduction and sexual violation of youth. And the manner in which the Catholic hierarchy has often soft-pedaled these offenses and allowed the offenders to aimply change locations and continue in their priestly activities (with access to children) is absolutely outrageous!The Jews in Germany and Poland certainly never commited any systematic corruption like that. The Jews were innocent victims. The Catholic hierarchy has shown callousness and deceit in dealing with the long-standing sex scandals within its priesthood.
The PPP compared the discomfort being experience by the church's leaders to the "collective violence" against the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. Where, one must ask, is anything remotely like "violence" being visited upon the Pope, the Cardinals, the Bishops who for so long have failed so miserably to seriously address the purulent festering sore of pedophilia that has for so long been contaminating the Catholic Church? Deserved and informed criticism is nothing like "violence."
German Catholics andmembersof certainother denominations traditionally have paid a "church tax" to the government (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax), but now German Catholics are leaving the church and having their names removed from the church tax rolls. The church tax is collected by civil government and is sometimes actually withheld from paychecks of those who are members of particular churches, but when one leaves the church, the tax is no longer required. So at least some Germans, disgusted with the seemingly never-ending sex scandals and the church's miserable evasion and unresponsiveness to date, are getting out of the church and no longer paying the church tax.
I wonder what they think of the recent nutty utterances of the PPP!
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