First posted on October 4, 2016
The Little Children and Jesus
People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this,
he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children
come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom
of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you,
anyone who will not receive the kingdom of
God like a little child will never enter
it.” And he took the children in
his arms, placed his hands on
them and blessed them.
Mark 10:13-16
The u r g e n c y of the message of this blog titled:
E M P A T H Y - ≠ - 9/11 Terrorist Attacks - Roman Curia & Hierarchy - Nazi Racial Policy - Extreme Homophobia - "unworthy of life”
Is that human E M P A T H Y is destroyed in children as young as 4 and 5 years of who are growing up gay or bisexual -by the powerful and lethally destructive influence of unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms. Theses norms are life-threatening to the child because they are not based on the combined knowledge acquired through the authoritative process of dialogue between science and religion. However, because of outside social or religious group pressure or because of the parent’s own personal sexual orientation conflicts - the parent under this kind of pressure will force the child to completely repress his natural - God given gay or bisexual sexual orientation. The parent will then be raising a child void of empathy. Depending on the degree of severity used to force the child to repress his gay sexual orientation, and if the child suffered from any other forms of child abuse will determine the level of the absence of empathy and the degree of violence that will be directed outward onto others.
To be continued:
To be continued:
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Pope Francis: don't interrupt others – it won't end well - October 22, 2016
Dialogue is a key element of mercy, Pope Francis said Saturday, explaining that when we interrupt others in order to push our own opinions without truly listening, we risk ruining relationships...
Pope: 'God calls us to be merciful and good, not rigid’- October 24, 2016
…The reading by Matthew tells us that Jesus’ action provoked the fury of the leader of the synagogue who was “indignant that he had cured the woman on the Sabbath” because - he said - Jesus had violated God’s Law by doing so on the Sabbath day which is set aside for rest and worship.
And pointing out that the Jesus responded calling the leaders of the synagogue ‘hypocrites’, the Pope observed that this is an accusation Jesus often makes to those who follow the Law with rigidity.
“The Law – he explained – was not drawn up to enslave us but to set us free, to make us God’s children”.
Concealed by rigidity, Pope Francis said, there is always something else! That’s why Jesus uses the word ‘hypocrites!’:
"Behind an attitude of rigidity there is always something else in the life of a person. Rigidity is not a gift of God. Meekness is; goodness is; benevolence is; forgiveness is. But rigidity isn’t!” he said.
In many cases, the Pope continued, rigidity conceals the leading of a double life; but, he pointed out, there can also be something pathological…
Read more:
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Commentary: The East-West divide over LGBT rights - November 7, 2016
…In Poland, the power of a conservative Roman Catholic Church remains large. The church is deeply hostile to same-sex marriage, and in the ruling Law and Justice Party, it has a government in tune with its most regressive influences. There is little or no anti-discrimination legislation, sex education in schools paints a negative picture of LGBT relations, and violence and prejudice against the LGBT community is usually unchecked.
Yet here, too, gay life has become more open, at least in the larger cities, such as Warsaw and Cracow. In addition, a party, originally called the Palikot Movement, committed to supporting gay unions won 40 seats in the Sejm (parliament) in 2011. It later declined, but Robert Biedron, an openly gay member of the Sejm until 2014, went on to become mayor of the city of Slupsk, a city of some 100,000 in the northwest of the country. Anna Grodzka, a transgender woman, was a parliamentary deputy until 2015…
Read more:
A Roman Catholic quandary: Presidential candidates leave faithful as polarized as others groups
November 7, 2016
…Sister Mary Traupman, a Catholic religious sister from Ross who is supporting Ms. Clinton, said the church’s pro-life teachings cover the whole range of life, not just birth. She said that also means finding ways to reduce warfare, gun violence and the death penalty and to promote better jobs and health care. She said women often have abortions due to poverty, and the Democrats’ support for a living wage, she said, would be a crucial way to reduce them.
“We cannot be single-issue voters; we have to look at the whole,” she said.
Read more:
A conspiracy theory about sex and gender is being peddled around the world by the far right - Ana Campoy November 04, 2016 Photo
The “gender ideology” discourse employs simple messages that avoid homophobic language and simplify the complex ideas of thinkers such as Judith Butler.
A new term has been creeping into the speech of conservatives around the world...
AUSCHWITZ - CHRISTMAS 2008
A flashback far more severe than in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
December 26, 2008
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2016/09/auschwitz-christmas-2008-flashback-far_30.html
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2016
“GENDER IDEOLOGY” - CONSPIRACY THEORY” - invention of the Far Right Conservatives - Religious FUNDAMENTALISTS = HOMOSEXUAL DISSOCIATION
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| Michael Sam Football player, Univ. of Missouri & NFLhttp://www.outsports.com/2014/2/9/5396036/michael-sam-gay-football-player-missouri-nfl-draft |
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Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
This entire posting has been previously sent out as a US group mailing prior to posting here on the Thalamus Center.
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Science +
+ Religion = Truth = L O V E
E M P A T H Y - ≠ - 9/11 Terrorist Attacks - Roman Curia & Hierarchy - Nazi Racial Policy - Extreme Homophobia - "unworthy of life"
= Sustains and Perpetuates Global VIOLENCE
= HYPOCRISY (Elite) & IGNORANCE (Science) &
EXPLOITATION (Political)
= HOMOSEXUAL DISSOCIATION - “…severe dissociation -
…any hint of same-sex feelings resides totally out
of conscious awareness.”
= SEXUAL ORIENTATION - Sexual Impulses & Attractions
- functions automatically and continuously
- functions automatically and continuously
throughout life under the control of the
AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM
= IGNORANCE of the SCIENCE of - Sexual Orientation -
Exasperate - Fear & Shame of Inability to
Consciously Control the Continuous
Same Sex Impulses & Attractions
= Political EXPLOITATION - To GAIN World Domination
Societal Ignorance of Homosexual Sexual Orientation
that Maintains Obsessive Guilt, Shame & Fear
Over Impossibility to Consciously Control the
Automatic and Continuous Functioning
of Same Sex Impulses & Attractions
Cardinal Raymond Burke: Gays, remarried Catholics, murderers are all the same
March 27, 2015 - Photo
Homosexual Dissociation
The Closet: Psychological Issues of Being In and Coming Out
Jack Drescher MD - 2004
…In the developmental histories of gay men and women, periods of difficulty in acknowledging their homosexuality, either to themselves or to others, are often reported. Children who grow up to be gay rarely receive family support in dealing with antihomosexual prejudices. On the contrary, beginning in childhood--and distinguishing them from racial and ethnic minorities--gay people are often subjected to the antihomosexual attitudes of their own families and communities (Drescher et al., 2004). Antihomosexual attitudes include homophobia (Weinberg, 1972), heterosexism (Herek, 1984), moral condemnations of homosexuality (Drescher, 1998) and antigay violence (Herek and Berrill, 1992). Hiding activities learned in childhood often persist into young adulthood, middle age and even senescence, leading many gay people to conceal important aspects of themselves.
Closeted individuals frequently cannot acknowledge to themselves, let alone to others, their homoerotic feelings, attractions and fantasies. Their homosexuality is so unacceptable that it must be kept out of conscious awareness and cannot be integrated into their public persona. Consequently, these feelings must be dissociated from the self and hidden from others…
…For example, a religious, homosexually self-aware man may choose a celibate life to avoid what, for him, would be the problematic integration of his religious and sexual identities…
…more severe dissociation--in which any hint of same-sex feelings resides totally out of conscious awareness. More severe forms of dissociation are commonly observed in married men who are homosexually self-aware but cannot permit the thought of themselves as gay (Roughton, 2002)…
…Strong antihomosexual feelings may represent an effort to control perceptions of a gay-basher's own sexual identity. This might translate as, "If I attack gay people, no one will think I am gay." …In other words, it is an effort to strengthen dissociative tendencies…
…Internalized, antihomosexual attitudes are often rigid and disdainful of compromise or "relativism." A patient's dogmatic belief system may not recognize the concept of respectful disagreement…
Read more:
Sexual Orientation
Sexual orientation refers to an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic and/or sexual attractions to men, women or both sexes.
Autonomic nervous system
The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal…
Sexual orientation
is an interrelated physiological and psychological life sustaining mechanism. It functions automatically and continuously throughout life - as part of the autonomic nervous system - like breathing, or the heart beating. They functions unconsciously - meaning we do not have to think about breathing that we need to take a breath. Their functioning is under the control of the autonomic nervous system, which means that they are not under our conscious control. They function involuntary and reflexively, because their continuous functioning is crucial to keeping us alive. They are our survival mechanisms, because - we cannot live without breathing or our hearts beating or exist without love and any impairment to these functions will shorten our lifespan. Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
The Eyes Have It: Sex and Sexual Orientation Differences in Pupil Dilation Patterns
August 3, 2012
…pupil dilation to stimuli indicates activation of the autonomic nervous system. This system is associated with many automatic processes such as perspiration, digestion, blood pressure, and heart rate. For this reason, pupil dilation has been used as indicator of automatic response, for example, in studies of implicit reaction and cognitive load. Other research suggests that pupil dilation can reflect automatic attention, or attention that is likely not in the conscious control of participants. It is therefore unlikely that participants suppress pupil dilation to stimuli they are sexually attracted to. Pupil dilation patterns could therefore reflect, with high sensitivity, automatic attention related to sexual attraction and sexual orientation…
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President of the Polish Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan…warned against "modifying the church's discipline”…urged "people with homosexual tendencies" to undergo therapy and not expect pastoral help… 6/20/15 - - Photo
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Pope at Mass: Be open to the Spirit, Who carries us forward - October 6, 2016
(Vatican Radio) True doctrine is not a rigid attachment to the Law, which bewitches as ideologies do. Rather, it is the revelation of God, which allows itself to be discovered more and more fully each day by those who are open to the Holy Spirit. That was the message of Pope Francis at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta…
Read more:
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Science +
+ Religion = Truth = L O V E
On Gay Priests “Who am I to Judge?”
July 29, 2013
Pope Francis
We have to find a new balance; otherwise
even the moral edifice of the church is likely to
FALL LIKE A HOUSE OF CARDS,
losing the freshness and fragrance
of the Gospel.
Pope Francis
SCIENCE can purify religion from error and superstition;
RELIGION can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Each can draw the other into a wider world,
a world in which both can flourish.
For the truth of the matter is that the Church and the scientific community will inevitably interact; their options
DO NOT include ISOLATION.
Pope John Paul II - 1988
…TRUTH is the light that gives meaning and value to CHARITY. That light is both the light of REASON and the light of FAITH, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as GIFT, acceptance, and communion. WITHOUT truth, charity degenerates into SENTIMENTALITY. Love becomes an EMPTY SHELL, to be filled in an ARBITRARY way. In a CULTURE without truth, this is the FATAL risk facing love. It FALLS prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted,to the point where it comes to MEAN the opposite. Truth FREES charity from the constraints of an EMOTIONALISM that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a FIDEISM that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word…
REASON always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself OMNIPOTENT. For its part, RELIGION always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…
Pope Benedict XVI 2007 2009
Love's many splendors begin with empathy and attachment
by David Cameron
Blanche DuBois’s legendary line in A Streetcar Named Desire, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” is evolutionarily and neurologically true. Empathy and attachment are at the core of human relatedness, and a small section of our prefrontal cortex drives us to find it one way or another. Without it, we’re lost.
“Attachment to others,” says Olds, “is the original reward.” Photo
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E M P A T H Y
This year was the 15th anniversary of the Al-Qaeda terrorist’s attacks of 9/11 when two passenger jet airliners clashed in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. In documentaries remembering the events of 9/11 - 15 years later - it was striking to note the extreme contrast between the sustaining motivation among those who led the terrorist attacks and those people who immediately responded to aid the victims of the attacks. It was a contrast between empathy and the absence of empathy.
The terrorist attacks were led by disenfranchised young men recruited by al-Qaeda to sacrifice their lives in committing the human atrocities of 9/11.
Immediately following this devastating and unprecedented Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks - TV news anchors stationed in New York City, i.e. NBC Today Show - reported that behind the scenes they were caught off guard and left in a state of shock, disbelief and utter confusion, the same as the rest of the world, especially for native New Yorkers. However, collectively they felt a strong moral obligation as journalists that they had to rise above their overwhelming personal emotional feelings and to report accurately the events.
At the same time, on the ground in New York City - the first responders: firefighters, rescue and recovery workers, other trained volunteers, including near by residents - immediately were rushing to the scene of terrorist attacks, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. These first responders of 9/11 were unconcerned about the what or why these terrorist attacks took place or about their personal safety, nor were they deterred by the overwhelming emotional feelings of the unfolding situation - their first and only concern was to focus on helping to save people’s lives.
It is extraordinary to observe the contrast between the Al-Qaeda terrorists who flew the jet airlines into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center killing thousands of people, including themselves and the first responders on the ground risking their lives to help save the lives of thousands of people - is the direct opposite. The sacrificing one’s life to indiscriminately kill people and the sacrificing one’s life in the attempt to save people.
The Development of Empathy: How, When, and Why
Nicole M. McDonald & Daniel S. Messinger - 2011
Empathy is a potential psychological motivator for helping others in distress. Empathy can be defined as the ability to feel or imagine another person’s emotional experience. The ability to empathize is an important part of social and emotional development, affecting an individual’s behavior toward others and the quality of social relationships…
…The ability to empathize begins at an early age, with infants as young as 18 hours showing some responsiveness to other infants’ distress. During the second year of life, toddlers responses to others’ distress typically transform from an overwhelming personal distress reaction to a more other oriented empathic reaction. At the same time, toddlers become capable of rather sophisticated helping behaviors. As children reach the preschool years, significant developments occur in cognitive empathy, or theory of mind abilities. There is evidence to suggest that these early dispositions toward empathy and prosocial behavior may be consistent and stable over time.
The ability to empathize develops with contributions from various biologically and environmentally based factors. These factors include genetics, facial mimicry and imitation, subserving areas of the brain such as the mirror neuron system and the limbic system, child temperament, parenting factors such as warmth, parent-child synchrony, and other qualities of the parent-child relationship. If one or more of these factors function atypically, they may contribute to empathy deficits…while the empathy deficits in psychopathy may be more indicative of impairments in responsiveness to others’ emotions.
These “disorders of empathy” further highlight the importance of the ability to empathize by illustrating some of the consequences to disrupted empathy development.
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John Paul II - b.1920 Poland
Benedict XVI - b.1927 Germany
Nazi Racial Policy 1933-1945
Pseudoscience and Pseudo-religion
Researching the how and when empathy develops in peoples lives that significantly improves life for all and what prevents empathy from developing in peoples lives that is destructive to all - is layered and complex. It all follows along lines of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI combined writings on the importance of maintaining a continuous dialogue between science and religion, reason and faith that is how truth is found. Pope Benedict XVI adds to this formula for finding truth - by stating that without truth there is no love and by emphatically stressing that any disruption is this dialogue between science and religion - reason and faith “comes only at an enormous price to human development.” John Paul and Benedict are writing from their personal experiences living through the Nazi Racial Policy - composed of pseudoscience and pseudo religion.
…The Catholic Church in Germany was systematically repressed by the Nazis and persecution was at its most severe in Nazi occupied Poland, where churches, seminaries, monasteries and convents were systematically closed and thousands of priests and nuns were either murdered, imprisoned or deported…
Nazi persecutions
Germany
The Catholic Church had been a leading opponent of the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party [Nazi Party] through the 1920s and early 1930s. Upon taking power in 1933, and despite the Concordat it signed with the church promising the contrary, the Nazi Government of Adolf Hitler began suppressing the Catholic Church as part of an overall policy of to eliminate competing sources of authority. The Nazis arrested thousands of members of the German Catholic Centre Party, as well as Catholic clergymen and closed Catholic schools and institutions. As the Third Reich expanded, thousands more Catholic priests were imprisoned or killed and Catholic institutions disbanded by the Nazis…
Nuremberg Laws of 1935 employed a pseudo-scientific basis for racial discrimination against Jews Photo
Racial policy of Nazi Germany
The racial policy of Nazi Germany included policies and laws implemented in Nazi Germany (1933–45) based on a specific racist doctrine asserting the superiority of the Aryan race, which claimed scientific legitimacy. This was combined with a eugenics programme that aimed for racial hygiene by compulsory sterilization and extermination of the Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), which eventually culminated in the Holocaust. Nazi policies labeled Jews, Romani people, Slavs (Poles, Serbs etc.) and persons of color as inferior non-Aryan subhumans in a racial hierarchy that placed the Herrenvolk ("master race") of the Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community") at the top. Jews were at the bottom of the hierarchy, considered inhuman and thus unworthy of life…
Read more:
Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism
Ian Kershaw - 2004
…The quest for national rebirth lay, of course, at the heart of all fascist movements. But only in Germany did the striving for national renewal adopt such strongly pseudo-religious tones…
…They could find rationality in irrationality; could turn into practical reality the goals associated with Hitler, needing no further legitimitation than recourse to the ‘wish of the Führer’. This was no ‘banality of evil’. This was the working of an ideologically-motivated élite coldly prepared to plan for the eradication of 11 million Jews (the figure laid down at the Wannsee Conference of January 1942), and for the ‘resettlement’ to the Siberian wastes, plainly genocidal in intent, of over 30 million, mainly Slavs, over the following 25 years. That, in such a system, they would find countless ‘willing executioners’ prepared to do their bit, whatever the individual motivation of those involved, goes without saying. This was, however, not on account of national character, or some long-existent, specifically German desire to eliminate the Jews. Rather, it was that the idea of racial cleansing, the core of the notion of national salvation, had become, via Hitler’s leadership position, institutionalized in all aspects of organized life in the nazi state. That was decisive.
Unquestionably, Hitler was a unique historical personality. But the uniqueness of the nazi dictatorship cannot be reduced to that. It is explained less by Hitler’s character, extraordinary as it was, than by the specific form of rule which he embodied and its corrupting effect on the instruments and mechanisms of the most advanced state in Europe. Both the broad acceptance of the ‘project’ of ‘national salvation’, seen as personified in Hitler, and the internalization of the ideological goals by a new, modern power-élite, operating along- side weakened old élites through the bureaucratic sophistication of a modern state, were necessary prerequisites for the world-historical catastrophe of the Third Reich.
Read more:
NAZI MEDICAL ETHICS: ORDINARY DOCTORS?
ROBERT N. PROCTOR, PHD
…Let me simply note in conclusion four points. First, it is important to appreciate not just the ex- tent to which the Nazis were able to draw upon the imagery and authority of medicine, but also the ex- tent to which Nazi ideology informed the practice of medical science. Secondly, physicians were not bystanders, or even pawns; many (not all, but not a few) helped to construct the racial policies of the Nazi state. It is probably as fair to say that Nazi racial policy emerged from within the scientific community, as to say that it was imposed upon that community. Thirdly, it is commonly said that the Nazis “politicized” science, and that much of what went wrong under the Nazis can be traced to this politicization. The argument I’ve made here is that one can’t consider the experience of the medical profession in terms of a simple “use and abuse” model of science. Among physicians, there were as many volunteers as victims; no one had to force physicians to support the regime. Hans Hefelmann testified to this effect in the euthanasia trial at Limburg in 1964: “[N]o doctor was ever ordered to participate in the euthanasia program; they came of their own volition.”7(p193)
The Nazis did not have to politicize science; in fact, it is probably fair to say that the Nazis “de- politicized science”—in the sense that they destroyed the political diversity that had made Weimar medicine and public health the envy of the world (with its local outpatient clinics, self-help networks, single-payer reimbursement, and similarly progressive programs). Nazism itself was supposed to transcend politics. The German state was to be a Volksstaat, not a Parteistaat; National Socialism was to be counted a “movement,” not a “party.” The Nazis medicalized politics as much as they politicized medicine; racial minorities were ostracized and then exterminated, and problems of sexual or social deviance (or both) were transformed into “surgical problems” in need of surgical solutions.
Finally, I do not want to leave the impression that the horrors of this period can be attributed to anything inherent in science or in medicine, or even in “technocracy” or the rule of professional elites. It took a powerful state to concentrate and unleash the destructive forces within German medicine, and without that state, science would have remained impotent in this sphere. In the midst of a war engineered by an aggressive, expansionist state, Nazi ideologues were able to turn to doctors to carry out acts that have come to be regarded as the embodiment of evil…
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John Paul II was 19 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in December 1939. He experienced the national terror of thousands of Polish people of the enactment of the irrational pseudoscience of the Nazi racial ideology - labeling all Poles, along with Jews and many others - as subhuman. Photo
A 19-year old Karol Wojtyla, during the construction of a military camp building in July 1939 in Western Ukraine, then eastern Poland. Photo
Benedict XVI was born in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany 1927, into the midst of the rising emotional frenzy of Hitler’s staged propaganda just 60 miles from Munich the birthplace and headquarters of the Nazi Party. Benedict was 6 years old when Hitler and the Nazi Party finally rose to power in 1933. His father was a policeman who strongly opposed the rise of Nazism and his attempts to rein in the brutality of Hitler's Brown Shirts forced the family to have to move several times (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Pope_Benedict_XVI) before he retired in 1937, when Benedict was 10 years old.
John Paul experienced, as a young adult growing up in Poland, the atrocities caused by the irrational pseudoscience of the Nazi racial ideology. Benedict experienced the same for the first 18 years of his life growing up in Nazi Germany. Hitler particularly focused on the education of young age school children - to indoctrinate children with Nazi ideology propaganda - the irrational pseudoscience of the Master Race and the need for “racial cleansing” or as Robert Proctor termed as the “use and abuse” model of science (https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-14.pdf). It was not only Nazi indoctrination that infiltrated the Germany Schools, but - “Childhood in Nazi Germany was cast in the mythic illusion of a super race...
Hitler's Unwanted Children
Sally M. Rogow - 2002
Childhood in Nazi Germany was cast in the mythic illusion of a super race. Children who did not meet the social or biological criteria of " perfect" children were removed from their homes and communities, isolated in institutions, hospitals, work and concentration camps, and many thousands were murdered (Aly, 1993; Burleigh, 1994; Friedlander, 1994; Peukert, 1987). It is a myth that only children with severe disabilities were killed or that the killings stopped in 1941; the last child was killed almost a month after the war was over. Unwanted children were orphans, children in care because of emotional or behavior problems, adolescent non-conformists as well as children with physical disabilities or mental handicaps (in addition to Jewish, Gypsy and non-white children). The campaign to remove unwanted children from the community was not only the result of Nazi racial biology and eugenics, it was part and parcel of the effort to impose control and conformity on the entire German population…
It was a social environment that evolved into an arbitrary form of racial hygiene encased in secrecy and disguised euphemisms that embodied the Nazi destruction of “lives not worth living.” It terrorized the German people by exterminating all those including children and infants who did not fit the ideal prototype of the Arian race. “The total infiltration of educational and social institutions [by Nazi policies] made total social control possible. No child or family was safe from intrusion. Leadership of educational institutions was placed in the hands of ambitious fanatics, Nazi bureaucrats, chosen for their faithfulness to the party line, rather than their competence as educators (http://www.holocaust-trc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/unwanted.pdf).” Benedict’s family had
…encountered the Nazi regime's euthanasia program for the handicapped. John Allen, a Ratzinger biographer, reports a revelation made by Cardinal Ratzinger at a conference in the Vatican on 28 November 1996: "Ratzinger had a cousin with Down's Syndrome who in 1941 was 14 years old. This cousin was just a few months younger than Ratzinger and was taken away by the Nazi authorities for "therapy". Not long afterwards, the family received word that he was dead, presumably one of the 'undesirables' eliminated during that time…(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Pope_Benedict_XVI)
1939–1945: Medicalized Mass Murder, Children first
“Eugenic Extermination”
“Children’s euthanasia” a murderous program, unique in the history of mankind, that targeted infants, children, and young adults as the means for actualizing a social Darwinist vision of society. By systematically murdering children, scientists sought to eradicate pathological phenotype — “eugenic extermination.” Not until 2000 did historians document 30 killing stations, misleadingly labeled Kinderfachabteilungen (“special children’s wards”) which were established in existing medical or other care facilities. The first victims of secret, systematic medical mass murder were handicapped German children who were murdered by physicians and nurses. “Physicians’ participation was always both voluntary and deliberate, they retained ultimate authority to order or decline a killing once authorized from Berlin.” (Lutz Kaelber. Child Murder in Nazi Germany: The Memory of Nazi Medical Crimes and Commemoration of Children’s Euthanasia Victims at Two Facilities (Eichberg, Kalmenhof), Societies, 2012 - http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/2/3/157/htm).
The mass murder of handicapped German children and adults was planned, organized, and implemented by the secret Reich Committee under the Office of the Führer which was the preeminent body dealing with racial hygiene and population policy in Nazi Germany. Its members belonged to the elite within the medical establishment. The SS had no part in the T4 so called “euthanasia” action. It was entirely carried out by health care professionals who facilitated the conditions for medical murder and heinous experiments; health care professionals implemented and actively took part in every phase of medical mass murder. The selection phase began with a State decree ordering doctors and midwives to fill out a questionnaire reporting all newborn infants and young children under age 3, who showed signs of specific mental or physical abnormalities or handicaps.
The questionnaire, couched in language using euphemisms to create the impression that the objective was a scientific survey to aid children with serious medical conditions, was essentially used as a death warrant. The children were selected on the basis of those questionnaires by three “medical experts” (psychiatrists) — Dr. Hans Heinze, Dr. Ernst Wentzer, and Dr. Werner Catel — who decided which children to kill. The program was expanded to include children under age 17. They were secretly transported to one of 22 killing wards where 27 doctors murdered the children. (Friedlander. Origins of Nazi Genocide, Table 3-4 - http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=12) [review - http://courses.washington.edu/intro2ds/Readings/23_Friedlander-review.pdf ]…
Read more:
Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP)
Medicalized Murder: Mentally or Physically Disabled Adults
The adult killing program, coded Aktion T4, (named for the address of the “Reich Charitable Foundation for Curative and Institutional Care” headquarters at 4 Teirgartensstrasse in Berlin) targeted handicapped German adults living in mental institutions and nursing homes.
The entire German healthcare system — public health officials, public and private hospitals, mental institutions and nursing homes — were mobilized. Questionnaires were distributed to elicit diagnostic, prognostic and genetic information which prominent “medical experts” used to select patients diagnosed with incurable mental or physical handicaps — they were deemed “worthless eaters” — “life unworthy of living.”…
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Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP)
It is psychological conceivable that both men may have experienced some long lasting traumatic memories of the irrational insanity of the pseudoscience of the Nazi ideology and spent a considerable amount time attempting to analyze, make sense of what went wrong. They would have been especially, as religious leaders, understandably fixated, if not devoted their lives, to make every attempt possible - to prevent these atrocities from ever happening again in the future. This is exactly what they did do from the combined perspectives of science and religion, faith and reason, to undo their past experiences of a time of the complete void of human empathy. They did this by being key participants at the Council of Vatican II and in their papacies.
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“CUMULATIVE RADICALIZATION”
Pope Pius XII (1939–1958)
Papal Nuncio to Germany 1917–1929
Cardinal Secretary of State 1930-1935
John Paul and Benedict were not the only two men who experienced the ever increasing overwhelming inhuman brutality of the Nazi regime spearheaded by Hitler’s irrational and lethal madness of racial purity. Pius XII prior to his election to the papacy in 1939, he was the papal nuncio to Germany from 1917 to–1929 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII). During this time - he was heavily involved in the evolving social chaos that began before the World War I and continued to increase during the war and the devastating economic hardship that resulted after Germany lost the war. In 1920 as Archbishop Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) he was then appointed Nuncio to the new Republic of Germany decreed by Weimar (https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/it/biography/documents/hf_p-xii_bio_20070302_biography.html). From that time on he remained right up to the end of the war, according to historical documentation the most ardent outspoken critic of the Nazi Ideology.
In 1929, he was summoned back to Rome and became Cardinal Pacelli. “David Dalin wrote ‘of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as papal nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII).’” From then on Cardinal Pacelli continued relentless denouncements against Nazism, while trying to protect the Catholic Church in Germany. In March 1937, Pacelli co-authored the encyclical of Pope Pius XI “Mit brennender Sorge" (With Burning Concern):
…accusing the Nazi Government of violations of the 1933 Concordat, and further that it was sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church". The Pope noted on the horizon the "threatening storm clouds" of religious wars of extermination over Germany. He asserted the inviolability of human rights and expressed deep concern at the Nazi regime's flouting of the 1933 Concordat, its treatment of Catholics and abuse of Christian values…
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This encyclical did little to resolve issues, in fact it only “exacerbated the crisis.” “Frank J. Coppa wrote that the encyclical was viewed by the Nazis as "a call to battle against the Reich" and that Hitler was furious and "vowed revenge against the Church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XI_and_Germany).“ The Nazis did increased their brutality against the Catholic Church - spearheaded and orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda.
Pope Pius XII
...Before his election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio to Germany (1917–1929), and Cardinal Secretary of State, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with European and Latin American nations, most notably the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany, with which most historians believe the Vatican sought to protect the Church in Germany while Adolf Hitler sought the destruction of "political Catholicism". A pre-war critic of Nazism, Pius XII lobbied world leaders to avoid war and, as Pope at the outbreak of war, issued Summi Pontificatus, expressing dismay at the invasion of Poland, reiterating Church teaching against racial persecution and calling for love, compassion and charity to prevail over war.
While the Vatican was officially neutral during the war, Pius XII maintained links to the German Resistance, used diplomacy to aid the victims of the war and lobby for peace and spoke out against race-based murders and other atrocities…
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
…Two Popes served through the Nazi period: Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pope Pius XII (1939–1958). The Holy See strongly criticized Nazism through the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, with Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) being a particularly outspoken critic. In 1933, Vatican signed a Concordat with Germany, hoping to protect the rights of Catholics under the Nazi government. The terms of the Treaty were not kept by Hitler…
…As Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli, made some 55 protests against Nazi policies, including its "ideology of race." Pacelli also assisted Pius XI draft the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge (http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge.html) critique of Nazi ideology. Written partly in response to the Nuremberg Laws, the document did not refer to Hitler or the Nazis by name, but condemned racial theories and the mistreatment of people based on race. In 1938, Cardinal Pacelli publicly restated the words of Pius XI on the incompatibility of Christianity and antisemitism: "It is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is inadmissible; spiritually we are all Semites.”…
…The Nazi regime disapproved of Pacelli's election as Pope. Historian of the Holocaust Martin Gilbert wrote: "So outspoken were Pacelli’s criticisms that Hitler’s regime lobbied against him, trying to prevent his becoming the successor to Pius XI. When he did become Pope, as Pius XII, in March 1939, Nazi Germany was the only government not to send a representative to his coronation." Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary on 4 March 1939 that Hitler was considering whether to abrogate the Concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as Pope, adding, "This will surely happen when Pacelli undertakes his first hostile act.”… Photo
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'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty - 2011 - NPR
…I’ll briefly discuss the role that dehumanization played in what is rightfully considered the single most destructive event in human history: the Second World War. More than seventy million people died in the war, most of them civilians. Millions died in combat. Many were burned alive by incendiary bombs and, in the end, nuclear weapons. Millions more were victims of systematic genocide. Dehumanization made much of this carnage possible…
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The Nazi "cumulative radicalization” effect is explained by Ian Kershaw who “...is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his monumental biography of Hitler...
…In Kershaw's view, what happened in Germany after 1933 was the imposition of Hitler's charismatic authority on top of the "legal-rational" authority system that had existed prior to 1933, leading to a gradual breakdown of any system of ordered authority in Germany. Kershaw argues that by 1938 the German state had been reduced to a hopeless, polycratic shambles of rival agencies all competing with each other to win Hitler's favour, which by that time had become the only source of political legitimacy. Kershaw sees this rivalry as causing the "cumulative radicalization" of Germany, and argues that though Hitler always favoured the most radical solution to any problem, it was German officials themselves who for the most part, in attempting to win the Führer's approval, carried out on their own initiative increasingly "radical" solutions to perceived problems like the "Jewish Question", as opposed to being ordered to do so by Hitler...
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Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism
Ian Kershaw- 2004
…So the ‘cumulative radicalization’ so central to nazism is left needing an explanation.
Linked to this is the capacity for destruction — again extraordinary even for dictatorships. This destructive capacity, though present from the outset, developed over time and in phases; against internal political, then increasingly, ‘racial’ enemies in spring 1933, across the spring and summer of 1935, and during the summer and autumn of 1938; following this, the qualitative leap in its extension to the Poles from autumn 1939 onwards; and the unleashing of its full might in the wake of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The unceasing radicalization of the regime, and the different stages in the unfolding of its destructive capacity cannot, however, as has come to be generally recognized, be explained by Hitler’s commands and actions alone. Rather, they followed countless initiatives from below, at many different levels of the regime. Invariably, these occurred within a broad ideological framework associated with Hitler’s wishes and intentions. But those initiating the actions were seldom — except in the realms of foreign policy and war strategy — following direct orders from Hitler and were by no means always ideologically motivated. A whole panoply of motives was involved. What motivated the individual — ideological conviction, career advancement, power-lust, sadism and other factors — is, in fact, of secondary importance. Of primary significance is that, whatever the motivation, the actions had the function of working towards the accomplishment of the visionary goals of the regime, embodied in the person of the Führer...
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People got caught up in this staged delusion that was grounded in this “use and abuse” model of science striving for the ultimate need of “racial purity” presented as essential in order to make Germany great again that involved removing all the inferior - less than human elements in Germany society. It was staged and disguised behind a spectacular “use and abuse” model of religion pageantry (http://time.com/3490218/a-brutal-pageantry-the-third-reichs-myth-making-machinery-in-color/). Sounds shockingly similar to a national presidential convention not unlike on the order of the political chant “Lock her up!!!” or “Lock them out!!!” to make America Great Again (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/22/the-republican-lock-her-up-chants-were-disturbing-they-were-also-inevitable/?utm_term=.1c520c3232c6) ! The mesmerizing effects of Nazi’s propaganda machinery beneath the “gargantuan Nazi banners, towering above a sea of human faces that fade into insignificance” - is a constant theme that Ian Kershaw points out in his
…writing on Hitler and National Socialism has been to suggest that they are best grasped through Max Weber’s quasi-religious concept of ‘charismatic authority’, in which irrational hopes and expectations of salvation are projected onto an individual, who is thereby invested with heroic qualities. Hitler’s ‘charismatic leadership’ offered the prospect of national salvation — redemption brought about by purging the impure and pernicious evil within — to rapidly expanding numbers of Germans experiencing a comprehensive crisis of social and cultural values as well as a total crisis of state and economy. Of course, manifestations of ‘charismatic leadership’ were far from confined to Germany in the interwar period. But Hitler’s was both different in character and more far-reaching in impact than the charismatic forms seen anywhere else…
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Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism - 2004
Due to Germany’s dire economic situation, following the consequences of their defeat and as the instigators of World War I, i.e. TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 1919 (https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005425) and THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 1919-1933 (https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008222) - made Germany fertile ground to be susceptible to the mesmerizing effects of Nazi’s propaganda making Hitler appear as the national messianic leader to economic salvation. The Weimar Republic was Germany’s first attempt at forming a democracy. The complexities of this situation are extensive on multiple levels as researched by Kershaw:
…the extraordinarily strong fears of a threat to German culture, a profound cultural pessimism in Germany’s unusually broad-based intelligentsia, widespread already before the first world war, formed one of the roots of such susceptibility. Oswald Spengler’s…tract on the downfall of western culture…published a month before the end of the war in 1918, embodied feelings which, in cruder form, had been spread by a multiplicity of patriotic organizations long before the nazis appeared on the scene. In the polarized society of the Weimar Republic, the antagonism of the perceived threat of modernity to what were portrayed as traditional and true German values — a threat focused on socialism, capitalism and, not least, the representative scapegoat figure for both: the Jew — spread both at élite and popular levels. Shored up by the trauma of a lost war, a trauma arguably greater in Germany than in any other land — in a country where the hated socialism had come to power through revolution and where established religion seemed to be losing its hold — an appeal to hopes of national salvation held substantial political potential. Though other countries were also traumatized by the war, the cultural crisis, even in Italy, ran nowhere near so deep as in Germany…
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given to the German government between the end of the Imperial period (1918) and the beginning of Nazi Germany (1933).
The Weimar Republic (and period) draws its name from the town of Weimar in central Germany where the constitutional assembly met. Political turmoil and violence, economic hardship, and also new social freedoms and vibrant artistic movements characterized the complex Weimar period. Many of the challenges of this era set the stage for Hitler's rise to power, but it is only with hindsight that some say the Weimar Republic was doomed from the start…
End of the Second Reich
World War I left Germany a shattered nation. Two million young men had been killed and a further 4.2 million had been wounded; in all, 19% of the male population were casualties of the war. At home, the civilian population suffered from malnutrition as a result of the Allied blockade, with starvation a serious and often fatal outcome. Workers went on strike in attempts to gain better working conditions; in 1917 alone, there were 562 separate strikes. In short, Germany was coming apart. The government, centered on an ineffective Emperor, devolved into a military dictatorship incapable of reforming the system…
Thus, the Weimar Republic came to bear for many the humiliation of World War I and the blame for all its accompanying hardships. In many ways, it never shook this association, particularly from the clauses of the Versailles Treaty that reduced the once proud German military to practically nothing and placed all blame for the war on Germany…
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UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 1919
…The burdensome reparations, coupled with a general inflationary period in Europe in the 1920s, caused spiraling hyperinflation of the German Reichsmark by 1923. This hyperinflationary period combined with the effects of the Great Depression (beginning in 1929) seriously to undermine the stability of the German economy, wiping out the personal savings of the middle class and spurring massive unemployment. Such economic chaos did much to increase social unrest, destabilizing the fragile Weimar Republic…
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Besides the crises related to the Weimar Republic, at the same time it was a “vibrant democracy” offering a great number of liberal freedoms that in its short existence burst forth an enormous growth of creativity in many fields i.e. science and art. The 1920s Berlin became the third largest municipality in the world. “It was known for its leadership roles in science, the humanities, music, film, higher education, government, diplomacy, industries and military affairs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_Berlin#Science).”
SCIENCE can purify religion from error and superstition;
RELIGION can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Each can draw the other into a wider world,
a world in which both can flourish.
For the truth of the matter is that the Church and the scientific community will inevitably interact; their options
DO NOT include ISOLATION.
Pope John Paul II - 1988
In the newly found Weimar Republic, 1918, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld was able to open the world’s first - Institute for Sexual Research and year later founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. “The group aimed to undertake research to defend the rights of homosexuals and to repeal Paragraph 175, the section of the German penal code that since 1871 had criminalized homosexuality. They argued that the law encouraged blackmail. The motto of the Committee, ‘Justice through science’, reflected Hirschfeld's belief that a better scientific understanding of homosexuality would eliminate social hostility toward homosexuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld).” The Committee issued a petition to overturn Paragraph 175 and succeeded in obtaining the signatures of over 5000 prominent German citizens. “Signatories included Albert Einstein, Hermann Hesse, Käthe Kollwitz, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, August Bebel, Max Brod, Karl Kautsky, Stefan Zweig, Gerhart Hauptmann, Martin Buber, Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Eduard Bernstein.”
The University of Berlin from 1914 - 1933 was a major center of some the leading scientists in the world. There were 9 recipients awarded the Nobel Prize during the Weimar Republic years, including Albert Einstein, who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. However, in 1933 with Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power a drastic change occurred that rendered scientific research meaningless in Germany - due the Nazi ideology of racial purity. Einstein along with over 1,700 other scientists left Germany, many to seek safety - others because they objected to the Nazi’s abandonment of the - empirical search for truth.
…TRUTH is the light that gives meaning and value to CHARITY. That light is both the light of REASON and the light of FAITH, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as GIFT, acceptance, and communion. WITHOUT truth, charity degenerates into SENTIMENTALITY. Love becomes an EMPTY SHELL, to be filled in an ARBITRARY way. In a CULTURE without truth, this is the FATAL risk facing love. It FALLS prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted,to the point where it comes to MEAN the opposite. Truth FREES charity from the constraints of an EMOTIONALISM that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a FIDEISM that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word…
REASON always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself OMNIPOTENT. For its part, RELIGION always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…
Pope Benedict XVI 2007 2009
Without T R U T H There Is No L O V E
E M P A T H Y
G O N E
M U R D E R E D
W O R L D W A R II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Total_deaths
The Rejection of Modern Science:
the Nazi Dismissal Policy of 1933
Colleen Harris - Jacksonville University
…Many of the scientists who left objected to Nazi-enforced methods of science. The Nazis’ “new science” was not objective; it was certainly not the “common property of mankind;” and the party used it to serve its own purposes. In June 1936, Dr. Bernhard Rust, German Minister of Science, Education, and People’s Education and loyal Nazi, declared that Nazism and official ideology were more important than was empirical, objective science. Turning the notion of empirical truth on its head, he argued that “Science which is not in accord with it [German ideology] is not objective.” For Rust, the changes made in German science were only to “enrich itself.” The Nazis maintained that they were basing science on observing nature and its reactions. Non-Aryan, theoretical science, on the other hand, did not expect one clear, definitive answer and considered each partially proven assumption to be a milestone. In Germany, as the New York Times reported, not even “a laboratory worker [could] decide for himself what the philosophy of science [should] be,” implying that science was a merely a tool of the dictatorship to be manipulated by the Führer and his party. Prominent scientists willingly gave themselves and their study to the regime…
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Weimar culture
…Germany, and Berlin in particular, was fertile ground for intellectuals, artists, and innovators from many fields during the Weimar Republic years. The social environment was chaotic, and politics were passionate. German university faculties became universally open to Jewish scholars in 1918. Leading Jewish intellectuals on university faculties included physicist Albert Einstein; sociologists Karl Mannheim, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse; philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Edmund Husserl; political theorists Arthur Rosenberg and Gustav Meyer; and many others. Nine German citizens were awarded Nobel prizes during the Weimar Republic, five of whom were Jewish scientists, including two in medicine. Jewish intellectuals and creative professionals were among the leading figures in many areas of Weimar culture.
With the rise of Nazism and the ascent to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933, many German intellectuals and cultural figures, both Jewish and non-Jewish, fled Germany for the United States, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the world. The intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research (also known as the Frankfurt School) fled to the United States and reestablished the Institute at the New School for Social Research in New York City. In the words of Marcus Bullock, Emeritus Professor of English at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, "Remarkable for the way it emerged from a catastrophe, more remarkable for the way it vanished into a still greater catastrophe, the world of Weimar represents modernism in its most vivid manifestation." The culture of the Weimar year was later reprised by the left-wing intellectuals of the 1960s,[4] especially in France. Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault reprised Wilhelm Reich; Derrida reprised Husserl and Heidegger; Guy Debord and the Situationist International reprised the subversive-revolutionary culture…
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_culture
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NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS
How E M P A T H Y Is Mutilated
E a r l y C h i l d h o o d
E a r l y C h i l d h o o d
Repressed Homosexuals - Threat to Humanity
In this next section we will explore through history - how it is not the homosexuals who is able to express empathy for others - courageously persevering even against all odds - for the right to live happily in love and to feel one with another human being that are a threat to humanity. Instead, historical evidence will show that the threat to humanity - is the repressed homosexuals who expresses a void of human empathy.
Repressed homosexuals are those people who vehemently deny the fact that they are homosexual or bisexual, they are mentally dissociated from the reality of their sexual orientation. However, their observable outward irrational antigay behavior is the validating proof of what they inwardly and endlessly 24/7 struggle viciously to keep completely suppressed out of their conscious awareness that is the constant bombardment throughout life of their homosexual tendencies: erotic impulses, sexual arousal, sexual thoughts or fantasies.
Their antigay behavior is irrational on two counts. First, they cannot give any authoritative explanation for their dehumanizing disrespect, often violent behavior towards gay people that is substantiated from the combined perspective of science and religion, as described by both John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The explanation that they give most emphatically is the same distorted and arbitrary explanation of science and religion that the Nazi gave for exterminate homosexuals, encased in "superstition and fanaticism.” Second, their ignorance of the authoritative scientific research on sexual orientation, prevents them from realizing that it is impossible, even life-threatening to attempt to control the interrelated physiological and psychological functioning of their God given gay sexual orientation. Because it is a life sustaining mechanism that functions automatically and continuously throughout life - as it is part of the autonomic nervous system - like breathing, or the heart beating. They functions unconsciously - meaning we do not have to think about breathing that we need to take a breath. Their functioning is under the control of the autonomic nervous system, which means that they are not under our conscious control. They function involuntary and reflexively, because their continuous functioning is crucial to keeping us alive. They are our survival mechanisms, because - we cannot live without breathing or our hearts beating or exist without love and any impairment to these functions will shorten our lifespan.
In brief, their frantic need to repress what is impossible to repress, which is the continuous autonomic functioning of their sexual orientation - most assuredly stems back to their early childhood years. First, because no child of 3, 4, 5 years of age has developed the capacity of understanding the adult concept of human sexuality, even what it means to be gay. A child’s intense negative reaction is induced - by the expressions of the parent’s adult negative understanding of the meaning of gay - that tends to be a traumatic situation for the child. Yes, it is an unidentified form of child abuse having lifelong harmful effects for the child.
Childhood Trauma, Neurobiology...
Development of the Brain:
Infant Mental Health Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1995
…Adults interpret the actions, words, and expressions of children through the distorting fitter of their own beliefs. In the lives of most infants and children, these common adult misinterpretations are relatively benign. In many cases, however, these misinterpretations can be destructive. The most dramatic example occurs when the impact of traumatic events on infants and young children is minimized. It is an ultimate irony that at the time when the human is most vulnerable to the effects of trauma— during infancy and childhood— adults generally presume the most resilience...
...Deprivation of critical experiences during development may be the most destructive yet least understood area of child maltreatment. Unlike broken bones, irreversible maldevelopment of brain areas mediating empathy resulting from emotional neglect in infancy and childhood is not readily observable...
...Some of the most powerful clinical examples of this phenomenon are related to lack of attachment experiences early in life. The child who has been emotionally neglected early in life will exhibit profound attachment problems which are extremely insensitive to any replacement experiences later, including therapy. Examples of this include feral children, children in orphanages observed by Spitz and Wolf (1945) and, often, the remorseless, violent child...
...Profound sociocultural and public policy implications arise from understanding the critical role of early experience in determining the functional capacity of the mature adult — and therefore our society. Persistence of the destructive myth that "children are resilient" will prevent millions of children, and our society, from meeting their true potential. Persistence of the pervasive maltreatment of children in the face of decreasing global and national resources will lead, inevitably, to sociocultural devolution.
It need not be so.
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A child at that this young age only wants to be loved and to reach out to love another and to feel as one with another human being. It is a parent’s disproval at this crucial developmental stage of a child learning to express love and interact with another - that prevents a child from fully experiencing and learning the meaning of empathy. This is why, the child as an adult, will instantly emotionally overreact negatively to any expression of gay love, such as gay marriage, or like the immediate hostile emotional outburst among the members of the curia and hierarchy at the release of the 2014 Synod on Family midterm report - regarding "welcoming gay people and valuing gay loving and committed relationships" and yet be unable to give any coherent reasoning for their emotional outburst. This is because the early childhood memory of the traumatic situation has been separated from the emotional outburst it caused. And it is not until the traumatic situation is once again reconnected to the emotional outburst will the obsessive irrational antigay rantings and ravings cease. But like with so many members of the curia and hierarchy this can easily be observed as to how their intense and irrational antigay emotional rantings and ravings persist endlessly throughout old age. A lot of hot air with absolutely no substantiating data from science and religion to support their emotional outrage. Again as stated above, what is key here is the complete absence of any rational explanation for their emotional outrage. There is no story or explanation - to match their intense emotional reaction regarding the 2014 topic of "welcoming gay people and valuing gay loving and committed relationships.” Such intense emotional reactions without a clear explanation why - tends to point to something traumatic happened in early childhood that has been repressed. This is in contrast to an event that happens in adulthood - like someone refusing to ride in the front seat of a car, because that person was in a severe car accident and got thrown through the windshield ( Henry Krystal - PDF http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibrarian.net%2Fnavon%2Fpaper%2FChapter_8__Psychoanalytic_Approaches_to_Trauma__A.pdf%3Fpaperid%3D16436404&ei=GF21VNXKA9SqyASwnoDYBA&usg=AFQjCNHw0P8nuU0GEYdZs0ItaQKDfe2GLA&bvm=bv.83339334,d.aWw).
Meet the Cards:
otherwise even
the moral edifice of the church is likely to
losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel
Bagnasco, as well as, the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy - is an excellent example of this fact - we can observe how he projects his confusion onto all gay people. Exactly, how many gay people does he actually know, that is gay people who are open about being gay?
Has Bagnasco read and studied any science on gay sexual orientation?
Or has Bagnasco studied any biblical exegesis on the topic homosexuality?
Could Bagnasco pass any graduate level comprehensive exam in these two academic fields of study on the topic of homosexual sexual orientation, including on the history of the Holocaust of World War II?
Now whose confused and void of empathy???
Bagnasco's arbitrary appraisal is no different than the way the Nazi “use and abuse” science (Robert Proctor) that formed the basis of the Nazi ideology of “racial cleansing” that soon led to the murder of 70 million people by the end of World War II (https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-14.pdf). And Bagnasco was elected to be the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, which says a lot about the mental stability of the men who chose him - void of science, void of scripture, void of truth and therefore void of empathy.
homosexuals “confuse people”
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco
head of the Italian Bishops Conference
Repressed homosexuals are inordinately obsessive - distorting the truth of science and religion on the sexual ordination of homosexuality, - in order to rationalize their irrational attempts to dehumanize gay people, and therefore justify their relentless use of violence and lethal means to destroy them. These repressed homosexuals choose to remain isolated by adamantly refusing to enter into any open discussion with authoritative professionals in the fields of science and theology (religion) on the topic of homosexuality - in order to avoid being challenged. They are thus able to maintain their deadly delusional concepts, as well as, their torturous lifestyle, at the expense of their lifetime, their emotional and physical well-being and not have to face the truth about their homosexual or bisexual sexual orientation.
Science +
+ Religion = Truth = L O V E
It is this absence of empathy (i.e. Bagnasco, Burke, Gadecki, Muller, Chaput, Cordileone, Sarah, Vigneron, - to name a few) that threatens all humanity and that is perpetuated through generations - because it remains largely unidentified. Until which time, if ever that through the continuous dialogue between science and religion on the topic of homosexual sexual orientation a combined perspective is formed - as described by both John Paul II (THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAITH AND REASON) and Benedict XVI. Only then will the much needed human empathy be restored to humanity that then society as a whole will more fully be able empathize with the people suffering the most due to climate change. Only then - will we as society together be able to empathizes with the dehumanizing effects of globalization and we will together begin valuing human life more than profit.
Pope Francis has already shown us the way - when less than four months after his election to the papacy - he announced on his air flight from Brazil back to Rome after being questioned about gay priests he emphatically answered with great empathy “Who am I to Judge?”July 29, 2013 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/pope-francis-gay-priests.html?_r=0 ). His poll rating soared - it was heard instantly around the world and like the devastating tragedy of 9/11 that is never forgotten - it is the first time such kindness coming the Vatican is even more deeply remembered. There is psychological research, as well as, biblical exegesis that will together explain the reasoning why goodness, kindness, and love are forever lasting.
The global reaction to Pope Francis's words about gay people on, July 29, 2013 - is a statement about the nature and the prevalence of the sexual orientation of homosexuality among the people around the world. This was an extraordinary phenomenon - a simple expression of empathy, the first time ever, specifically addressed to those - who by many are not considered worthy to be even considered as the least among us - immediately in lightning speed caught the attention of people globally.
It is a statement that should be well scrutinized by professionals from both academic fields of study science and religion, as to whether or not - fully addressing the issues of valuing gay loving and committed relationships - is a prerequisite to begin instilling empathy individually in people around the world - for us all to be able to hear the cries and be able to feel the pain of - those most in need of our help.
Homosexuality and the Holocaust
"superstition and fanaticism"
…In 1791 the Constituent Assembly in France adopted a new penal code that omitted all laws motivated by "superstition and fanaticism" — including those against sodomy. Napoleon Bonaparte, who had emancipated the Jews under his rule in 1806, did not restore the laws against sodomy in his penal code of 1810. Wherever the Code Napoleon was adopted, as it was in many states during the nineteenth century, as it was in most of Catholic Europe and in the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch colonies abroad, homosexual acts between consenting adults in private ceased to interest the police power of the state…
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Robert Biedroń, Nazism’s Pink Hell
Germany’s Golden Years The nineteenth century was the first period when voices openly defending homosexuality and refusing to condemn it were heard on a broad scale. The Napoleonic Code of 1804 served as the model for this kind of progress. Under the influence of the French Revolution, Bavaria repealed in 1813 the law that imposed penalties on homosexual unions…
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Pope Francis
meets with, hugs same-sex couple
meets with, hugs same-sex couple
Cardinal-designate Tobin Will Focus on Dialogue, Discernment - October 18, 2016
Comfort level with dialogue a U.S. gift to the universal Church -October 19, 2016
…Presumably, however, he had other reasons that were more decisive in terms of why these three - because if that’s all he was looking for, virtually any churchman in the United States would have done the trick.
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With Pope’s cardinal picks, Bernardin’s ‘seamless garment’ is back - October 9, 2016
By naming Blase Cupich of Chicago, Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis and Kevin Farrell, formerly of Dallas, as cardinals, Pope Francis has moved the senior leadership of the American Catholic Church to a centrist, non-cultural warrior stance reminiscent of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's "seamless garment.”…
…Cupich was well known at Francis’s two Synods of Bishops on the family for parting company to some extent with the more traditionalist bloc, signaling openness on issues such as finding new pastoral approaches for LGBT believers and also opening the door to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to potentially receive Communion.
Tobin is a former superior general of the worldwide Redemptorist religious order, who served from 2010 to 2012 as the number two official at the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, better known as the “Congregation for Religious,” during the time when the Vatican was conducting two separate investigations of American nuns.
Tobin was publicly critical of those probes, suggesting they had been launched without dialogue or consultation with the women religious, and behind the scenes that didn’t always sit well with some of the prelates who had pushed for them in the first place…
…As for Farrell, over his years in Dallas he’s tried to steer the University of Dallas into a more centrist, mainstream position, at times running afoul of the sentiments of more conservative forces at the university. He’s also emerged as a leader in favor of gun control, something of a bold stance in the context of Texas, and also on immigration issues…
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Pope Francis’ cardinal choices bring surprises, especially for the US church - October 10, 2016
“A glance at the biographies of the new cardinals reveals that Francis has clearly chosen pastors who are humble men, not aspiring to be princes; men of dialogue, not culture warriors; men who know how to show mercy in their ministry,” wrote Gerry O’Connell, Vatican correspondent for America magazine, a New York-based Jesuit weekly…
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New Cardinals Signal a Shift Away from the U.S. Culture Wars - October 9. 2016
The pope’s decision to make two American archbishops cardinals is a message to other U.S. prelates that the church needs leaders less concerned with culture war issues and who are instead focused on building bridges and making the church a more welcoming place…
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To be continued:
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
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9/11 In Our Own Words, Part 1 MSNBC
NBC anchors and correspondents recall their memories of reporting on the morning of 9/11/01. Weaving together live footage with present-day interviews, the special covers the first several hours as the terrorist attacks on America unfolded. With Tom Brokaw, Matt Lauer, Jim Miklaszewski, David Gregory, and Andrea Mitchell. Part 1 of 6.
Brief excerpt:
…BROKAW (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): There has never been an event to match the magnitude of this one in which everything has been shut down in terms of air traffic, the national capital has been immobilized. The Pentagon has been attacked, the financial markets have been shut down. There is an untold loss of life here in Manhattan, the nerve center of America, say nothing of what’s going on at the Pentagon
LAUER: throughout the early course of that morning, we were getting, people were handing us pieces of paper, wire copy, stories that were breaking-- you know-- eyewitness accounts from people that we couldn't actually find out if-- if-- if they-- they knew what they were talking about.
LAUER (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Can you tell me about the injuries you’re seeing and the--and the numbers of people you’ve been treating?
WOMAN (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): We’ve seen a steady stream of people for approximately an hour and a half.
BROKAW: That day, we were skiing in an avalanche. I mean that's the only way to describe it. We were just trying to keep our heads above this--this cascade of information, keeping stable, trying to keep the information in a coherent form…
LAUER: throughout the early course of that morning, we were getting, people were handing us pieces of paper, wire copy, stories that were breaking-- you know-- eyewitness accounts from people that we couldn't actually find out if-- if-- if they-- they knew what they were talking about.
LAUER (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Can you tell me about the injuries you’re seeing and the--and the numbers of people you’ve been treating?
WOMAN (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): We’ve seen a steady stream of people for approximately an hour and a half.
BROKAW: That day, we were skiing in an avalanche. I mean that's the only way to describe it. We were just trying to keep our heads above this--this cascade of information, keeping stable, trying to keep the information in a coherent form…
LAUER: When we first heard that another plane had crashed, there clearly was no way to definitively connect what happened to that plane to what had already happened in New York City and Washington at that moment.
LAUER (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): We do not know whether that crash of that plane is related to what has become an obvious terrorist attack.
LAUER: But I think, it would be fair to say, that none of us believed in ridiculous coincidences. And we all assumed at that point that-- that it would be too great a coincidence for a fourth commercial airliner to be involved in a catastrophic event on that same morning and have it not connected. But we didn't know the story. We didn't know what turned out to be maybe one of the most dramatic stories of that entire day
LAUER (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): We do not know whether that crash of that plane is related to what has become an obvious terrorist attack.
LAUER: But I think, it would be fair to say, that none of us believed in ridiculous coincidences. And we all assumed at that point that-- that it would be too great a coincidence for a fourth commercial airliner to be involved in a catastrophic event on that same morning and have it not connected. But we didn't know the story. We didn't know what turned out to be maybe one of the most dramatic stories of that entire day
MITCHELL: At the time we didn't know clearly about the heroism of the passengers and how they had prevented that attack from taking place. We later learned that the plane, the hijackers were heading to the nation’s capital.
BROKAW: Think of how catastrophic that would have been if they had been able to pull off the White House or the Capitol. Thank god for all those brave people on United 93 that they were able to-- rush the cockpit. And the way that they got together-- and a lot of 'em were kind of jockey guys, you know, who were weekend athletes-- at the back of the plane, and decided-- this is what they had to do-- and got the beverage cart to rush the cockpit. And-- give their lives willingly, heroically. And my guess is, in utter rage. My guess is that, when they hit that cockpit, they thought, "I'm going to die, but so are you, and you're going to die on my terms, not on your terms."
LAUER: it was a short time after the buildings collapsed that we first started seeing some of our colleagues joining us in Studio 1A in Rockefeller Center. And the first thing I remember is Ron Insana walking in our studio covered in dust I mean, in a way that it looks as if someone had just taken a bucket of the dust and dumped it over his head.All you had to do was see that image of Ron and you knew what he had been through and what he had just witnessed.
RON INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): As we were cutting across in a--in a-- in a-- quarantined zone, actually, the building began to disintegrate. And we heard it and looked up and started to see elements of the building come down, and we ran. And honestly, it was like a scene out of “Independence Day.”
BROKAW: When Ron Insana walked into the studio, it was-- it was stunning to me. I-- I-- I was close to him personally. And he was so shaken.
INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Everything began to rain down. It was pitch black around us as though the winds were whipping through the corridors in lower Manhattan.
LAUER: There was the smell. It was just a combination of odors that I had not smelled on any human being.
BROKAW (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Ron, we’re00we’re happy to see you, and must say it’s...
INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Thank you. You have no idea how happy I am to be here.
BROKAW: Think of how catastrophic that would have been if they had been able to pull off the White House or the Capitol. Thank god for all those brave people on United 93 that they were able to-- rush the cockpit. And the way that they got together-- and a lot of 'em were kind of jockey guys, you know, who were weekend athletes-- at the back of the plane, and decided-- this is what they had to do-- and got the beverage cart to rush the cockpit. And-- give their lives willingly, heroically. And my guess is, in utter rage. My guess is that, when they hit that cockpit, they thought, "I'm going to die, but so are you, and you're going to die on my terms, not on your terms."
LAUER: it was a short time after the buildings collapsed that we first started seeing some of our colleagues joining us in Studio 1A in Rockefeller Center. And the first thing I remember is Ron Insana walking in our studio covered in dust I mean, in a way that it looks as if someone had just taken a bucket of the dust and dumped it over his head.All you had to do was see that image of Ron and you knew what he had been through and what he had just witnessed.
RON INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): As we were cutting across in a--in a-- in a-- quarantined zone, actually, the building began to disintegrate. And we heard it and looked up and started to see elements of the building come down, and we ran. And honestly, it was like a scene out of “Independence Day.”
BROKAW: When Ron Insana walked into the studio, it was-- it was stunning to me. I-- I-- I was close to him personally. And he was so shaken.
INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Everything began to rain down. It was pitch black around us as though the winds were whipping through the corridors in lower Manhattan.
LAUER: There was the smell. It was just a combination of odors that I had not smelled on any human being.
BROKAW (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Ron, we’re00we’re happy to see you, and must say it’s...
INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Thank you. You have no idea how happy I am to be here.
BROKAW (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Yeah, it’s a relief. But then you think about the experiences of thousands of other people...
INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Yeah...
BROKAW (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Who are down in the epicenter of all that, and were there when it occurred. Our hearts go out to them. We don’t know what the numbers are yet.
INSANA (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Yeah...
BROKAW (TODAY show, September 11, 2001, file): Who are down in the epicenter of all that, and were there when it occurred. Our hearts go out to them. We don’t know what the numbers are yet.
BROKAW: he was down there doing his job. That had not occurred to me about how much collateral damage there may be-- on the ground with people who could-- could have gotten caught in all that…
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ARLINGTON, Va. – Arlington County Fire Department Battalion Chief James Bonzano was attending a leadership seminar about a mile from the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, when he heard a blast and felt the ground tremble. It was 9:37 a.m. Monitors in the room carried news of planes striking the World Trade Center in New York. Now an American Airlines Boeing 757 carrying 64 people had slammed into the Pentagon. As fighter jets circled above, Bonzano soon boarded a bus filled with other firefighters and headed toward the crash scene…
Read more:
(CNN)Not long ago, retired New York City firefighter James Hanlon and his five-year-old daughter were hanging out in the family garage.
The girl spotted an unfamiliar box containing Hanlon's dusty, banged up old firefighter's helmet.
"Dada, what's that?" she asked.
Hanlon's mind raced back 15 years when he and hundreds of other first responders rushed inside the World Trade Center after terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the North and South Towers…
Read more:
9/11 First Responders Battle Toxic Exposures 15 Years Later - September 11, 2016
It has been 15 years since Ray Pfeifer saw news about a plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. A two-decade veteran of the New York Fire Department, Pfeifer was on his way to enjoy a round of golf when he immediately got back in his car and headed into the city.
A member of FDNY Engine 40 and Ladder 35 station on the city’s Upper West Side of Manhattan, Pfeifer showed up to the site in the afternoon after the two towers had fallen. Thousands of victims were lost in the rubble, including 12 members from Pfeifer’s fire company.
“It was hell on earth, it was horrible. The odors and the task alone,” Pfeifer said of searching for survivors and then later remains…
Read more:
15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks
CNN Photos - 9/12/16
Why Victims of Child Abuse Blame Themselves?
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Gay Men Testify to UN Security Council About Horrors of ISIS Regime
Meeting was first time UN Security Council met to discuss gay rights, U.S. ambassador says.
Reuters - Aug 24, 2015
Syrian refugee Subhi Nahas watched in fear as the al Qaeda-linked group Nusra Front took over his home town of Idlib and began torturing and executing men suspected of being gay. Then, with the rise of Islamic State, came videos of gay men being hurled from buildings.
If the victims did not die from the fall, they were stoned to death.
"This was to be my fate, too," Nahas told a closed-door informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday. The meeting was organized by the United States and Chile to draw attention to "brutal attacks" by the militants.
"I was terrified to go out. Nor was my home safe, as my father, who suspiciously monitored my every move, had learned I was gay. I bear a scar on my chin as a token of his rage," said Nahas, according to a text of his prepared remarks.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said this was the first time the UN Security Council had discussed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.
"It is impossible not to take up the struggle for their rights as our own as we have other great human rights struggles," she told the meeting, according to her prepared remarks. "Today, we take a small but important step in assuming that work. It must not be our last step.”…
Read more:
Gay Men Testify to UN Security Council About Horrors of ISIS Regime
Polish bishops oppose Catholic group's support of gay rights campaign — September 22, 2016
WARSAW, POLAND When a group of Polish Catholics declared support for a gay rights campaign, their involvement was quickly condemned by the country's bishops conference. Having raised the issue in the church, however, the group is determined to press on and ensure the atmosphere of understanding engendered by Pope Francis finds a louder echo in Poland.
"The bishops' reaction is only a first step -- what matters is that they've now felt it necessary to take up a position on LGBT issues," explained Dominika Kozlowska, editor of the Catholic monthly Znak (The Sign). "The Catholics who've engaged in this campaign will also continue to talk about these issues in publications and discussions. Though the bishops have accused us of infringing Gospel injunctions, they've also said things in the process which haven't been said in the church here before."
The campaign, "Let's exchange a sign of peace," was launched in early September with nationwide billboards depicting clasped hands -- one with a rainbow bracelet and the other with a Catholic rosary…
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Conservative dissent is brewing inside the Vatican -September 7, 2015
VATICAN CITY — On a sunny morning earlier this year, a camera crew entered a well-appointed apartment just outside the 9th-century gates of Vatican City. Pristinely dressed in the black robes and scarlet sash of the princes of the Roman Catholic Church, Wisconsin-born Cardinal Raymond Burke sat in his elaborately upholstered armchair and appeared to issue a warning to Pope Francis.
A staunch conservative and Vatican bureaucrat, Burke had been demoted by the pope a few months earlier, but it did not take the fight out of him. Francis had been backing a more inclusive era, giving space to progressive voices on divorced Catholics as well as gays and lesbians. In front of the camera, Burke said he would “resist” liberal changes — and seemed to caution Francis about the limits of his authority. “One must be very attentive regarding the power of the pope,” Burke told the French news crew.
Papal power, Burke warned, “is not absolute.” He added, “The pope does not have the power to change teaching [or] doctrine.”
Burke’s words belied a growing sense of alarm among strict conservatives, exposing what is fast emerging as a culture war over Francis’s papacy and the powerful hierarchy that governs the Roman Catholic Church…
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TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2016
Without Truth there is no Love - Benedict XVI - Welcoming gay people - Synod 2014 & 2015???
Excerpts:
BENEDICT XVI - 2009
3. Through this close link with truth, charity can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity and as an element of fundamental importance in human relations, including those of a public nature. Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word.
4. Because it is filled with truth, charity can be understood in the abundance of its values, it can be shared and communicated. Truth, in fact, is lógos which creates diá-logos, and hence communication and communion. Truth, by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations and to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things. Truth opens and unites our minds in the lógos of love: this is the Christian proclamation and testimony of charity. In the present social and cultural context, where there is a widespread tendency to relativize truth, practising charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development. A Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance. In other words, there would no longer be any real place for God in the world. Without truth, charity is confined to a narrow field devoid of relations. It is excluded from the plans and processes of promoting human development of universal range, in dialogue between knowledge and praxis…
Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development… Photo
FIDES ET RATIO
JOHN PAUL II
JOHN PAUL II
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
FAITH AND REASON
14 September 1998
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).
…Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32)…
…Therefore, reason and faith cannot be separated without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way…
…On a number of occasions, the Second Vatican Council stressed the positive value of scientific research for a deeper knowledge of the mystery of the human being…
…“[Galileo] declared explicitly that the two truths, of faith and of science, can never contradict each other, 'Sacred Scripture and the natural world proceeding equally from the divine Word, the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit, the second as a very faithful executor of the commands of God', as he wrote in his letter to Father Benedetto Castelli on 21 December 1613. The Second Vatican Council says the same thing, even adopting similar language in its teaching: 'Methodical research, in all realms of knowledge, if it respects... moral norms, will never be genuinely opposed to faith: the reality of the world and of faith have their origin in the same God' ( Gaudium et Spes, 36). Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions”: John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (10 November 1979): Insegnamenti, II, 2 (1979), 1111-1112.
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Letter to Father George V. Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory (June 1, 1988) | John Paul II
…By encouraging openness between the Church and the scientific communities, we are not envisioning a disciplinary unity between theology and science like that which exists within a given scientific field or within theology proper. As dialogue and common searching continue, there will be grow towards mutual understanding and a gradual uncovering of common concerns which will provide the basis for further research and discussion. Exactly what form that will take must be left to the future. What is important, as we have already stressed, is that the dialogue should continue and grow in depth and scope. In the process we must overcome every regressive tendency to a unilateral reductionism, to fear, and to self-imposed isolation. What is critically important is that each discipline should continue to enrich, nourish and challenge the other to be more fully what it can be and to contribute to our vision of who we are and who we are becoming…
Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.
For the truth of the matter is that the Church and the scientific community will inevitably interact; their options do not include isolation.
Faith can never conflict with reason
The 'Galileo case' teaches us that different branches of knowledge call for different methods, each of which brings out various aspects of reality
The following English translation of the Holy Father's address, which was given in French, appeared in L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) - 4 November 1992
After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves - October 31, 1992
ROME, Oct. 30— More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo, Pope John Paul II is poised to rectify one of the Church's most infamous wrongs -- the persecution of the Italian astronomer and physicist for proving the Earth moves around the Sun.
With a formal statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Saturday, Vatican officials said the Pope will formally close a 13-year investigation into the Church's condemnation of Galileo in 1633. The condemnation, which forced the astronomer and physicist to recant his discoveries, led to Galileo's house arrest for eight years before his death in 1642 at the age of 77.
The dispute between the Church and Galileo has long stood as one of history's great emblems of conflict between reason and dogma, science and faith. The Vatican's formal acknowledgement of an error, moreover, is a rarity in an institution built over centuries on the belief that the Church is the final arbiter in matters of faith.
At the time of his condemnation, Galileo had won fame and the patronage of leading Italian powers like the Medicis and Barberinis for discoveries he had made with the astronomical telescope he had built. But when his observations led him to proof of the Copernican theory of the solar system, in which the sun and not the earth is the center, and which the Church regarded as heresy, Galileo was summoned to Rome by the Inquisition. Forced to Recant…
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html
Vatican Science Panel Told By Pope: Galileo Was Right - November 1, 1992
…John Paul said the theologians who condemned Galileo did not recognize the formal distinction between the Bible and its interpretation.
This led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith, a question which in fact pertained to scientific investigation…
Read more:
Above excerpts taken from:
TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2016
Without Truth there is no Love - Benedict XVI - Welcoming gay people - Synod 2014 & 2015???
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Injustice anywhere is a
threat to
Justice everywhere
Martin Luther King
The Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Martin Luther King Jr.
What you cannot do is accept injustice.
From Hitler – or anyone.
You must make the injustice visible
– be prepared to die like a
soldier to do so.
Mahatma Gandhi
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!
“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed,
well considered and yet fervent public conviction that
the most deadly of all
possible sins
is the mutilation of
a child’s spirit.”
Important note: No disrespect meant to Pope Benedict XVI or the hierarchy, the one and only concern is the safety and well-being of children.
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!
