Death by faith
Here's a rhyme, how much wood could a wood chuck chop, if a wood chuck could chop wood?Here's another. How much deception can be seen and heard, when there is no word, and nobody is really listening?How long will we look the other way while people are ravaged by false teaching's promoted by men who spread their own miracle rumors?It was E.W. Kenyon in his book the Hidden man on pg.99 wrote, �I know that I am healed because he said that I am healed and it makes no difference what the symptoms may be in my body.� An example would be if they are coughing and you say you have a cough they respond by �no I don�t, I haven�t had a cough in years.� That�s called denial of reality at best, and lying at worst.This is what was adopted by Kenneth Hagin who writes in his book �In the name of Jesus� on the topic of divine healing and health. �I have so often said, I haven�t had a headache in so many years (45 to be exact) ... Just a few months ago, as I left the office building and started home, suddenly my head started hurting, someone might say, �well, you had a headache. No, I didn�t have one! I don�t have headaches. I haven�t had a headache since August 1934. 45 years have come and gone. And I haven�t had a headache�but if I had a headache, I wouldn�t tell anybody. And if somebody asked me how I was feeling, I would say, I�m fine, thank you.� (In the Name of Jesus, p.44) Notice he says he wouldn't tell you how he really feels because his words override the pain. Is this honest? Is it true? Is this the way someone is to represent the Lord. Did Jesus teach this nonsense? Of course not.E.W. Kenyon studied at the Emerson College of Oratory in Boston which was a hotbed at the time for the emerging New Age thought. They imagined they have discovered laws of faith, promoting a Christianized version of occultism.Kenyon had divorced his wife even when he taught that what one speaks they will possess. E.W Kenyon who is certainly the Father of the Word of Faith Movement taught divine healing and that it was always God's will to heal. But he died in a coma, brought on by a malignant tumor. He died from disease.Kenneth Hagin states: It is not God's will for any to be sick (Healing the fathers Provision, p.9 ) I believe that it is the plan of our father that no believer should be sick that every believer should live his life to full time and actually wear out if Jesus tarries then fall asleep in Jesus. I state boldly that it is not the will of God my father that we should suffer with cancer and other dread disease and reap pain and anguish. No its God's will that we should be healed.�While Hagin says he has had no headaches, he had 4 major cardiovascular failures. But this is one of those incidents he's not telling you (Christianity in Crises, pp.237-238; a Different Gospel by D.L McConnell) Hagin suffered 4 separate episodes of heart-crisis in 1939, 1942, 1949, and 1973.Hagin claims he was healed of numerous sicknesses a �deformed heart,� �paralysis,� and �incurable blood disease.� He also declared his �healing from the top of my head to the soles of my feet� on August 7, 1934, so that �every symptom of distress, deficiency and physical wrongness was driven out of my body,� perpetually. �I'm still healed after 49 years,� Hagin said. (Kenneth E. Hagin, Exceedingly Growing Faith, 2d rev. ed. [Tulsa, OK: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1990, 48-49, 82-83.) His healing occurred on Tuesday of the �second week� of August 1934, or August 7, which was not the same date as the �second Tuesday� that month [August 14). Elsewhere Hagin gives various dates, such as �6 days before my 17th birthday [August 20, 1934,� which would be August 14, the �second Tuesday of August 1934�: (Kenneth E. Hagin, El Shaddai [Tulsa, OK: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 19801, 24-25.) But see Kenneth E. Hagin, How You Can Be Led by the Spirit of God (Tulsa, OK: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1978), 87 (healing on a �Thursday� in August 1934). In still another place Hagin claims his healing was on �August 8, 1934,� which was a Wednesday (Kenneth E. Hagin, Zoe: The God-Kind of Life [Tulsa, OK: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1981], 13.) Maybe Hagin needs his memory healed as well. (adopted from Christianity in Crises)Kenneth Hagin died Sept. 23.2003 After eating breakfast his head fell to his chest. Charisma News Service reported that �An exact cause of death was not immediately known� Hagin had been hospitalized in a cardiac intensive care unit since Sept. 14, when he collapsed at home. (Charisma News Service September 23, 2003 edition People & Lifestyle) We later find out that was transported by an ambulance admitted to the cardiac intensive care unit and remained in the hospital until he died. This become an interesting point of contention because Hagin claimed he was healed of his heart problem supernaturally years before. He also held to the belief that one should actually wear out, not die this way.E.W. Kenyon wrote mockingly, �We have sung `Nearer the cross' and we have prayed that we might be `Nearer the cross' but the cross has no salvation in it. It is a place of failure and defeat.� (Advanced Bible Course, p.279) Does this sound familiar? It should. Kenneth Hagin copies him, (as he did most of his theology) saying, �Do you think that the punishment for our sin was to die on a cross? If that were the case, the two thieves could have paid your price. No the punishment was to go into hell itself and to serve time in hell separated from God ... Satan and all the demons of hell thought that they had him bound, and they threw a net over Jesus and they dragged Him down to the very pit of hell itself to serve our sentence.�If Jesus was not victorious on the cross, he was not victorious at all! Yet these same men will teach by his stripes we are healed. Which is it? Are we healed for our sicknesses at the cross and not for our sins?It is reported that the �father� of the modern Word of Faith Movement Kenneth Hagin had his wife go to the hospital for an operation. Yet Hagin claims that Jesus �appeared� to Hagin and gave him a special anointing to heal the sick. (in I Believe In Visions). Is Hagin an anointed healer?Kenneth Hagin had his sister die of cancer. Hagin�s great faith and words of confession did not keep her from death. I don't say this to belittle the pain or loss, but to point to the facts. It doesn't work like they say, otherwise this would not be happening to them. There would be a substantial difference between the faith teachers and those who do not practice this word faith confession. But the facts show otherwise.'�Hagin's son mentioned that his own young son (senior Hagin's grandson) was �diagnosed as having a brain tumor that required immediate surgery,� but there is no mention of any faith healing whatsoever.''' (Kenneth E. Hagin, Jr., The Answer for Oppression (Tulsa, OK: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1983], 14-16, 23). (Cited from Christianity in Crises, Hank Hannegraaf)Hagin and his son wears glasses as their eyesight is growing dim just like anyone else who grows older. Many of these men who promise healings are getting older, they wear hair pieces, and these are simple things compared to organic disorders that they supposedly heal. So they cannot even cure the ABC's and yet they claim they are curing in others the xyz's. And worst of all they run to the doctor for surgery. So what do they really believe?Kenneth E. Hagin's son-in-law Buddy Harrison, who is the Founder of Harrison House Books, and Head of the Faith Christian Fellowship (FCF) Word of Faith denomination, died Nov. 1998 of cancer. This is unfortunate that this should occur, however it is evidential that the son-in-law of Kenneth E. Hagin, submitted to cancer and died. He was in the �faith movement� before Copeland and many others so... what does this mean in light of what he promoted and has written? Did he practice what he preached? definitely. But what he taught was simply was not true.Promises are a never ending stream for the gullible. Benny Hinn says unequivocally �There will be no sickness for the saint of God� (Rise and Be Healed! 1991, p.14). �If your body belongs to God, it does not and cannot belong to sickness� (ibid. p.62); �The day is coming, I tell you this, I know it like I know my name, the day is coming there will not be one sick saint in the body of Christ. Nobody will be, nobody's gonna be, no one will be raptured out of a hospital bed. You're all gonna be healed before the rapture.� (Benny Hinn, �Praise the Lord,� 7/8/96) Bible verse- NONE. As often the case it rests on the authority of man, not God.John writes Diotrephes loved to have the preeminence in the Church. There are many today that threaten the welfare of the believers by their preeminence. So it is important for us to identify the people who say they represent God and can ruin peoples health and lives by there teachings. Some people take this all too lightly until they are visited with personal disaster from this theology.Satan said to God about Job (2:4), �Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has will he give for his life.� The most heart-breaking stories involve people who have incurable organic sickness and are desperate for a last chance. They listen to anyone who can give them hope and they will do anything to preserve their life, sometimes even believing a lie for some hope! There are those who preceded the modern day movement of healing that died. they too taught God will always heal by faith. A.A. Allen died from cirrhosis of the liver. Jack Coe died from polio. Dr. Hobart Freeman and over 100 of his followers died after refusing medical attention while believing for their healing (more of this at the end of the article).Many others have died needlessly because they tried to confess healing and bind Satan ignoring medical treatment. According to their position, divine healing is in the atonement, and when Satan attacks, the authority of the believer uses the name of Jesus, and confesses their healing. Even if these teachers say it is an attack from Satan - how did Satan get in there? Since they were not confessing sickness or disease in the first place. Some like Copeland go even further and say it is divine health not just divine healing. This is something we will not experience until the Millennium, but he says he has it now.Copeland says �I've had people die on me standing there saying bless God you ain't gonna die. And they did anyway and I'm glad I stood, and I'm glad I stood, and I'm glad I stood. I ain't never stood for anything in my own life that didn't come to pass. I can only use my faith just so far with you.�Copeland is saying that his faith works efficiently and successfully for himself but for others it is not optimum strength. Yet it is not his fault. He teaches faith never fails, especially for himself. So where is God in this. Its all dependent on him. His faith, his power, his will. But it can fail for you. But he will also say, �The very faith that God used when He created, and what we read there in the first 2 chapters of Genesis, is the faith that�s burning in your spirit. But now if you�ve made Jesus the Lord of your life, it�s the same faith. Well, He created all those planets, how come you can�t create something? You don�t know as much about it as He does. He has a greater working knowledge of that faith than you do. But we�re learning. Our time is coming. And in some ways its already here� (Aug. 18,1999 John Hagee's Church, on LeSea Broadcasting).Like Copeland many have died trying to activate spiritual laws and principles. Numerous people who have been influenced by this teaching have said that they stood on the word for people dying, and this person is not going to die and they died. And their faith becomes crushed because they thought they heard God say they would live. How? By someone else usually telling them by his stripes we are healed. They may not directly tell the people to get rid of their insulin or other medicines but they encourage this by stating emphatically that it is a promise of God to heal all by faith.Kenneth Copeland, in a taped message entitled �Why all are not healed� (# 01-4001), states, �Several people that I know had criticized and called that Faith bunch out of Tulsa a cult. And some of 'em are dead right today in an early grave because of it, and there's more than one of them got cancer.� Prophetess and promoter of the gold dust Ruth Ward Heflin died from cancer. (Article: The Life and Times ofGolden Girl and Globetrotter Ruth Ward Heflin, by G. Richard Fisher, Personal Freedom Outreach)While these faith healers claim to heal all kinds of diseases, their cancer is still in the body of Christ and growing both spiritually and physically. What is interesting is that the people who are called Word of Faith teachers do not seem to have any of a lesser ratio of cancer and sickness than others. These ministers know one another, they teach the same doctrine, and share the same stories. . .and sickness is common among them and their families. It is unusual for a specific group that teaches the same doctrine of healing to have a higher percentage of their families to be struck with cancer. Is God telling them something? Are they or their followers taking notice? No, that would be a negative confession... Furthermore, almost all the faith teachers wear glasses, It's right there on their face as they tell you that you can be healed and call out all the diseases people are being healed of. God made it so you can�t miss their contradiction, but many do. Why? Because they do not know how to listen with discernment, they believe almost every word these men say verbatim. How sad. On January 6, 1999 Diane Sawyer, and Sam Donaldson of 20/20 did a report on the Followers of Christ, where over a thousand people attend a small church outside Portland, Oregon. An alarming number of children in the Followers have died while their parents prayed instead of getting a doctor. 78 children are buried since 1955 in the Followers of Christ cemetery just outside Oregon City. Doctors said at least 21 probably would have lived with medical intervention, often by using simple antibiotics.An article in the Journal of Pediatrics examined the deaths of 172 children from families who relied upon faith healing from 1975 to 1995. They concluded that four out of five ill children who died under the care of faith healers would most likely have survived, if they had received medical care. Eighty-one percent of the deaths were caused by conditions that had a medical survival rate of 90%.Many die from the promotion of health by faith. Charles Meade, is the founder of an End Time's cult located in Florida. They have had Over 19 children die due to his faith stance and his revulsion medicine.One of the more famous cases is Dr. Hobart Freeman, who was the founder and pastor of the Glory Barn. He blamed his own son-in-law for a lack of faith in the death of his own grandchild. The fact was a routine operation could have saved his life. He had detested medical doctors and persuaded his members to avoid the doctors as well. His faith stance touched 97 people directly, they died! And Eventually Hobart himself died in 1984. Despite all the documentation of deaths instead of healings, his ministry continues in the congregations he established. People ignore the facts and follow the person.In 1998, Dr. Seth Asser, a critical-care pediatrician at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio did a paper in the professional Journal Pediatrics. Asser examined the deaths of 172 children from families who relied on faith healing. Families from Christian Scientist, Faith Tabernacle, Faith Assembly and several other assorted religious. He concluded 4 out of 5 ill children who died under the care of faith healers would have most likely survived if they had received medical attention. 81% of the deaths were caused by conditions that had a 90% chance of survival rate if they would have seen there physician. Most could have been cured from routine medical care.The Christian Science Church which has been practicing faith healing, has a national membership of 170,000. They had 28 child deaths between 1975 and 1995, according to one (Asser's) study. So When we say Christian Science is a cult, and way less people die percentage wise than the faith Churches, what do we say to our people? There are no real statistics on how many have become sick or died from the word faith teaching of Isa.53 by his stripes we are healed. But we can estimate it certainly is more than Christian Science, and it may be closer to the J.W's and their anti-blood policy.The charismatic author Jamie Buckingham wrote �I'm healed� In charisma Magazine and a several months later died of cancer. Jamie was under a medical doctors care. �One day my wife ... suddenly spoke aloud [and] said, 'Your healing was purchased at the cross.' ... Here is what I discovered. You have what you speak. If you want to change something, you must believe it enough to speak it. ... If you say you're sick, you'll be (and remain) sick. It was not mine. It was the devil's. I didn't have cancer. I had Jesus. The cancer was trying to have me, but the Word of God said I was healed through what Jesus did on Calvary. ... It was a Friday afternoon. The tape was an Oral Roberts' sermon ... I came up off the sofa, shouting, 'I'm healed!' My wife leaped out of her chair and shouted, 'Hallelujah!' For the next 30 minutes all we did was walk around the house shouting thanks to God and proclaiming my healing� �The cancer was trying to have me, but the word of God said I was healed through what Jesus did at Calvary.� (Jamie Buckingham, �My Summer of Miracles,� Charisma, April 1991). Ten months after the publication of his article claiming he was healed he died of cancer ( Feb.17, 1992)Buckingham had made other statements to the fact, �I also believe God has promised me that I can live to be at least 100 years old �(Charisma April 1990). His wife had a prophecy �You will not die but live and proclaim what the Lord has done.�Everyone believed this, his wife , Oral Roberts, his congregation-but they were all wrong. This is not an uncommon practice of people believing they have heard from God and died. Instead of preparing to meet their make they presume that they will have many more years on earth.One of the more recent sad stories was John Osteen who was a pastor in Houston of a mega-church, who had kidney dialysis in late 1998. He also had a heart catheterization in August that determined all was well with his heart at that time. Later on doctors performed surgery to put in a pacemaker for his heart.Pastor Osteen knew �he was in need of a miracle.� He claimed God had given him Psalm 27:14. Requests went out to his friends to wait on the Lord with him, and agree with him for a creative miracle for his kidneys and his heart.They agreed with the Psalmist in Psalm 41of the Lords deliverance and protection to keep him alive. He will transform his illness. He will raise him up! The �Lord� gave him a vision that he would be preaching into his 90's.Osteen �confessed,� his healing and 20,000 members in his church stood in �agreement� with him for his recovery. They believed he would have his miracle just like his wife Dodie received her miracle (Dodie his wife got liver cancer and was treated through medical attention). But unfortunately did not happen for John. Here is a man who lived the faith message and when it came down to it, it failed. As it has for so many others. This does not mean it fails 100%, because God is the one who heals and he will have mercy on whom he wills.If someone says they are having heart trouble and they deny this symptom claiming their healing by faith they could die. A perfect example of this is when Oral Roberts was on Paul Crouch on �Praise the Lord� show on TBN (October 6, 1992). I watched as Crouch was asked to lay hands on Oral Roberts to minister to his chest pains, Roberts exclaimed, �I feel the healing power of Jesus!� and said it felt like an �electric current go through him.� Paul you are anointed. Oral Roberts was pronounced healed on TBN. But was he really? It was reported less than four hours later, while visiting a home in Newport Beach, Roberts felt more pains and was hospitalized at Hoag Presbyterian Memorial Hospital (also in Newport Beach), shortly after midnight. Subsequent articles report that Roberts's heart attack was �near fatal.� (�Evangelist Has Tests,� The Orange County [CA] Register [Dec.16 1992], A-7) the healing evangelist now has a pacemaker (�Roberts Out of Hospital,� The Orange County [CA] Register (2l December 1992), A-30). Of course this is ignored by the crowds that follow his healing doctrine. One can only wonder why?Frederick K. Price, Word of Faith pastor of a mega-church in Los Angeles teaches that no one should die before 70. He became famous for saying why would God want to live in a sick body.� If you keep talking death, that is what you are going to have. �If you keep talking sickness and disease, that is what you are going to have, because you are going to create the reality of them with your own mouth. That is a divine law.� (Fred Price, Realm, 29).� ... how can you glorify God in your body, when it doesn't function right? How can you glorify God? How can He get glory when your body doesn't even work? ... What makes you think the Holy Ghost wants to live inside a body where He can't see out through the windows and He can't hear with the ears? What makes you think the Holy Spirit wants to live inside of a physical body where the limbs and the organs and the cells do not function right? ... And what makes you think He wants to live in a temple where He can't see out of the eyes, and He can't walk with the feet, and He can't move with the hand? ... The only eyes that he has that are in the earth realm are the eyes that are in the body. If He can't see out of them then God's gonna be limited he's not going to be helped...� applause (Frederick K.C. Price, �Is God Glorified Through Sickness?� (Los Angeles: Crenshaw Christian Center, n.d.), audiotape #FP605).Price also discourages the use of medication, saying, �When you have developed your faith to such an extent that you can stand on the promises of God, then you won't need medicine� (Faith, foolishness or presumption, p.88, 1979, Harrison House). Price states, �We don't allow sickness in our home (Is Healing for All? p.20, Harrison House, 1976)Really Fred? Yes you do. His own wife, Betty got cancer. How did it come into their house? In October 1990 Price openly said she had developed cancer-an �inoperable malignant tumor in her pelvic area.� (Betty Price praise report, Ever Increasing Faith Messenger). She was medically treated by chemo-therapy and God had mercy on her and she was healed. Thank God for his mercy and not mans word. What does this mean after hearing Prices own statements of how legalistic he is, �We don't allow sickness in our home.� According to her husbands teaching the Holy Spirit leave his wife because she had a sick body. His faith was not enough, Fred�s own wife needed a doctor just like anyone else would. Price now claims she is free of cancer, medication, and pain (but only �95 percent free of a limp� (CRI telephone interview with Crenshaw Christian center staff member July 31 1992) also Betty Price health update...then... and... now from Betty Price. Ever Increasing Faith Messenger 13, 4 (fall, 1992):5 (cited in Christianity in Crises).It is not by the amount of our faith that has God heal us. God can heal even if there is little faith represented. God is not bound to heal by our declaration of faith; healing rests in His sovereign will and timing. We need to understand that all miraculous healing is an act of God's grace, otherwise we are in control not him. Unless one understands the sovereignty of God and his control they will never have the peace God wants to give them through any trial of sickness.Charles Capps, Word of Faith teacher, mimics Copeland as he teaches power of our words to create reality saying �You can have what you say! � � I don�t deny the existence of disease. I deny the right of that disease to exist in this body, because I�m the Body of Christ� (The Tongue p. 43.) �This is not theory, It is fact. It is spiritual law. It works every time it is applied correctly.� His wife got cancer and was medically treated. So where's the power that is claimed for his own personal miracle.Ruth Carter Stapleton, ( Faith Healing sister of former US President Jimmie Carter) believed in faith healing and refused medical treatment for cancer. She died in 1983 of the disease.Ruth Heflin who was 60 years died of cancer Sept.15, 2000. Yet she firmly believed �I suddenly knew how easy it is to raise the dead and to heal all manner of sickness and disease.. how easy it is to see blind eyes open and deaf ears unstopped� (Harvest Glory her 1999 autobiography).R.W. Schambach, is one of the favorite Faith Healer's on LeSea and TBN. He has said �You don�t have any problems, all you need is faith in God.� and on TBN recently he stated �God will heal you�. But its reported that he got a quadruple heart bypass from doctor (not doctor Jesus). What do those who hold to the faith teaching say about their own leaders doing this? It is for the most part ignored.What about their healing, their confession is not their possession. It's not working for them either. I know some may mean well and naively teach this but it more harmful to believe in fantasy than to face the reality of truth and have time to do something about it.Why did none of the people who are deathly sick call for Oral Roberts or go to a Benny Hinn crusade? Why didn't they send for a prayer cloth from Parsley or get a trinket from Marilyn Hickey. If what they teach is true none of them should be sick for long, they should all have supernatural healing.Why not? Maybe they know something that you don't? They do not trust their own welfare into their hands of faith. There are many Word Faith teachers that are getting medical attention. Instead of being healed by faith, they go to medical doctors to get their bodies repaired like anyone else. None of these folks got a �miracle� or received �divine healing� directly from the hand of God or themselves. They did what every person with common sense would do, they got medical help.John Wimber who made famous the Signs and Wonders Movement, believed in �Power Healing,� was dying from cancer. He was medically treated even though he believed God could heal. No �power� healing was presented, it was chemo-therapy. He eventually died of something unrelated to his sicknessChris Wimber of Vineyard Music died on Feb 6, 1998 of melanoma cancer. Although they had members who supposedly �healed� people of cancer and other sicknesses, even Aids - there was no �healing� for Chris.Concerning the deaths of people Morris Cerullo has pronounced healed. Among these so-called `miracles' was a four year old child falsely pronounced Healed by Cerullo in a London arena before an audience of thousands. The child died shortly afterward. Natiela Barnes age 4 died as a result of Morris Cerrulo pronouncing her healed (Charismania-when Fundamentalism goes wrong, Rowland Howard, London 1997 41-43).Dr. Peter May, a respected evangelical physician and member of the Christian Medical Fellowship and Church of England General Synod, asked for a list of six of Cerullo's best medically documented miracles. When these were eventually forthcoming not one proved to have been a genuine cure. The tragedy of these kinds of deaths is that they were covered by the media, undermining Christian witness to the general public.�Audrey Reynolds went to Cerullo's Mission London in 1992, certain she had been healed of ankle injury. She felt well and therefore stopped taking all medication including her anti-epilepsy drugs. Six days later she had a fit and drowned in her bath. The Southwark Coroner, Sir Montague Levine, concluded: �It is a tragedy that she went to this meeting and thought she had been cured of everything. Sadly it led to her death.�Real faith in truth does not kill, so what is going on? People are dying from these men's teachings and proclamations of people being healed. The public notices when someone claims to be healed. Before we publicly claim this, we need to make sure, lest we have them mock the church because of a false testimony. The truth matters people, and nothing can hurt the truth more than outlandish unproven assertions of supernatural power that does not take place. Why should we believe tremendous miracles take place just because a Televangelist says so?Now you won't have to go to faith healer but visit a healing center. Benny Hinn Promises to build a World Healing Center where there will be Healing Stream and healing fountains, healing gardens, with healing statues of biblical healing saints from the Old Testament. Hinn promises to build chapels for everyone of those greats of the past where you can visit Kathryn Kuhlmann, Amiee Simple McPhearson, Oral Roberts and Dr. Sumerall.What many do not know is that Hinn�s idol Kathryn Kuhlman, died of heart failure in 1976. It was found out that she had lived with heart disease for nearly twenty years. Its not my point to impugn Kuhlman, but there a many testimonies that are against the healings, as there are for them. The point is that these people who claim to heal are sick, sometimes very ill themselves.Kurt Koch was a renowned evangelical researcher. In one portion of his book Occult ABC he describes his research into Kathryn Kuhlman's healing ministry. He carefully followed up on a list of 28 cases of alleged healings in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area. These cases were submitted to him by the Kuhlman's organization as the best examples of healings which had occurred under her ministrations. He summarizes his findings as: �Ten had not been healed, seven had experienced an improvement in their condition, eleven had diseases in which the mind can play an important part. In the whole of this extensive report, there is not one clear case of healing from an organic disease� (Kurt Koch, Occult ABC, 1981).Kathryn Kuhlman had brought one of her healing services to St. Louis. A fleet of chartered buses brought people to the meeting from a near 200-mile radius of the city. One driver from the bus noted: �'She doesn�t always succeed,� said a driver from Chester. �My bus was pretty quiet on the way home last year [after her service]. But for some of those people a little inspiration does wonders, if only for a little while. I had a guy last year who was dying of cancer. He got up on the stage and said he was healed. He died a week later.'� (St. Louis Post Dispatch, 5/4/75, �Praying, Hoping, Waiting...� pg. G11).Did anyone die after Jesus pronounced them healed? Of course not. Do you ever see anyone leave the stage at the Healing Crusades not being healed. Is everyone getting healed? Because that is the impression they give. If miracles actually convinced people, Jesus' own family would have been convinced, but they were not.Dr. Nolan did work on 82 cases of Kathryn Kuhlman's healings using names that she herself supplied. His conclusion at the end of the entire investigation was that not one of the so called healings was legitimate not a one! This does not impugn God, but those representing him. For God is able to heal today as he always was able. I believe God heals and that we should pursue healing from him, but not only him. Doctors are a God sent profession. What do you think the Jews did in the OT before Jesus came? They went to doctors. After Jesus left do you think they looked for only healers when they were sick?Hinn states the TV will be conduit for this power as �People around the world who will lose loved ones, will say to undertakers, ahh, not yet. I want to take my dead loved one and place him in front of that TV set for 24 hours� Placing them before a television set, waiting for God�s power to come through and touch them. (TBN 10/19/99)Recently Sheryl Pruit Salem's daughter tragically died and it was distressing to see her break down and then say God is sovereign. The very opposite of what they (word/faith) actually believe, as they do not pray thy will be done. Hinn said he is going to have the Salem's on the program that had a tragic loss of their 6 year old child. Yet right after he stated this he said �No matter what you need our God wants to heal you and bless your life� (Dec.28, '99). Why did they not seek Hinn out to heal their child if this is true? Why does none of the sick healers go to Hinn for their healing if he holds healing services more than all of them? Do they not have enough faith?There seems to be as much room for faith healing malpractice as there is malpractice in the medical industry. What becomes most disturbing is when people get computerized letters from certain TV faith healing ministers saying that the Lord has led them to pray for a certain one to be healed. They received a word of knowledge for you or your loved one. The problem is they receive this letter after that person has already died. So who is telling them this? Why are they not resurrected? (That's another article- on all the hyped resurrection stories occurring).Before you finish reading this article I want to say that I do believe in healing and miracles. So I'm not anti-supernatural, what I oppose is the false stories and unbiblical methods that give rise to them. I'm believing for a miracle for those in the Word/ Faith movement. Many who are involved in this movement need a miracle to get out.Almost the majority of the known healers went for some kind of treatment from medical professionals. This was in spite of all their claims of miracles and the practice of their �positive confession� faith.Even Joyce Meyers did, and she was honest to admit that she had breast cancer and was medically treated. One of the few honest admission�s.There are many documented cases where people who were dying prayed to God of their own religion (and imagination) and were healed. There are numerous documented cases where people who were sick and dying had made no claim to faith, used prayer, or even believed in God, had a miraculous cure. How are these explained? You could be sure if a faith-healer was nearby they would find a way to attribute it to their ministry.Now we have a first with Rev. Skankster's Online Healing Ministry. (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/7383/heal.html) link no longer worksYou no longer have to go to a crusade� That's right, now YOU can be healed ONLINE, in the comfort of your own home! Whether you're young or old, black or white, rich or poor...God's healing power is available to you at the touch of a button. Please, come and join us. Witness the miracles of Jesus Christ!He claims on his site, No Affliction is out of reach of healing! Any affliction will be completely healed. (When enough funds are received he will expand his services to include online EXORCISMS) Now, even the most unyielding demons can be cast out from the comfort of your favorite chair.... All this is GUARANTEED! All this for the incredibly low, low price of $49.95. Which he claims is � a small price to pay for your own personal miracle!�This is a VERY special service available only at this address on the Internet!His Directions are: 1. Place your left hand on the screen. 2.Now without removing your left hand from the screen, click the �HEAL NOW!� button with your mouse. 3.Sit back and experience the warmth and peacefulness that accompanies God's healing powers as your ailment is divinely removed. 4.This is the most important step! After you have received your healing you must say, �Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the annointing!� Be sure to stress annointing or else it will not work.�Yes say the magic words to be deceived. Well the healing Rev. Shankster is certainly a prankster. The sad part is that many will na�vely go to him, desperate for a healing.What if I told your loved one that God guarantees YOU TO BE HEALED when they were dying. Would you want to see them take a chance on this? What if it didn't work, would you be angry? What does it take to mobilize you? Do we care for the people who are being deceived by these false promises? The faith of some men become a license to kill.So why do people die from THIS faith? Because the faith they are exercising is not the faith of the Bible. God does not promise that EVERYONE will be healed if they have faith. So it is not based on truth. So why do some get healed and others not? Because God is gracious and merciful, and it is there time. For whatever reason, only God knows. He has the power to heal at any time, but he has chosen not to all the time. He also has the power to destroy all wickedness, but he has chosen not to. Yet this too is a promise in the Scripture. We know one day he will. So it becomes a matter of timing, not just a matter of faith. It is the same for healing. As Christians we believe in the power of God! Do we actually believe that God can raise the dead? Certainly! The real question is �When?� The Scriptures are clear in Romans 8:23, We are �waiting for ... the redemption of our bodies.� The Resurrection is connected to the 2nd coming of Christ as stated in 1 Corinthians 15. If he resurrects some individuals today, Praise the Lord. If he does not, we still have hope in his promise.A story everyone should read - http://geocities.com/robbi01/ This article will continually be updated as long as these people continue to teach this falsehood and die from disease and sickness they claim to be healed of. Touch , Topple, Tilt Another gospel Exercising Discernment Suffering Is Healing in the atonement PrayerFalse Teachers among UsWas Jesus Rich! Danger , Deception and Diabolical teachingIts Jubilee I have what I Think I have Isaiah 53 by his Stripes I'm Healed His miracles The Prosperity of the faith Teachers Whose influencing Whom? The Image of God in Man Were All Healed by Faith Another Kenneth Copeland false prophecyBecoming Rich in this present age Rod Parsley's teachingGloria Copeland's teachingsK. Copeland's teachings Jesus the SinnerJesus of the Faith MovementWalter Martin's Warning to the Church Death by faith The Price is right or wrong?Parsley, Purple Passion and Paisley I'm rich! � 2009 No portion of this site is to be copied or used unless kept in its original format- the way it appears. Articles can be reproduced in portions for ones personal use. Any other use is to have the permission of Let Us Reason Ministries first. Thank You. We always appreciate hearing from those of you that have benefited by the articles on our website. We love hearing the testimonies and praise reports. We are here to help those who have questions on Bible doctrine, new teachings and movements. Unfortunately we cannot answer every email. Our time is valuable just as yours is, please keep in mind, we only have time to answer sincere inquiries from those who need help. For those who have another point of view, we will answer emails that want to engage in authentic dialogue, not in arguments. We will use discretion in answering any letters. Let Us Reason MinistriesWe thank you for your support in our ministry
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The Bible and Homosexuality by Rev. Mona West, Ph.D. (MCC[Eric, 3/2013])
The Bible and Homosexuality
By Rev. Mona West, Ph.D. (MCC[Eric 3/2013])
Lesbians and gay men face discrimination because of societal attitudes. Unfortunately, these
attitudes are often taught by churches and, sadly, the Bible is frequently used as a weapon to
“bash” lesbians and gays. It is important to remember that such hurtful things are not a reflection of
Christ, or the way God wants the church to be, or even what the Bible really says.
Only a small number of passages in the entire Bible reference same-sex sexual activity (six out of
sixty-six books of the entire Bible). Obviously this topic was not of great concern to the biblical
writers. Yet these verses have been used to justify hatred, condemnation and exclusion of God’s
lesbian and gay children.
The word ‘homosexuality’ is a modern term and did not exist during biblical times. Biblical writers
had no concept of sexual orientation or sexual development as we understand those today.
Therefore, passages that reference same-sex sexual activity should not been seen as
comprehensive statements concerning homosexuality, but instead should be viewed in the context
of what the ancient world that produced the Bible understood about sexual activity.
Sexuality in the Mediterranean World
Biblical scholars have employed the social sciences to study the relational and gender patterns of
the ancient Mediterranean world—the world that produced the Bible. Professor Mary Tolbert
summarizes that research with the following words:
The single most important concept that defines sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean
world, whether we are talking about the kingdoms of Egypt or of Assyria or whether we are
talking about the later kingdoms of Greece and Rome, is that approved sexual acts never
occurred between social equals. Sexuality, by definition, in ancient Mediterranean
societies required the combination of dominance and submission. This crucial social and
political root metaphor of dominance and submission as the definition of sexuality rested
upon a physical basis that assumed every sex act required a penetrator and someone who
was penetrated. Needless to say, this definition of sexuality was entirely male—not
surprising in the heavily patriarchal societies of the Mediterranean.
In these societies sexual acts between men did happen, but they happened in order to show
dominance of one group of men or a man over another, especially during times of war. It was not
uncommon for men who had conquered a foreign army to rape them in order to show they were
dominant and of a higher status.
The Story of Sodom in Genesis 19
This understanding is helpful when we read the story of the city of Sodom, Lot, and the visitors (or
angels). The men of Sodom want to ‘know’ (yadah - a Hebrew word that can mean sexual
intercourse) the foreigners who have come to Lot’s house. In essence they want to rape them in
order to show their social and cultural dominance over them.
This story is not a condemnation of homosexuality, but is a story about rape and inhospitality. In
other biblical texts (Ezekiel 16:49, Luke 17:28-29) Sodom’s ‘sin’ is not identified as homosexuality,
rather, their sins were pride, failure to help the poor, and lack of hospitality to foreigners.
Leviticus
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” (18:22)
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they
shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” (20:13)
These verses are part of the Holiness Code in the Old Testament book of Leviticus (chapters 17-
26) that attempted to spell out ways the people of Israel would act differently than their
Mediterranean neighbors. In light of the previously mentioned sexual practices of Israel’s
neighbors, it becomes clear that this prohibition in Leviticus was an attempt to preserve the internal
harmony of Jewish male society by not allowing them to participate in anal intercourse as a form of
expressing or gaining social and political dominance. These verses in no way prohibit, nor do they
even speak, to loving, caring sexual relationships between people of the same gender.
The Writings of the Apostle Paul
“So do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived!
Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards,
revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
“The law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and
sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers,
fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound
teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:9-11).
There are two major issues to consider when one approaches these passages: translation and
sexual practices of Greek culture. A comparison of these verses in several translations of the Bible
indicates that there is some confusion about how to translate two Greek words in these lists of
vices Paul has enumerated. The two words are arsenokoitai which is rendered in various
translations as “homosexuals,” “sodomites,” “child molesters,” or “perverts” and malakoi which is
rendered in various translations as “catamites,” “the effeminate,” or “boy prostitutes.”
These Greek words are difficult to translate in the context of these passages. Malakoi is a
common term and means “soft.” It can refer to clothing (Matthew 11:8) or moral matters, meaning
“undisciplined.” Arsenokoitai is a rare word and is made up of arseno meaning “man,” and koitai
meaning “bed, lying, or having sex with.” When put together the word may mean “male
prostitutes.”
When these words are placed in the context of Greek culture in which Paul was writing, the
passages have very specific meanings. As we have seen earlier, the Mediterranean world had a
definition of sexuality that was based on dominance/submission and unequal status. Greek culture
fine tuned that definition with regard to status. Proper sexual relations occurred between people
whose status was unequal. In addition there was a practice in ancient Greek culture known as
pederasty in which younger men were socialized and educated through a close relationship with an
older man. These older men were the boys’ (age 12 or 13) patrons and, often, their lovers. These
relationships were seen as the key to raising up the next generation of city leaders and there were
strict rules about how long the relationship should last and the roles of families within these
relationships. Evidently there was some abuse happening in these relationships and young boys
were being exploited and kept by the patron well after the boy had grown into adulthood (which
would have made him an equal, hence violating the code of sex only among unequals).
These abusive relationships are what the apostle Paul is referencing, not mutually loving and
caring relationships between people of the same sex.
Romans 1:26-27
“For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural
intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with
women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men
and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”
By now it should be clear that these verses must be read in the cultural context of the
Mediterranean world that understood socially acceptable sexual behavior to happen only one way:
among unequals with the dominant partner always an adult male.
It is also important to read these verses in Romans within their larger context. At the beginning of
his letter to the church in Rome (where he had not yet visited) Paul was attempting to lay out for
the Roman church his theology of grace (all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; but are
justified by the gift of grace in Christ Jesus, 3:23). He is writing to a Jewish and Gentile audience.
In chapter one he tries to demonstrate the Gentiles’ need for God by pointing out behaviors that
keep them alienated from God. In chapter two he does the same thing for his Jewish audience.
Paul’s reference to natural and unnatural sexual acts must be taken in light of Mediterranean
sexuality. He is not attempting to give an ethical teaching concerning homosexuality. He is trying
to meet his Gentile audience on their own terms; using the example of some people who are not
upholding the dominant/submissive model as an opportunity to talk about all persons’ need for the
saving grace of Jesus Christ.
Issues of Biblical Authority
When dealing with matters of biblical interpretation one always needs to keep in mind the role of
the authority of the Bible in matters of faith and practice. While the Bible is an important witness to
the relationship between God and humanity, it is not the ultimate revelation of God—Jesus Christ,
the Word made flesh, is. We must guard against what some scholars have called bibliolatry—
making an idol out of scripture.
One way to guard against bibliolatry is to realize that while the Bible may be at the center of
matters of faith, it must also be in ‘conversation’ with tradition, experience and reason. These four
sources of faith have become known as the Wesleyan quadrilateral, so named after their originator
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist heritage.
We must read and interpret scripture with the aid of the history and tradition of the Christian
church. We must also bring reason—philosophical and rational thought--to bear on applications of
scripture to real life situations. And last and most importantly, scripture must be weighed alongside
human experience—especially the experience of God’s grace.
It is time we stopped making an idol out of the Bible. It is time we bring philosophical and rational
thought—especially what the sciences have told us about sexual orientation and identity
development—into conversation with the Bible. It is time we listen to the experiences of God’s gay
and lesbian children who know with all their hearts that God has created them just as they are.
Resources
Brooten, Bernadette (1996). Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female
Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Helminiak, Daniel (1994). What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality. San Francisco: Alamo
Square Press.
Scroggs, Robin (1983). The New Testament and Homosexuality. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Tolbert, Mary (2002). “Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: Biblical Texts in Historical Contexts.”
Paper delivered at Lancaster School of Theology, published on the web at www.clgs.org.
Wink, Walter (1999). Homosexuality and the Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the
Churches. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Euthanasia A study prepared by the Academy of Catholic Traditional Biomedical Ethics-Apologetics
Euthanasia
Academy of Catholic Traditional Biomedical Ethics
Euthanasia is the intentional killing of a person, for compassionate motives, whether the killing is by a direct action, such as a lethal injection, or by failing to perform an action necessary to maintain life. For euthanasia to occur, there must be an intention to kill.
Meanings of Terms
The word Euthanasia comes from the Greek language: “eu” means good and “thanatos” means death. The meaning of the word has evolved from “good death”. It now refers to the act of ending another person’s life, at their request, in order to minimize suffering.
It comes in two main forms:
Passive Euthanasia: Hastening the death of a person by removing life support equipment (e.g. a respirator), or stopping medical procedures, medications etc., or stopping food and water and allowing the person to dehydrate or starve to death. These procedures are performed on terminally ill, suffering persons so that natural death will occur sooner. It is also done on persons in a Persistent Vegetative State - individuals with massive brain damage who are in a coma from which they will not recover.
Active Euthanasia: Causing the death of a person through a direct action.The term ‘Assisted Suicide’ is vaguely related to Euthanasia. It usually refers to a situation in which information and/or the means of committing suicide (e.g. drugs, carbon monoxide gas) are given to a person so that they can easily terminate their own life without further assistance. The term “voluntary passive euthanasia” (VPE) is becoming commonly used. One writer suggests the use of the verb “to kevork”. This is derived from the named of Dr. Kevorkian, a Michigan doctor who has promoted VPE and assisted at the deaths of dozens of patients.
Less commonly discussed is involuntary euthanasia. This concerns the killing of persons who cannot express their wishes, because of immaturity (such as a newborn infant), mental retardation or coma. Here, it is decided by others that that person would be better off dead.
Nazi Euthanasia
In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war, Hitler ordered widespread “mercy killing” of the sick and disabled. The Code named “Aktion T 4,” the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate “life unworthy of life”, at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.
A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.
Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under the term “treatment” on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant a decision against killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a ‘Children’s Specialty Department’ for death by injection or gradual starvation.
Patients had to be reported if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington’s chorea and other neurological conditions, also those who had been continuously in institutions for at least 5 years, or were criminally insane, or did not posses German citizenship or were not of German or related blood, including Jews, Negroes, and Gypsies. A total of six killing centers were established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar.
A. In l935 in Britain, in l938 in the U S A, and in l980 in Canada. The British and America groups were very small and insignificant for the next two decades.
Q. When did the movement start to become bigger and more vocal?
A. After the hugely-publicized Karen Ann Quinlan ‘right to die’ case in New Jersey in l976 which revealed to the public the extent of modern medical technology to extend life indefinitely in a persistent vegetative state.
Q. How many people support voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill?
A. Opinion polls show average support of 60 percent in the USA, 74 percent in Canada, and 80 percent in Britain. When actually voting in official ballot measures, the support has been 46 percent in Washington State (l991), 46 percent in California (l992), and 51 percent in Oregon (l994).
Q. How many physicians support voluntary euthanasia?
A. Numerous opinion polls indicate that half the medical profession would like to see it made law. It also appears that about 15 percent of physicians already practice it on justifiable occasions. The leaderships of the professional medical associations, like the American Medical Association, remain adamantly opposed.
Q. Where does the main opposition to voluntary euthanasia come from?
A. From the Hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Also religious sects on the religious right.
Q. Which religious sects officially support the principle of voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill?
A. The United Church of Christ (Congregational), the Unitarian Church, and the Methodist Church on the West coast of America. It appears that the congregations of most churches are divided on the issue.
Q. Where is voluntary euthanasia (assisted dying) lawful in the world?
A. In only two places. (1) The American state of Oregon, where its citizens in November, l994, voted for Ballot Measure 16 which permits physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill under limited conditions. This law is held up by an injunction obtained by the National Right To Life Committee on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional. The Measure 16 sponsors are appealing this ruling to a higher court in the Spring of l996.
(2) In May of l995 the legislature of the Northern Territories State of Australia passed a voluntary euthanasia law which permits terminally ill people to ask for medically assisted death either by injection or taking the drugs themselves. This law will come into effect some time in l996.
Q. But what about the Netherlands where it has been going on for years?
A. Assisted dying (euthanasia) is still technically a crime in the Netherlands (Holland), but the Dutch Parliament and Supreme Court have ruled that, provided certain conditions are met, physicians may assist people to die with either lethal injection or fatal drugs taken by mouth. The majority choose the injection because it is quicker.
No copyright on these facts provided that the following is included: Source: ERGO! (Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization)
In the first paradise, Adam and Eve had, with the state of grace, the special gift of impassibility (absence of suffering) and of immorality. There are two other gifts that do not concern us here: integrity (absence of disordered passions) and knowledge. It is interesting to know how this gift of immortality was given to the first man. It was by eating the fruit of the tree of life. A violent death remained possible but a special Providence of God prevented it.
But as a consequence of his first sin of rebellion against God, Adam lost sanctifying grace and the special gifts. God “cast out Adam and Eve and placed before the Paradise of pleasure cherubim, and a flaming sword, running every way to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen 3:24) lest Adam “take of the tree of life and eat and live forever” (Gen 3:22). Then aging , suffering and death entered the world. They must be now considered punishment for sin. “By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death.” (Romans 5:12)
But since the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world, aging, suffering and death, united to the sufferings and death of Our Lord during his Passion, obtain supernatural fruits if we are in the state of grace:
they obtain the reparation of our personal sins and, with the communion of Saints, of the sins of our neighbor. With sufferings and death, we are co-redeemers with Our Lord, we save the world with Him;
they prepare us for eternal life, forcing to turn one’s back on the world;
they can become a period of spiritual ascent by our union with Our Lord crucified.
othe
The catechism of St. Pius X teaches that “extreme unction is a sacrament instituted by Our Lord for the spiritual as well as the temporal comfort of the sick in danger of death.” This sacrament is invalid if given to persons who are only old but are not in danger of death, as alas it is practiced today in many places.
This sacrament, as the Catechism of St. Pius X says:
increases sanctifying grace;
remits venial sins, and also mortal sins which the sick person, if contrite, is unable to confess;
takes away weakness and sloth which remain even after pardon has been obtained;
gives strength to bear the illness patiently, to withstand;
aids in restoring us to health of body if it is for the good of the soul. (This is not a miracle. The sacrament strengthens the natural resistance of the organism, which can cure the sick. There are numerous examples of this occurrence but it is important that the sacrament be not given too late. The sacrament must be given as soon as the sick is in danger of death, even doubtfully.)
The decision to give this sacrament or not belongs to the priest. But the family, the doctor, the nurse, have the duty to call a priest as soon as the sick is in danger of death even doubtfully. It can help in the recovery of the sick person, and above all help him serbear and offer his sufferings to gain merits and to prepare him for death.
Question? Must we tell the sick that he is going to die?
Answer. If we do not, the sick cannot prepare himself for death. The announcement of the death belongs to the contract existing between the sick and his doctor. The doctor has the duty to inform the sick about his health and not to hide the reality. It is a question of justice (there is a contract) and a question of charity (we must love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God).
A nurse has not the same obligation as the doctor because there is not the same contract. A nurse has only the obligation of charity, and only a serious disadvantage (for example threat of dismissal) could exempt her from informing the sick if the doctor does not do it.
Obviously, prudence and wisdom are required to announce to a sick person that he is going to die. In some cases it is better to wait some time in order that the sick is in a better moral condition to receive such news. But “to postpone by reluctance (without reason) the preparation of a sick to his passage to eternity could easily be a serious sin” (Pope Pius XII, May 21, 1952).
Pope Pius XII:
Address to those attending the Congress of the International Union of Catholic Women’s League, Sept. 11, 1947;
Address to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives, Oct 29, 1951;
Speech to the members of the International Office of Military Medicine Documentation, Oct. 19, 1953
Address to those taking part in the IXth Congress of the Italian Anaesthesiological Society, Feb 26, 1957;
Address on reanimation, November 26, 1957.
Holy Office (against Euthanasia imposed by the State):
Decrees of Dec 2, 1940 and Feb 22, 1941 (during the time of Euthanasia practices by the Nazi state in Germany)
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
Declaration on Euthanasia, May 5, 1980. (This declaration uses many principles of modern philosophy, but the conclusions remain important.)
Killing an innocent is a crime against the 5th commandment “Thou shall not kill”. This commandment forbids the killing of the innocent, not the killing of the guilty, which can be sometimes ordered by the state for the common good. This is clear in the Old testament where Moses also gave laws to kill the guilty, and in the doctrine of the Church (the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas for example). Euthanasia is a crime against the same commandment as abortion.
Let us quote here Pope Pius XII.
“ If there exists no direct casual link, either through the will of interested parties or by the nature of things, between the induced unconsciousness and the shortening of life – as would be the case if the suppression of the pain could be obtained only by the shortening of life: and if on the other hand, the actual administration of the drugs brings about two distinct effects, the one the relief of pain, the other the shortening of life, the action is lawful. It is necessary however to observe whether there is, between these two effects, a reasonable proportion, and if the advantages of the one compensate for the disadvantage of the other. It is important also to ask oneself if the present state of science does not allow the same result to be obtained by other means” (Feb. 26, 1957).
Second point: About suffering and use of sedatives
We must know that heroism is possible and we have examples of priests, religious, sisters, lay persons who refused sedatives and analgesics and offered their sufferings.
Most of the time, the sufferings can also be an obstacle to spiritual life and can lead to despair and even rebellion against God. Refusing the sedative may be presumptuous.
Sedatives are obviously permitted.
Let us quote Pope Pius XII:
“The growth in love of God and abandonment to His will does not come from the sufferings themselves which are accepted, but from the intention in the will supported by grace. This intention in many of the dying, can be strengthened and become more active if their sufferings are eased, for these sufferings increase the state of weakness and physical exhaustion, check the ardor of soul and sap the moral powers instead of sustaining them. On the other hand, the suppression of pain removes any tension in body and mind, renders prayer easy, and makes possible a more generous gift of self. If some dying persons accept their sufferings as a means of expiation and a source of merits in order to go forward in the love of God and in abandonment to His will, do not force anesthetics on them. They should rather be helped in following their own way. Where the situation is entirely different, it would be inadvisable to suggest to dying persons the ascetical considerations set out above, and it is to be remembered that instead of assisting towards expiation and merit, suffering can also furnish occasion for new faults” (Feb. 24,1957).
There may be a problem with the action of the sedative on the conscience of the sick. We must remember that our earthly life has its meaning in the eternal life. Also, when the sedatives are going to suppress the conscience of the sick, we must let the sick prepare himself to eternal life by the reception of the sacraments of penance, the Holy Eucharist, extreme unction, and also urge him to accomplish his last duties, such as his last will and testament.
Let us quote Pope Pius XII in answer to a group of doctors who had put the question:
“Is the suppression of pain and consciousness by the use of narcotics…permitted by religion and morality to the doctor and the patient (even at the approach of death and if one foresees that the use of narcotics will shorten life)?” the Pope said: “ If no other means exist, and if, in the given circumstance, this does not prevent the carrying out of other religious and moral duties: Yes” (Sept. 9, 1958).
Obviously “ it is not right to deprive the dying person of consciousness without a serious reason” (Sept.9, 1958).
Third point: About ordinary and extraordinary means.
(Bibliography: Pope Pius XII; Congregation of the D sooine of the Faith; Noldin, Theologia Moralis)
a. Everybody has the duty to employ what is necessary to the conservation of his own life and health, to avoid what is harmful to them, and to use what can restore the health. Let us quote St. Thomas Aquinas (commentary on the 2ndepistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, lect. II, n. 77): “A man has the obligation to sustain his body, otherwise he would be a killer of himself; by precept therefore, he is bound to nourish his body and likewise we are bound to all the other items without which the body cannot live.”
b. Everybody has the duty to conserve his own life and health by ordinary means. This principle is just a consequence of the precedent. The ordinary means are the means that are commonly used by men to preserve their own life, and which can be procured by ordinary diligence.
What are these ordinary means today?
-blood transfusion;
-intravenous feeding;
-ordinary surgery, etc.
c. “If there are no sufficient remedies, it is permitted, with the patients consent, to have recourse to the means provided by the most advanced medical techniques, even if these means are still at the experimental stage and are not without certain risk” (Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , May 5, 1980). These means, provided by the most advanced medical techniques, are called extraordinary means.
What are the characteristics of an extraordinary means?
They depend on:
the common estimation
the price of the surgery
the danger of death
the personal repulsion for this means
the pains of the surgery
the proportion of this means and the hope of success
the length of the treatment.
“It is also permissible to make do with the normal means that medicine can offer. Therefore one cannot impose on anyone the obligation to have recourse to a technique which is already in use but which carries a risk or is burdensome. Such a refusal is not the equivalent of suicide; on the contrary, it should be considered as the acceptance of the human condition, or a wish to avoid the application of a medical procedure disproportionate to the results that can be expected, or a desire not to impose excessive expense on the family or on the community” (Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith).
Sometimes there is an obligation employing the extraordinary means: when the life or the health of the sick is necessary to the common good of a family or the society.
When inevitable death is imminent in spite of the means used, it is permitted in conscience to take the decision to refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted. In such circumstance the doctor has no reason to reproach himself with failing to help the person in danger.
“It is also permitted , with the patients consent, to interrupt these means, where the results fall short of expectations. But for such a decision to be made, account will have to be made of the reasonable wishes of the patient and the patients’ family, as also of the advise of the doctors who are specially competent on the matter. The latter may in particular judge that the investment in instruments and personnel is disproportionate to the results foreseen; they may also judge that the techniques applied impose on the patient strain or suffering out of proportion with the benefits which he or she may gain from such techniques” (Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith).
In the beginning of this process, it is said that the population of the country is too big, that contraception becomes necessary , and even that contraception will prevent abortion (we answer these problems in our leaflet on contraception). We must tell here that the introduction of contraception is always done in a context of increasing immorality spread by television, movies, advertisements, magazines, sexual education in the schools, and so on. It is the liberation of sexuality, and this immorality increases the need of to practice contraception.
But after some years, this contraception obviously induces an anti-conception mentality. So it becomes easy to introduce abortion. In the beginning, it was said that abortion was introduced only in order to help poor women victims of rape, and such other cases. But very quickly, abortion became permitted for all women who do not want any more babies. Now after some years, abortion has made a mortal breach in the respect of life. Then, people having no more respect for life, euthanasia can easily be introduced.
What are the causes of this introduction?
Firstly, contraception and abortion cause such a decrease in birth rate that the proportion of old people (whose number increases with the legitimate progress of science) becomes too much important for the economy of a country.
Secondly, euthanasia is introduced when people do not have any more faith in the value of sufferings and death united to the sufferings and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For the doctors who do not have the faith anymore, death is a failure. When they can’t avoid it (cancers in terminal phase, old people), then they prefer to induce it.
Families that do not have faith anymore, are no longer able to support the illness and treatment of the sick. They don’t want to see these sufferings anymore, they say that it is too expensive (we must say that euthanasia is more often asked by the families and rarely by the sick).
So they have “this false piety which is a pretext to justify euthanasia and make man avoid purifying and meritorious sufferings, not by a charitable and praiseworthy relief, but by death as it is given to an animal without reason and without immortality”. (Pope Pius XII, Sept 11, 1947)
In order to fight against this culture of death:
We must fight for life, fight against contraception, abortion, and euthanasia.
We must spread the doctrine of the faith, help people to understand what is the meaning of life and death according to the Revelation made by Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is impossible to remain only at a natural level, ignoring the supernatural order, ignoring the reality of eternity.
About the Academy of Catholic Traditional Biomedical Ethics
The objectives of this Academy, placed under the patronage of St Martin of Porres, are:
1. To help the members of the medical profession (doctors, dentists, nurses, etc.) to know in depth the traditional teachings of the Church on medical issues and problems.
2. To link and bond the traditional members of the medical profession.
3 To participate in the mission of the Society of St. Pius X by an apostolate towards members of the medical profession who are not Traditional Catholics.
4. To fight against degradation and corruption in the field of medicine and morals by our influence in the medical profession and by means of mass media when possible.
The following activities of the academy are held every three months:
1. Medical missions organized by the Society of St. Pius X
2. Meetings to study the traditional doctrines of the Church on problematic issues in the medical field. Meetings will begin with the Mass, then a potluck dinner, after which a conference will be given by a priest of the Society, sometimes by doctors, on a chosen medical issue.
CATHOLIC APOLOGETICS
Christianity in Europe during WWII by Jim Walker
http://www.nobeliefs.com/ChurchesWWII.htm
Christianity in Europe during WWII
by Jim Walker
- originated: 01 June 2000
- additions made: 22 Dec. 2005
Introduction
The Catholic Church during WWII
The Reich Concordat between Hitler and the VaticanThe Protestant Churches in Germany
Catholic Croatia's Atrocities
The Confessing Church
Remaining secrets
Bibliography
Introduction
The propaganda by the Christian churches in regard to their role during WWII in Fascist Italy, Yugoslavia, and Nazi Germany has so conditioned their believers that most of them believe that Christianity played an honorable role at best, and only a silent role at worst. Yet there seems little recognition that the very framework of the beliefs owned by the Fascists and Nazis came from their Christian upbringing from church, school, and Christian traditions. The entire anti-Jewish and racial sentiments came not from some new philosophy or unique ideology, but rather from centuries of Christian preaching against the Jews, gypsies, and heretics. This comes especially true for European countries, for the Christian practice of crusades, inquisitions and holy wars occurred in their own backyards. Moreover, the wars conducted by Providence, approved by God, appears so often in the Bible, and practiced by Christians throughout the centuries has disciplined Christians to believe that they could engage in offensive war honorably and even worse-- morally. One must remember that the Catholic raised and Protestant conditioned Hitler took his cause of war for an expanded Germany and his fight against the Jews, for Providence's sake, and a fight for the Lord. He appealed to his fellow German Christians to put him in power and he achieved popular support. I find it unimaginable that Hitler, without this religious foundation, could have churches, politicians and citizens electing him into office, much less have acted against the Jews.
The intolerance against humans and religious wars committed before WWII comes from such abundant sources of Christian history that to deny an influential connection can only come from immeasurable ignorance. Moreover the justification for atrocious acts committed by Christians and priests during WWII could only have come from their own beliefs and faiths.
I do not think I understate the claim that the conditions required for a Nazi or Fascist state cannot occur without a deep religious or superstitious underpinning. I charge that the major accountability for World War II and the Jewish holocaust must go to the ones who created the conditions for it to occur. And the people who created the conditions come in the form of the Christian churches-- the body of believing people who acted according to their Christian beliefs and who taught their children, preached to their congregations, and influenced their society's political leaders.
I aim to provide the reader with a flavor of the forgotten or denied role of Christians during WWII. Nothing here comes from a unique or original understanding. Rather, I have taken parts of what comes almost directly from established and well researched historical works on the Catholic and Protestant involvement in Europe.
The Catholic Church during WWII
Jewish persecutions: banning Jews from working for public office, the enforcement of wearing yellow badges, the Jewish ghettos, burning of synagogues, and the extermination of Jews remind us of the atrocities committed by Nazis in WWII. However the atrocities above do not pertain to Nazi actions but rather the practices of Catholicism, centuries before Hitler came into power.
The seeds of Christian hatred for Jews begins from the readings of the New Testament and the persecutions began when the Church first held power to enforce its dogmas. The Biblical Paul, for example, put the blame of Jesus's death entirely on the Jews. In the first epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians (2:14-15), it says, "the Jews who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets...." Also the gospel of John, makes it clear that the Jews represent an enemy (and John 8:44 puts the devil as the father of the Jews). Many prominent priests used Paul's epistles and the gospels as Biblical justification for Jewish persecution.
Historical Christianity makes it clear that the Jews formed an essential part of early Christian theology. Examples include the letter of Barnabas (circa 130), Justin the Martyr's "Dialogue with the Jew Trypho" (circa 160), Tertullian's treatise against the Jews (circa 200), Orgin's work against Celsus (circa 250). The sermons by John Chrysostom in 387, especially, show an indigence against the Jews. Origen had written, "The blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world." John Chrysostom wrote, "The Synagogue is a brothel, a hiding place for unclean beasts.... Never has any prayed to God.... They are possessed by demons." [Cornwell, pp. 24-25]
When Christianity became officially accepted for the state in the 4th century, the Christians began to act against the Jews. Constantine imposed heavy penalties on anyone who visited a pagan temple or converted to Judaism. Mixed marriages between Jews and Christians were punished by death. In the Codex Theodosianus of Theodosis II (408-450), it forbade Jews to hold any public office. It first came from Justinian who legalized the burning and pillaging of Jewish synagogues by Christian bishops and monks (often canonized later). Thomas Aquinas, in the treatise De regimine Judaeorum ad Ducissam Brabantae, made it acceptable for popes and kings to dispose of property belonging to the Jews.
Compelling Jews to wear yellow badges came from an invention of the Catholic Church. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 set up the Inquisition along with enforcement of Jews wearing a yellow spot on their clothes and a horned cap (pileum cornutum) to mark them as the murderers of Christ and to remind them of their descent from the devil. During the Black Death plague which ravaged Europe in the 14th century, the Catholic clergy aimed its blame at the Jews claiming they worked for the Devil and had poisoned the wells and springs. Their extermination compares with the pogroms that took place in the 20th century under Hitler. During the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church directed its actions against the baptized Jews, the marranos. They forbade them to hold any office in the Church or the state; many suffered torture or death.
Popes have traditionally supported anti-Jewish acts and beliefs. Pope Paul IV in the sixteenth century established the Roman ghetto (another Catholic invention). For more than two centuries afterward, Catholics humiliated the Roman Jews and degraded them at the annual carnival. In the same century, Pope Gregory XIII instituted enforced Christian sermons insulting Judaism. [Cornwell, p. 299]. In a Papal custom Popes performed an anti-Jewish ceremony on their way to the basilica of St. John Lateran. Here the Pontiff would receive a copy of the Pentateuch from the hand of Rome's rabbi. The Pope then returned the text upside down with twenty pieces of gold, proclaiming that, while he respected the Law of Moses, he disapproved of the hard hearts of the Jewish race. [Cornwell, p. 27]
Forcing Jews, and heretics into the Catholic faith, of course has always served as a hallmark of Catholicism. When they could not legally use strong-arm tactics they used propaganda. Although most people associate the term with Hitler, propaganda actually came as an invention by the Catholics long before the Nazis, from the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, an organization established by Pope Gregory XV in 1622.
In the 1930s, as the Catholic leaders listened to Hitler's rhetoric against the Jews during his appeal for power, his speeches condemning Jews only correlated with the Church's own long history of Jewish hatred. Indeed, in Hitler's meeting with Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann on April 26, 1933, Hilter reminded his Catholic guests that the Church, for 1,500 years had regarded the Jews as parasites, had banished them into ghettos, and had forbidden Christians to work for them. Hitler said he merely intended to do more effectively what the Church had attempted to accomplish for so long. [Lewy]
It should come to no surprise that at no time before or during Hitler's rise did the Catholic Church speak up against such talk. Sadly the Church remained mostly silent, with its main objections concerned with its own power structure in Germany. Thus it aimed to prevent loss of control and, indeed, to gain Church control through an expansion of papal power, control of appointment of bishops, and the control of Catholic schools. This self-serving interest gave the Vatican an impetus to form an agreement with Germany. In this sense, Hitler actually saved Catholicism in Germany, especially considering that Bismark before him had begun aKulturkampf ("culture struggle"), a policy of persecution against Catholicism. [Cornwell, p.14]
The Reich Concordat between Hitler and the Vatican:
In 1917, Eugenio Pacelli, later to become Pope Pius XII, resided in a nunciature in Munich, directly opposite to what was later to become the Brown House, the cradle of Nazism. There he showed his first inkling of his unsympathetic feelings toward the Jews when he refused to come to the assistance of Jews and calling them a "Jewish cult." [Cornwell, p.70]. In a typewritten letter, he described "a gang of young women, of dubious appearance, Jews as like all the rest of them, hanging around in the offices with lecherous demeanor and suggestive smiles." [Cornwell, p.75] In the 1920s Pacelli presented his credentials to the Weimer government where he stated, "For my part, I will devote my entire strength to cultivating and strengthening the relations between the Holy See and Germany." Pacelli's stay in Germany with his familiarity with their political, religious, and racist views must have influenced his later work to unify Catholicism with Germany.
In Italy, the Holy See signed a pact (drafted by Pacelli's brother and Pietro Gasparri) with Mussolini in February 1929, known as the Lateran Treaty. Hitler had taken note of the Lateran Treaty and hoped for an identical agreement for his future regime. [Cornwell, pp.114-115] The Vatican encouraged priests to support the Fascists and the Pope spoke of Mussolini as "a man sent by Providence." The Church has a history of pacts with criminal states as the Holy See signed treaties with monarchs and governments regardless of slavery, inhumanity, or torture they may have induced upon fellow human beings. Even Mussolini's attack on Ethiopia on October 3, 1935 was not condemned by the Holy See. Nor did Pius XI restrain the Italian hierarchy from war enthusiasm. "O Duce!, declared the bishop of Terracina, "today Italy is Fascist and the hearts of all Italians beat together with yours." [Cornwell, p.175]
In the 1930s, Pacelli and his associates negotiated with the Nazis to form a contract which got signed in 1933 as the Reich Concordat with the approval of the Pope. Note that the Catholic hierarchy believes in the infallibility of Popes in matters of faith and morals (ever since the First Vatican Council of 1870). This Concordat with its Papal infallible authority had arguably neutralized the potential of 23 million Catholics to protest and resist and which helped Hitler into legal dictatorship. [Cornwell, p. 4] After the agreement, Hitler, mimicking Pacelli fourteen years earlier stated, "I will devote my entire strength to cultivating and strengthening the relations between the Holy See and Germany." [Cornwell, p. 136] (Hitler, spent more time and effort on the concordat with Pacelli than on any other treaty in the entire era of the Third Reich [Cornwell, p. 150]). This Concordat gave Germany an opportunity to create an area of trust with the Church and gave significance to the developing struggle against international Jewry. According to John Cornwell, this papal endorsement of Nazism helped seal the fate of Europe which makes it plausible that these Catholic prejudices bolstered aspects of Nazi anti-Semitism. [Cornwell, p. 28]
The Concordat and the following Jewish persecutions resulted in the silence of the Pope and the bishops. Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich, referring to the Nazi attacks on the Jews, wrote to Pacelli, confirming that protest proved pointless since it could only extend the struggle to Catholics. He told Pacelli, "Jews can help themselves." [Cornwell, p. 140] Most bishops and Cardinals were Nazi sympathizers as were bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabruck and Archbishop Grober of Freiburg (Pacelli's choice for emissaries).
On April 25, thousands of Catholic priests across Germany became part of an anti-Semitic attestation bureaucracy, supplying details of blood purity through marriage and baptism registries in accordance with the Nazi Nuremberg laws which distinguished Jews from non-Jews. Catholic clerical compliance in the process would continue throughout the period of the Nazi regime. [Cornwell, pp.154] Any claimed saving of all-too-few Jewish lives by a few brave Catholics must stand against the millions who died in the death camps as an indirect result of the official workings of the Catholic body.
After Kristallnacht (where Nazis broke Jewish store windows and had synagogues burned) there issued not a single word of condemnation from the Vatican, the German Church hierarchy, or from Pacelli. Yet in an encyclical on anti-Semitism, titled Humani generis unitas (The Unity of the Human Race) by Pope Pius XI, a section claims that the Jews were responsible for their own fate. God had chosen them to make way for Christ's redemption but they denied him and killed him. And now, "Blinded by their dream of worldly gain and material success," they had deserved the "worldly and spiritual ruin" that they had brought down upon themselves. [Cornwell, p. 191] Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, archbishop of Vienna warmly received Hitler in Vienna after his triumphal march through the capital where he expressed public satisfaction with Hitler's regime. [Cornwell, p. 201] Meanwhile, Cardinal Bertram sent Hitler an effusive telegram, published on October 2 in the Nazi newspaperVolkischer Beobachter, "The great deed of safeguarding peace among the nations moves the German episcopate acting in the name of the Catholics of all the German dioceses, respectfully to extend congratulations and thanks and to order a festive ringing of bells on Sunday." [Cornwell, p. 202]
After the death of Pius XI, the electoral procedure to elect another pope had begun. The March 1939 election favored Pacelli and four days later, Pacelli made it clear that he would handle all German affairs personally. He proposed the following affirmation of Hitler:
To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and Chancellor of the German Reich! Here at the beginning of Our Pontificate We wish to assure you that We remain devoted to the spiritual welfare of the German people entrusted to your leadership.... During the many years we spent in Germany, We did all in Our power to establish harmonious relations between Church and State. Now that the responsibilities of Our pastoral function have increased Our opportunities, how much more ardently do We pray to reach that goal. May the prosperity of the German people and their progress in every domain come, with God's help, to fruition!Pacelli became a crowned Pope on March 12, 1939 (Pius XII). The following month on April 20, 1939, at Pacelli's express wish, Archbishop Orsenigo, the nuncio in Berlin, opened a gala reception for Hitler's fiftieth birthday. The birthday greetings thus initiated by Pacelli immediately became a tradition; each April 20 during the few years left to Hitler and his Reich, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin would send "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany," to which he added "fervent prayers which the Catholics in Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." [Cornwell, p. 209] By this time Pacelli could call on the loyalty and devotion of a half-billion people, of which half the populations of Hitler's new Reich had become Catholics, including a quarter of the SS. At this time bishops, clergy, religious, and faithful had bound themselves to the Pope, and by his own self estimation, served as the supreme arbiter of moral values on earth. [Cornwell, p. 215]
Throughout the war, not only did Catholic priests pay homage to Hitler and contribute to the anti-Semitic feelings, several priests also protected Nazis from criminal charges. For example, Nazi sympathizers such as Bishop Alois Hudal helped Nazi criminals escape to South America by assisting them with false papers and hiding places in Rome. Father Dragonovic worked with the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) to organize the escape of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to South America. Barbie had also lived under Dragonovic's protection in San Girolamo for about a year.
Catholic Croatia's Atrocities:
In 1941 Croat Fascists declared an independent Croatia. Italy and Hungary (also a fascist state) joined forces with Hitler for a share of Yugoslavia. Hitler had issued his plan for a partitioned Yugoslavia, granting "Aryan" status to an independent Croatia under the Catholic Ante Pavelic. This resulted in a campaign of terror and extermination conducted by the Ustashe of Croatia against two million Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Communists between 1941 and 1945 (Note that the Croats were Roman Catholics, the Serbs were Orthodox Christians). According to Cornwell, "Pavelic's onslaught against the Orthodox Serbs remains one of the most appalling civilian massacres known to history."
From the outset, Pope Pius XII and the Vatican knew of the racist and anti-Semitic statements made by the Croats even as the Pope met with Pavelic and bestowed his papal blessing. Not only did the Croatian Catholic clergy know the details of the massacre of the Serbs and the virtual elimination of the Jews and Gypsies but many of the priests took a leading role! Monks and priests worked as executioners in hastily set up concentration camps where they massacred Serbs. These killings had gotten so brutal that even the Nazis protested against them. By the most reliable reckoning, the Catholic fascists massacred 487,000 Orthodox Serbs and 27,000 Gypsies between 1941 and 1945 in the independent State of Croatia. In addition, approximately 30,000 of the 45,000 Jews died in the slaughter.
At no time did the Vatican make an attempt to halt the forced conversions, appropriation of Orthodox property, or the mass killings. Croat priests had not only sympathized with the fascist massacres but took part in them. According to Cornwell, "Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal. A father Bozidar Bralow, known for the machine gun that was his constant companion, was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most." Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe bands. In September of 1941, an Italian reporter wrote of a Franciscan he had witnessed south of Banja Luka urging on a band of Ustashe with his crucifix." In the Foreign Ministry archive in Rome there sits a photographic record of atrocities: of women with breasts cut off, gouged eyes, genitals mutilated; and the instruments of butchery: knives, axes, meat hooks. [Cornwell, pp. 253-254] Not only priests, but even many nuns sympathized to the movement. Some of these nuns marched in military parades behind soldiers with their arms raised in the fascist salute.
From the very beginning the Catholic clergy worked in collaboration with the Ustashe. Archbishop Stepinac got appointed spiritual leader of the Ustashe by the Vatican in 1942. Stepinac, with ten of his clergy held a place in the Ustashe parliament. Priests served as police chiefs and officers of in the personal bodyguards of Pavelic. There occurred frequent BBC broadcasts on Croatia of which a February 16, 1942 typical report stated: "The worst atrocities are being committed in the environs of the archbishop of Zagreb [Stepinac]. The blood of brother is flowing in streams. The Orthodox are being forcibly converted to Catholicism and we do not hear the archbishop's voice preaching revolt. Instead it is reported that he is taking part in Nazi and Fascist parades." [Cornwell, p.256] The French cardinal Eugene Tisserant, a Slavonic expert, told a Croat representative on March 6, 1942, "that it is the Franciscans themselves, as for example Father Simic of Knin, who have taken part in attacks against the Orthodox populations so as to destroy the Orthodox Church in banja Luka...." [Cornwell, p. 259]
Even though petitions against the Catholics and their massacres got sent to Pius XII, not once did Pacelli, the "infallible" Pope, ever show anything but benevolence toward the leaders of the Pavelic regime. His silence on the matter matched his silence about his knowledge of Auschwitz.
To this day, there occurs ethnic cleansing, outbreaks of war and intense bitter feelings between Croats and Serbs. The religious organizations in the area must bear the major responsibility for these intolerances, atrocities and wars.
Yes there occurred some brave protests by priests and nuns against Nazism and their Jewish attacks but they came few and far between. For example, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (a Jewish convert also known as Edith Stein) wrote a letter to Pius XI begging him to "deplore the hatred, persecution, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews, at any time and from any source." Her letter drew no response. Faulhaber defended converted Jews, but not all Jews. Catholics point to the canonized friar, Maximilian Kolbe, who voluntarily took the place of another person in a concentration camp, but conceal the point that he took the place of a gentile, not a Jew; nor do we hear that he had served as editor of an antisemitic Catholic journal. We also have bishops such as Jozsef Midszenty of Hungary who openly condemned the Nazis after they invaded his country.
We should, of course, always applaud individuals against oppression, but the few protests cannot, by any standard, serve to absolve Christianity, much less honor it.
The deploring fact remains: the major body of the Catholic Church in Germany, that being popes, priests, nuns, and Catholic lay-people supported Hitler and anti-Semitism. Catholicism had links to government organizations, right-wing nationalism, including Fascism and Nazism. Moreover, most every right-wing dictator of the period had been brought up a Catholic: Hitler, Horthy, Franco, Petain, Mussoline, Pavelic, and Tiso (who has served as a Catholic priest). Catholic bishops and cardinals throughout the war expressed anti-Semitic views even as the actions against the visibly persecuted Jews increased. In 1936, for example, Cardial Hlond, primate of Poland, opined: "There will be the Jewish problem as long as the Jews remain." Cardinal Maglione, even though he recognized the hellishness of Hitler, justified himself with the private view that "Hitler and all his diabolic works may be the process of the casting out of the devil in the subconscious of the German race." [Cornwell, p. 282] Slovak bishops issued a pastoral letter that repeated the traditional accusations that the "Jews were deicides," and evidence exists that anti-Judaism occurred in the heart of the Vatican. [Cornwell, p. 280] Pope Pius XII, his campaign of silence and subterfuge, his fanatical urge to complete a Concordat and to assist Hitler into legal dictatorship, shows his complicity with the Nazi Government. And at no time did the bishop of Rome make a single liturgical act for the deported Jews of Rome. Even after the lost war for Germany and upon hearing of the death of Adolf Hitler, Adolf Bertram, the cardinal archbishop of Berlin ordered all the parish priests of his archdiocese "to hold a solemn Requiem in memory of the Fuhrer and all those embers of the Wehrmacht who have fallen in the struggle for our German Fatherland, along with the sincerest prayers for Volk and Fatherland and for the future of the Catholic Church in Germany." [Cornwell, p. 317]
The followers of the Catholic Church, the common German Catholic citizens also had ingrained into them a loyalty to the Church and to Germany. Most of them held anti-Semitic views. Many of the police battalions that formed execution squads came from religious men. According to Goldhagen, "some of the men who went to church, prayed to God, contemplated the eternal questions and recited prayers which reminded them of their obligations to other humans; the Catholics among them took communion and went to confession. And when they went at night to their wives and girlfriends, how many of the killers discussed their genocidal activities?" [Goldhagen, pp.267-268].
The Protestant Churches in Germany
Protestantism constituted the major religion in Germany during the early 1930s. Until Hitler attempted to establish a German Reich Church, there existed no such thing as an official German Protestant Church. The Nazi party made a call for all German Protestants to unite in the hour of national need [Holt, p.168-9]. The Christian Evangelical Church would receive the dignity due it within a National Socialist State (Nazism) based on positive Christianity ("Positive Christianity" was stated in point twenty-four of the Nazi Programme, their version of a constitution), and whom Martin Luther served as their spiritual patron.
Most German Protestants followed Luther (who they knew hated Jews) and believed in the sanctity of the secular authority and the supremacy of the authority over all religious organizations. To Luther, the head of the temporal state should also be head of "the church visible." [McGovern, p.650] On May 14, 1933, Ludwig Muller, a prominent member in the ranks of the German Christian Movement became the principle Bishop of the Evangelical German Reich Church.
Of course the thought of a state controlled national church could mean loss of control by the pastors of the Church. Naturally many pastors became concerned; some protested quietly to themselves and others, openly, by forming the Confessing Church. Nevertheless, most pastors allied themselves with the Nazi party and their anti-Semitic views got published in the Protestant press even before Hitler's election into power. The Protestant press influenced millions of its readers with the most prominent being the Sonntagsblatter, and the weekly Sunday newspapers. These weekly papers dwelled on religious piety and preached how they thought of Jews as "the natural enemies of the Christian-national tradition." [Goldhagen, 1996] As far as anyone knows, there had never occurred any visible or vocal church protest against the anti-Semitism of the Nazi party before it came into power. Considering that the majority of Germans at that time held anti-Semitic feelings (no doubt due mainly to religious preachings and propaganda), this should not surprise anyone. As many have pointed out, the religious rhetoric influenced Hitler during his youth.
Other pastors openly welcomed the Nazi's believing that the reintroduction of government by Christian authorities, affirmed St. Paul that "the power that be are ordained by God." (Romans 13:1). Under the continuing influence of the Lutheran Court Preacher Adolf Stocker, they believed that the future of German Lutheranism lay in obliterating the Jewish background of Christianity, and creating a national religion based on the traditions of German Christianity. They repeatedly stressed Luther's anti-Semitic statements.
One of the "moral" pastors of the nation, Bishop Otto Dibelius, declared in a letter after April 1933, that he has been "always an antisemite." Dibelius had expressed that he wanted the Jews to die out peaceably, bloodlessly (what a guy!) Wolfgang Gerlach, a German Evangelical pastor and historian of the Christian churches during the Nazi period, observed Bishop Dibelius' anti-Semitic sentiments as "well nigh representative of German Christendom in the beginning of 1933. [Goldhagen, pp.108-9].
Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther's anti-Semitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht (the first openly public attacks against the Jews by the Nazis). He applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany... of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." [Goldhagen p.111] He also edited a brochure for his ministers at the end of November 1938 titled, "Martin Luther and the Jews: do Away with Them!" He quoted extensively from Luther's book "On the Jews and their lies." [Wollenberg, p.73]
After the Nazi party took over, they began to exclude Jews from jobs and schools and later to exclude baptized racial Jews from the Land churches and to force them to live completely by themselves. Notably, the churches deeply involved themselves in furnishing data about racial origins from the very beginning of the Nazi era. Even Bishop Wurm saw no harm in this, and in 1934 informed his clergy: "The use of the 'hereditary passports' (Ahnenpasse) can also be recommended from the standpoint of the church." [Helmreich, p. 328]
On September 1, 1941, a national law made it compulsory for all Jews to display the Star of David when they appeared in public. The ordinance presented a problem to the churches because they did not know that many of the Christians in their congregations had Jewish origins.
How did the Protestant churches respond to this oppression of their fellow Christians? On December 17, 1941, Protestant Evangelical Church leaders of Mecklenburg, Thuringia, Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, and Lubeck collectively issued an official proclamation:
From the crucifixion of Christ to the present day, the Jews have fought Christianity or misused and falsified it in order to reach their own selfish goals. By Christian baptism nothing is altered in regard to a Jew's racial separateness, his national being, and his biological nature. A German Evangelical church has to care for and further the religious life of German fellow countrymen; racial Jewish Christians have no place or rights in it. [Helmreich, p. 329]One must also remember that most of the German citizens held beliefs as Protestant Christians. Many of the German police battalions who executed Jews with anti-Jewish zeal got recruited straight from the German populace, citizens that grew up in traditional Christian homes. For example, the men of one Police Battalion came predominantly from Hamburg and the surrounding region, an overwhelmingly Evangelical Protestant area. And even those battalion members who renounced the Church, declared themselves "gottglaubig," a Nazi term for having a proper religious attitude without being a member of a traditional church [Goldhagen, p. 209].
In the end neither the official Protestant or Catholic churches tried to stem the tide of anti-Semitic measure taken by the Nazis, The Kirchliches Jahrbuch summarized it after the war:
The anti-Semitism of the NSDAP found the Evagelical church unprepared. Indeed, at least the Confessing church resisted the Aryan paragraph in the church and the separation of Jewish Christians out of the Evangelical church of Germany, but against anti-Semitism they uttered no word, and even at the time of the Jewish persecutions and of their extermination it could not bring itself to stand against the measures of the National Socialist regime both in and without the church. [Helmreich, p. 332]
The Confessing Church
Inevitably, whenever one questions the role of Christianity during WWII, Christians will quickly respond by providing examples of heroic Catholics or Protestants who saved lives, protested against Nazism, or had given their lives by dying in concentration camps. What appears most puzzling by these defenses comes from their complete lack of perspective of the history of their own faith-system. Of course there lived a few brave Christian men and women who opposed Nazism and performed courageous deeds. But the key word here, "few," can hardly absolve the whole. One can say the same of the few heroic Nazis who protested against the atrocities committed by their own government. But can we prop up these few as a banner, while ignoring the majority of those who committed crimes to justify a belief-system regardless if it comes from a political ideology or a religion? If this served the case, then we could mine any intolerant system for its "few" noble members as justification for the system by calling it the True system, as do Christians who love to use the term True Christianity as if this had any definable meaning. Any honest reader should recognize that if this ploy cannot work for support of Nazism, Communism, Islam, (or any religion not your own) or any ideological belief-system, then neither can it work for Christianity.
As for the Church's supposed role against Nazism, when the focus gets narrowed as to just what Church opposed Hitler, sadly, one can only point to a single minor opposing Church body: the Confessing Church. Although one should always fairly honor any heroic struggle against oppression of human freedom, the ethical dilemma faced by the Confessing Church did not exactly meet the demands for opposing anti-Semitism.
Hitler wanted to combine all the regional Protestant churches into a single and united Reich Church. Of course this meant government control of the Church and a minority of Lutheran Pastors foresaw the dangers. In 1933, a few Protestant Pastors, namely Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and others formed the "Pastors Emergency League" which later became known as "The Confessing Church" to oppose the state controlled Nazi Church.
It bears some importance to understand that Germany did not recognize the Confessing Church as an official Church. Not only the Nazis, but all other Protestant Churches condemned the Confessing Church. They thought of it as a minority opposition that held little power. The vast majority of German churches supported Hitler and his policies against the Jews. Moreover, they advocated composing an "Aryan Paragraph" in church synods that would prevent non-aryans from joining the Church, which of course included Jews.
In spite of the myth that has developed that the Confessing Church opposed Hitler for anti-Semitic reasons, the main reason for the opposition actually aimed to protect the power of Pastors to determine who should preach and who they can preach to. The Barmen Declaration of Faith (by Karl Barth, et al) became the principle statement of The Confessing Church. Not a single sentence in it opposes anti-Semitism. According to Professor John S. Conway: "The Confessing Church did not seek to espouse the cause of the Jews as a whole, nor to criticize the secular legislation directed against the German Jews and the Nazi racial philosophy."
Basically, the Confessing Church wanted to save themselves from state control by forming what they considered themselves as the "True Church" (don't all Christians think of themselves as belonging to the True Church?). They did not want government interference with Church self-regulation. This of course deserves plaudits as history has shown that state controlled religions have always ended in oppressing its people. The formation of the United States with its secular government aimed at just this kind of freedom of religion from the state. On this account, the Confessing Church deserves honorable mention. However, just what did they oppose about the Jewish question?
It turns out that the Pastors of the Confessing Church held concerns only for Jews who converted to Christianity. Of course they viewed Jews who converted to Christianity as Christian, not Jewish. This Christian centered view gave them the reason for their objection to the "Aryan Paragraph." For Jews who did not convert, they held strong anti-Semitic feelings. Remember that these pastors lived as well read Lutherans; any reading of Martin Luther will reveal strong anti-Semetic feelings toward Jews who did not convert (see, On the Jews and their lies).
Although Martin Niemöller opposed the Nazi regime, he concurred with the Nazi view in one foundational respect: the Jews as eternally evil. In one of his sermons, he attacked the Nazis (without naming them) by likening them to the Jews! [Niemöller 1937] Pastor Bonhoeffer, according to his beliefs, saw the Nazi treatment against Jews as proof of God's curse on Jews. Shortly after Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer wrote to a theologian friend that regarded the Jews "the most sensible people have lost their heads and their entire Bible." [Goldhagen, 1996, p.109] To Bonhoeffer's credit, he did proclaim a credo of non-violence, but this did not come from Christian theology. Rather he based his non-violent stand from Mahatma Gandhi and the humanistic movement (he claimed to be a disciple of Gandhi). His neo-orthodox view opposed most every cardinal doctrine of Christian faith to a point that some considered him an atheist. Indeed he claimed it impossible to know the objective truth about Christ's real nature and even claimed that "God was dead" (Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, New York: Macmillan Co., 1972, pp. 9-12, 378; Ethics, pp. 38, 186; No Rusty Swords, pp. 44-45). Karl Barth, considered a great theologian, and an opponent of the Nazis, and to his credit, did oppose the persecution of Jews, had nevertheless, made us quite clear of his own anti-Semitism. In his Advent sermon of 1933, he denounced the Jews, Luther style, as "an obstinate and evil people." In a July 1944 Lecture in Zurich, Barth said, "We do not like the Jews as a rule, it is therefore not easy for us to apply to them as well the general love for humankind..."
Richard Steigmann-Gall's research found that, "many confessional Lutherans who would later join the Confessing Church received the Nazi movement warmly." Otto Dibelius, General Superintendent of the Kurmark, and one of the most conservative in the Confessing Church, certified the Nazi movement as Christian: "The National Socialists, as the strongest party of the right, have shown both a firm, positive relationship to Christianity.... We may expect that they will remain true to their principles in the new Reichstag." After the Nazi Seizure of Power, Dibelius continued to view Nazism this way, even to the point of excusing Nazi brutality [Steigmann-Gall]. At a 1933 service in Berlin's Nikolaikirche for the new Reichstag, Dibelius announced: "We have learned from Martin Luther that the church cannot get in the way of state power when it does what it is called to do. Not even when [the state] becomes hard and ruthless.... When the state carries out its office against those who destroy the foundations of state order, above all against those who destroy honor with vituperative and cruel words that scorn faith and vilify death for the Fatherland, then [the state] is ruling in God's name!" [Steigmann-Gall].
Unfortunately, several of the member of the Confessing Church lost their lives in opposing Hitler. Bonhoeffer, for example, joined with several high ranking Nazi officers in a plan to assassinate Hitler. He also contacted foreigners to gain support for a call to resistance. The Nazi's sentenced him for his opposition to Hitler and his policies (not because of his Christianity as some believers want us to believe). He died in the Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945.
Nevertheless, even after the war, members of the Confessing Church admitted their guilt. For example, Gerhard Kittle, a world-renowned scholar of the New Testament confessed his political guilt as he insisted that a "Christian anti-Judaism" which he found in the New Testament and in the tradition of the Christian church determined his attitude toward the Jewish question during the Third Reich.[Wollenberg, p. 76] On March 1946, in a lecture in Zurich, Martin Niemöller declared: "Christianity in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo." [Goldhagen, p.114]
Considering that the Confessing Church with its few members, represents the most active religious protest against Nazism in Germany, it projects a poor commentary on the state of Christiandom as a whole, even if the other churches had remained passive. Unfortunately most Christian churches in Germany took an active role, not only by accepting Nazism, but to support and strengthen it.
Remaining secrets
The repulsive behavior of the Catholic hierarchy and the Protestant leaders in Germany presented here gives only a glimpse of the known atrocities and inhumane acts perpetrated through religious beliefs. Much remains unknown; the uncovering of the terrible history of Catholic and Protestant Germany during WWII continues. The silence of Catholic and Protestants, church members, priests, and nuns continues to this day. However, there occurs a few brave researchers who dig to uncover the facts. As one example, Anja Elizabeth Romus (best known in the U.S. from the fictionalized movie, "The Nasty Girl [1990]") continues to research and write about the priests who suppressed their anti-Semitic role in Germany (Romus' first book: "A Case of Resistance and Persecution, Passau 1933-1939," 1983). In her latest book, "Wintergreen: suppressed Murders," she documents the atrocities in her hometown [Passau] at the end of the war including the slaying of 2,000 Soviet prisoners, the murder of slave laborers' infants and the efforts to change memorials to victims so that Nazi horrors would remain forgotten. Rosmus has endured verbal abuse, death threats and lawsuits in response to her dedication to the memories of those who faced Nazi persecution.
Recent evidence has surfaced that shows that both Germany's Roman Catholic Church and Germany's Protestant Church used forced laborers during the Third Reich. Religious affairs organizations have attempted to get the Churches to pay into a compensation fund for Nazi victims. According to Christa Nickels, religious affairs spokeswoman for junior coalition government partners the Greens, said the Church should immediately pay into the fund; "The correct thing to do is for the Church to pay into the fund. It's not about when, where and how many forced laborers were used, but whether the two main churches were involved in the system." [Reuters news, 20 July 2000]
How can one come to terms with such a powerful and oppressive system that denies its involvements with crime? Priests and ministers get held in high regard as they unconsciously hide their tracks with "moral" platitudes and religious services that seem to have nothing in common with past Church intolerances. In the United States, Father Patrick Peyton in the 50s campaigned at encouraging the recital of the Rosary in the home with the famous slogan, "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace." How in the world can anyone justify such fake sentiments in light of the fact that Christians have prayed for peace ever since Christianity's invention without a single lasting result? The horrors of WWII introduced by religious minds appear so obvious and dominate that only some powerful agency could possibly conceal the obvious facts from so many people for so long a time. That agency, indeed, does exist and it confronts every conscious believing human being at every waking hour: the power of Faith, that hideous instrument of counterfeit reality that can convince even the most educated human.
One should also keep in mind that the sheep of Christ, the blind followers of Christian leaders, no matter how grievous their sins or the sins of their pastors and priests, could rest in assured comfort that they lived as a part of the people of God. This religious system excluded anyone who refused to pay allegiance to Popes and ministers.
The questioned cry of "How could these atrocities have happen?" could only come from a religious mind overwhelmed by falsification or who must live in a state of denial against the abundant facts of history to protect a religious illusion. The Nazi atrocities did not come from a mad leader (a common excuse) or from a superstitious Satan, or from the mysterious workings of God-- they occurred from common people acting from their beliefs. The question has an obvious answer and it sits staring at us in the face for anyone who dares look.
Today the Catholic Church has undertaken a campaign of suppression and propaganda to belittle Cornwell, Goldhagen, Romus or any researcher that dares to uncover the reality of the atrocities committed by Roman Catholic Christians. Today, Protestant leaders rarely mention the influence by Martin Luther and his anti-Jewish sentiments taught throughout Germany. Indeed, most Protestants live completely unaware of the hatred and intolerances spread by their congressional ancestors. Instead of releasing documents and admitting to the crimes of their fellow Christians, they have opted to protect their religious power structures by silence, concealment, suppression, and projecting the story of persecutions committed against their own religion by other ideological systems, a ploy that disguises their own complicity of persecutions heaped upon others.
Catholics and Protestants might protest against revealing the reality of Church involvement by claiming a trampling on the sensibilities of the religious people between Church and the modern effort to form some sort of conciliation between Christians and Jews. However this tactic only distances themselves from the recognition of the very problem that created the problem in the first place. The seeds of intolerance sits firmly in the place where it has always been-- in the "sacred" scriptures and in the minds of believers who read them and act upon its words.
Bibliography
Cornwell, John, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, Viking, 1999
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Alfred A. Knoph, 1996
Helmreich, Ernst Christian, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1979
Hold, John B., Under the Swastika, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1936
Lewy, Guenter, "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany," Da Capo Press, 1964
Macfarland, Charles S., The New Church and the New Germany: A Study of Church and State, N.Y. Macmillan Co, 1934
McGovern, William Montgomery, From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist-Nazi Political Philosophy, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1941
Niemöller, Martin, Here Stand I! Chicago: Willett, Clarke & Co., 1937
Steigmann-Gall, Richard "The Holy Reich: Nazi conception of Christianity, 1919-1945," Cambridge University Press, 2003
Wollenberg, Jorg, Ed., The German Public and the Persecution of the Jews 1933-1945: No One Participated, No One Knew (Chapter: When the Witnesses Were Silent, The Confessing Church and the Jews, by Wolfgang Gerlach), Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1996
Web sites:
The Protestant Reaction to the Nazi Holocaust,by Michael Hakeem, Ph.D.:
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hakeem/holocaust5.html
Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/bonhoeffer/general.htm
- 1945: The German churches before and afterwards:
- http://www.secularism.org.uk/churchgermany.html
Note, some nefarious web site operators, like those from "jews-for-allah," for example, have copied this web page without permission and removed all references to its source. Needless to say, this kind of practice reflects the very questionable nature of their morals and belief system. NoBeliefs.com does not condone or authorize these web sites in any manner. Nor does NoBeliefs.com condone or authorize this material for use on other religious, racist, or Neo-Nazi web sites. On the other hand, those who ask permission and include a citation or link to NoBeliefs as the originator of this compilation, have full welcome to use it.
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