Tag Archives: Martin Luther

November 15, 2020 · 21:46

The Window to My Soul and How I understand Others

The Late Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone Episode “Time at Last”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

George R.R. Martin wrote in his book A Dance With Dragons: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

I constantly read and because I try to imagine what I am reading so that in a way I live it. I have been to places that have never traveled to before and on entering them I know exactly where everything is and what happened there. I remember leading a group from my Army chapel in Wurzburg Germany to Wittenberg, where Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. As I led the group through the town a couple of people asked me how many times I had been there. I told them, “physically, never until today, but I have been here a thousand times before because of books. I saw Wittenberg in my minds eye before I ever saw the city.” They were surprised and both said that it seemed like I had been there many times.

I have had the same thing happen other places that I have visited, and again, it is because I read, and as I read, I imagine and occasionally dream. I do not need virtual reality to take me places I have never been. For me it is enough to read, look at pictures or paintings, and study maps. Those actions allow me to see and imagine people, places, and things more than any virtual reality program can do, because the mind is so much more powerful in imagining what was simply by reading, studying, and closing our eyes. Then when we actually get to the place we know it, we know the people who were there, we know where they lived, and what they thought. It really is quite amazing which is why I love readying history and biography so much. The late astronomer Carl Sagan wrote: “One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”

I have a huge number of my books in my office most dealing with the history, especially the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the World Wars, and the insurgencies and counter-insurgency wars of the past seventy or so years. I have a lot of biographies, books on American history, military theory, sociology, philosophy, psychology related to war and PTSD, and a few theological works, of which most are in my home library which doubles as a guest room.

When I had an office outside the house long with mementos of my military career, other militaria, artwork, and baseball memorabilia the sight and smell can be both overwhelming and comforting at the same time. I hear that a lot from my visitors, including those who come in for counseling, consolation, or just to know someone cares. They tell my visitors volumes about me without them ever asking a question or me telling them, and occasionally someone will ask to borrow a book, and most of the time I will lend them the book, or if I have multiple copies even one to them.

In a sense my books are kind of a window to my soul, the topics, and even how I have them organized, and they are not for decoration. Many times while I am reflecting on a topic, a conversation, or something that I read in the news I peruse my books and pull one or more out to help me better understand it, or relate it to history. sometimes when in conversation something will come up and I can pull out a book. A Chaplain who once served with me said that he should “apply for graduate credit” for what he learns in our often off the cuff talks. But, for me that is because I read so much and absorb it. Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” That is something I have come to understand over the decades.

Likewise my memorabilia is there to remind me of all the people in my past who I have served with. I don’t have all my medals, honors, and diplomas up for everyone to see, instead I have pictures and collages, many signed by people who made a difference in my life. When I see the signatures and often all too kind words on them I am humbled, and in some cases a tear will come to my eye, but I digress…

I always try to read a decent amount everyday. I in the past couple of weeks I have finished reading a number of very good books dealing with different historical dramas. I have mentioned a number of my recent reads. Last year I read a very good book called Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes In World War II, by Yuki Tanaka. The book is primarily focused on Japanese War Crimes In the Southwest Pacific against Allied POWs, civilians, including German missionaries, and indigenous peoples. I will be referring to it in future articles as I deal with Japanese War Crimes In the Second World War. I am well versed in the Nazi War crimes and only somewhat familiar with Japanese war crimes, but the the takeaway from the book was that both the German War Crimes and Japanese War Crimes committed during the Second World War were committed by men who placed unconditional loyalty to a supreme leader, in the case of the Germans, Hitler’s Fuhrer cult, and in the case of the Japanese, Emperor worship, much like the present day Trump Cult. But I digress, I will go into that in a future article. This week I completed Dr Timothy Snyder’s latest book “Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary, and I am working on the second volume of Volker Ullrich’s biography of Hitler. Due to spending so much time on my book before having my own medical-dental crisis I am behind in much of the ready I plan to do.

I love reading and writing about complex characters, people who may be heroes and at the same time scoundrels. I like the contradictions and the feet of clay of people, because I am filled with my own, and truthfully saints are pretty boring. Unfortunately, until Ullrich’s haven’t read any biographies of late although I have several waiting in my stack of books. Much of my reading deals a lot with biography as the characters weave their way through history. By reading about them I often feel that I get to know them better than some of the people they actually associated because most people only reveal select aspects of themselves and their thoughts, even to close friends.

Two years ago we observed the Centenary of the end of World War One. As a result I re-read Edmond Taylor’s The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order, 1905-1922 and Richard Watt’s The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany: Versailles and the German Revolution. Both of these are very important reads which should help us to reflect reflect on what is happening in our world today. There are many similarities and reading them causes me to wonder if world leaders will allow hubris, arrogance, greed, and pride to drag the world into another catastrophic war. Sadly President Trump, doesn’t read, and doesn’t learn from history. Unfortunately, his ignorance is very much a reflection of our twenty-first century media culture.

But to me, books are important, far more important than anything that is shouted at me on television. Unfortunately, the latter is how most people get information today. I often sit at the bar and on quiet days simply listen to those near me repeat ad-nauseam the bullshit echoed by badly educated and historically ignorant conservative pundits, usually from Fox News. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his little but profound book, On Tyranny:

“Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable, but the two-dimensional world makes little sense unless we can draw upon a mental armory that we have developed somewhere else. When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell’s and Bradbury’s books could not do this—but we still can.”

Likewise, Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

But anyway, I retire from the Navy soon and writing, reading, and teaching will become more and more part of my life. I am happy about that. Carl Sagan wrote:

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

I hope that the books I write do what Sagan wrote about, and that by teaching I can encourage others to break away from the two dimensional screens that hold them captive and return to books where imagination can flourish and take us places we only hope to go.

Have a great day and better tomorrow tomorrow, stay safe and pick up a book and read.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under books, books and literature, History, philosophy

Tagged as barbara tuchman, burgess meredith, Carl Sagan, Edmund Taylor, George R.R. Martin, Hidden horrors Japanese War Crimes in World War Two, joyce carol oates, Martin Luther, on tyranny: twenty lessons from the twentieth century, Our Malady Lessons on Liberty from a Hospital Bed, reading, Richard Watt, teaching, The Fall of Dynasties, The Kings Depart, the twilight zone, Time at Last, timothy snyder, Volker Ullrich, wittenberg, writing, Yuki Tanaka

August 8, 2020 · 03:26

COVID19 Deniers and Enablers: Trump, His Cult and the Commission of Crimes Against Humanity

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I hate having to write this, especially because the deliberate lies and intentional malfeasance of government officials, and their enablers who have allowed as of yesterday over 164,000 of their own citizens die from a deadly virus. That virus, the Coronavirus 19, while highly contagious and dangerous could have been contained with far less loss of life, economic carnage, and social disruption than the Cult built around President Donald Trump has saddled us with.

The cost to date: over 164,000 dead, over Five Million infected, of whom some 2.3 Million are still infected, about 1-2% are in serious or critical condition. Since 6% of the closed cases, that is known cases with some manner or level of recovery and deaths resulted in death, a statistic which is consistent with the world’s death rate, we can probably expect that of the 2.3 Million currently infected, that somewhere around 138,000 will die, not including those infected after I write this.

Of course that number could be lower or higher, but that really depends on how overwhelmed hospitals, especially rural or community hospitals which have very limited and critical care or ICU capacity are hit. If one looks at the statistics at the county level in predominantly rural states, this is worse than the major medical centers in the major cities and metropolitan centers of those same states being so overwhelmed by cases and deaths that they need refrigerated cargo trailers to put the bodies of the COVID19 dead that won’t fit in their morgues

But I have to ask: How can it be that a Modern, highly technological society with some of the most advanced medical centers, physicians and research institutions be the hardest hit country in the world by the Coronavirus 19? It is a fair question because we only have about 4.25% of the world’s population but have over 25% of the total number of infections, and just under 25% of the total deaths in the world. Add to this that we have a natural defensive barrier of two oceans to keep infected people out of the country.

But let us assume that better protocols and drugs that lower the death rate to one or two percent the deaths of those infected as of today would be 23,000 to 46,000 deaths. But that does not count the people being infected at 50,000 to 70,000 a day, before we reopen schools, which in states like Georgia are being reopened without social distancing or any requirement for masks. Sadly, despite the factual inaccuracy of President Trump’s statements that children and young people don’t get the virus, they do. Some die, but they spread the virus to teachers, cafeteria workers, administrators, parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors. This is a game changer, because when we shut down schools we limited the spread of the virus. The same thing happened when we made a decision to lock everything down until certain criteria of infection rates, deaths and those hospitalized went down.

Unfortunately, when President Trump gave states the opportunity to reopen businesses, restaurants, entertainment venues they did so, many under the pressure of the administration, opened before any of their states had met the Center for Disease metrics for reopening. Since then, the virus has grown exponentially. The current and gold standard models for COVID19 related deaths, that of the University of Washington project that at current rates with no changes that by 1 December 2020, that if things remain as they are we will have almost 300,000 deaths, if restrictions are eased that number rises to almost 500,000, but if they are strengthen by law that number could fall to 230,000 if every swinging Richard and Mulva wears their face masks. Of course the latter will never happen and even if an effective vaccine is developed and fielded in the requisite numbers, the dumb-ass anti-vaxers and their political, propaganda and religious allies will do all that they can to ensure that as few people get it as they can. If the religious among them claim to be pro-life, then they are liars, because once a baby leave the womb they don’t care if it lives or dies, and that is the brutal truth.

Now I admit that the charge of Crimes Against Humanity as currently defined by the U.N., the Treaty of Rome, and the Nuremberg and Tokyo International War Crimes Tribunals never anticipated any government acting in am manner to ensure the maximum number of its citizens are infected and killed by a virus that they though their willing negligence and malfeasance of their government were killed. Maybe it is time to amend international law to include such actions as crimes against humanity, and maybe it is time for the leaders of the United States to follow in word and deed what Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson when the charges against the Nazi War Criminals were developed before Nuremberg:

Sadly, there are now many Trump supporters, who claim that yes their is a pandemic, but that the numbers of deaths and infections are inflated. When you get to the hear of their arguments they are in substance no different than Holocaust Deniers. For such people are quite willing to sacrifice the lives those of less value than themselves, the elderly, the disabled, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, and Non-white immigrants, and yes, that includes pregnant mothers just to prove their point and say that their supposed freedom matters more than the lives of others.

As such they are no different than Joseph Stalin who said: “The death of one man is tragic, but the death of thousands is statistic.”

Sadly the vast majority of Trump supporters who deny the evidence, make light of the deaths, and argue that certain lives are worth more than others prove their agreement with the Soviet Dictator. I say the hell with them and any other participant or bystander when human rights are being steamrolled, the Constitution being trampled, and the greatest commandments of the Jewish and Christian Religions are upended by their supposed defenders.

The German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.”

He also said:

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”

Another, Major General Henning Von Tresckow said: “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.”

General Ludwig Beck said: “Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.”

Sophie Scholl a twenty-two year old student at the University of Munich and a leader of the anti-Nazi White Rose Resistance movement wrote:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

And finally, the words of the leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther: “Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.”It is legend that Luther said the words “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.”

That being said, Luther’s, Scholl’s, Beck’s, Von Tresckow’s and Bonhoeffer’s words are my words today, both in reference to the Constitution and my vows as a Christian, Deacon, and Priest.

So until tomorrow.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under anti-semitism, authoritarian government, christian life, civil rights, Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, crimes against humanity, Diseases Epidemics and Pandemics, ethics, faith, healthcare, History, holocaust, Immigration and immigrants, laws and legislation, leadership, Military, ministry, nazi germany, Political Commentary, racism, Religion

Tagged as adolf hitler, Colonel Henning Von Trescow, Coronavirus 19, COVID19, crimes against humanity, dietrich bonhoeffer, general ludwig beck, holocaust deniers, International Criminal Court, Joseph Stalin, justice robert jackson, Martin Luther, nuremberg trials, sophie scholl, the white rose, tokyo trials, treaty of Rome, trump cult, united nations

April 13, 2020 · 01:48

Going Forward into the Past: Coronavirus-19 Easter 2020 and Going Back to Our Roots

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This kind of returns to the theme of the article I wrote on Good Friday. On the first Good Friday the followers of Jesus fled the scene and hid. The same was true on the first Holy Saturday, and yes, even the first Easter Sunday. If it had not been for the appearance of Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and a woman named Salome coming to anoint his body according to Luke, Mary Magdalene alone according to John, or Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of Jesus according to Matthew and Mark just to visit the tomb we can remain assured that the male followers would have remained in their spider holes until they were sure that it was safe to come out. Regardless of the account it was one or all of these women who found Peter and John, who ran to the tomb to find it empty. Then they returned to discuss the matter with whoever of the disciples they could find, except Judas Iscariot who was simply hanging around and rotting, but I digress.

What is important is that they pretty much remained in hiding until Jesus made his first port-Resurrection visits to them. Even then, they didn’t do much in public and were not engaged in preaching or knocking on doors to share their faith. One of the disciples, a man named Thomas expressed his doubts until he met Jesus face to face when Jesus made one of his appearances. During the encounter challenged by Jesus to put his hands in the wounds on his hands and side. Personally, I think it would be good for all Christians to experience doubt, or even what Saint John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul, or the total absence of any feeling of the presence of God. However, in our Americanized profit before prophet materialistic and success absorbed church, that message is a hard sell. Perhaps the Coronavirus 19 pandemic will change that, but only time will tell.

I think that what is happening now with the Coronavirus-19 pandemic has shaken our faith in the illusionary comforts and successes of this life. I think that this illusion of control needs to be shaken to the core, especially for the Christian, regardless of tradition, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Evangelical, or Pentecostal/ Charismatic. German theologian Jürgen Moltmann wrote:

“In a civilization that glorifies success and happiness and is blind to the sufferings of others, people’s eyes can be opened to the truth if they remember that at the centre of the Christian faith stands an unsuccessful, tormented Christ, dying in forsakenness.”

This is not a denial of the resurrection, but a realization that while Christ is risen, that we still live in a world that is afflicted by the actions of human beings to exploit it, destroy it, and exploit and dehumanize other human beings in quest of power and profit. It is the obligation of the Christian and other people of faith to stand up against respond to the plight of suffering people, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted:

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

Tonight I read the story of a Pentecostal Church in Beckley West Virginia devoting its Easter weekend to using 3D printers to manufacture face masks and shields to CDC and FDA specifications for local hospital workers who are desperately short of PPE. I was blown away. They understood that the mission of Christian, the Church as well as other believers in such as situation is not just simply praying or gathering, but rather doing what they could to act, to do something more than gathering, praising, praying, or celebrating while others suffer and die.

I have learned and still am learning what Bonhoeffer so eloquently wrote not before he was killed by SS at Flossenburg on the personal order of Hitler:

“During the last year or so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not ahomo religiosus, but simply a man, as Jesus was a man…I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!) a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian.”

I truly believe that this pandemic is an opportunity to re-learn what our ancestors in faith knew from experience: That faith is most real when there is little worldly to hope for, when our illusions of worldly power, and with it the power, and exclusivity of the Church are broken down by something smaller yet more disruptive and deadly than the leaders of our greatest cathedrals, or most massive megachurch stadiums could ever imagine, because what we worship is not spiritual, but material treasures. We, and I mean me as well, have often found our worth in our possessions, those things that we think we own or or think we possess.

This horrible pandemic is by no means over. It will most likely continue to wash over our planet like tsunami waves disrupting our lives and killing many. Between each wave there intervals of comparative quiet, until the next wave hits. This will continue until a vaccine is developed and provided around the world. That could take a year to eighteen months. During that time our lives will be changed in ways that none of us can imagine.

But in the midst of this, when ways out seem so fraught with danger, on Easter we have to remember hope. As Moltmann wrote:

“Believing in the resurrection does not just mean assenting to a dogma and noting a historical fact. It means participating in this creative act of God’s … Resurrection is not a consoling opium, soothing us with the promise of a better world in the hereafter. It is the energy for a rebirth of this life. The hope doesn’t point to another world. It is focused on the redemption of this one.”

That is the task now, not just of Christian, but of all people of faith as well as those who do not believe in God or any higher power. We have to focus on the redemption of the real world, and doing everything we can to alleviate the suffering of others and not abandoning them, as we hope that others will not abandon us in the hour of our need. As Bonhoeffer noted we have to see the world through the eyes of Jesus in Gethsemane.

If people of faith, Christian or not, respond by loving and caring for those who before we didn’t think were worthy of the love of God, or probably more accurately believed were unworthy of associating with us, then maybe people will believe our message again.

When I was a teenager growing up in the middle of the Jesus movement in the 1970s there was a Christian Rock Group out of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa named Daniel Amos. Written by Terry Scott Taylor, the Song, Losers and Winners https://genius.com/Daniel-amos-losers-and-winners-lyrics reminds us that being a Christian, or for that matter any member of any faith, that God cares for everyone, regardless of who we are or our status in life, and we should too.

I ain’t namin’ names
But I sense that some pride remains
And I do not want to exclude myself
But I had to take a look
In the light of God’s own Book
So see if this sin ain’t yours as well

Do you hail the gifted ones
And the others do you shun?
Do you speak to only those you chose?
Well, God’s love, it has no bounds
Has no ups, and it has no downs
Goes out to those who win and to those who lose

Now, clubs and cliques, they choose and pick
And they make their interviews
Screen the undesirables
And turn down clowns and fools
But Jesus died for sinners
Losers and winners
Yes, it’s proven by His love for me and you

Do you give the highest place
To someone ’cause you like his face
And turn aside those you deem less than yourself?
Well, love that is natural
Can be less than satisfactual
For we all are one, no less than anyone else,

So until tomorrow, let that sink in. The Jesus I believe in loves and cares for everyone, and his command is that his followers do the same.

So in this unusual for our age Easter and Easter season let us remember that it is not about us and our superiority, prosperity, privilege, pride, or worldly possessions or honor that we live. Nor is about our theology or who we believe God, is, or what our doctrine teaches about the Deity Himself or Herself, but it is for others, regardless of our faith, their faith, or lack of it, for we all are human beings on the Big Blue Marble that we call Earth. We live or die together.

Until tomorrow or whenever,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Wannsee at 78 Years: Monsters do Exist

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Last night I wrote about the Wannsee Conference yesterday. The references were more from films based on history than documents themselves. This is different, it uses the words of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders to deal with the conference at the Villa overlooking the lake in the south Berlin district of Wannsee.

Primo Levi wrote, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

Seventy-eight years ago today a group of 15 relatively common men of various German government, police, and party agencies sat around a table and discussed the implementation of what is called the Final Solution. The meeting was chaired by SS Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich, who had been charged with the task of solving Germany’s “Jewish Problem” shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Hermann Goering, the number two man in the Nazi Reich sent Heydrich the following message:

Berlin, July 31st 1941

To: Gruppenfuhrer Heydrich

Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24th 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of evacuation and emigration in the best possible way by according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlosung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.

Where the competency of other organizations touches on this matter, the organizations are to collaborate.

I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for the carrying out the desired final solution (Endlosung) of the Jewish question.”

Goering

Heydrich

When Goering wrote Heydrich, the head of the Reichssiecherhiethauptampt (RSHA) or Reich Security Main Office, in July 1941 it seemed that Nazi victory in Europe was all but assured. Goering’s words were businesslike. Early measures taken by Heydrich to rid Germany and annexed Austria had been reasonably successful to rid those areas of their Jews through emigration and evacuation. These were not benign measures, people were forced to leave their homes, businesses, communities, and had most of their belongings taken from them in order to leave the Reich, and subjected to much violence and segregation.

However with the occupation of most of Europe following the Nazi military success and the looming occupation and subjugation of the Soviet Union the process of giving the Jews a chance to emigrate to lands outside Nazi control had come to an end. In fact the Nazis occupied the countries that may Jews had found refuge.

Less than six months after he received the directive from Goering, on January 20th 1942 Heydrich summoned representatives from various Reich agencies were called for what turned out to be a brief, two hour meeting which decided the fate of the Jews. The meeting was originally scheduled for early December 1941, but the combination of the Soviet counteroffensive at Moscow and the German declaration of war against the United States following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but was deflated for just over a month until the situation on the Eastern Front had been stabilized.

The meeting was held at an estate located in the southern suburbs of Berlin, called Wansee. Organized by Heydrich’s deputy Adolph Eichmann, involved Heydrich, Eichmann and 13 mid level representatives from various economic, governmental, justice and police entities.

At the conference Heydrich established his authority through Goering’s directive to overcome the bureaucratic and personal attempts of various attendees to take control of the Final Solution process. Despite objections from some attendees who favored sterilization and the use of Jews in the war armaments industries, Heydrich made it clear that the Final Solution would be a campaign of extermination. He was quite clear:

“Approximately 11 million Jews will be involved…in large single sex labor columns, Jews fit to work will work their way eastward constructing roads. Doubtless the large majority will be eliminated through natural causes. Any final remnant that survives will doubtlessly consist of the most resistant elements. They will have to be dealt with appropriately, because otherwise by natural selection, they would form the germ cell of a new Jewish revival.”

The Nazi leadership decided that its race war against the Jews needed to forge ahead. Within days of Wansee the orders went out and SS commanders at various concentration camps began devising more efficient means to exterminate Jews and other “sub-humans.” It was a matter of pride and efficiency for them. As Rudolph Hoess the Commandant of Auschwitz said at Nuremberg “the camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas, and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Zyclon B….” Hoess estimated that some 2.5 million people were exterminated at Auschwitz at rates as high as 10,000 a day.

Einsatzgruppen in Action

Before the Conference took place, four Einsatzgruppen followed each of the German Army Groups and systematically began to massacre the Jews of every city and village which German soldiers captured. The Einsatzgruppen, Ordungspolizei battalions, Army Security Divisions and locally recruited units in fewer than six months, killed over a million and a half Soviet Jews, and the slaughter would continue unabated until the dying days of the Reich. One of the participants at the conference, the SS Major and commander of Einsatzkommando in Latvia, had been in charge of exterminating over 30,000 Jews, before the meeting was organized.

When the Nazis began their attack into the Soviet Union, Heinrich Himmler, Heydrich’s friend and superior told a gathering of senior SS leaders:

“I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public…I am talking about the “Jewish evacuation” the extermination of the Jewish people.”

It is One of the things that is easily said. “The Jewish people is being exterminated,” every Party member will tell you, “perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter.”

But then along they all come, all the decent upright Germans and each has his decent Jew. They all say: the others are all swine, but here is a first class Jew. And none of them has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, or when there are 500 or 1000. And to have seen this through, and –with the exception of human weaknesses– to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned….”

Himmler and his entourage

Whether the words are those of Goering, Heydrich, Hoess or Himmler, there is a certain businesslike banality to them. But these men, and many others like them orchestrated a campaign of genocide and race hatred unmatched in history. Yes, there have been other genocides, the Turks killing the Armenians during the First World War and the Hutu and Tutsi slaughter in Rwanda but neither they or the politically motivated campaigns of mass slaughter conducted by the Soviets, the Chinese Communists and the Khamer Rouge killing fields can match the systematized extermination campaign waged by the Nazis against the Jews.

The truly terrifying thing about the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust to me is that most of the men at Wannsee; as well as the men that commanded the Concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen were very ordinary men who simply believed that they were doing their jobs.

They are all a very fascinating group of men to study. Very few could be described as psychopathic killers by nature. They were lawyers, doctors, career police officials, businessmen, and bureaucrats who carried out an extermination campaign that killed by their own numbers between 5.5 and 6 million Jews, not to mention others deemed to be subhuman including the handicapped, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and other non-Jewish minorities like the Gypsies not to mention the wide variety of those considered political enemies. But it was the Jews that bore the most tragic fate.

It is something that we must never forget.When it comes to Wannsee, the men there had few qualms about what they were doing. Most of those who opposed Heydrich did so because he was centralizing the power of action against the Jews in his Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and subordinating the the other Reich ministries to it. But by the end of the conference all of the participants had agreed to Heydrich’s terms. Some did what they could afterwards to use their Bureaucratic abilities to prevent some of the protocols from being fully implemented, while others did all they could to implement it.

After the war it meant the difference between life and death for the attendees, except Heydrich who was killed by Czech partisans a few months after the Wannsee Conference, SS Major Rudolph Lange, who died fighting the Red Army toward, the end of the war, Martin Luther Unter Staatssekretär of the Foreign ministry who died of a heart attack, in a concentration camp after opposing Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in 1945; Roland Freisler who represented the Ministry of Justice who died in early 1945 during a bombing attack on Berlin while serving as the head of Hitler’s extrajudicial People’s Court, and Gauleiter and Staatssekretär Alfred Meyer who committed suicide near the Weser River in May 1945. A few of the rest received the death penalty, but most received relatively brief prison sentences, and some lived to old age. In the end, only one, Friedrich Kritzinger showed remorse for his and his country’s actions during Nazi rule.

One man of fifteen. I wonder if the same ratio applies to the officials of the governments of evil, repressive, authoritarian regimes. Possibly even the one emerging in the United States.

I will leave it at that.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under ethics, film, History, holocaust, laws and legislation, leadership, nazi germany, Political Commentary

Tagged as adolf eichmann, Alfred meyer, auschwitz, concentration camps, einsatzgruppen, final solution, Friedrich Kritzinger, heinrich himmler, Hermann Georing, Himmler Posen Speech, jewish question, Martin Luther, primo levi, Reinhard Heydrich, roland freisler, Rudolph Hoess, Rudolph Lange, Treblinka, wansee conference

May 10, 2019 · 22:37

“Men Alone are Capable of Every Wickedness” the Reality Of Human Nature and the Holocaust

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Two weeks ago Saturday was Holocaust Remembrance Day in the United States. I had the honor of speaking about not forgetting the Holocaust at Norfolk’s Temple Israel. When I look at the Holocaust and the men who managed and executed the plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe, I realize the wisdom of the words of Joseph Conrad, who wrote:

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”

Holocaust survivor and philosopher Primo Levi wrote, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

The truth is that human beings are incredibly capable of committing great evil and wickedness. The Holocaust stands alone, above every other genocide committed in history. Laurence Rees in his book Auschwitz, a New History, ended that book with these words:

We must judge behavior by the context of the times, and judged by the context of mid-twentieth century, sophisticated European culture, Auschwitz and the Nazis’ “Final Solution” represent the lowest act in all history. Through their crime, the Nazis brought into the world an awareness of what educated, technologically advanced human beings can do – as long as they possess a cold heart. Once allowed into the world, knowledge of what they did must not be unlearned. It lies there – ugly, inert, waiting to be discovered by each new generation. A warning for us, and for those who will come after.

That bring me to tonight’s subject. Seventy-seven years ago a group of 15 relatively common bureaucrats of various German government, police, and party agencies sat around a table and discussed the implementation of what is called the Final Solution, or in German Endlösung. The meeting was chaired by SS Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich, who had been charged with the task of solving Germany’s “Jewish Problem” shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Hermann Goering, the number two man in the Nazi Reich sent Heydrich the following message:

Berlin, July 31st 1941

To: Gruppenfuhrer Heydrich

Where the competency of other organizations touches on this matter, the organizations are to collaborate.

Goering

Reinhard Heydrich

When Goering wrote Heydrich, who headed the Reichssiecherhiethauptampt (RSHA) or Reich Security Main Office, in July 1941 it seemed that Nazi victory in Europe was all but assured. Goering’s words were businesslike, and his words describing the Jews in terms of a question were euphemism of dehumanization. The late Christopher Hitchens understood how labeling ethnic or religious groups as in terms of questions or problems allowed people to escape the human realities of their solutions.

“Die Judenfrage,’ it used to be called, even by Jews. ‘The Jewish Question.’ I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question—as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it—may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish ‘problem.’ Again, the word ‘solution’ can be as neutral as the words ‘question’ or ‘problem,’ but once one has defined a people or a nation as such, the search for a resolution can become a yearning for the conclusive. Endlösung: the final solution.”

The early measures taken by Heydrich to rid Germany and annexed Austria had been reasonably successful to rid those areas of their Jews through emigration and evacuation. These were not benign measures, people were forced to leave their homes, businesses, communities, and had most of their belongings taken from them in order to leave the Reich. However with the occupation of most of Europe following the Nazi military success and the looming occupation and subjugation of the Soviet Union the process of giving the Jews a chance to emigrate to lands outside Nazi control had come to an end. In fact the Nazis occupied the countries that may Jews had found refuge. In Heydrich, Goering, most likely acting on the verbal orders of Hitler, had found the man to execute the final solution of the Jewish Problem. Heydrich was the one man who could break through resistance of competing government and party offices and bring them into line.

Less than six months after he received the directive from Goering, on January 20th 1942 Heydrich summoned representatives from various Reich agencies were called for what turned out to be a brief, two hour meeting which decided the fate of the Jews. The meeting was held at an estate located in the suburbs of Berlin, called Wansee. Organized by Heydrich’s deputy Adolph Eichmann, involved Heydrich, Eichmann and 13 mid level representatives from various economic, governmental, justice and police entities.

Order of Heydrich to Martin Luther, Under Secretary of the Foreign Ministry

Estimates of Jews to be Exterminated from Wannsee Documents

Auschwitz

The Nazi leadership decided that its race war against the Jews needed to forge ahead. Within days of Wansee the orders went out and SS commanders at various concentration camps began devising more efficient means to exterminate Jews and other “sub-humans.” It was a matter of pride and efficiency for them. As Rudolf Hoess the Commandant of Auschwitz said at Nuremberg “the camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas, and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Zyclon B….” Hoess estimated that some 2.5 million people were exterminated at Auschwitz at rates as high as 10,000 a day.

Einsatzgruppen in Action

Of course before the Endlösung was decided on in Berlin and and the pieces were put into place at Wannsee, the Einsatzgruppen had been at work for over six months in the Soviet Union. Four Einsatzgruppen followed each of the German Army Groups and systematically began to massacre the Jews of every city and village which German soldiers captured. The Einsatzgruppen, Ordungspolizei Battalions, Army Security Divisions and locally recruited units in fewer than six months, killed over a million and a half Soviet Jews, and the slaughter would continue unabated until the dying days of the Reich.

Heinrich Himmler, Heydrich’s friend and superior told a gathering of senior SS leaders:

Himmler and his entourage

The truly terrifying thing about the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust to me is that most of the men at Wansee, men that commanded the Concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen were very ordinary men who simply believed that they were doing their jobs. Very few could be described as psychopathic killers by nature. They were lawyers, doctors, career police officials, businessmen, and bureaucrats who carried out an extermination campaign that killed by their own numbers between 5.5 and 6 million Jews, not to mention others deemed to be subhuman including the handicapped, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and other non-Jewish minorities like the Gypsies not to mention the wide variety of those considered political enemies. But it was the Jews that bore the most tragic fate and it was the Jews who were the object of Hitler’s most bloodthirsty actions.

But without the bureaucrats, the mayors, district leaders, party functionaries, police officers, soldiers, railroad officials, businessmen, and others who helped there could have been no Holocaust. As Laurence Rees wrote:

“human behavior is fragile and unpredictable and often at the mercy of the situation. Every individual still, of course, has a choice as to how to behave, it’s just that for many people the situation is the key determinate in that choice.”

Timothy Snyder correctly observed that “The world is now changing, reviving fears that were familiar in Hitler’s time, and to which Hitler responded. The history of the Holocaust is not over. Its precedent is eternal, and its lessons have not yet been learned.”

That is something that we must never forget lest the would be architects of annihilation of our day; the American President, other politicians, preachers, propagandists, and profiteers, who demonize the Jews, Muslims, dark skinned immigrants, LTBTQ people and other inconvenient elements and prepare people to do evil or ignore it: the ordinary men who just obey orders. Primo Levi who I quoted at the beginning was right, the common me, those that don’t think but simply follow orders or turn their heads and ignore the evil who are the most dangerous.

Milton Mayer wrote in his book They Thought They Were Free about a German colleague during the 1950s that had lived through the Hitler years as an academic. The man tried to explain how changes were so gradual that people like him who should have known better did not take action, if they did at all until it was too late. The man asked Mayer:

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.”

We cannot forget and we must always be vigilant or we too could easily succumb, it’s not that hard. Any of us can be a perpetrator, victim or bystander. Yehuda Bauer wrote these words of warning:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.“

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under ethics, History, holocaust, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as adolf eichmann, adolf hitler, auschwitz, christopher hitchens, Death camps, einsatzgruppen, final solution, heinrich himmler, hermann goering, Holocaust, jewish problem, jewish question, Laurence Ress, Martin Luther, milton mayer, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hoess, they thought they were free, timothy snyder, Wannsee Conference, yehuda bauer

January 4, 2019 · 00:05

Jerry Falwell Jr. and the Christian Nationalist Church Of Trump

President Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr.

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Atticus Finch, the hero of the book and film To Kill a Mockingbird said:

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

I think that most people like to believe that religion is a benign or positive influence in the world. As much as I want to believe the positive aspects I have to admit based on the historical and sociological evidence that this is not so, especially during unsettled times of great change.

We live in such an era and when it comes to identity, God is the ultimate trump card, or in the case of Jerry Falwell Jr., Donald Trump is the ultimate God card. Falwell exemplifies the ideal of Christian Nationalism in his idolatrous and uncritical support of the President.

When asked the question Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders? during an interview with the Washington Post, Falwell said: No.

The interviewer who had listened to a number of long winded and theologically unbelievable answers in which he attempted to tie his uncritical support of the President by linking it to Martin Luther’s teaching of the “Two Kingdoms” then noted, That’s the shortest answer we’ve had so far, to which Falwell using perfect circular logic responded:

Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.

Truthfully whenI saw and then read the interview which you can see here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/jerry-falwell-jr-cant-imagine-trump-doing-anything-thats-not-good-for-the-country/2018/12/21/6affc4c4-f19e-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8fd8a874afb5

Falwell’s arguments are very similar to Reichsbishof Müller and the Nazi supported German Christians, or Otto Dibelius, who before he became an anti-Nazi and General Superintendent of the Confessional Lutherans claimed:

“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!”

Robert Jeffress, the Pastor of the mammoth First Baptist Church Of Dallas, Texas, is another who seems like Falwell Jr. for the Office of Reichsbishof of Trump’s MAGA State, said:

“You know, I was debating an evangelical professor on NPR, and this professor said, ‘Pastor, don’t you want a candidate who embodies the teaching of Jesus and would govern this country according to the principles found in the Sermon on the Mount?’” Jeffress said. “I said, ‘Heck no.’ I would run from that candidate as far as possible, because the Sermon on the Mount was not given as a governing principle for this nation.”

I wonder what some of Jeffress’s predecessors in that storied pulpit would think of his and Falwell’s unlimited support and blessing of the lawless President would say. Actually I don’t wonder a bit, I know what they would say. George Truett Who pastored First Dallas and served as the President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote:

“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”

So, if one wonders why the most fanatical individuals and groups on earth are tied to religions, it is because they honestly believe that they are acting in the Name Of God. Sadly,mit is the theology of Falwell and others like him that leads to genocide. In that as Pact, Christian history is often little different from the bloodthirsty if the non State actors of Islamic State: Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, or Hezbollah, although it is much closer to the State sponsored acts of the Christian Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks, and the Catholic versus Protestant wars of the Reformation. Likewise, some Ultra-Orthodox Orthodox Jews, radical Hindus, and Buddhists Of course all of these groups have different goals, and some are less violent than the others, but their overall thoughts and philosophy are quite similar: they desire to impose their religious authority on others using the means of the state or if they cannot gain control of government, through terror.

Robert Heinlein wrote:

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”

Heinlein, the author of the classic Starship Troopers was absolutely correct. Just look at any place in any time where any religion, sect or cult has gained control of a government. They are not loving, they are not forgiving and they use the police power of the state to persecute any individual or group that is judged to be in error, or even worse has the gall to question their authority. Samuel Huntington wrote in his book The Clash of Civilizations:

“Whatever universalist goals they may have, religions give people identity by positing a basic distinction between believers and non-believers, between a superior in-group and a different and inferior out-group.”

That distinction is on display all over the world and in our own country when conservative Christians write laws that allow them the right to discriminate against other people based solely on their religious beliefs and to secure themselves the preeminent position in society. Gary North, one of the most eloquent expositors of the Christian Dominionist movement and a long time adviser to Ron and Rand Paul and other conservative Christian politicians wrote:

“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.”

Huntington was right, you see the true believers, those who follow their religion without question and believe that it is superior to all others also believe that their religion entitles them to be atop the food chain, others who don’t believe like them be damned both in this life and the next. That is the certitude of the true believer, especially the religious one. Secular or atheistic fanatics could care less about the next life, for this life is all that they have. But the religious “true believers” are not only interested in destroying someone in this life, but ensuring that in the next that they suffer for eternity, unless they believe in the annihilation of the soul after death, which really spoils the whole Dante’s Inferno perspective of the damned in the afterlife.

The great American philosopher, Eric Hoffer wrote:

“The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish.”

That is why they, the religious true believers of any faith, men like Jerry Falwell Jr., are capable of such great evil, and why such people can bless the murder innocents in the most brutal manner simply because they do not believe correctly.

Under President Trump, conservative American Christians are getting their chance to do their worst, and will only get more militant and violent as the walls close in around the President and they form the last protective barrier around him, like a Praetorian Guard, unless they are fought at every turn. As Falwell and others including Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, and hundreds of other conservative Christians leaders rally around him, Trump, knowing that their worship,is directed toward him will cleave to them ever more faithfully.

Based on the unwavering and increasing loyalty of men like Falwell, Jeffress, and their followers, Trump was right about his supporters when he claimed in 2015:

“You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.”

It is incredible, and dangerous.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve

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Filed under christian life, ethics, faith, History, Loose thoughts and musings, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as atticus finch, Christian Nationalism Robert Henlein, First Baptist Dallas, gary north, jerry falwell jr, Ludwig Muller, Martin Luther, Otto Dibelius, president donald trump, rand paul, Reichsbishof, Robert Jeffress George Truett, ron paul, samuel huntington, starship troopers, to kill a mockingbird, two kingdoms

October 9, 2018 · 23:59

A Visit to Lutherstadt Wittenberg

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

For the first time in 22 years during our recent trip to Germany I returned to the city where a little known Augustinian Monk and Professor of Theology, Dr. Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation and changed the world forever. There had been other revolts against the Catholic Church by various dissenters but none of them had ever found and ear with rulers who by their support could change the status quo and protect them from being tried as heretics.

To be tried as a heretic meant that you were also in violation of the law of the local monarch or the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and likewise an enemy of the State. Once convicted of heresy the the opponents of the regime were then executed in whatever way the Church and State deemed to be the most effective way of discouraging future dissenters.

Luther was not only a keen theologian, he knew how to gain the support of common people, as well as the princes and other members of the nobility who knew that they were getting screwed by both the Church and the Empire. Thus while his theological motives based on his experience of the grace of God were genuine, he understood the political implications of his theology which broke the chains of Germans Protestants to Rome.

The result would lead Luther’s political supporters into multiple wars against Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, and then against German dissenters who dissented from Luther. It would also set the stage for successful breaks from Rome in England, and in Geneva, where John Calvin proclaimed a harsh and cold version of Protestantism. In many ways Luther never fully rejected parts of Catholic doctrine such as the Eucharist as the Body and Blood of Christ, and the efficacy of Baptism for the forgiveness of sins, despite writing circles around himself to show his differences with Rome. He would never be Protestant enough for Calvin, or Ulrich Zwingli of Zurich, or the later more radical Calvinist separatists in France, Holland, England, and Scotland. Of course none of those were acceptable to the Radical Reformers of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement in Holland which spread to England in the guise of the early English Baptists, who were simply Anabaptists who had thrown out pacifism.

Luther was a remarkable man with many flaws. His theology led to married clergy, the Bible being translated into German and then many other languages. In fact Luther’s translation of the Bible into German helped birth the modern German language as much as the later King James Bible did for English some 80years later.

Likewise, through his emphasis on the Three Solas, Sola Gratia, Sola Fides, and Sola Scriptura he opened the door for individuals to have more say in their spiritual lives and interpretation of the Christian faith, which led to many more breaks with the Church, his Church within a few years. Luther opened the door to a Christianity which has never stopped splitting, often with ugly consequences, and sometimes reforming for the better. Luther was a huge influence on John Wesley who influenced me like William Wilberforce and John Newton who helped abolish slavery in England and it’s colonies. At the same time one cannot overlook just how Luther’s vehement denunciations and demonizations of the Jews helped set the stage for the German anti-Semitism that brought about the Holocaust.

But all that being said from a theological point of view Luther shattered the theological oneness of the western church. Instead of one Pope, Luther opened the door for everyone to be his own Pope.

His theology also allowed rulers to break from Rome and still support their own State Church. In the various fiefdoms of Germany some went with Luther, others Calvin, and still others Zwingli. In England, Henry VIII took the Church of England out of Rome and that church recognized the English King, or at times the Queen the head of the Church.Without Luther to shatter the barrier between Church and State, there would likely never have been the freedom granted to the great

This when the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States wrote those documents they were absolutely opposed to the government of the United States having a State religion or for that matter even endorsing any sect of Christianity. The great Virginia Baptist and friend of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, John Leland wrote:

“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

Luther certainly would not have agreed with that, but he opened the door to it and we should all be grateful that he did. One wishes that the Christian Nationalists of the United States would read their United States history because they are try to establish a particular minority sect of Christianity, a fundamental evangelicalism rooted in the political theology of John Calvin as the official State religion. To do so they are using a man who would shame the Medici Popes in his profound disregard and disrespect of anything resembling the Christian faith; for his carnal indulgence, his wanton greed, vain pomposity, and his narcissism which borders on self-deification. Luther would have recognized him and them as frauds of the most odious kind.

Luther’s flaws are many. He suffered severe, probably clinical depression, and many PTSD from the beatings administered by his father. That was not helped by his understanding as a young man, theology student, and monk of a very punitive and angry God who he could never please. His life crisis came at a time in his life, between 28 and 32 years old, when developmental psychologists tell us that many great thinkers, intellects, and leaders have their breakthroughs.

He was also at times terribly sarcastic, vindictive, and angry. He could turn on friends and former students who broke with him in a visceral manner. He was also beset by an anti-Semitic streak that while it was a part of the times that he lived was used by other German anti-semites, especially Hitler’s Nazis in their persecution, and later extermination of the Jews. He was also prone to see the religious wars of his time, be they against the Turks, the Roman Catholics, or the Radical Reformers, through the lens of an apocalyptic worldview.

Despite all his flaws he is one of the most important men in history. Without his break with Rome and the support of European nobility there probably would have been no Enlightenment as we know it for the great artists, writers, scientists, and others of that period would likely have never had safe places to go beyond the limits of Medieval Scholasticism and Aristotelian philosophy.

Likewise the principle of the Reformation is that Reformation never ends. The Church must continually reform or die. Unfortunately, that is seldom the case, the Christian Church has always been resistant to change and frequently is the last holdout against truly evil movements. Christians, not just in the United States, frequently heed the call of racism, nationalism, and misogyny more than any other group. Of course there are other religions where many of the faithful and their leaders do the same thing, but today’s post is about Luther and the the Christian faith.

Luther understood that the Gospel must speak to the issues of the day. He said: A gospel that doesn’t deal with the issues of the day is not the gospel at all. In our day those issues are ones that I think that had he lived among us that Luther would see and preach about. I could see him boldly condemning the court preachers of Donald Trump, (yes I see the split infinitive and I don’t care – to “boldly go” as someone we’ll know has said). Men like Robert Jeffress, Jerry Falwell Jr., and Franklin Graham wouldn’t stand a chance against the Monk from Wittenberg. Neither would the Medici President and his sycophant supporters who scream in indignation when he or they are exposed for who they are.

So, until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Meeting Old Friends in Eisenach

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It has been a long day so tonight’s post is basically to check in. We left Wittenberg this morning after a nice visit to meet our friends Gottfried and Hannelore in the town of Eisenach for Judy’s birthday which is tomorrow.

On the way we stopped at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp outside of Weimar. It was another sobering visit to a site where man’s inhumanity to man remains fully on display. I will write more about that later and may combine what I write with my observations at Flossenbürg which I visited Thursday.

We arrived at the hotel shortly before they did about 3:45 and we spent the afternoon and evening conversing and reminiscing over dinner and drinks. Our friendship with them is special, we have known them since early 1985 when I was a young Army First Lieutenant stationed in Wiesbaden Germany. We got to know each other through the partnership program between the 68th Medical Group and Sanitäts Regiment 74. Gottfried, who had worked himself up through the enlisted ranks to become an officer was also a First Lieutenant and the Officer in Charge of a Medical Clinic in Mainz.

Over the years we have managed to stay in touch. We have seen their children grow up and have kids of their own. We know Hannelore’s brother and many of their friends. They are like family to us. Tomorrow we will have breakfast with them and then go over to see the Wartburg Castle where Martin Luther was hidden by his supporters after his defense at the Diet of Worms, an where he translated the New Testament from Greek into German. After that we will each head our separate ways, they to their home where they are dealing with repairs to their own home as well as the disposition of the home and business Hannelore’s aunt who died in April. We will drive to Berlin where we will remain until Tuesday.

We will get some pictures posted of the visit sometime soon as I keep getting backlogged on the articles that I plan on writing due to the travel schedule of the past few days. So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

F-Bombs and Feet of Clay: My Less than Saintly Life on Display

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am frustrated and angry tonight at people who I served with and considered to be friends because I dared to criticize the draft dodging, combat veteran mocking President when it was reported that he is forcing the Pentagon to give him a big military parade like Bastille Day in France. I made my comments on Facebook which I use to keep up with friends. I do post articles and occasionally comments on those articles but I make it a point never to go to my friends pages and attack them for their political, social, or religious beliefs, even when what they post attacks on things that I deeply believe in. For me it is not worth it, I would rather remember the good times with people than to attack them and their beliefs.

But tonight I lost it after repeated attacks and posted something that was not very Jesus like, something about fornicating the President and his minions. When I did that, one former shipmate who had been one of the instigators of my anger threw up my clergy status and noted that Jesus never said such things. I readily agreed with him and admitted that I am a bad seed. As far as what is written in the Bible goes I am sure that he is absolutely correct that Jesus never said such things. But that being said Jesus did kind of mess up the money changers in the Temple day when he when all sorts of crazy on them. Likewise, St Nicholas, tired of hearing heresy proclaimed at the Council of Nicaea punched the heretic Arius, an act that the Emperor Constantine had him stripped of his office as a Bishop and imprisoned. One has to admire punching saints. Likewise, the great German Reformer Martin Luther was probably at least as foul mouthed as me, especially after a good amount of beer.

Since I still struggle with belief and since I know that I am a very poor representative of Jesus in many ways it was offensive. On a good day I believe about 60% of the time which is a lot better than just a few years ago and that is not because how well I have been treated by supposedly Christian friends, rather it is because of the grace, love, and mercy I have been shown by others who don’t claim to be Christian, as well as Christians not afraid to rock the boat or embrace those who do, even if they disagree with them.

I guess that makes me a traitor to the President and his minions. If so I’ll live with it and I’m sure that when the President gets his Reichstag Fire moment that I will be terminated in one way or another. Since I have have had my life threatened by Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists going back to 2010 I wouldn’t be surprised at anything. I know too much about History and human nature to believe the best about anyone in times like this.

Tonight I am angry, I am disgusted, and I am discouraged; but I won’t stop speaking out. If I stop speaking out I will be no better than the Wehrmacht Officers who turned away from the Weimar Constitution, who turned the other way when Hitler gave them what they wanted and eliminated the opposition, and who planned and executed his wars of aggressive conquest and genocide, and when the war was over blamed it all of the SS.

General Ludwig Beck who first supported Hitler’s military build up but resigned his post rather than to execute orders to invade Czechoslovakia noted:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.”

Thankfully one of my former now retired subordinates sent me a personal message asking me to take my most incendiary comment down promising to copy and paste it on his timeline without attribution. The comment was admittedly over the top and posted out of anger, not that I didn’t mean it; but he was right to tell me to take it down in order to protect me. It was a scathingly brilliant idea. I removed the post and the comments and he posted my comment without attribution. You have to appreciate people who “look out for your six.” Thank you my friend for doing so.

The last two glasses of wine and the support of other friends have taken the edge off my anger. The Apostle Paul wrote “be angry and do not sin” while the Martin Luther, a man as foul and melancholy as I will ever be wrote his faithful friend and lieutenant Philip Melanchthon:

“If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides.”

I don’t hide behind my clerical collar, or the cross on my uniform. I know that I am deeply flawed and certainly not an imaginary sinner. I sin and when I do it tends to get noticed, and I’m sure that God is watching and that She knows it too. I don’t know if I can be angry and not sin because my mostly Irish and Scottish DNA combined with my life experience and PTSD mitigates against it. My ugly and beat up feet are definitely made of clay.

That being said I’m not going to be some namsy-pamsy that lets people walk over him. Feet of clay or not I do fight back and when I turn the other cheek I frequently emit foul odors.

So until tomorrow when I write about the substance of what set me off, not the attacks or the people,

Peace,

Padre Steve

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Filed under christian life, ethics, faith, Loose thoughts and musings, Political Commentary

Tagged as bullies, feet of clay, Martin Luther, penis envy, president donald trump, sin, st Nicholas

January 6, 2018 · 00:01

The Cost of Crawling into Bed with Caesar: Base Meanness, a Pliant Church, and Trump

Bonhoeffer in Prison

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther noted: “When the Church crawls in to bed with Caesar, Caesar hogs the covers and leaves the Church exposed and naked”

Is that not exactly what is happening today?

The writings of some authors are timeless. This year I have taken to reading a collection of the writings of the German pastor, theologian, and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer as my spiritual reading on a daily basis for this year. I’m also doing 365 days of Martin Luther in German as part of my spiritual journey for the year.

Luther is interesting, but Bonhoeffer I think is more relevant to our time. In his book Ethics which was written during the reign of the Hitler regime Bonhoeffer wrote something that strike to the heart of our present crisis in the United States and even more particularly that of the conservative Christian Church and its relationship to President Trump:

“The message of God’s becoming human attacks the heart of an era when contempt for humanity or idolization of humanity is the height of all wisdom, among bad people as well as good. The weaknesses of human nature appear more clearly in a storm than in the quiet flow of calmer times. Among the overwhelming majority of people, anxiety, greed, lack of independence, and brutality show themselves to be the mainspring of behavior in the face of unsuspected chance and threats. At such a time the tyrannical despiser of humanity (in the case of Bonhoeffer, Adolf Hitler) easily makes use of the meanness of the human heart by nourishing it and giving it other names. Anxiety is called responsibility; greed is called industriousness; lack of independence becomes solidarity; brutality becomes masterfulness. By this ingratiating treatment of human weaknesses, what is base and mean is generated and increased ever anew. The basest contempt for humanity carries on its sinister business under the most holy assertions of love for humanity. The meaner the business becomes, the more willing and pliant a tool it is in the hands of a tyrant. The small number of upright people will be smeared with mud. Courage is called revolt, their discipline Pharisaism, their independence arbitrariness, and their masterfulness arrogance.”

We have seen this in our own day among President Trump, his supporters in Congress and the media, and especially among conservative Christians. The worst aspects of human nature have been elevated to virtues over the past two decades and like Germany in 1933 there was someone waiting in the wings to exploit it and make it his own.

I’ll leave you to mull that over and I will continue to post these theological and ethical criticisms of the church and of the President, and yes I will keep making the connections with the Nazi state and other authoritarian regimes as I do so. But for me this is a matter of faith, and for me that means confronting and battling the Christians who have gotten in bed with the Trump regime; in the long term they are at least as dangerous, perhaps more than the President for they serve as his enablers; as Bonhoeffer noted:

Until the next time,

Peace

Padre Steve

1 Comment

Filed under civil rights, faith, History, leadership, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as conservative christians, dietrich bonhoeffer, donald trump supporters, Martin Luther, nazi germany, president donald trump, tyranny

Tag Archives: Martin Luther

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Meeting Old Friends in Eisenach

F-Bombs and Feet of Clay: My Less than Saintly Life on Display

The Cost of Crawling into Bed with Caesar: Base Meanness, a Pliant Church, and Trump

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