In his May 23 letter, "Watching what the church does," Barry Ward cannot refute Jennifer Kim's comments (May 16 letter, "Catholic link to human rights"), which show the debt owed by modern human rights conventions to Judeo-Christian teaching. So, instead, Ward fumes over historical wrongs committed by the Catholic Church.
People sin, but ideas have power over time. Cathar theology — fleeing an evil creation for the spirit world — is not a path to justice in this life. Christianity teaches that fallen though we are, God forgives and asks us to build up His Kingdom in this life: "He who does these things for the least of My brethren, does them for Me."
Thus Christian charities run more hospitals, shelters and schools than most governments, and are the critical voice defending the unborn, the aged and the weak from the eugenic agenda of "enlightened" materialists. But ideas can turn on facts, and Kim's detractors misrepresent them.
Greg Blossom (May 23 letter, "Hitler cited his religious faith") cites the diaries of Gerhard Engel. Does he know that David Irving's masterful history, "Hitler's War," shows that Engel's "diaries" were postwar fabrications?
Was the church silent on Nazism? "Mit Brennender Sorge," a papal encyclical deliberately written in German, condemned Nazi racial theory in 1937. Ward wouldn't know that, because he "doesn't read papal bulls, or any other bull" — liberal open-mindedness at its finest!
Pope Pius XII's vocal opposition to Nazism was widely recognized, including by Albert Einstein in a 1940 Time article. Pius' saving of over 800,000 Jews led Golda Meir to label him a "righteous gentile."
On the other hand, Hitler favorite and top Nazi Martin Bormann said in a 1938 speech: "We Germans are the first to be appointed by destiny to break with Christianity. It will be an honor for us."
Not only does this explode the myth that Hitler and his cabal considered themselves Catholic, but it also suggests who today has the most in common with the Nazis' pagan ideology.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.
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