The Pope Re-Writes History

I’ve been busy with a very meaningful Yom Kippur with my friend and mentor, Rabbi Miriam Jerris, together with the wonderful members of Beth Adam in Boca Raton. So I’m just catching up with the news where I discovered this quote from the Pope on his trip to England:

“Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

“As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.”

This is the kind of up is down and black is white version of history that I’ve come to expect from the Vatican. Just for the record, let’s recall a few facts.

Adolph Hitler was a Catholic. He was never excommunicated by the Church. Nazi Germany was a heavily Catholic nation. The Vatican fully accommodated Hitler, signing the infamous “Concordat,” the equivalent of a treaty, with him in mid-1933. Hitler was not an atheist, “militant” or otherwise.

PZ Myers’ Pharyngula has a long, long list of Hitler’s quotes regarding God. Furthermore, as Myers also points out, Hitler actually outlawed all atheist and freethinking groups in 1933. I don’t think I need to remind anyone of this Pope’s background, either. The Pope’s assertion is simply an outright lie, an obvious distortion of history.

There is something I don’t understand. I am a humanistic atheist and I try to be an honest person because it is my ethical and moral responsibility to my fellow humans. The Pope says he believes in a god who knows the inner recesses of every person’s thoughts. Following that logic, wouldn’t said god know he’s lying? Doesn’t that scare or worry him? Or is he lying about his faith, too? He can’t possibly believe his own statements. They are demonstrably false.

The Jewish experience has taught me that the Vatican has no trouble setting up boogeymen to single out for scapegoating. Once upon a time it was acceptable to do this to Jews. Since the Holocaust that’s fallen out of fashion. So now it will be the atheists. It should be obvious to thinking people that this libel is as transparently untrue as were those targeted at the Jews.

The problem is that there just aren’t enough thinking people.