{"id":715,"date":"2010-09-19T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/the-pope-re-writes-history.html"},"modified":"2010-09-19T13:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T13:04:00","slug":"the-pope-re-writes-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/the-pope-re-writes-history.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope Re-Writes History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 So I\u2019m just catching up with the news where I discovered this quote from the Pope<\/span><\/a> on his trip to England:<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cEven 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.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cAs 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.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
This is the kind of up is down and black is white version of history that I\u2019ve come to expect from the Vatican.\u00a0 Just for the record, let\u2019s recall a few facts.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
Adolph Hitler was a Catholic.\u00a0 He was never excommunicated by the Church. \u00a0Nazi Germany was a heavily Catholic nation. \u00a0The Vatican fully accommodated Hitler, signing the infamous \u201cConcordat,\u201d the equivalent of a treaty, with him in mid-1933.\u00a0 Hitler was not an atheist, \u201cmilitant\u201d or otherwise.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
\nPZ Myers\u2019 Pharyngula<\/span><\/a> has a long, long list of Hitler\u2019s quotes regarding God.\u00a0 Furthermore, as Myers also points out, Hitler actually outlawed all atheist and freethinking groups in 1933.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I need to remind anyone of this Pope\u2019s background, either. \u00a0<\/span>The Pope\u2019s assertion\u00a0is simply an outright lie, an obvious distortion of history.\n<\/div>\n
There is something I don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The Pope says he believes in a god who knows the inner recesses of every person\u2019s thoughts.\u00a0 Following that logic, wouldn\u2019t said god know he\u2019s lying?\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t that scare or worry him?\u00a0 Or is he lying about his faith, too?\u00a0 He can\u2019t possibly believe his own statements.\u00a0 They are demonstrably false.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
\nThe Jewish experience has taught me that the Vatican has no trouble setting up boogeymen to single out for scapegoating.\u00a0 Once upon a time it was acceptable to do this to Jews.\u00a0 Since the Holocaust that\u2019s fallen out of fashion.\u00a0 So now it will be the atheists.\u00a0 It should be obvious to thinking people that this libel is as transparently untrue as were those targeted at the Jews.<\/span>\n

<\/span>The problem is that there just aren\u2019t enough thinking people.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 So I\u2019m just catching up with the news where I discovered this quote from the Pope on his trip to England: \u201cEven in our own lifetimes we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,8],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-atheism","tag-catholicism"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope Re-Writes History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I\u2019ve 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\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/the-pope-re-writes-history.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pope Re-Writes History\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019ve 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\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/the-pope-re-writes-history.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-09-19T13:04:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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