Won’t Maureen Dowd be surprised!
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin
Jimmy,
I hope you get a chance to see the film.
I wonder if Matthew Fox is satisfied? His “22 Questions for Cardinal Ratzinger,” posted on his website, included such thoughtful inquiries as:
“1. You come from Bavaria, that part of Germany that most admired Hitler and first voted for him. Did you ever denounce Hitler or fascism? If so, when? If not, why not? …
“3. If you denounced Hitler then why do you carry on in his ways such as 1) bookburning and denouncing of thinkers and theologians? 2) whipping up hostility toward homosexuals as he did? 3) excluding women of all decision-making and leadership? 4) create scapegoats including people of religions other than Catholic along with women and gay people? …
“4. Do you want to put gays in concentration camps like Hitler did? (In the second of two documents you wrote and the past pope signed denouncing homosexuals you did not cite even ONE scientific study of homosexuality but cited your catchechism five times. Is this anti-intellectual attitude not another Galileo case in the making?) …
“21. Why do you denounce Buddhists as “atheists” and “autoerotocists?” Why do you condemn Hindus? Protestant churches? Pagans? Goddess worshippers? Native American believers? Feminists? The practice of Yoga? (You write that it gets you “too much in touch with your body”). Is your church–mother of Inquisitions and Crusades and anti-Semitism–without sin and the holder of all spiritual wisdom? Why did your church never excommunicate Hitler?”
Our loss is the Episcopalians’ gain, I guess.
He he he. If there weren’t so many nuts (or worse) out there who act as though this were really a question, I’d be mildly embarrassed that my pope thought it necessary to condemn Nazism (obliterated) or Communism (dying, mostly anyway). Still, I suppose he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Personally, I’m still waiting for the Church to condemn to slaughter of the Incas in the 16th century by syphillis-ridden apostate Conquistators.
One needs to understanding Communism as alive and kicking, all right. It’s not alive in its Soviet form any longer, except in Cuba, but in the modern secularism and liberalism in general. No, it’s not class struggle anymore, rather it’s race struggle, gender struggle, etc. Different words, same approach, in particular in the atheism and anti-christian which still breath life in them.
I saw the movie Karol, a Man who Became the Pope on CBC (a Canadian broadcast TV). It is wonderful. This is the same movie Pope Benedict XVI saw and then declared that he himself condemns NAZISM (and atheistic COMMUNISM).