Matthew pt4

Mathew 16:18

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Recently in my other journal I made an entry with a link to an article about Pope Benedict, where he asks where God was during the Holocaust. This is somewhat ironic, of course, because the new pope was a member of the Hitler Youth as a young person. He may not have had a choice (although it seems somewhat of a cop out to me to say "but if I didn't do it, they'd hurt people I cared about". Well, people you cared about got hurt anyway, didn't they.) But it's even more strange-not that he was in the Hitler Youth, and not that he was elected pope in spite of this, when the previous pontiff had made such great strides in the area of Jewish-Christian relations- it's strange that he would ask such a question.

"Where was God?"

You'd think the head of the largest Christian organizations in the world would have some kind of answer to that. Perhaps the answer is not one he wants to consider. You see, if the Church had been doing its job, maybe things wouldn't have gotten so out of control. Religion exists to be the voice of compassion and morality, at least all religion post Jesus has- Religion has often been the last or the first line of defense for the weak and helpless. When it fails in this duty, whether because it's focused on its own survival or because it has simply turned on the people it was supposed to help-maybe just because people are feeling apathetic, disaster strikes.

Of course it's not just the Church's fault. When we look at the causes of the Holocaust, we see a failure of every popular system people have of policing themselves. Democracy backfired (Hitler was voted in), Science turned on us (Eugenics, experiments on people), Diplomacy was taken advantage of (We can trust he won't invade Poland) -even the idea that we're all Civilized and Enlightened turned out to be largely false. But the Church, the Church is-was- supposed to be different. Isn't it?

Jesus famously told Peter "you are the rock, and on this rock I will build my kingdom. " The Catholic Church loves this verse. You might recognize it yourself, it's carved on the wall of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. The verse has been used for over a thousand years to cement the Church's right to rule on earth. Yes, the meaning of it is disputed often (maybe it wasn't Peter, maybe it wasn't a literal rock, etc, etc), but the Catholics have held firmly to their belief that Jesus gave Peter the keys to Heaven. "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven." The verse is so popular it's actually been made into a pop song.

"And all the powers of Hell itself shall nevermore prevail against it." If there was ever a twentieth century illustration of "the powers of Hell" it was the Nazis. There are billions of Catholics in the world, they have billions of dollars in art, architecture, money and other assets throughout the world, they have radio stations, television stations, film companies, world class universities…and the Vatican is a literal fortress (it is its own nation with fortifications capable of withstanding everything except heavy missiles) with its own private army. Now, imagine what they could do when backed up by other major Christian denominations. If the majority of Christians in the world all turned their energies, physical, political or psychic, on a goal there is little that could stand in their way. We can see that in the way fundamentalists of all denominations have banded together to take over America's government.

So why did six million Jews have to die? Because the Catholic Church, and many other major Christian denominations, did not try hard enough to save them. In some cases they actively encouraged the Nazis (even smuggling war criminals out of Germany) until it became obvious what the Nazis were doing- meaning- about the time they were actually shoving Jews in actual ovens. And still, most church authorities did little about it.

With privilege comes responsibility, as exemplified in Paul's explanation of the Jewish laws. This chunk of verse is often used to claim that Christians are the new chosen people, because the Jews failed at living up to their responsibilities. But the very people who use these verses as a defense have also failed to live up to what's expected of them-they've failed even more because when they failed, it affected people besides just their own community. The Church failed at the task God set for them, the task of loving your neighbor, protecting the helpless, treating others as you would like to be treated, they did not live up to the example of Jesus (who, incidentally, happened to also you know, be a Jew).

Benedict asks "why didn't God stop this?" God was there…that little voice in your heart that tells you "don’t do that, it's wrong", that voice is from God. And the Church as a global body was supposed to be God's hands on earth, or so they constantly tell us. You can't have it both ways, spending a thousand years insisting that God has given you the keys to the universe and then claiming you were helpless when evil showed its face on earth. You weren't helpless, you were trying to save your own skin. Or maybe you were just too unconsciously influenced by medieval urban legends about Jews.

Standing up to evil would have required some people to die, more than likely. And many other people might have lost employment or political favor. That's what you sign on for when you sign on to be a part of this Christianity thing. You agree to strive to follow the example of Jesus and the first Apostles. Aside from the obvious example of Jesus, the first Christians were beheaded, shot, stoned, burned at the stake, devoured by lions, tortured, crucified (upside down and right side up) , among other things. Another interesting line in the song I linked to above says "If you would give your life away, for nothing in return". The Christian leadership during WW2 was not, on the whole, willing to do such a thing. A pope or archbishop who truly walked with God would have said "you want to take those people to a concentration camp, then you're going to have to take me too."


"One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine gun trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains -- and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel. . . . The three victims mounted together onto the chairs. . . . "Where is God? Where is He?" someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. . . . Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive. . . . For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "Where is God now?" And I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is He? Here He is -- He is hanging here on this gallows . . ."

Elie Wiesel