Michael Gerson reflects on Pope Benedict XVI’s reinstatement of a bishop who denies the Holocaust, and discusses more broadly the actions (or lack thereof) of Christians who have, recently and historically, stood by during genocides:
In Hitler’s Germany, Christians responded to mass murder with general acquiescence and only isolated defiance. Protestants earned the most shame. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church elections of 1932, so-called “German Christians” won two-thirds of the vote—and later praised the fight “against the political and spiritual influence of the Jewish race.” Catholic leaders were less overt in their anti-Semitism, but hardly heroic in their resistance—usually accommodating rather than confronting the Nazi regime. “Charity is well and good,” said one Vatican official at the time, “but the greatest charity is not to make problems for the church.”
During the Rwandan genocide, writes Timothy Longman, “Numerous priests, pastors, nuns, brothers, catechists and Catholic and Protestant lay leaders supported, participated in, or helped to organize the killings.” Two Benedictine nuns collaborated with Hutu militias in the murder of 7,000 people just outside their convent grounds. A priest participated in the burning and bulldozing of a church with 2,000 men, women and children inside.
It is very difficult to understand how those who worship a man on a cross could help to drive the bloody nails themselves. But the record is clear: When religion is infected by racism, ideology or extreme nationalism, it can become a carrier of hatred instead of conscience. And when churches are concerned mainly for their institutional self-preservation, they often end up neck-deep in compromise or paralyzed by cowardice.
Read the full article here.