"Nazi war criminal's funeral thwarted by protesters in Italy"

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Brendan said:
An untruth is not necessarily a lie. It would depend on an intent to deceive. If the person honestly believed that the Holocaust did not happen, then there was no lie.

If the person believed that the Holocaust DID happen, but was intending to deceive others into believing that it did not, that would be sinful.

I do not see how any of us can make a judgment as to which category this person fell into.
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Such judgments are made every day. Jurors, for example, often are called upon to decide whether an accused person could honestly have believed something that is patently untrue, but where an honest belief might reduce or eliminate guilt.

Only the Lord knows for certain what Priebke believed to be true and what was culpable self-deception or just outright lying. He has the final word. But it’s sometimes necessary for the rest of us to decide whether someone is lying. And I’m not inclined to give the benefit of a doubt to a former Nazi captain and mass murderer who had full access to the historical record before his death – to a man who in the opinion of Bishop Semeraro, the secretary the Council of Cardinals, demonstrated a “lack of conversion [that] was public and notorious.”

Besides it has been reported that the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel has a document indicating that Priebke signed off on the transport of Italian Jews to death camps operated by Adolf Eichmann.
 
saveusfromhell said:
again I don’t know if they did or not i’ll let God decide but i hope and pray that he and many like him did repent.
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A decision to excommunicate (for example) or to deny a catholic funeral to someone who publicly and obstinately refuses to acknowledge the sinfulness of his objectively horrific actions is NOT a judgment about his eternal destiny. The church declares no man to be in hell. It is, however, an important step in demonstrating what the church stands for and what she will not tolerate for behavior for those who claim to be in communion.

In short, I still say it was a good call to deny in this case.
 
larsont7 said:
They’re not lies if you believe them to be true. If I say that we never landed on the moon, and I believe that to be true, that doesn’t make me a liar. Sure, I may be going against the evidence presented or even common sense, but I wouldn’t be committing the sin of lying.

I don’t know enough about this man’s life or what he did and did not do, but according to all reports, he repented of his sins, was a faithful Catholic during his last years, and was given the Sacrament of Extreme Unction before dying. To me it sounds like he should have been allowed a Catholic burial. It also sounds like it was never meant to be a public burial, but rather a private one, but when the media got wind of it, all that flew out the door.
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Can you cite some of the reports that are all over. Why would he bother with a last statement refuting a repentence?
 
manualman said:
A decision to excommunicate (for example) or to deny a catholic funeral to someone who publicly and obstinately refuses to acknowledge the sinfulness of his objectively horrific actions is NOT a judgment about his eternal destiny. The church declares no man to be in hell. It is, however, an important step in demonstrating what the church stands for and what she will not tolerate for behavior for those who claim to be in communion.

In short, I still say it was a good call to deny in this case.
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I agree with your last statement and your reasoning. I wish you would have applied this reasoning to your comment earlier of Ted Kennedy.
 
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