Sociologist compares today's crisis to Nazi smear campaign

[didymus]

NCR:

Sociologist compares today’s crisis to Nazi smear campaign

Perhaps the most remarkable defense of Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the sexual abuse crisis to appear in recent weeks ironically never mentions the current pope, and it comes not from a senior Vatican official but a lay Italian sociologist of religion. In a nutshell, the suggestion – never made explicit, but clear nonetheless – is that today’s drumbeat of criticism of the church over “pedophile priests” amounts to a replay of a Nazi smear campaign.

Massimo Introvigne, who directs the international Center for Studies on New Religions, published an essay in the April 16 edition of L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops, about a Nazi campaign in 1937 led by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to discredit the Catholic Church following Pope Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Introvigne argues that Goebbels created what sociologists would later call a “moral panic,” based on real facts, but facts which are distorted and amplified.

In the end, Introvigne says, the plan backfired – Goebbels’ attempt to smear the church generated more outrage than actual cases of sexual abuse in 1930s-era German Catholicism, which were reported in the German media and tried in German courts.
The following is an NCR translation of Introvigne’s essay, the original of which may be found here:

It’s too long to post here but read Introvigne’s article, very interesting. I’ve heard people pooh-pooh Mit Brennender Sorge & question how anti-Nazi Pius XI was but the Nazis obviously took it seriously.

 

[Worthy5]

=didymus;6536974]NCR:

It’s too long to post here but read Introvigne’s article, very interesting. I’ve heard people pooh-pooh Mit Brennender Sorge & question how anti-Nazi Pius XI was but the Nazis obviously took it seriously.

 

[markomalley]

Shocking to see that such an article would appear in the National Catholic Reporter, of all places!

 

[didymus]

Shocking to see that such an article would appear in the National Catholic Reporter, of all places!

Check the byline: John Allen. He’s a good reporter, fair, appears to have good sources in Rome.

I subscribe to him by RSS & lately his posts come with links to Sr. Chittister & the rest of the gang so I assume I’m not the only one who likes him & ignores the rest.

 

[JohnSanzone5]

I saw this on NCR, and was just about to post it before I saw your post.

This is truly great stuff, and vindicates my analysis of recent events.

 

[Darryl1958]

Propagandists are able to use facts to serve their own ends. It is a good reminder that we need to keep perspective, and not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

But for the Catholic Church, having sex with children and teen-aged boys would not even be a scandal in the first place. It is Catholic teaching that made it so. What was considered to be good and respectable behavior in Greece and Rome and the ancient world only became revealed as sin directly because of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

And without Catholic teaching remaining prominent, most certainly there are few other bastions left in our societies capable of continuing with the message that sexual licentiousness is gravely immoral and corrupting.

The difference between truth and propaganda is not the presence of absence of facts. The same facts are being presented by both.

The difference between truth and propaganda is perspective, or lack thereof.