Sociologist compares today's crisis to Nazi smear campaign

[Biggie]

“There are cases of sexual abuse that come to light every day against a large number of members of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately it’s not a matter of individual cases, but a collective moral crisis that perhaps the cultural history of humanity has never before known with such a frightening and disconcerting dimension. Numerous priests and religious have confessed. There’s no doubt that the thousands of cases which have come to the attention of the justice system represent only a small fraction of the true total, given that many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy.”

An editorial from a great secular newspaper in 2010? No: It’s a speech of May 28, 1937, by Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. This speech, which had a large international echo, was the apex of a campaign launched by the Nazi regime to discredit the Catholic Church by involving it in a scandal of pedophile priests. …

The expression “moral panic” was only coined by sociologists in the 1970s to identify a social alarm created as a kind of art, accomplished by amplifying real facts and exaggerating their numbers through statistical folklore, as well as “discovering” and presenting as “new” events which in reality are already known and which date to the past. There are real events at the base of the panic, but their number is systematically distorted

ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/sociologist-compares-todays-crisis-nazi-smear-campaign

 

[Joe_5859]

It is interesting to see this in the National Catholic Reporter of all places.

John L. Allen, Jr., does (I think) make a concerted effort to be a true reporter. He is NCR’s one saving grace.

 

[ChadS]

I read this same article and found it to be extremely interesting and thought provoking. Unfortunately most of the comments following the article on the NCR site missed the point of the article.

There seems to have been claims of sexual abuse that were credible that date back to the mid-1930s. The Catholic hierarchy was aware of it and were attempting to get a handle on it and some bishops admitted mistakes.

Here’s where the comparisons are more apt, the Nazis attempted to exploit the situation and blow it out of proportion, as the article mentions. While any abuse is horrible they attempted to make it seem more widespread and pervasive than it actually was. Has anybody seen articles dealing with today’s scandals attempt to put it into a proper perspective? I really haven’t seen much if any of that going on.

I think before anybody dismisses the article as trying to whitewash the problem or drawing poor historical characterizations what the writer is actually trying to say should be looked at.

ChadS

 

[Biggie]

I read this same article and found it to be extremely interesting and thought provoking. Unfortunately most of the comments following the article on the NCR site missed the point of the article.

There seems to have been claims of sexual abuse that were credible that date back to the mid-1930s. The Catholic hierarchy was aware of it and were attempting to get a handle on it and some bishops admitted mistakes.

Here’s where the comparisons are more apt, the Nazis attempted to exploit the situation and blow it out of proportion, as the article mentions. While any abuse is horrible they attempted to make it seem more widespread and pervasive than it actually was. Has anybody seen articles dealing with today’s scandals attempt to put it into a proper perspective? I really haven’t seen much if any of that going on.

I think before anybody dismisses the article as trying to whitewash the problem or drawing poor historical characterizations what the writer is actually trying to say should be looked at.

ChadS

Exactly, Chad. The allure of such accusations for the enemies of the Church is that the moral outrage they produce surpasses all reasonable attempts to place them in perspective.

 

[NewEnglandPriest]

Until someone proposes a “final solution to the Catholic problem” then all comparisons to Nazism are silly.

 

[Biggie]

Until someone proposes a “final solution to the Catholic problem” then all comparisons to Nazism are silly.

Before a problem is recognized to require a final solution, it must first be exacerbated. Herr Hitler’s representative, Herr Goebbels, was presaging Hitler’s plan. Of his plans for the Church, Hitler said,

“My discernment tells me an end must be put to the reign of lies. It likewise tells me the moment is not opportune. To avoid making myself an accomplice to lies, I have kept the shavelings out of the party. It will take place, if really we must go so far. And I shall make up my mind to it as soon as I think it is possible.”

Of course we can’t learn anything from Hitler, can we?

 

[NewEnglandPriest]

Before a problem is recognized to require a final solution, it must first be exacerbated. Herr Hitler’s representative, Herr Goebbels, was presaging Hitler’s plan.

Well, I highly doubt that western govermenst are going to be rounding up Catholics into concentration camps anytime soon. Nor do I see any government attempt in the west whatsoever to banish the Church from any country.

We trivialize evil when we apply the worst case scenario to every situation.

 

[Biggie]

Well, I highly doubt that western govermenst are going to be rounding up Catholics into concentration camps anytime soon. Nor do I see any government attempt in the west whatsoever to banish the Church from any country.

We trivialize evil when we apply the worst case scenario to every situation.

Although that was not the point of the article, nor was it my point, voices in at least one western government are garnering to round up the Pope. Not every reference to evil is a trivialization of it.

 

[ChadS]

Until someone proposes a “final solution to the Catholic problem” then all comparisons to Nazism are silly.

You either didn’t bother to read the article or you’re intentionally misrepresenting it. It wasn’t a comparison to Nazism for the sake of a comparison. The point of the article was to show how the Nazis took a problem within the Church, blew it out of proportion to its actual scale and seeked to discredit and attempt to ruin the Church. The sociologist that wrote the article was making the point that in today’s scandals the problem is being blown out of proportion, taken out of context and that information is being used to discredit the Church.

The biggest difference between now and then, in my opinion, is that the Nazis had the full power of the state behind them and all its various apparatuses. Now, it’s journalists with their own axes to grind being supported by their news organizations – hardly the same in scale, but that doesn’t mean that their intentions can’t be similar.

ChadS

 

[NewEnglandPriest]

Although that was not the point of the article, nor was it my point, voices in at least one western government are garnering to round up the Pope. Not every reference to evil is a trivialization of it.

Voices in one western goverment? Which one? Who? Last I heard, its an atheistic writer and a UN lawyer. Not exactly a fearsome group.

 

[NewEnglandPriest]

You either didn’t bother to read the article or you’re intentionally misrepresenting it. It wasn’t a comparison to Nazism for the sake of a comparison. The point of the article was to show how the Nazis took a problem within the Church, blew it out of proportion to its actual scale and seeked to discredit and attempt to ruin the Church. The sociologist that wrote the article was making the point that in today’s scandals the problem is being blown out of proportion, taken out of context and that information is being used to discredit the Church.

Its a bad analogy. The Nazis had very specific and very evil aims in mind. The NYT is simply a liberal rag. As much as we may dislike the editorial board of the NYT, comparing it to the Nazis is too much.

The biggest difference between now and then, in my opinion, is that the Nazis had the full power of the state behind them and all its various apparatuses. Now, it’s journalists with their own axes to grind being supported by their news organizations – hardly the same in scale, but that doesn’t mean that their intentions can’t be similar.

Comparing a handful of liberal rags and atheistic talking heads to a murderous and genocidal government regime is an extreme analogy.

 

[Darryl1958]

Its a bad analogy. The Nazis had very specific and very evil aims in mind. The NYT is simply a liberal rag. As much as we may dislike the editorial board of the NYT, comparing it to the Nazis is too much.

 

[Biggie]

Voices in one western goverment? Which one? Who? Last I heard, its an atheistic writer and a UN lawyer. Not exactly a fearsome group.

Not a fearsome group indeed, and certainly the type of activity about which for the moment one can afford to be glib. But you have still failed to understand or at least acknowledge the point of the article, not that the current opponents of the Faith are on the order of Nazis.

This type of charge is recurring and constitutes a vulnerability of the Church because it is based on truth and the natural response to such charges is moral outrage the author identifies as moral panic. The charges, for that reason, are met with irrational responses beyond all proportion to the truth and with little regard for the actual facts. Goebbels, also just one atheistic writer astute in public relations, recognized the vulnerability and attempted to exploit it. It is no surprise today that the enemies of the faith would use the same vehicle to the same ends.

Incidentally, I also think it is an error of intellectual sloth to view the Nazi’s as an isolated historical phenomenon. Genocide is not a creature of the Nazi’s but of the human spirit. The Nazi’s merely demonstrate what is possible in the realm of genocide when a small, grassroots movement is able to effectively market itself and use a burgeoning media to marshal an otherwise quiet and sophisticated population to an evil purpose. And should you think the Church will not one day be the subject of such genocide, the efforts of the Roman Empire not withstanding, even the Catechism of the Church disagrees with you.

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.

 

[ChadS]

Comparing a handful of liberal rags and atheistic talking heads to a murderous and genocidal government regime is an extreme analogy.

Obviously it’s not a direct comparison, but the tactics the Nazis employed as propaganda seem similar to the responses newspapers like the NYT and others have employed.

ChadS