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Julian_Bashir
Guest
And thus, it is semantics that bother you. The reference is that they are comparable on numerous levels, and since THE Holocaust is the epitome of mass evil and murder for most people, it is a tool to highlight how evil the plague of abortion is.
I don’t think it does a disservice to the people who died in the Holocaust at all. There are either in Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. If Hell, they don’t much care about their names being used for good. If in Heaven or Purgatory, the insight they now have would likely mean they’d hope someone would use their tragedy for good to stop what they can now clearly see is the greatest evil in history, abortion. If it bothers you, that’s fine, but I don’t see any problem with it.
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Julian_Bashir
Guest
We also fought a war in which a byproduct was the ending of that Holocaust.
Today, we pass laws that protect those who wish to continue the murder. I’d say until the evil is recognized for what it is, the comparison is apt, if not even lacking in severity.
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gracepoole
Guest
This is like claiming that abortion is simply death and not murder. To complain about this mischaracterization would just be semantics, eh? There really is a relationship between signified and signifier – one that’s not born out in your use of the word “semantics.”
The Holocaust should not be a tool for any purpose. To make it into one claims that 11 million people died to teach others some sort of lesson, to share some sort of message. A slew of Holocaust scholars have rightly noted the problem with making such claims. If Holocaust survivors (who are also victims) tell me it’s insulting to use a lowercase version of the word, I accept that rather than trying to use their tragedy to my own advantage. If the Church tells me it no longer sees value in using a lowercase version of the word, I accept that.
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gracepoole
Guest
You see abortion is far more evil than the Shoah. Then why the insistence on comparing it *with *the Shoah? It wouldn’t seem a very apt analogy if the Shoah is dwarfed by the evil of abortion.
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Julian_Bashir
Guest
That’s up to you. I see no problem with it myself, and will continue to make the comparison if the opportunity presents (though I honestly don’t that often).
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colmywaykurtz
Guest
I tend to agree. I think the parable of the vineyard owner (Mt 20:1-16) conveys the fallacy of the bean-counter approach that human notions of “measurement” and “commensurability” are saddled with.
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colmywaykurtz
Guest
Eugenics as practiced in the US, however, depends upon appealing to members of targeted groups to make the final, critical decision about abortion themselves.
In communist China, by contrast, many abortions (probably most of the total of 13 million a year) are non-optional, with the state making the final, unappealable decision. As many as 336 million abortions have occurred in China since 1971, and most were probably involuntary. Add to that 196 million sterilizations. ft.com/cms/s/2/6724580a-8d64-11e2-82d2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Nhxzw6d3
China also leads the world in female suicides, with 56% of them occurring in China, which has 19% of the world population. They also have the world’s highest rates of female breast cancer. Most of that is probably attributable to forced abortion.
In view of that, I think in the overall eschatological context, China is digging its own hole deeper and faster than we are ours.
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jeannetherese
Guest
I’m a little confused. It seems possible to think about human beings as unique individuals or groups of individuals who were harmed or killed and also to think of these same human beings and groups of human beings relationally. How does the latter preclude the former? Both scholars and non-scholars compare and contrast people, instances, tragedies…atrocities. Perhaps comparisons can help one to think of both similarities and differences and thus highlight uniqueness as well as commonalty?
May God bless us all. Amen.
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gracepoole
Guest
Imagine someone uses the example of 9/11 to make a claim about the immorality of eating meat. Or she uses the example of abortion to make a claim about those who have been put to death via capital punishment. I guess the first reason that springs to mind when responding to your question is this: those who die via abortion deserve not to be part of another group’s agenda. To really remember the victims of the Holocaust for who they were (mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, toddlers, teenagers, grandparents, those without family, and on and on), their memories shouldn’t be saddled with the memories of victims from other atrocities. Unfortunately, as witnessed here in this thread, the end result of such comparisons is not typically the highlighting of uniqueness as well as commonality – the Holocaust’s victims become little more than a vehicle through which one can express outrage over abortion.
I would point out, too, that if something is truly unique, by definition it cannot be compared. There are certainly many scholars who are argue against the uniqueness of the Holocaust and there are many who argue in favor of it. However, I have yet to locate a successful objection to the claim that at least in this respect, the Holocaust is indeed unique: it was the culmination of centuries of oppression and hatred against the most persecuted group on the planet.
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Michael57
Guest
I don’t recall anything of the sort. Ever. And I followed them quite closely once upon a time.
Not that I do anymore.
Could you please cite an example of this? Just one?
Thanks.
meltzerboy
New member
Before the formation of the Moral Majority party in the late 1970’s, Jerry Falwell was opposed to preachers’ becoming involved in politics, and the Southern Baptist Convention, of which Falwell was a member, had a pro-choice platform on abortion. Baptists aligned themselves with pro-life Catholics on the matter of abortion to gain social conservative votes when they became more politically minded. It was a marriage of convenience. As I stated, I’m not sure about Pat Robertson’s beliefs on the issue of abortion before the late 1970’s.I don’t recall anything of the sort. Ever. And I followed them quite closely once upon a time.
Not that I do anymore.
Could you please cite an example of this? Just one?
Thanks.
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markomalley
Guest
I personally don’t see what relevance the beliefs or practices of protestant televangelists has to do with this issue.
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Michael57
Guest
Well, I think your definition is different from what my understanding of the term “holocaust” is, which is a sacrifice that is consumed by a fire in it’s entirety (not a death by fire), leaving nothing for those making the sacrifice to consume, as many temple sacrifices ended up in the bellies of priests and priestesses in the history of sacrifice to gods.
Even Judaism referred to a holocaust being a burnt offering, and I believe that first the animal was killed by slicing it’s throat with a knife. So, “sacrificial death by fire”? I really don’t think so, at least as far as Judaic practice went, pagans, well, they be pagan, so who knows for sure?
Just a “point of order”, so to speak (er, write)…
Now, use of the term…see the link
The use of the term in the fashion that you assert has only been popular in the USA since the late 70’s early 80’s, and then not accepted by all. Perhaps Shoah is more widely accepted.
I even recall it once being applied to animals being slaughtered during a newscast (Huntley/Brinkley or Cronkite)…I think it was the wild mustangs being killed by ranchers in the 60’s and from the JDL not a peep…but my memory ain’t what it used to be.
As far as using the term with the abortion argument (and why even be concerned about Pat Robertson anyway?), it helps provide some context for those supporting abortion while they absolutely condemn the Shoah by the Nazi State.
It’s a device to show the abortion supporter that if they hate the one, they must also hate the other, or else hypocrisy is the result.
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Michael57
Guest
Yeah, that’s a bit different than Falwell actually having a pro-choice position. I would be curious to see if he ever voted in favor of that within the SBC.
I recall Robertson starting a movement for homes for unwed mothers as an outreach to prevent abortion. And that was in the 70’s.
And thanks for your reply! Gotta go to Mass now!
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gracepoole
Guest
From Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation, by James Young: “Derived from the Greek holokauston, which literally means ‘whole burnt,’ it referred to the Septuagint specifically to sacrifice by fire, assonant with the Hebrew term for sacrificial offering, ola.”**Well, I think your definition is different from what my understanding of the term “holocaust” is, which is a sacrifice that is consumed by a fire in it’s entirety (not a death by fire), leaving nothing for those making the sacrifice to consume, as many temple sacrifices ended up in the bellies of priests and priestesses in the history of sacrifice to gods.
Even Judaism referred to a holocaust being a burnt offering, and I believe that first the animal was killed by slicing it’s throat with a knife. So, “sacrificial death by fire”? I really don’t think so, at least as far as Judaic practice went, pagans, well, they be pagan, so who knows for sure?
Young offers a detailed explanation of the evolution of naming this genocide, including both Holocaust and Shoah but also churban. “Shoah” is preferred in many circles, including (as I noted earlier) by Yad Vashem.
Right you are. There’s also this: imdb.com/title/tt0078935/I even recall it once being applied to animals being slaughtered during a newscast (Huntley/Brinkley or Cronkite)…I think it was the wild mustangs being killed by ranchers in the 60’s and from the JDL not a peep…but my memory ain’t what it used to be.
meltzerboy
New member
Neither do I. Sorry for the digression.
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jeannetherese
Guest
This argument adds to my confusion.
Abortion and capital punishment are often compared. Indeed, our Catechism of the Catholic Church may be used in making such comparisons (and often is in arguments around my dinner table.) To speak of saddling memories with those of other atrocities seems uncharitable- but perhaps I am misreading/misunderstanding this sentence?
Perhaps it would be helpful to explore the linkages made by those who see connections between the atrocities perpetuated by Nazis against Jews, Poles, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Catholics, trade unionists, socialists and communists and the atrocities perpetuated against Downs babies, children who might be born to young impoverished single parents, children with birth defects, children of the “wrong” sex, children who today are seen to be a threat or a burden to the family or upon the state.
To explore these issues does not necessarily demean the aborted children or those deemed undesirable by the Third Reich. It might lead us to question the extent to which we may have adopted, perhaps unknowingly, an ideology that lead us to think of some human beings as expendable in our quest for material gain (a.k.a liebensraum).
We may both consider the sacredness of each individual life lost then, and the sacredness of the lives which are being lost now; each unique, each precious.
May God bless us all. Amen.
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gracepoole
Guest
Remember when the Church of LDS was exposed for having baptized Jewish Holocaust victims? Relatives of those Jewish victims who were baptized as Mormons after death were rightly horrified and I doubt there’s a need to explain why. In similar fashion, no matter how abhorrent one might find abortion, the mothers and children who went to their deaths upon arrival at Treblinka didn’t agree to be used to make a point about another act of evil. In short, I’d argue that we don’t have the right to use these victims as part of our own agendas, no matter how noble the agendas are. It is one thing to speak of abortion as a genocide – in fact, an intriguing and possibly cogent argument could be offered to support such a position. But “Holocaust” was and is related solely to a specific set of genocidal actions taken during WWII. It’s a specific genocide. Why not just call abortion a genocide?
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Tarpeian
Guest
Hello gracepoole,
I am just now getting on the computer, I will try to get you the non-Catholic source shortly.
Pax,
Tarrpeian
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