Pope and Church must face up to historical facts

“The open words of the Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany on the role of Christians in the Nazi regime deserve clear recognition”, said Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany, yesterday in response to statements published last Saturday by Nikolaus Schneider. In an interview with the daily newspaper “Berliner Morgenpost”, EKD Council Chairman Schneider had recalled the large number of people, including those with a Christian background, who were among the perpetrators of the regime under Adolf Hitler. In doing so, he rejected the dictum of the Roman Catholic Church, according to whose official interpretation the countless victims of Hitler’s fascism were a consequence of godlessness. Nikolaus Schneider also explained that addressing Martin Luther’s hatred of Jews, the rural population of his time and other groups as part of the upcoming Reformation anniversary in 2017 was a matter of integrity. “With his honest and unapologetic words, Nikolaus Schneider continues to play an important part in coming to terms with the past, which we welcome,” said Frieder Otto Wolf. “For too long after the end of the Second World War, forms of philosophical and theological reflection could be observed in society in which the appalling number of victims and the inhuman acts during the Nazi tyranny were reinterpreted as a direct consequence of atheistic attitudes or a hubris of human reason. Until recently, numerous theologians and politicians have used these interpretations to spread fear and anxiety about the concerns and ideas of secular and non-religious people.” However, in Wolf’s opinion, “the rejection of this falsifying interpretation of history must not serve as a pretext for denying the role of certain elements, including more recent non-religious traditions, in the legitimization of Nazi crimes or their cultural prehistory. These “ranged from elitist ‘Übermensch’ fantasies to social Darwinist selection and even ‘euthanasia’ concepts to the legitimization of a cynical worship of the state and power, which was particularly widespread among German intellectuals”. The history of non-denominational cultural organizations would provide enough points of reference for a clear critical stance towards these perversions of a secular worldview. Even today, non-religious people and their ideas still encounter prejudices in public opinion all over the world that can be traced back to distorted interpretations of the ‘Night of the 20th Century’, Wolf noted. “We should therefore pay particular tribute to the words of EKD Council Chairman Nikolaus Schneider.” Finally, Frieder Otto Wolf argued that the Catholic Church should also face up to its role. “We must not and should not tolerate a small section of German Christianity taking on responsibility, while official Catholicism, and in particular Joseph Ratzinger, who comes from Germany, tries to evade this by all means. Non-denominational and denominationally bound people could therefore work together more closely on this point in future in order to finally bring about a change: The Pope and the Church itself should have to face up to historical facts.”