Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Europe's Original Sin: Being Different

Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz survivor and author, died a few days ago. Most young Americans will know his account of deportation, separation from his family, and liberation in 1944, Night. One night four years ago I had the opportunity to dine with Wiesel and some other students, who, between their verbal eructations of self-import, occasionally allowed the old sage to voice a few words.

The question was raised by one as to whether or not Germany was a ticking time bomb before the Second World War, if years of Catholicism, beer, wet weather, and military history amounted to a countdown to Hitler's death camps. Wiesel countered that "Germany—really Austria—did give us Hitler, but it also gave us Schiller, Goethe, and Beethoven. As much as Hitler took life, they gave it." And how the students were enchanted at such an aphorism! The tiramisu was terrible.

This quick one liner harped on Germany and the rest of Europe's on-going existential crisis. European politicians have effectively asked their constituencies de facto to disavow their own histories and cultures since the end of the Second World War and instead to embrace a spirit of cooperation, putting aside one's differences. Endless platitudes alluding to our "common humanity" fill U.N. documents and modern Christian writings. When did our "common humanity" ever avert a war? There has not been a major direct war since 1945 for fear of mutual nuclear destruction between America and Russia, not because of peace conferences. More poignantly, medieval Europe generally avoided open wars, with some exceptions, because the common religion of those people was both their primary value and their greatest commonality. But common humanity? The common bipedal creatures who convert air into carbon dioxide?

After the 19th century revolutions throughout Europe the State replaced the Church as the focus of Man's devotion. Nationalism, far from polarizing people, was a forced attempt to build consensus where religion failed after 1517 rent the veil of Christendom. Its spectacular failure in the twentieth century (although let us not forget that Communist China and Red Russia killed many times more people than Hitler ever did) did return people to religion. Instead it only reinvigorated the monster that has bothered leaders since the democratic disease replaced culture two centuries ago: people are different. The glue of Christianity is gone and unlikely to return in the near future. However, post-Christian pretensions of unity have not.

Nationalism is not in and of itself harmful. One need not not believe in the immaculate conception of the Declaration of Independence to be patriotic. One can be proud of one's heritage and country without shame, even with its sins. Modern leaders would better spend their time leaving people alone rather than inadvertently starting world wars by forcing them to be alike. If they really want to build consensus they should start making pray together to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost rather than by feigned councils that lead men to military posts.

Happy octave day.

5 comments:

  1. Patriotism and nationalism are not the same thing.
    Patriotism is being willing and eventually capable of answering a call for arms to defend the country when the [king] (or any accepted leader) calls for it.
    Nationalism is a spiritual dimension, related to the Bible and Jesus Christ, about the revelation of nations (what is the spirit of the nation, language, culture, relationship with God) happening only after the Crucifixion of Jesus and His Resurrection.
    In the 19th century, the time of romantic definition of nations and also, with the Modern times, not necessarily linking it to God but rather to their Pagan roots alone (from which Hitler also took some stuff for his own use, or not him necessarily, the occult who used him, he didn't sound smart enough to be the Antichrist imho). Freemasonry continuously used and grew these ideas, trying to pull them under their league - see how Garibaldi managed to convince the Italians that Roman-Catholicism is what's keeping their national ideals down. Knowing (from inside or outside, it's true that Orthodoxy had at least one known freemason Patriarch - Metaxis) that the idea of nation linked to Christ is attacked, ethno-phyletism (the preexistence of nation before anything else, namely at that time Christ) was rejected as heresy in 1872. Nationalism is accepted but only in the above mentioned terms - the revelation of nations (non-Jewish people who did not know how to worship God) through Christ in Christianity. This idea is sustained by the Bible, explained also in Romans 11 25-35, by St. Peter that the sacrifice of Christ was necessary, Jewish will not be judged for this matter and other ideas that many ethno-plytetists today, also Christians, still consider as true. Nazism used ethno-phyletism but later on revealed its international face based on the theory of race (which still exists, except they discovered eugenia won't work creolisation is better, same approach), Darwin's and other scientific theories aimed to ^improve the human race^.
    Nazism and communism are hard to be set apart not because of the socialist theory they present but from their roots (science and independence from God) and fruits (atheism and the need of an insane regimentation of all human being on the planet for ^their better good^).

    I never read his stuff, I know of the existence of the Holocaust from private sources and also from my intuition. If anyone doubts its existence simply because Elie Wiesel wasn't convincing enough they're being deluded. By the devil, yeah. They should research some bit to find out he wasn't the only one who talked about it, just probably the most famous. He tried to fix things, people who keep being mesmerized by Hitler's book and going into the field of death themselves because they are blind.
    I'm sorry he died, but he did live his life after all.
    May he be forgiven.

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  2. @Maria Anna:

    "I never read his stuff, I know of the existence of the Holocaust from private sources and also from my intuition. If anyone doubts its existence simply because Elie Wiesel wasn't convincing enough they're being deluded. By the devil, yeah."

    I know the Devil is the father of all lies, evil, and ugliness, but it worries me when Catholics or other Christians say things like this about that event.

    The powers that be (who are obviously anti-Christian) already treat that event like a religious dogma without people in the Church treating it as though it were a de fide teaching of the Church.

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    1. I understand what you mean. Yes, it is not dogma within the Church nor the Bible. It's a personal sensibility of mine I can't control.
      I know shuddering and feeling is not proof of Faith necessarily and the Church always tries to bring in reason and thinking. James chapter 2 ...
      I cannot explain my deep emotion regarding that event.
      Like now, when I write it here.
      But I know you're right - history is history, the Church teaches that is linear and has a purpose (not circular and relative like many people consider today) and a finality (to be established by God in the end).

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  3. Of all the modern conceits the putative holocaust is the most irksome to ABS.

    It is a crying shame the One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church cooperated with the Messias-Deniers in supplanting The Holocaust with the war crimes they- and they alone- suffered during WW2.

    Ask any Catholic you know - What is the Holocaust? - and 99.99999% will answer in a way pleasing to the racial supremacists who are Messias-Deniers and the remaining men who answer correctly - The Pluperfect Salvific Sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary and the Mass - are considered atavistic haters.

    However, the Mass IS a Holocaust.

    O, and ABS had a little fun with the idea the war crimes were a holocaust for that idea has consequences that few stop to consider, certainly not the Messias-Deniers.

    http://thenesciencentnepenthene.blogspot.com/2016/05/holocaust-18-last-in-series-absurdity.html

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  4. "medieval Europe generally avoided open wars, with some exceptions, because the common religion of those people was both their primary value and their greatest commonality."

    If one reads books on history one sees that there were almost incessant wars during the Middle Ages in Europe (100-year war, etc.). Such perception is supported by the fact that the ruling class was professional warriors and that a prominent feature of medieval architecture, as we see it preserved to our days, is military structures (city walls, castle keeps, etc.), and all that - in the interior of the Christendom where attacks by Saracens and other barbarians were unlikely. The invention of measures like 'treuga Dei' or 'pax Dei' shows that there was a need for it. Yes, there was a common religion, but it has not held back its faithful, children of the first Eve as they were, from coveting land, natural resources, and other goods of each other and killing each other because of that. Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum...

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