Archbishop Dadeus Grings
Catholic clerics have not learned that one must be ultra-cautious in making any statement about the Holocaust. Jews are understandably sensitive about anything that tends to minimize their unimaginable suffering.
Archbishop Dadeus Grings of Porto Alegre in Brazil has not learned this lesson.
According to reports here, here, here, and here he has said
The Jews talk about six million people killed. But how many Catholics were victims of the Holocaust? They were 22 million in all.
There were not 22 million killed in the Nazi camps; there were 22 million, probably many more, civilian victims of the war, and I suspect the biggest group of civilian victims was among the Slavic Orthodox. Among Catholics, Poles suffered terribly, and then probably Germans, but Catholics were not the biggest civilian group of victims, either in numbers or proportion.
Grings added
Jews say they were the main victims of the Holocaust, the biggest victims were the gypsies, because they were exterminated.
The gypsies (Roma) were also a target of the Nazis, and it is possible that a greater proportion of gypsies than of Jews was killed by the Nazis– I have not seen any analysis. But the gypsies were not exterminated; there are numerous gypsies (who seem to be mostly Catholic – of a sort) in Europe.
But Grings really inserted and pushed his foot firmly into his mouth when he added
Os judeus têm a propaganda do mundo
The Jews control the world press.
Grings has been at it before. In 2003 he said “one million” Jews were killed by the Nazis:
Sem entrar na questão de número das vítimas, que tem muito de ideológica, é preciso reconhecer, como historicamente comprovado, que o nazismo provocou em torno de 22 milhões de mortes, sendo que os judeus participam desta cifra com cerca de 1 milhão. Portanto a grande vítima do nazismo não foram os judeus, mas os cristãos.
Grings is repeating in 2009 what he said in 2003: Christians, not Jews, were the primary victims of the Holocaust. This is simply not true, and Grings, like Williamson, is providing respectability to anti-Semites. A comment on one Catholic blog was:
It takes courage to speak the truth and this Archbishop has added his name to those like Bishop Williamson who seek the truth and fight against the evils of this world. I have much respect for all of them.
Leon, remember what Pope Paul VI said years ago: “The smoke of Satan has entered the sanctuary.”
Among the effects of that “smoke” is a pervasive anti-Semitism that permeates some Catholic quarters (such as the Buchananites and some members of the Vatican bureaucracy).
Look, for example, at the Vatican’s general refusal or unwillingness to defend Israel the way it defends the unborn (after all, if innocent life is *the* issue, then why not defend people who remain a target of extermination, as anybody familiar with the Iranian theocracy knows?).
Look at the comments and activities of such people as Martino and Etchegaray, and some of the editorials in L’Osservatore Romano.
Despite JPII’s tremendous efforts at reconciliation with Jews, his recognition of the Israeli state and the Vatican II encyclical, Nostra Aetate, anti-Semitism is still a problem among Church leadership.
Moreover, remember that this bishop is from Brazil, the same country led by a president who claimed that “white people with blue eyes” were responsible for the international financial crisis.
Also, consider this: Grings is a Germanic name. How do we know that his forebarers were not Nazi sympathizers, if not actively involved w/the party?
In any event, it’s beyond ironic that a Pope who was conscripted by the Hitler Youth late in WWII — and who knows firsthand how evil the Nazis were — should be subjected to this drivel from two bishops.
The fact that Grings was not disciplined by the prevous Pope for his remarks — a Pope who knew firsthand the horrors of the Holocaust — gives me no cause for optimism, certainly when it comes to the papacy’s ability to hold the bishops that it appoints accountable.
Then again, that’s the way it is with isolated, bureaucratic, self-benighted hierarchies. Just look at the Soviet Union.
Thanks for a good read. Years ago I went in Manhattan to a conservative Catholic group’s meeting in a swanky venue which included an anti abortion Catholic congressman (amazing in itself)…but all of a sudden from the microphone an anti Jewish joke was told by someone and virtually the whole place chuckled. What is it about us that engenders part of us to do this?
I did not go back nor contact the family who invited me and who also laughed. Did I confront them? No. I was a confronter par excellance but my whole system was thrown for a loop in that I never expected to hear such things there.
I was stunned and have never forgotten that moment while I have forgotten much from that period.
Why do conservative Catholics tend towards an anti-Semitism of sorts? I would say it is simply because we have our eyes open and have a justifiable anger towards a people who have ever been the implacable enemies of Christ and His Church.