Playing the Indian Card

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Righteous Among the Nations



St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Wikipedia features a page listing those "righteous gentiles" recognized for helping Jews persecuted during the Nazi years. One subcategory is for "Religious figures." Here it is, in total:
  • Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos,[49] who, when ordered by the Axis occupying forces to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's. Consequently all 275 Zante Jews were saved.
  • Archbishop Damaskinos - Archbishop of Athens during the German occupation. He formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis. Thousands of Greek Jews in and around Athens were thus able to claim that they were Christian and were thus saved.
  • Archbishop Johannes de Jong, later Cardinal, of Utrecht, Netherlands, who drew up together with Titus Brandsma O.Carm. († Dachau, 1942) a letter in which he called for all Catholics to assist persecuted Jews, and in which he openly condemned the Nazi German "deportation of our Jewish fellow citizens" (From: Herderlijk Schrijven, read from all pulpits on Sunday 26 January 1942).
  • Alfred Delp S.J., a Jesuit priest who helped Jews escape to Switzerland while rector of St. Georg Church in suburban Munich; also involved with the Kreisau Circle. Executed February 2, 1945 in Berlin.
  • Rufino Niccacci, a Franciscan friar and priest who sheltered Jewish refugees in Assisi, Italy, from September 1943 through June 1944.
Archbishop Damaskenos of Athens.

Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty.
Now, isn't it troubling that there is only one member of the Protestant clergy on that list? It is just possible that the author of the Wikipedia post is deliberately suppressing actions of the Protestant clergy, of course. But this may say something about the Protestant clergy, too.

The world is too much with them. They tend to go along with whatever the popular or politically advantageous line is at the time, as opposed to standing firm for the eternal verities.

As they have generally done, in recent years, on subjects like abortion, or the ordination of women.

This may be because, unlike the Catholic or Orthodox clergy, they are entirely dependent on local popular approval for their livelihoods.

An argument against democracy in religion.

No comments: