“There are cases of sexual abuse that come to light every day against a large number of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately it’s not a matter of individual cases, but a collective moral crisis that perhaps the cultural history of humanity has never before known with such a frightening and disconcerting dimension. Numerous priests and religious have confessed. There’s no doubt that the thousands of cases which have come to the attention of the justice system represent only a small fraction of the true total, given that many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy.”
Now, who said that delightful little piece of propaganda? Sounds a lot like what we hear nowadays, doesn't it? Maybe someone from one of the news resources said it. Maybe it was a cover-story.
Or maybe it was part of a speech given by Joseph Goebbels on May 28 1937.
In case anyone's forgotten, let's recap just briefly some things about Joseph.
Joseph Goebbels was born to a (originally Catholic) family of six in Rheydt. He had a deformed right leg, which led to his being rejected for military service during World War I. Later on, he would "misrepresent" his status as a war veteran and his disability as a war wound. There is little evidence as to any level of piety he may have had when it came to his religion, except that sometime while at the University he abandoned the faith entirely.
Eventually he came to work as the "Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda", and eventually succeeded Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany for a grand total of two days before he and his wife committed suicide (though not before killing their six children via morphine injections and cyanide capsules).
Today, Goebbels is best remembered for perfecting the "Big Lie" propaganda technique, and as one of the main instigators (and enablers) of the Holocaust.
What is not commonly known is that as a direct consequence of the aforementioned speech, 325 Catholic Priests were imprisoned--one from every diocese in Germany. 21 were condemned, though whether they were condemned justly is entirely dubious. Essentially all of them were sent to extermination camps, where many died.
Reread that paragraph. I'm looking at you, common news centers.
Goebbels would be proud.
1. Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich
2. Goebbels and the Pedophile Priests Operation
3. Nazi Propaganda
4. Not-necessarily-reliable biography of Joseph Goebbels
3 comments:
Thanks for posting this.
To be sure, the quote at the beginning can be straight from the New York Times, which I thought a first.
Whenever I have read about Goebbels - in history books, etc. - the murdering of his children always looms in the background of my mind, irrespective of what aspect of his life is being discussed. Just downright evil.
Always a pleasure, beloved blogmistress.
TH2, Goebbels strikes me as being one of the most outstandingly evil men from that time. Even excepting the heinous kind of mentality it takes to propagate such lies and construct mass murders, it still takes a different, unusually grim evil to kill one's own flesh and blood. I am no psychologist, but I would think that it would take a very twisted mind to do such a thing. I would think that in the slaughter of others (people, perhaps, he does not know) he could disassociate from it, detach himself from any sort of remorse by viewing the dead as things, not people, because if they do not seem real to him, then he doesn't feel anything for them--but with his own family? His children, his own flesh and blood? Evil.
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