Early Letters: Christian Martyrs, Holy Shroud,
Abortion and RU486, persecution
of atheists in Germany, and happy end.
Although some Letters-to-the-Editor were
written almost ten years ago, their themes are still topical, and
we have to fear that that will not change soon.
Oct. 22nd 1988 , the JAPAN TIMES published an article by Archbishop W. A. Carew on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the inauguration of Pope John Paul II, in which the Archbishop glorified the Christian martyrs and asserted that "During the first centuries of the Christian area tens of thousands bore witness to their faith even unto the shedding of their blood, to the very death", talked of "exemplary heroism" and meant "They are ideals to emulate, leaders to follow..." The far bigger number of victims of Christianity, he did not mention.
The following reasons made me write a letter to the editor:
1.) I knew through historic studies that the figure of Christian martyrs was from being that high.
2.) The victims of Christianity are haunting me. I feel myself in the tradition of the Enlightenment and cannot forget under how many sacrifices our freedom from medieval terror was achieved. Not one position did the church leave voluntary.
3.) Such fanaticism as the martyrs showed us should never be admired but regretted.
My letter to the Japan Times (published Oct. 31st. 1988):
Of martyrs, real and not
Archbishop W. A. Carew's assertion that tens of thousand of Christians became blood witnesses during the first centuries of the Christian era is a legend and far from the truth, although it is still repeated in popular church histories. Even Catholics know better.
If interest exists, I will provide a list of Catholic authors and an even longer list of non-Catholic theologians and historians, who studied this matter more seriously. A respected Christian like Origenes called the number of martyrs small and easy to count. Of course, he didn't know yet of all the fake documents which created masses of martyrs.
Some want to make believe that all popes up to Constantine were martyrs. The reality is that far into the 2nd century the Roman nobility wasn't interested in that obscure sect. Fabian was the first Roman bishop who became a victim of persecution. On January 20, 250 he died a natural death in prison.
Romans, unlike Christians, were very open-minded and tolerant of other religions and Christians were never persecuted because they were Christians, but because they refused to give offerings to the emperor, a kind of pledge of alliance in those times. Many did give offerings, like the Roman bishop Marcellinus.
Others got along with bribes or were ignored, some insulted the emperor and attacked officials, but were still sent home. But there were martyrs, not many of them bishops, though in time they heard a voice - at least that is what they said - telling them to flee.
Those martyrs were beheaded, incarcerated or deported, but never tortured, burned or put in boiling water or oil as legends tell us. Such heinous deeds, though, were committed by Christians up to the 20th century.
Such fanaticism as the martyrs showed us should never be admired but regretted. Their blood doesn't prove any Christian truth. Which truth could their blood possibly prove? The truth of the Catholics, the Marcionists, the Montanists, the Novotians? They all had martyrs. And they all killed each other and created more martyrs.
The suffering of Christian martyrs in ancient Rome becomes diminutive when we compare it with the suffering the Christians caused from the 4th century onward: The Catholic Duke Alba alone had 20,000 Protestants executed, hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed during the Middle Ages, religious mania resulted in the death of about 9 million witches, during World War II Catholics in Croatia killed about 200,000 Orthodox Serbs.
And the victims of Catholic conquistadors in the New World are estimated to be more than 50 million. And since it is the great day of Pope John Paul II, I will cite him now. During his visit to South America, where the church committed one of its worst slaughters, he proclaimed: "There is nothing more glorious in the whole missionary history" and he called the church "an expert on humaneness."
HOLGER HERMANN HAUPT
Tokyo
This letter provoked a Christian believer, Mr. Dyer, to write an offensive letter (published Nov. 12) asking where I studied history etc. His letter ended with the request, I should organize an archaeological research team to the catacombs under the city of Rome. And I would find bones of possibly 176,000 martyred Christians. A look into any travel guide about Rome would reveal this nonsense. But anyway the JAPAN TIMES published it.
A Christian acquaintance told me gleefully: "Now, you are in trouble." My answer was: "Not, if they publish my reply." But they did not publish my reply. I even offered to pay the advertisement rate for
publishing it, but received only the note
"We do not publish your letter".
To the Editor:
Mr. Dyer asked me where did I study history. Surely not in public schools! The Christians wrongly accused Nero of arson who was at the time of the conflagration in Antium. Sueton and Tacitus who were both hostile to Nero rated the trial as just and counted the execution of the arsonists to his good and reasonable measures (Suet. Nero 16. Tacit. annal. 15, 44). Both thought the Christians were guilty. When I look at history and see what horrible deeds Christians committed throughout it, I believe them. They also tell us that Nero donated huge amounts of money to rebuild a nicer and more comfortable city, that he was generous, gave to the poor and was very popular among his people.
For arsonists the Roman law provided the cruelest types of summum supplicium, supreme torture, namely wild beasts, the cross and burning. And according to the law they were executed.
Nero's proceed was limited to Rome. Documents claiming that there were persecutions all over Italy are fake (proofed by Catholic theologian A. Ehrhard, Die Kirche der Märtyrer, p. 21. Many of the books mentioned in his letters are surely also available in other languages). "...an arsonist trial, Christianity was not the issue." (Catholic Theologian Carl Schneider, Geistesgeschichte II. p.293)
That St. Peter was in Rome is convincingly questioned by C. Guignebert, La primaut de Pierre et la venue de Pierre Rome, Karlheinz Deschner, Abermals krähte der Hahn, Haller, Das Papsttum, Dannenbauer, Die römische Petruslegende, Heussi, War Petrus wirklich in Rom? Petrus, wirklich römischer Märtyrer? Neues zur Petrus Frage, A. Bauer, Die Legende von dem Martyrium des Petrus u. Paulus in Rom, Robinson, Where and when did Peter die? W. M. Smaltz, Did Peter die in Jerusalem? . Hyde, Exkursus III. Was St Peter in Rome? etc.
Still Catholic church historian A. Schuchert asserts (just as Mr. Dyer does) in his Church history, that St. Peter's stay in Rome is accepted by all researchers, also by all non-Catholic scholars.
As I wrote already in an unpublished letter and an unpublished part of my letter from Oct 31th, a whole skeleton with skull of St. Peter identified because of some scribbling in 1953 beneath the St-Peter-Basilica, and an other head of St. Peter in the Basilica of St. John Lateran do not prove anything.
Under Domitian some people were convicted of irreligion but only in Rome and it is not sure whether they were really Christians (Suet. Domit. 15. Dio Cassius 67, 14. Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiastica 3, 18, 4.). It seems that under Decius in Rome only the priest Moyses became a martyr. There were none in the rest of Italy but one each in the provinces Palestine, Syria and Pamphylia. Two of them died a natural death in prison and according to Catholic historian Ehrhard's history of martyrs is the account of the third martyr not purely legendary. The same history book tells us that the following martyr records about the Decius' persecution Acta Codrati, Acta Terentii, Acta Pionii are fake and created much later. They are full of hatred against the Emperor but genuine source material describes him as an able and humane sovereign.
Under Diocletian Christians started to forget their mission of love towards enemies and propagated the use of force and tyrannicide. As Catholic theologian B. Schöpf (Das Tötungsrecht bei den frühchristlichen Schriftstellern bis zur Zeit Konstantins) puts it: "The time where they suffered passively had an end".
The martyrs Antoninus, Germanus and Cebinas hindered the governor to give offerings to the emperor. Apphianus and Aedesius insulted a judge and beat him.
Christians were only executed after a trial, there were no mass executions except for the arsonists under Nero. Judges were admonished to ignore anonymous denunciations and libel. "That would not be appropriate for our era." (Trajan) How contrasting to the Christian Inquisition, who accepted all this, and even tortured people or their children to get a confession.
Ehrhard tells us, that of 250 Greek martyrdoms which should have happened in a span of 250 years only 20 are historic. According to him the following martyrs are fake: pope Victor, Cornelius, Stephan I. Cyprian however was a real martyr. When he went to his execution, he was accompanied by his whole parish. They all wanted to die with him, but were ignored.
Catholic Theologian Lucius whose work was never questioned, at most ignored found out that in the 5th century the number of martyrs had already increase to the eightfold. He mentions many fake records. Most of this invented martyrs were worshipped, as the following Catholic scholars admit: Lucius, Surkan, Morawitzky.
Of course I knew that Origen's father was killed. That makes one martyr. But not the Catholics can claim Origen because they pronounced an anathema upon him. Although on my last Rome visit I went to see the catacombs, I did not count the corpses, but I bought one of this kitsch books the Catholic church had for sale there (Emeralda Crucitti, Ph. D. at Rome University, The Persecutions). Even she does not claim that all were martyrs. In her conclusion she states correctly: "The Catacombs were simply burial places, recognized and respected as such by the Roman authorities." Her conclusion ends however: "The persecutions served to form the proto-type of the 'Christian Saint': "a person free of both fanaticism and fatalism." I could not disagree more.
Holger Hermann Haupt
Here are some more letters the JAPAN TIMES did not publish. The
first letter was written Sept. 19th, when the first information
about the fake shroud appeared in public and the church was
upset. Now they say: "The church believes in the image and
not in the history because this image of Jesus Christ in fact is
very interesting and the people believe deeply in Jesus".
(JT Oct. 14) What ever that means. The shroud is back in place
and can be worshipped.
To the Editor:
It is understandable that the Catholic church would have preferred to keep the forgery of such a famous relic as the Holy Shroud as secret as possible, since it casts reflections upon them. Once they even tried to keep the whole Bible a secret; laymen were not permitted to own it (Decision of the Synod of Toulouse 1229), and not permitted to read it (Decision under Pope Julius III, 1550 - 1555), and until 1897 (!) Catholics had to ask the Roman Inquisition for a permission to read the Bible. In clericofascist Spain under Franco the Bible was also forbidden. The police was searching private homes for it and travellers had their Bible confiscated at the border. The reason is obvious: The whole teaching of the Bible contrasts very much with words and deeds of the church.
Of course the Bible is not God's word (another lie of the church, see Luke's first chapter), in fact more a collection of, at its time of writing, current pagan beliefs and popular wonders.*
Believers should also ask themselves, how can God who created the whole universe some 10 billion years ago feel the necessity to correct or beautify his Jesus picture within a couple of years: The oldest evangelist described a human being, which was not very useful for the church, Matthew and Luke a demigod and John a real god only incarnated. And the way the wonders increase from time to time is a wonder in itself. Also compare the genealogies, Matth. 1. 6. and Luke 3. 24.! They have only two names in common. Would God be so confuse?
But I want to remind the Catholics that there are more than 40 other holy shrouds spread all over the world in Catholic churches. The one in Turin was only considered the most genuine. But critics have always said, that it is from the 14th century, because it was not mentioned earlier.
People who thought that Jesus was a poor itinerant preacher will be surprised to hear that he left the Catholic church 20 holy robes. The one in Trier is the most famous.
Because the Catholic parson Johannes Rouge called worshipping this relic an idiolatry, he was excommunicated in 1844. In 1843, one year earlier, the Holy Robe in Argenteuil near Paris became recognized by Gregor XVI as the genuine one (among others).
Beside chopped-off body parts of so-called martyrs, there are a lot of relics from the time of Jesus and even earlier. In the 4th century one found the Holy Cross with nails. Immediately Rome started to send splinters all over the world, without decreasing the original cross. As one Vatican employee once said irreverently: There are enough splinters to build the Italian Navy. Much later the church also got some of the blood Jesus shed on the cross and his foreskin. According to former Dominican A. V. Müller there are now 13 places with `genuine' foreskins.** Beside that, it is said that there are several hundreds of unofficial foreskins.
In Verona they have the relics of the Palm Donkey, but whose dropping belong to the relics of the monastery Gräfrath near Cologne. Already in the year 333 Christians found the column where Jesus got whipped, the stone where Judah betrayed the Lord, the palm-tree whose branches were plucked when Jesus entered Jerusalem, also the spear, sponge and reed, as well as the crown of thorns; they even found Jesus' footsteps. Pope Gregor I (590-604) sent kings crucifixes with hair from John the Baptist. Fortunately he left two heads behind for the church. Also St. Peter must have had two heads. In 1953, because of some scribbling the skeleton of Peter was identified beneath the Saint-Peter-Basilica, at the same time the faithful could worship the skull of St. Peter in the Basilica of St. John Lateran. How many heads did he have?
There are a lot of bizarre relics. 1542 the Bishop of Mainz showed two feathers of the Third Person of God and an egg of him. In Gamming in Lower Austria, there were among others the following objects worshipped: Part of the stone, above which Jesus was born, part of the crib and his nappies (Brit: diapers). Crumbs left over from when Jesus fed 5000 people (Mk. 6,44) or were it 5000 men plus women and children, hence probably around 10 000 (Mt. 14,21)? Remains of the table of the Lord's Last Supper, of Aaron's rod and of the banner of Saint George with blood from the dragon, some teeth of Saints, the brain-pan of Saint Christophorus, hairs of Mary Magdalene etc.
The palace-chapel of Wittenberg had 5005 relics. Example: Straw, on which Jesus was born, remains from the stone, where Jesus cried about Jerusalem, remains of Manna, of the bread from the Last Supper, parts of the bush, Moses saw burning, eight thorns of the Jesus' crown, of the Virgin Mary: her milk, cloth and shoes. And the church even started to produce relics factory-made, by bringing cloth into contact with `original' relics, which proofed to be a good business. Pope Gregor I explained, that in those rags a similar process was taking place as in the Eucharistic elements. He was surely right!
In the Louvre there is an arm-chair, not really a relic but maybe older than most of the relics. This arm-chair has a horse-shoe-shaped seat and the new pope had to sit there, while the cardinals defiled and convinced themselves, before they exclaimed: "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes." in English: "He has testicles and they are hanging down well." Too many fanatics had castrated themselves, but the church must have remembered that Jesus didn't teach: "Cut off your balls!"
The man in the Shroud of Turin surely suffered the same wounds as Jesus according to the evangelists, he probably took Matth. 16,24 (let him … take up his cross and follow ME) too literally. At the time when the church ruled everything even people's sex life, masochism was common as was torture. Christian theologian Damiani taught when a discipline of 50 lashes is good one of 60, 100, 200, 1000 or 2000 is better. He also enjoyed telling people about a monk who tamed his penis with red-hot iron. Domingo de Guzman, Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, whipped himself often till unconsciousness. An other Dominican, Heinrich Sense († 1366), flagellated himself daily and carried for eight years day and night a cross with 30 nails and twice a day he would hammer with his fist on the cross so the nails would pierce into his flesh.
Mary Magdalena dei Pazzi, a Carmeliter from Florence, wallowed in thorns, asked people to drop hot wax on her skin and had people kicking and whipping her face, which she enjoyed most. She was canonized, which means, she is a Saint. The Salesian Marguerite Marie Alacoque (1647-1690) cut a Jesus monogram into her breast and when it started to heal she opened it up with a burning candle. She enjoyed eating dirt, once she cleaned up the expectoration of a patient; in her autobiography she describes the bliss she felt when she filled her mouth with the faeces of a man who suffered diarrhea. Jesus permitted her at night to kiss his heart. And because of the revelation of this nun the Catholic church has a Heart-Jesus-order, a Heart-Jesus-devotion and a Heart-Jesus-feast.
Another dirt-gormandizer Katherina of Genoa (1447-1510) was 1737 (!) canonized. Saint Angela of Foligno (1248-1309) felt, while drinking the wash-water of lepers and eating their scabs, she had just received the Sacrament. She also thanked God, that her mother, husband and her children died, because
they were obstacles for her way to God.
But fake relics and masochism shouldn't concern us too much. After all among today's masochists and sadist are probably even atheists. We are tolerant and unlike the church we respect personal happiness.
It gets serious when we see that the church is still in a powerful position gained because of lies and forgery, which started with the account of Jesus, and continued with the Donatio Constantini and the pseudoisidoric Decretales. Some historians say the medieval clergy produced more fake than real documents.
Recently (1973) the Vatican ordered securities for almost one billion dollars from New York's Mafia. And they are also rich because they committed robbery, in the 4th century confiscating the property of pagan temples, from the 6th century onward robbing the pagan in general, taking the property of killed and banished Jews, of burned heretics, sorcerers and witches. But they also robbed their own people through taxes, tenure, tribute, tithe and double tithe, high charges, black mail, selling of indulgences, miracle and relic fraud. Unfortunately the church or better churches or Christians never remember that Jesus did not teach: "Lie, rob, torture, kill, make war, commit genocides!" Popes, bishops and priests incited people with God in the course of history against pagans, Jews, Langobardes, Saxons, Saracens, Hungarians, Britons, Poles against the Albingenses, the Waldenses, the Templars, the Geuses, the Hussites, the Hugenottes, the peasants and of course against the Haitians, Mexicans, Inkas and the natives of America and other continents, with God against the Protestants and of course with God against the Catholics, with God against Abyssinia in 1935, against the Spanish Republic and especially gruel with God and the Catholic Ustasha in Croatia (1941-45) against the Orthodox Serbs, and with God against each other as during World War I and World War II, the pope favored the fascists. And surely we will also enter the Third World War with God.
Pius XII (1939-58) permitted repeatedly an atomic war against the East. But when the poor are longing for justice (or is it just bread?) as in South America, Pope John Paul II tells them not to be violent. How contrasting to all their military religious welfare during their wars!
Of course while they were inciting people to kill each other, they also said once in a while `peace'. In their mouth that word is as phony as the Shroud. Compared to the pope, Hitler was a man of honor, from the very beginning he preached violence.
Lets also remember Waldheim, he lied about his past, just like the pope, but compared to the pope his involvement during the war was harmless. We should better get upset, when our Chief Executives visit the pope.
It is sad and without doubt fateful, too, that even today only few people are leaving the church, after all the suffering the church has inflicted upon our ancestors.
H. H .Haupt
* Water walkers were Asclepios, Sarapis and also Buddha. Just as an disciple of Jesus, Peter, so walked a disciple of Buddha on water. Also Joshua and Elijah walked across the Jordan. The title Son of God were holding Pythagoras, Plato, Augustus, Apollonius of Tyana and many other. Asclepios raised 6 dead people, the details are the same as in Jesus' two resuscitations. He also healed blind and lame people. Hercules after been born to the married virgin Alkmene was already persecuted as a child. And just as the Jesus in John's evangelism he died with the word: It is accomplished. There was an earthquake and darkness. A well-known motif, that was also used for Caesar. Finally he hovered away to heaven, as before him Romulus and Henoch, and after him Jesus. Euripides (480-406 BC) tells us that Dionysus turned water into wine. The Dionysus cult knew also already something like the Holy Communion, with the same meaning for the life after death. Just like Prometheus at the Caucasus and Lycurgus, Spartan lawgiver of the 9th century BC, Dionysus, too, belongs to the crucified gods. And the Dionysus' parish worshipped their god long before Christ on an altar-table with a wine-chalice on a cross. There are also: Dionysus on a donkey, D. on a ship and as master of the sea, D. and the dry figs, D. and the vine, the mockery and suffering of D., D. whose flesh is eaten and whose blood is drunk. There is also a similarity between Mithras and Jesus. Mithras was the sun god and his holy day was dies solis, Sunday. His birthday was dies natalis solis, the 25th Dec. When Luke wrote the sentimental account of Jesus' birth he obviously cribbed from Hellenic sources. Back.
** People who want to worship a foreskin or some other relics should write me. Against a small donation to the anti-clerical collection-bag, I'll provide them with the place-names. Back.
or "Who is the Killer?"
To the Editor:
200 000 dead women a year due to faulty abortion techniques should be reason enough for any right-to-life group to support RU 486. But they do not. They are followers of moral theologians who are indifferent to other people's suffering. And what suffering they caused! Starting from the synod in Elvira (306) which forced woman who aborted to do penance for life, to the Middle Age where they were put into a sack together with a dog, a cock, a cat and a snake and drowned.
Even in the 18th century almost everywhere in Europe such women were tortured with red-hot tongs, buried alive or impaled. The Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V which recommended drowning and in areas were this abuse was frequent first tearing with red-hot tongs was valid in some German states until 1871. After 1871 the woman got up to 5 years hard labor for an abortion and the helper up to 10 years. Only Hitler introduced again the capital punishment for abortion.
Even in the 60s/70s, a woman in Germany risked 5 years' imprisonment. And in the States from 1 year in Kansas up to 20 years in Mississippi.
In Germany even today, it is a judge who decides, whether a woman can have an abortion or not and not the woman. This summer (1988) a mother of five children who was suffering a nephritic disorder was refused an abortion. When she had an illegal abortion she was fined 1000 DM or by substitution 40 days' imprisonment.
When a woman who in her distress sought help in illegality, got into inexperienced hands, fell sick and died, how does a moralist feel about that? Well, pastor Legius (from Berlin?) wrote: "It is a pity that so many of these useless woman stay alive..." When after the war many woman had illegal abortions Catholic Moralist Binder said: "At the war crimes trails they have hanged the wrong people." What I want to show is that these moralists do not worry about other people's life. If they would, they wouldn't be at the same time against contraceptives, as the majority of them are. They would not support a nationalistic politic, not the Contras, not the military, atomic deterrence etc.
An especially striking example was pope Pius XII, he did not find the use of atomic weapons absolutely immoral, he even saw God involved in this horrible human invention. But the use of preventives he called sinful, immoral, unnatural, devilish, even when a woman risked to contact venereal diseases from her husband. When will they stop to consecrate arms and to damn preservatives, the Pill, abortion and now new on the list RU 486! At least they allowed the Vatican owned Istituto Farmacologico Serono to produce the Anti-Baby-Pill. And in 1967, the Vatican gave nuns who were raped by Congolese soldiers the permission to have an abortion.
An abortion is mostly the killing of something that does not yet have the size of a tadpole and by far not a tadpoles ability and survival skill. Some say, it has already a soul, but fail to prove it. Actually, even adults do not have souls, they have minds. Souls are part of fairy tales.
A long time Christians were supposed to believe that the male fetus developed a soul 40 days after conception and the female fetus 80 days after conception (yes, the old discrimination). But that was a long time before the pope was infallible. He is it since 1870.
In Germany the Catholics distributed pamphlets calling women who had abortions murderer, even Auschwitz-murderer and contraception early-abortion. (People who criticized the church for that were prosecuted under § 166 CC, a relic from Nazi-Germany that protects the church.) When I compare some of these fanatic anti-abortionists to woman who aborted I think the first are much more willing to commit murder. In fact their hatred often makes me feel that they would still like to kill the aborting woman, her helpers and supporters and me. Somehow, it is understandable: The fetus doesn't do any thing offensive. Only adults have the unmitigated gall to disagree with them.
If we continue to propagate at our present rate, it will not only get very crowed but lead to catastrophe.
H. H. Haupt
My last letter is about persecutions
of atheists in West Germany. Although I enclosed
newspaper articles from English papers and copies of protest
letters of notable personages like Nobel prize winners George
Wald and Noam Chromsky, also winner of the General Science Award
in Kyoto (JAPAN TIME Nov. 25, 1988), it was not published.
To the Editor:
In my home country, West Germany, very serious infringements on rights of freedom of conscience, thought and expression are occurring.
In 1984 came the conviction of Ms Brigit Römermann of Göttingen for atheism and criticism of the church based on the so-called blasphemy clause § 166 of the Criminal Code.
An almost complete press ban had been placed on those proceedings. The German press is unfortunately not without fear and favor (motto of Japan Times!). This press ban was violated by two students at the University of Aachen, who displayed documents connected with the Römermann case and collected protest signatures.
These two students were also accused under Section 166 CC. But due to strong international protest however, the two had to be acquitted. Two years later the Chief Country Court in Cologne revoked the non-guilty verdict by legal manœuvering, in the hope that the international attention had faded away. Now another, year later this trial is still not finished. The law costs already amount to 12 000 DM and the accused are emotionally worn down.
An other case: The atheist employer Dr. Joseph, who refused to remit the church rate for his employees (They did the remittance by themselves. A practice that was tolerated for 30 years.) got suddenly the order to pay retroacting for 10 years the church rate (14 000 DM) for his employees. He of course refused because his employees had paid the church rate already. Next he was distrained.
Then because he accused the revenue-office of fraudulent double encashment he was indicted for gross insult. Normally in West Germany 95% of the charges of insult are dismissed, but he was fined 12 000 DM. He even had to submit to a coercive psychiatric examination. (He is not the only one.)
An anticlerical group protested against the prosecution of Dr. Joseph. Their protest letter again was regarded as an insult later even as an intimidation.
There were four police searches in houses of group members, one even in their attorney's office. Documents, manuscripts, one last will and a type-writer were confiscated.
They were later acquitted and the type-writer was returned after seven months. When they tried to claim the costs for a rented type-writer, although the receipts were genuine, as the court admitted, the court accused them of fraud.
There are more persecutions going on under § l66, some against journalists, although they did not use offensive language, historical facts like the concordat between Hitler and the Pope and that the Vatican was the first state who recognized Nazi-Germany were offensive enough.
The most recent scandal is the prosecution of attorney Gottfried Niemietz from Freiburg. His crime was to repeat during a lecture about § 166 a quotation of his client Ms Römermann, that the church is "the biggest criminal organization in history". *
Considering the track of blood the church left through the centuries and the fact that we are a democracy we should be not only have the right to quote but to say it.
The German public is not informed about all these persecutions. The censorship goes that far that even advertisements calling for the abolition of this law are refused. However several newspapers abroad published long articles about it.
And many personages and institutions committed to democracy and personal freedom have protested at the German ministry of justice, among them the Nobel prize winner George Wald and Noam Chomsky, the Russell Tribunal, Amnesty International, several western Boards of Attorneys, Universities, many writers, politicians and scientists.
Our democracy is the result of the death of many allied soldiers and now again we need foreign help to maintain our democracy. Next time you hear a German politician standing up for freedom in the Soviet Union please remember the German dissidents.
H.H.Haupt
addenda:
Well, the Soviet Union is dead. East-Germany belongs to the West. Persecutions are no longer limited to atheists, fellow believers like the Scientologists, Jehovah Witnesses and other Christian sects are persecuted because of their 'wrong' belief as well as everybody who support somehow the Eastern regime.
Please remember also the ever increasing number (last over 10,000) victims of "berufsverbote". Berufsverbote means that people who might not agree with our 'democratic' constitution are barred from government jobs like teacher, policeman, scavenger etc. As you might have guessed not members of undemocratic organizations like the two big churches suffer under this law, but people who are committed to democracy. Of course, only they endanger the establishment.
Not only do the persecutions show that the churches try to gain back the power that was taken out of their hands by the Enlightenment and to rebuild a new Middle Age, but they even say it themselves: "Europe must be evangelized for a second time." When you know how the first evangelization under Clovis I and Charlemagne looked like and where it led to, you will want to get up and protect your friends and family. Once they succeed they will surely not stop with Europe, they never do, they will try once more to wreck the world with their crusades. Let's do something before it's too late.
December 16th, 1992 , the European Court in Strasbourg confirmed the unanimous result of the European Commission of Human Rights and found the Federal Republic of Germany guilty of violating article 8 of the Convention of Human Rights (security of the inviolability of domicile and correspondence).
In Germany
and in Austria people were prosecuted for showing this
"blasphemous" cartoon: Almighty god as a puppet in the
hand of a happy priest. Happy, because of the "Konkordat
1933" (the treaty between Hitler's German Reich and Vatican)
and §166 of the Criminal Code, the so-called blasphemy clause,
that protects them from criticism and irony.
For more information about this and related subjects, please
contact AHRIMAN.
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