I watched the Catholic Archdiocese in Maine lead a campaign of lies and distortion against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in overturning marriage equality in my state. So, from now on, I will point out the lies and distortions put forward by the Catholic Church hierarchy wherever I encounter them.
Last week Cardinal Meisner in Germany delivered a homilythat distorts historical fact by blaming the Holocaust and the Gulag on "atheism". Furthermore, the "New Atheism" advanced by thinkers such as Richard Dawkins will, in Meisner's view, lead to a new National Socialism.
I am not a huge fan of Richard Dawkins, but Cardinal Meisner's attack is beyond the pale:
Nun aber feiert dieser so genannte wissenschaftliche Atheismus fröhliche Auferstehung. Hoffentlich durchschauen die Menschen diesen uralten Dreh, mit dem sie den Gottesglauben verlieren sollen. Es sei nochmals daran erinnert, dass solche Unternehmungen keine harmlosen Experimente einiger Leute sind! Wie damals, so kann das auch heute viele Menschen buchstäblich das Leben kosten.[...]
Ähnlich wie einst die Nationalsozialisten im einzelnen Menschen primär nur den Träger des Erbgutes seiner Rasse sahen, definiert auch der Vorreiter der neuen Gottlosen, der Engländer Richard Dawkins, den Menschen als „Verpackung der allein wichtigen Gene", deren Erhaltung der vorrangige Zweck unseres Daseins sei.(Now this so-called scientific atheism is experiencing something of a renaissance. Hopefully people will see through this old delusion which is supposed to destroy their belief in God. Let me remind you that these undertakings are not just the harmless experiments of a few individuals. Just as we've seen in the past, even today they can cost many people their lives. [...] Just as the Nazis viewed the individual human being as the genetic agent of his race, so does the Briton Richard Dawkins, the leader of the New Atheists, define humans as "the packaging of the all important genes" whose preservation is the overarching purpose of our existence.)
The idea that the National Socialists in Germany were somehow "atheists" is false. In fact, the Nazis persecuted atheists as representing a "corrupt Jewish spirit"('zersetzenden jüdischen Geistes'). Furthermore, Cardinal Meisner completely ignores the role of the Catholic Church promoting antisemitism throughout German history: well into the 20th century the clergy preached the collective guilt of the Jews in deicide - the killing of Christ.
Of course, Cardinal Meisner never touches on the controversial role of Pius XII during the Third Reich. While individual Catholic clergy exhibited tremendous bravery against the Nazis and were murdered in the death camps, the pope never spoke out against Hitler or against Nazi atrocities, even though the Vatican became aware of these atrocities by 1941.
Pope Benedict XVI is fond of criticizing the "dictatorship of relativism" he sees in secular society. But the Catholic Church and Cardinal Meisner are engaging in historical relativism by distorting historical fact. Atheists were not responsible for the horrors of the Holocaust.