... and there's no end in terms of speeches by Catholic Church senior management folks that would fairly qualify as evil propaganda. Augsburg's Bishop Dr Walter Mixa (he's the bloke wearing the colourful dress in the picture) declared that without God there's no end to what people would likely do to each other. He used in his Easter 'sermon' (in his particular case hate speech given on Church property to Church members) the examples of atheist nationalsocialism and atheist communism and the murders these regimes committed against millions of humans as examples of what happens when God's law isn't obeyed.Well, fair enough, the good German bishop is paid to run propaganda campaigns against non-believers [in Germant only about 22% of the population believe unequivocally that God exists, while 23% do not (the rest is sitting on the philosophical fence)], but still. He chose to ignore that it wasn't atheism that motivated the Nazis or the Soviet style communists but Nazi ideology and Soviet style communist ideology. So, both with respect to the Nazi crimes and to the Soviety style communist crimes atheism did not trigger the horrendous crimes committed.
The same, of course, cannot be said for the crimes Christians and Muslims committed in the name of their respective Gods. The Christian crusades and the massmurders they resulted into were motivated entirely by religious belief. Similar stories can be told with regard to most monotheistic religious ideologies. Will any German authority go after the good bishop and charge him for hate speech related crimes? Of course not! Once you're a dress wearing middle-aged to very-aged man who represents an organisation that routinely is embroiled in child sex abuse cases, it seems you can say whatever you like.
Talking about double-standards! Indeed, I wonder whether my truthful description of the bishop (as dress-wearing etc) above would qualify by UN standards as a human rights violation, given that it could be read as mocking the representative of a major religion. According to the UN Human Rights Council that qualifies squarely as a human rights violation... -
In fairness to the Catholic Church, however, it tries to make up on the odd occasion for its all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good God's failings! The Vatican sent this Easter 500 Easter eggs to the victims of the earthquake in Italy. Neat gesture by one of the richest organisations on earth!
