I, as a human being, a Christian, a priest, and a German, demand of you, Chief Physician of the Reich, that you answer for the crimes that have been perpetrated at your bidding, and with your consent, and which will call forth the vengeance of the Lord on the heads of the German people.”
– On this day in 1943, Fr Bernhard Lichtenberg – declared Blessed by the Catholic Church and Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem – died of pneumonia en route to Dachau. Harassed and finally arrested for denouncing Nazi authorities, the Gestapo had declared him “incorrigible.” The impeachment above is from his 1941 letter to chief physician of the Reich, Leonardo Conti, on euthanasia.
In a strange, scatterbrained column given the all-clear by a sub-editor of The Weekend Australian today, the always flighty Nikki Gemmell ‘argues’ the angry are “coming for” Christians like Andrew Thorburn, the Archbishop of Hobart and their peace-loving co-religionists. “It’s called the growing awareness of younger generations. They’re coming for you.” In different circumstances, this could be seen as dangerous rhetoric. Christians are now the world’s most persecuted and most frequently murdered religious adherents. We certainly don’t need Radio Rwanda amplifying a rolling pogrom that’s killing 4000 a year. Invariably young and violent zealots have been “coming for” Christians since – in the splendid words of Lord Macaulay – “the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon and camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre.” We’re not making haste for the hills to escape brooding scooterers. I guess it’s possible Gemmell’s piece is satire. Her nomination of Nick Cave, 65, as leader of the Gnat Pack couldn’t be serious.
Interesting report CL.
Feminists within the church always turn to “Why was it Eve’s fault?” It wasn’t hers alone. Adam was warned before Eve was created, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If he had fulfilled his role as the head of the household, he would have not only refused to eat the fruit but would have stopped her from eating it too.
As for the values and morals of the Christian church not meeting those of modern society, the late Pentecostal evangelist, Barry Smith (from NZ) was once accused of “stroking the cat the wrong way.” ” He replied, ‘Let the cat turn around.”
Yet we are told by the left these days that you are a “fascist” or a “Nazi” if you believe in free speech!
This, of course, is patently untrue.
Air heads and dangerous. Spouting all embracing kindness which invokes Jesus yet which is hell bent on ‘coming for you.’
Where are the fact checkers as to what constitutes hate speech. Threats, even.
Oh, and I wonder why respect for women does not extend to the Blessed Mother. No, it’s ugly fetishisms all the way down.
Wherever their political masters tell them to be.
Assisted dying, didn’t take them long to turn it into life’s version of the tv show survivor. It’s time to go….
Satire? It’s hard to tell. There are other bits that sound comedic. For example, “Many young people look on in bewilderment and revulsion at values not of their world. They champion qualities like kindness, tolerance, equality and fairness.” Young people… kindness, tolerance, equality, fairness? That’s hilarious! Dare question “inclusion & diversity” and the science-illiterate, history-illiterate, psychology-illiterate, thoroughly-brainwashed “kind”, “tolerant”, “fair” young folk would have you cancelled.
But, alas, Gemmell is no comedian. Quick google search. A few pics of Gemmell donning the thick-rimmed, brightly-coloured glasses. From snippets of her content, she sounds ultra woke (including pro-euthanasia) for whom the Christian teaching is obviously repugnant.
Didn’t Gemmell once write a column in great distress at the antics of her teenage daughter?
In a godless household with godless friends it’s no wonder they are convinced it’s the end of the Christian era.
We’ll see.
Seriously, is anyone surprised euthanasia is being ‘nudged’ along by the Canadian state? We all know what this is about. The elderly are a financial nuisance. This is coming to Australia. It is inevitable.
@Perplexed.
Eve commited 5 sins at the Fall. Adam committed 8. It’s all there in the Bible.
C.L. says:
5 November, 2022 at 12:47 pm
Oh my! There is so much misinformation in that long whinge that I just don’t know where to start!
Given the latest Sinod document is proposing ”priestesses”, blessing of same-sex ”unions” and other wordly ”morals”, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this pontificate nudge towards euthanasia.
The elderly are a financial nuisance.
Yet, the medical establishment has used that smokers, as a group, don’t die elderly enough in comparison to non-smokers, as a group, to denormalize/leperize/ostracize smoking/smokers.
Not a typo.
Love this. 👍
From the same people who accused those opposed to draconian Covid related laws and lockdowns as being “granny killers.”
Trudeau is truly evil.
The Sinod on Sinodality is definitely not a typo.
Give me a demonstration Doc. I’ll watch as you show how it goes on yourself.
*thud*
Nah, I’m not convinced yet. Nurse, how about you try?
*thud*
Hmm, I am impressed! But I think I’ll wait a few years.
Yet no one prepared to point out the egregious conflict of interest in the state nudging their employees to tell folks it’s time we put you down like a dog. Hey but it’s your choice.
Blessings indeed to Lichtenberg for holding a strong line of faith when most were just going with the Nazti momentum.
There are a few notable points. The medical establishment (and lawyers) played a central role in the Nazti era. Some still believe, erroneously, that the Naztis corrupted the medical establishment. Not so. Hitler had to rein in the medicos because they were going too quickly for him. Medicos are physicians. They are dominated by physicalism/materialism… the carnal mind. Remove spiritual/moral constraint and medicos will try to play god and they are demonstrably terrible at it. In addition to racial matters, the Natzi medicos had a litany of behavioral diktats, e.g., anti-tobacco.
I bring up anti-tobacco on occasion. Why? It was one of the critical early markers (1960/70s) of the medical establishment venturing into “lifestyle” activism (i.e., tyranny) reminiscent of the Eugenics era (America and Germany). It’s not a good sign. Most missed it… it’s only smokers; who cares. It’s a major lesson we were supposed to have learned from the catastrophe of the Eugenics era. Public Health has been and has again become a dangerous entity. And look at where we are now decades down the slippery slope. In addition to the standard anti-tobacco, anti-alcohol stances, the medical establishment HQ – the UN’s World Health Organization – is responsible for OKing, normalizing poofism and OKing, normalizing transism. The medical establishment has medicalized more and more of everyday life. IIRC It even wanted to medicalize “racism”. We’re currently way down the slippery slope to euthanasia. And another UN agency is pushing the climate crisis scam, also in the remit of contemporary Public Health.
The fault doesn’t lie only with the medical establishment. There are plenty of folk that don’t want to think: If they feel unwell, they just want pills and potions. They’re quite happy for the medical establishment to play god.
For anyone interested, I’ll post some Nazti era info.
Your tobacco posts and info welcome here, Ando.
And yet, if you recall, Tony Abbott gave one of his first interviews as Prime Minister to this silly bint. A parable of his leadership.
Thanks, C.L.
Proctor (1996) highlights that “we know that about half of all doctors joined the Nazi party and that doctors played a major part in designing and administering the Nazi programmes of forcible sterilization, ‘euthanasia’, and the industrial scale murder of Jews and gypsies. Much of our present day concern for the abuse of humans used in experiments stems from the extreme brutality many German doctors showed toward concentration camp prisoners exploited to advance the cause of German military medicine.” (p.1450)
Decker (2002) highlights that, apart from the SS where lawyers outnumbered them, physicians’ representation in other Nazi organizations outranked every other professional group, e.g., Nazi party, the SA (stormtroopers).
Proctor (1996) notes that:
Historians and epidemiologists have only recently begun to explore the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the strongest antismoking movement in the 1930’s and early 1940’s, encompassing bans on smoking in public spaces, bans on advertising, restrictions on tobacco rations for women, and the world’s most refined tobacco epidemiology, linking tobacco use with the already evident epidemic of lung cancer …. German anti-tobacco policies accelerated towards the end of the 1930‘s, and by the early war years tobacco use had begun to decline. The Luftwaffe banned smoking in 1938 and the post office did likewise. Smoking was barred in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals, and rest homes. The NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty. The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Hermann Goering‘s decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches, and on brief off duty periods.
By the way, Canada’s ‘voluntary’ assisted homicide system is known by the helpful, benevolent-sounding acronym, MAID – Medical Assistance in Dying.
Hermann was a renowned fitness fanatic.
Smith et al. (1995) also indicate that:
The Public Health Office and the German Medical association, both under the leadership of Dr Gerhard Wagner, repeatedly issued precise pronouncements regarding the dire health consequences of smoking. By 1939 Wagner’s successor, Dr Leonardo Conti, had established the Reich Bureau Against the Dangers of Alcohol and Tobacco. The Reich Health Office also made numerous statements, which its president, Hans Reiter, reiterated at his inaugural address at the opening of the ‘first scientific institute for the struggle against the dangers of tobacco’ at the University of Jena in 1942 …. Recognition of the damaging effects of smoking on health led to much antismoking legislation; this included legislation banning smoking in public places by those under 18 and prohibiting both tobacco advertising and smoking in public buildings and on public transport. Pregnant women and those deemed to be sick because of smoking had their tobacco rations withdrawn, and there was serious discussion regarding whether those sick with illness caused by smoking should receive medical care equal to that given to patients whose illnesses were not considered to be self-inflicted.
By the way, Canada’s ‘voluntary’ assisted homicide system is known by the helpful, benevolent-sounding acronym, MAID – Medical Assistance in Dying.
… pear-shaped… quickly
Doctor: Would you like MAID?
Patient: Yeah, that sounds good: I’ll have a MAID.
Patient: Yeah, that sounds good: I’ll have a MAID.
… and a cup of tea, thanks.
Proctor (1997) provides considerable detail as to the extent of antismoking sentiment and measures by the Nazi regime:
Tobacco was opposed by racial hygienists fearing the corruption of the German germ plasm, by industrial hygienists fearing a reduction of work capacity, by nurses and midwives fearing harms for the ‘maternal organism’. Tobacco was said to be ‘a corrupting force in a rotting civilization that has become lazy’, a cause of impotence among men and frigidity among women. The Nazi-era anti-tobacco rhetoric drew from an earlier generation’s eugenic rhetoric, combining this with an ethic of bodily purity and performance at work. Tobacco use was attacked as ‘epidemic’, as a ‘plague’, as ‘dry drunkenness’ and ‘lung masturbation’; tobacco and alcohol abuse were ‘diseases of civilization’ and ‘relics of a liberal lifestyle.’ (p.441).
Antismoking steps such as extensive “public education,” bans on certain forms of advertising, and bans on smoking in many public places “were consistent with the regime’s larger emphasis on physician-directed ‘health leadership’, embracing both preventive health and the primacy of the public good over individual liberties – the so-called ‘duty to be healthy.’” (p.437)
Proctor (1997) continues that “throughout this period, magazines like Genussgifte (Poisons of taste or habit), Auf der Wacht (On Guard), and Reine Luft (Pure air) published a regular drumbeat against this ‘insidious poison’ [tobacco], along with articles charting the unhealthful effects of alcohol, teenage dancing, cocaine, and other vices. Dozens of books and pamphlets denounced the ‘smoking slavery’ or ‘cultural degeneration’ feared from the growth of tobacco use. Tobacco was branded ‘the enemy of world peace’, and there was even talk of ‘tobacco terror’ and ‘tobacco capitalism’ …. The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls both published antismoking propaganda, and the Association for the Struggle against the Tobacco Danger organized counseling centers where the ‘tobacco ill’ could seek help” (p.456-457); “Hitler Youth had anti-smoking patrols all over Germany, outside movie houses and in entertainment areas, sports fields etc., and smoking was strictly forbidden to these millions of German youth growing up under Hitler.” (www.zundelsite – January 27, 1998.htm)
Interestingly, the Nazis basically marched on methamphamine
Specialized antitobacco institutes were also established. The most important of these was the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research. This was established by a 100,000 RM gift from Hitler’s Reichskanzlei (personal funding) to the University of Jena amidst great media fanfare in April, 1941 (Proctor, 1997, p.463). Within the medical and “health” leadership, antismoking was strongly propagated. For example, “Reich Health Fuhrer Leonardo Conti pointed out that tobacco was an addictive drug, weakening the ability of leaders to serve their nation. Karl Astel, the SS officer and physician who founded the institute [Institute for Tobacco
Hazards research], denounced the health and financial costs of smoking but also the ‘ethic of apathy’ fostered by the habit.” (Proctor, 1997, p.463)
Furthermore, the director of Dortmund’s Institute for Labor Physiology (a Prof. Graf) argued that tobacco should be entirely banned at the workplace, due to the dangers of ‘passive smoking’….Jena by this time was a center of antitobacco activism. Karl Astel, director of the new institute, was also president of Thuringia’s Office of Racial Affairs, and rector – since the summer of 1939 – of the University of Jena. Astel was not just a notorious anti-Semite and racial hygienist (he had joined the Nazi party and the SS in July 1930), he was also a militant antismoker and teetotaler who once characterized opposition to smoking as a ‘national socialist duty’. On May Day of 1940 he banned smoking in all buildings and classrooms of the University of Jena; he soon became known for snatching cigarettes from the mouths of students who dared to violate the ban. One year later, in the Spring of 1941, as head of Thuringia’s public health office, he announced a smoking ban for all state health offices and all German schools. Tobacco abstinence was, as one might imagine, a condition of employment at Astel’s antitobacco institute: the original proposal sent to Hitler – written by Gauleiter Sauckel – noted that this was ‘as important as Aryan ancestry’; freedom from tobacco addiction was said to be necessary to guarantee the ‘independence’ and ‘impartiality’ of the science produced. (Proctor, 1997, p.464)
Last one. Thanks for your patience.
Concerning tobacco workers, the situation seemed to be serious enough that “Reich Economics Minister Walther Funk worried that tobacco workers were being tarred as persons ‘outside the Volksgemeinschaft’ and ‘on a par with Jews’ – dangerous charges in 1941.” (Proctor, 1997, p.477)
Regarding the Fuhrer, “Hitler had smoked 25 to 40 cigarettes per day in his Viennese youth, until he realized how much money he was wasting, whereupon he ‘tossed his cigarettes into the Danube and never reached for them again.’” (Proctor, 1997, p.472) Hitler “characterized tobacco as ‘the wrath of the Red Man for having been given hard liquor’. At one point the Fuhrer even suggested that Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.” (Proctor, 1996, p.1450) In the publication Auf der Wacht (1937, 18) there appears a photographic portrait of Hitler and the caption “Our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler drinks no alcohol and does not smoke ….. His performance at work is incredible.” (Proctor, 1996, p.1451)
Of all the excruciatingly questionable, horrid and unconscionable conduct of the Nazis and the Fuhrer himself, one of Hitler’s few regrets, it seems, was “allowing his soldiers to smoke: on the 2nd March 1942 he noted that ‘it was a mistake, traceable to the army leadership at the time, to have started giving our soldiers daily rations of tobacco at the beginning of the war’: he added that it was ‘not correct to say that a soldier cannot live without smoking’ and vowed to put an end to military tobacco rations once peace was achieved.” (Proctor, 1997, p.471)
And, I’ve posted before but Vera Sharav has been pushing that barrow for some time … for decades actually, she tried to warn us but only got taken seriously in 2020.
https://ratical.org/PandemicParallaxView/VeraSharav-101220-Pt1.html
If you are collecting this stuff then you should add that interview.
Powerful interview, it would be hard to read that and not realise that the Nazis were big government.
Social media has utterly inverted the world order. The young are, were and always always have been half formed and it used to expected their revolutionary phase could be contained to uni newspapers and wotnot until they grew up. Now social media amplifies their well intentioned lunacy but has been weaponised by the Marxist left to cancel the experienced and wise. Any story can be crafted by cherry picking ‘tweets’. That Musk fellow may slow it up a bit, but the adults need to figure out a way to get back in charge. Using accumulated wealth wisely might be a start: divest in companies that yield to mobs. A robust Church that can state the truth is needed. SJWs aren’t going to mass and never will. The Church should stop courting them and go back to what it’s been doing for centuries: guiding the way.
The interview with the incredible Vera Sharav should be compulsory reading in schools and parliaments.
Read the whole thing.
Nick Cave is a complex character and thinker, and struggles with his understanding and doubts about God, but he is not an atheist. He is seeking the truth. I reckon many of his criticisms of institutional religion would be shared by CL and readers.
Institutional religion and the instituted, inviolable Church are two different things.
Criticism of institutional religion – of hierarchical structures, eg, or ritual worship – is not the same as criticism of persons within the Church whose religious practice falls short of integrity. As an example of a difference: it was not the Church which failed her people during the covid event but those within the Church who were entrusted with serving the people.
Societies that believe in euthanasia have been pretty consistent with limiting medical assistance to the frail aged with covid, New York, Sweden, France etc and here in Melbourne ambulances with elderly patients in aged care were turned away from Royal Melbourne hospital in 2020.
Pretty sure Sharri Markson wrote an article in The Age on that subject.
CL: the fate of those who opposed Hitler within the various German community and religious organisations was hardly assisted by the Reichskonkordat, signed by a future Pope, that wa in force from 1933 and which explicitly required the Catholic Church to refrain from political activities.
The encyclical condemned breaches of the 1933 Reichskonkordat agreement signed between the German Reich and the Holy See.[4] It condemned “pantheistic confusion”, “neopaganism”, “the so-called myth of race and blood”, and the idolizing of the StateMit brennender Sorge