A LITTLE CANDOR, PLEASE
HOW SHOULD ONE LOOK AT HITLER?
CHOOSING AMONG IMPERFECT CANDIDATES
BREAKING NEWS: PRO-ABORTION GROUP ATTACKS CATHOLIC ANSWERS
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
I don't live in New York City, but still I have to think about theft when leaving my bike outside. I did what millions of others have done. I purchased the best bike lock on the market, the U-shaped Kryptonite. It's massive. Attach your bike to a highway railing with one of these, and the only way a thief will take your wheels is if he takes the railing too.
Until last week, that is, when someone discovered that you can pick the lock by using the empty barrel of a ballpoint pen. Just stick the barrel into the circular lock, twist it around a bit, and in a few seconds the unbreakable lock is broken. The proof is on the Internet, where several people have uploaded videos showing them picking their own locks.
It's bad enough to see a $50 purchase become worthless instantaneously. The really annoying part, for me, was reading that a spokeswoman for Kryptonite said that the company's locks still provide "an excellent deterrent to theft."
How's that again? A practiced thief can pick the lock in five seconds. He would suffer a greater delay if an owner left his bike "protected" by a few loops of string through the wheels.
It would have been refreshing to read that the company was being candid about making an ineffective product. Nothing good is accomplished by trying to pretend a situation is other than it is.
This brings to mind something Pope Leo XIII once said: "Nothing is so salutary as to view the world as it really is."
Don't ask me for a citation. I read it so long ago that I no longer remember where I read it, and probably the quotation is only approximate. No matter. The idea is what counts, and the idea is true: Pretending is fine when fairy tales are being read to young children but not in everyday life, whether the issue at hand is a bike lock or, say, Adolf Hitler.
(How's that for a segue?)
HITLER: HUMAN OR NON-HUMAN?
A new movie is causing a furor in Germany. It's called "Der Untergang" ("The Downfall") and is about the final twelve days of the Nazi regime. The story is told from the point of view of one of Hitler's secretaries, who witnessed what happened in the Berlin bunker.
The furor arose not because Hitler is the subject of a German movie--nothing new in that, really--but because he is portrayed as having a human side. One Berlin pensioner is quoted as saying, "I think it's good a German film maker is confronting Hitler, but I don't like the way Adolf comes off like such a human being."
The Reuters report says that "Hitler's hypnotizing outbursts of rage at his generals' failure to stop the Soviet advance [on Berlin] are mixed with scenes in which he is kind to his female staff, his fiancee, Eva Braun, and his dog." Reuters quotes a student as saying, "It's hard to accept, portraying Nazis as human beings."
For more than sixty years Hitler has been cast as evil incarnate. One can understand why many people perceive him that way, but the result is a malevolent cartoon figure, not a real man. Hitler ends up not really being a cautionary tale for us because we know that, whatever our sins, we aren't always sinners. We have vices, but we also have virtues. Real people have both, precisely because they're human.
Historian John Lukacs, a Catholic, has written several books about Hitler and about World War II. He argues that, when Hitler is portrayed as the epitome of all earthly evil, the dictator actually makes less of an impact on us than if we understood him more roundedly, as having certain positive attributes. Lukacs notes that Hitler was intelligent, brave, and loyal to friends, and often he had better military sense than did his generals. These positive attributes were mixed with extensive moral depravity.
To see Hitler as unalloyed evil sets him apart from us--so far apart that he is not a "good bad example." He is a bogeyman "out there" but not a personal warning to us. To see him, on the other hand, as a man with some admirable qualities (perhaps like the ones we have) is to see him as a warning of what we might become. The evil he did then appears even more frightening. A "human" Hitler is scarier than a "non-human" Hitler.
G.K. Chesterton remarked, through his detective character Father Brown, that any man is capable of any crime. He meant that, no matter what good we otherwise might do, we have the capacity to fall into deep sin.
Just as you never will find a religion all of the tenets of which are wrong, so you never will find a man who is nothing but evil. Even the worst man has something good in him. That is what makes his embrace of evil all the more disturbing. "There but for the grace of God ..."
WHEN NO CANDIDATE IS 100%
Our "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics" was mentioned in the left-wing "National Catholic Reporter." In his September 1 column, Joe Feuerherd, the Washington correspondent for the weekly, gave a fair synopsis of our guide. He applied its principles to George W. Bush and John Kerry and noted that neither candidate is completely right on the five "non-negotiables." (The same can be said of candidates in many other races, of course.)
As quoted by Feuerherd, the voter's guide explains what to do in a situation such as this: "In some political races, each candidate takes a wrong position on one or more of the five non-negotiables. In such a case you may vote for the candidate who takes the fewest such positions or who seems least likely to be able to advance immoral legislation." The voter's guide also notes that, in particular races, you are free to vote for no one.
Catholic Answers has been careful not to show any favoritism toward any candidate or any political party. Our voter's guide names no names, either of candidates or of parties. It doesn't single out any particular political race. Quite the opposite. It says that the principles it enunciates should be applied to all political races, whether at the federal, state, or local level.
THIS JUST IN: PRO-ABORTION GROUP SICS IRS ON CATHOLIC ANSWERS
As I was finishing up this edition of the E-Letter we received word that Catholics for a Free Choice, a political lobbying group that is not Catholic but is decidedly pro-abortion, has filed a formal complaint against Catholic Answers with the IRS.
Frances Kissling, the president of CFFC, claims in a press release that our voter's guide endorses one presidential candidate and opposes another. She wants our tax exemption to be revoked and, apparently, an injunction against our running the "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics" in "USA Today."
On August 31 we published the text of the voter's guide as a full-page ad in four regional editions of "USA Today," and we plan to run the ad again next month. Kissling's group is trying to deny us our First Amendment rights and, more than that, is trying to put us out of business entirely (which is what a loss of our exempt status would amount to).
I will keep you informed as we learn more about her group's attack on us. In the meantime, please keep us in prayer. We may be going into a big and expensive legal battle.
One thing is clear: We wouldn't be attacked by Catholics for a Free Choice if our voter's guide weren't working. Our guide has been the only one singled out by the pro-abortion forces because it is the only one that is moving hearts and minds.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' new discussion forums at:
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
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