Bishop criticised for comparing abortion to Nazi euthanasia programme

"Trivialisation of Nazi injustice".

Criticism after laying of stumbling stone memorial: "Perfidious derailment of the ceremony by the bishop".

In a press release on the occasion of the laying of a stumbling stone for a euthanasia victim in Regensburg, Bishop Voderholzer and the diocese draw a line from the murders of the sick during National Socialism to abortions today. There is criticism of this.

Using a stumbling stone laying ceremony to criticise abortions and drawing questionable parallels: Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer.

A total of eight more stumbling stones were laid in Regensburg yesterday, Tuesday. More than 250 of these engraved brass plates now commemorate murdered Nazi victims in the cathedral city - 16 years after the project began. Deported and murdered Jews, Sinti and Roma, political persecutees, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and euthanasia victims.

Since Tuesday, for example, a stone in Engelburgergasse commemorates the resistance fighter Franz Enderlein - he was murdered in a concentration camp because he was a communist. In the presence of representatives of the Regensburg SPD, a stumbling stone was laid in Eichenstraße for the Social Democrat and member of the state parliament Alfons Bayerer. In 1935 he was sentenced to several years in prison for "preparation for high treason", the consequences of which he died of shortly after his release as a terminally ill patient in 1940.

Hans Husserl, whose name is on the new stumbling stone in Obermünsterstraße, threw himself in front of a train on 14 October 1944. As the son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, the 41-year-old was considered a "mixed race of the first degree" and chose suicide out of fear of deportation and concentration camps.

Commemoration of victims of "Aktion T4

Since Tuesday, Anna Walter has also been remembered in Wöhrdstraße. Along with Johann Plodeck, she is one of two victims of "Aktion T4" who were honoured at yesterday's event.

Walter was born near Dachau in 1906 and worked as a simple maid in Regensburg. Because she complained of pain and no medical cause could be determined for it, she was sent by the Brothers of Mercy to the Karthaus-Prüll sanatorium and nursing home in 1931, where she remained until shortly before the end of her life.

Over the years, her condition deteriorated. She was considered incapable of working and was incapacitated. Her brother, who held guardianship, died. On 19 November 1940, she and another 128 patients were deported from the sanatorium and nursing home to Hartheim in Upper Austria. It was the second of five transports from Regensburg.

(Cathcon: I have been to Hartheim and shockingly at the end of the visit euthanasia is still presented as a matter for debate.....they don't want to learn from history)

As part of "Aktion T4", Anna Walter was classified as "unworthy of life" and murdered with carbon monoxide. Between 1940 and 41, a total of 642 people were taken from Regensburg to Hartheim on the grey Gekra buses and murdered there just like her. Anna Walter was 34 years old.

The laying of her stumbling stone was attended by residents of the house at Wöhrdstraße 27, where the young woman had her last job, as well as representatives of Jehovah's Witnesses, Ilse Danziger from the Jewish Community and Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer, who spoke a few words on the spot. Afterwards, he had a text about the appointment published on the homepage of the diocese.

The press release under the headline "Stolpersteine sind Zeichen der Achtsamkeit" (Stumbling stones are a sign of mindfulness) has now been sharply criticised by the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes-  Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (VVN-BdA). The text is not formulated in a very mindful way.

Background: In the statement published by the Diocese, Voderholzer (not for the first time) draws a direct line from "Aktion T4" and the murder of the sick during National Socialism to abortions.

Euthanasia, selection and abortions

Literally, the Diocesan website states:

"Already at a T4 commemoration in the Regensburg District Hospital on 4 November 2015, Bishop Rudolf emphasised to political representatives: 'When commemorating the inhuman events of the National Socialist era in Germany, we must never make the mistake of granting ourselves, who live in a free democratic constitutional state, a supposed immunity to the mechanisms and consequences that were possible under such a cruel regime of terror.'

For many years, Bishop Dr Voderholzer has taken part in the Berlin 'March for Life'. In 2017, he called for the dignity of every human being, as laid down in the Basic Law, to be defended 'from their first moment to their last breath'. It does not matter 'whether a person meets the expectations of others or not'.

Today, he said, people with disabilities receive more care than ever before in history. But in the case of unborn children, there is a 'merciless and merciless selection'. Nine out of ten embryos with Down syndrome are aborted, a selection that now takes place at the beginning of life, Bishop Rudolf criticised."

"Nobody has to put up with such hostility."

The Diocese and the Bishop were thereby engaging in "an unacceptable relativisation of Nazi infanticide", which they resolutely disagreed with, according to a reaction from the executive committee of the VVN Regensburg. "The Diocese not only mentions Aktion T4 in the same breath as abortions, but also places it in direct ideological proximity as the killing of so-called 'life unworthy of life'."

This reading not only trivialises the injustice of the Nazi regime, it "demonises and defames women who terminate pregnancies and doctors who perform terminations," it continues. "No one has to put up with such hostility."

Voderholzer's description of abortions as "merciless selection" is a "historically oblivious and perfidious derailment of the bishop". This is a direct allusion to the practice of SS doctors in the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, known as "selection", to weed out prisoners "unfit for work" and send them directly to the gas chamber.

70,273 men and women died as a result of Aktion T4. More than 216,000 were killed in total as part of the murder of the sick during National Socialism.

Comment: Hardliners on a mad caper

That a Catholic bishop criticises abortions, sometimes using questionable references, is nothing new - especially with Rudolf Voderholzer. It is part of the brand essence of the Catholic Church and Voderholzer is one of the hardliners there.

It is legitimate to raise the issue of the high rate of abortions of embryos with Down's syndrome - 90 percent. One can and must be allowed to talk about this.

However, it is neither legitimate nor appropriate for the bishop to hijack an event that is about remembering the victims of Nazi murders in order to promote his "protection of life" agenda.

It is perfidious and oblivious to history when he draws parallels and uses a vocabulary that places abortions in a direct line with the crimes of National Socialism. Voderholzer and the Diocese have done nothing other than this with this unspeakable announcement.

In keeping with the occasion, it would have been appropriate to put one's own house in order and, for example, to remember the misconduct of his predecessor, Bishop Michael Buchberger - or at least to finally acknowledge it.

Buchberger - like the majority of his episcopal colleagues - had kept silent about the murders in the context of "Aktion T4" in 1940.

Buchberger was in favour of the forced sterilisation of disabled people.

According to the then Bishop of Regensburg, who obviously drew on his own experience, there were "mentally, physically and morally so abnormal and sick people in institutions that the sexual excesses, which were commonplace among them, were among the dirtiest and most terrible things imaginable". In this case, there was "in fact no other possibility of prevention than surgical intervention".

Source

Cathcon:  A state which licenses the killing of the unborn has become capable of anything.