Papal preacher exalts non-violence, connects Nietzsche to Holocaust
Print Friendly VersionBy JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York
Friedrich Nietzsche espoused a pagan lust for power “irreducibly” opposed to Christian non-violence, the Preacher of the Papal Household told the pope this morning, and it’s difficult not to see a connection between Nietzsche’s thought and the Nazi Holocaust.
Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the pope’s official preacher since 1980, addressed Benedict XVI during the weekly retreat he offers for the pope and senior Vatican officials each Lent. His subject was the promise of the Beatitudes in the New Testament: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land.”
The Capuchin recalled that Nietzsche scorned the vision of humility and non-violence offered by Jesus in the Beatitudes, styling it a “morality of slavery.”
In the last half-century, Cantalamessa observed, it’s been fashionable to try to reconcile Nietzsche and Christianity, arguing that it was only an excessively abstemious and tee-totaling brand of religion to which he objected. Thus when Adolph Hitler invoked Nietzsche to justify the Nazi regime, according to this theory, he was betraying Nietzsche’s intent.
Only one voice, Cantalamessa said, has held out against this revisionist approach: the French Catholic thinker René Girard (today an emeritus professor at Standord). Girard, according to Cantalamessa, saw clearly in Nietzsche’s reaction to the Beatitudes a microcosm of the “irreducible alternative between Christianity and paganism.”
“Paganism exalts the sacrifice of the weak in favor of the strong and the advancement of life; Christianity exalts the sacrifice of the strong in the favor of the weak,” Cantalamessa said.
In that regard, he said, Hitler did not misread Nietzsche.
“It’s difficult not to see an objective connection between the proposal of Nietzsche, and the Hitlerian program of the elimination of entire human groups for the advancement of civilization and the purity of the race,” Cantalamessa said.
“Christianity was not the philosopher’s only target, but Christ,” Cantalamessa said. “‘Dionysus against the Crucified: Behold the antithesis,’ he exclaimed in one of his posthumous fragments.”
In fact, Cantalamessa said, the widespread modern conviction that society is obligated to defend the powerless is a direct result of Christianity’s influence.
Cantalamessa said Girard shows how “the greatest point of pride for modern society – its concern for victims, its taking the part of the weak and the oppressed, its defense of life where threatened – is in reality a direct product of the revolution of the Gospel.” Paradoxically, Cantalamessa said, those very qualities are now championed by other movements as if they were their own inventions, sometimes even in opposition to Christianity.
Reflecting on the Beatitudes, Cantalamessa told Benedict XVI that the gospel leaves no room for doubt about non-violence as the proper Christian attitude, as opposed to other traditions where “exhortations to non-violence” are “mixed with contrary exhortations.”
Though he did not mention Islam by name, Cantalamessa situated his analysis of the Beatitudes and non-violence within the context of “the debate over religion and violence which has taken place after Sept. 11.”
Even if some Christians have not lived up to these ideals over the centuries, Cantalamessa said, the witness of the Gospel in favor of non-violence is clear.
He argued that two New Testament references frequently cited as examples of a “violent” thrust also within Christianity have been misinterpreted.
First, Cantalamessa addressed the famous line from Luke 14, where a master instructs his servant to find guests for a dinner and to “force them to come.” The line has a checkered history; St. Augustine, for example, used it to justify violence against followers of the Donatist heresy. Cantalamessa, however, argued that in context, the master is talking about “amiable insistence,” not literal coercion.
“How many times in similar circumstances have we said, ‘You forced me to accept,’ knowing full well that the insistence in this case is a sign of benevolence, not of violence,” Cantalamessa said.
Second, Cantalamessa referred to Luke 19:27, in which Jesus tells a parable about a king who says, ‘As for those enemies of mine who did not want me as their king, bring them here and slay them before me.’ A recent Italian book, Cantalamessa said, claims that the line authorizes a Christian form of holy war. In fact, however, Cantalamessa says that the words are from a character in a parable, and the identification with Jesus is inexact. Moreover, he said, they have to be ‘translated’ spiritually. In effect, Cantalamessa said, the point of the parable is that the decision to accept or reject Christ is a matter of life and death.
“Holy war,” Cantalamessa said, “has nothing to do with it.”
Not to nitpick, but had the
Not to nitpick, but had the Christians been less certain of the need to be Christian in order to avoid eternal damnation, they might have responded to the Muslim threat more as they did to threats from one another, by engaging in war for defensive reasons, and not crusading and converting people by force.
I find your perspective on the present a bit confusing. I do not think anyone has advocated making peace overtures to terrorists. Clearly, the response to 9/11 was to take control of Afghanistan away from the terrorists--not an empty threat--I have heard no complaints about George W. Bush on that.
It seems to me that what I have heard from the Vatican has been that military aggression is to be avoided. Could it be that you think that we must be the bully in order not to be bullied?
I haven't seen
I haven't seen Cantalamessa's complete remarks, but it doesn't seem to me that we need to assume he was referring to Islam when he mentioned "the debate over religion and violence which has taken place after Sept. 11." There is still an internal Christian issue that needs to be resolved. I sense a great deal of interest in Catholic (and broader Christian circles) in re-evaluating the traditional just war categories. In my classroom, my students frequently bring up the topic. They want to know how it is possible to have warfare in the name of Jesus? Like Benedict in his Regensburg address, my students assume that Christians will be compelled by reason to choose non-violence if they are to follow the Prince of Peace. For many of their generation, it is a no-brainer that Christianity is supposed to be non-violent and pacifist. The hardest part of teaching in this area is to get them to understand the sincerity of the crusaders or other religious warriors. Frankly, I'm not sure that I really want to.
So maybe Cantalamessa is pointing to the need for a clear repudiation of the just war tradition? Will Benedict be responsive? Is that part of the Regensburg legacy?
It was once difficult for me
It was once difficult for me to view the Crusaders as anything but self-righteous, but in light of their sincere belief that one must be Christian to avoid eternal damnation, what they did would be justified. It is only because we have a broader interpretation of who is saved and why, that we do not follow this same pattern.
Actually, the Crusaders were responding to a militant expansionist Islamic threat that was sweeping across Africa and into Europe. It had been checked in spots at times but not stopped. The Crusades were intended to stop this threat and roll it back and we know the results of that over about a three hundred fifty odd year period (and several crusades) was mixed. The Muslims were still occupying parts of Europe as late as the fifteenth century (ask Spain and France), were still militarily taking ground in the sixteenth (the Battle of Lepanto temporarily stopped them but not for long) and this went on until 1683. In other words, the Islamic military threat was a serious one for over a thousand years!!!
Now since the Vienna in 1683 they were not a threat to us and the industrial revolution gave us a serious technological edge. But that is not the case anymore and we have been seeing the past fifty years that the Islamic threat has resurfaced amongst the more extreme of the Muslim contingents.
Now it appears to me that in more democratically governed nations the overwhelming majority of the Muslims are not of this sort fortunately but I do find myself annoyed at an obvious double standard invoked by those who defend the silences of the Muslim community towards their more extremist elements as many of these same people blasted Pius XII for similar silences. And those who think there is a giant gulf between the Nazis and the extremist Muslims are not paying much attention. At least with the communists in the days of the old USSR we could to some extent communicate as they were atheists and were not interested in destroying the only life that they believed in. The Islamic extremist sorts not only do not care but they actually believe that "Allah" will reward them in the world to come in proportion to the number of people they can massacre.
We can "talk peace morning, noon, and night" as one reader suggested but it will be futile because this enemy has a long memory. And I am wondering how many of you will still be so stupid as to be chanting "give peace a chance" when your neck has the same rusty knife decapitating it as Nick Berg or Paul Johnson did. Or will you all choose to wear burkas and pray to Mecca five times a day instead???
This war on terror is not a new situation but indeed has been going on since at least the 1970's. And like the days when the Islamic hoard blew out of Saudi Arabia smashing everything in sight, these terrorist sorts have been blowing up civilian targets, civilians, and the like as well as military ones while we for the most part did nothing. President Reagan did a few things and showed backbone but even in his presidency there were a few examples where these sorts but President Carter did nothing whatsoever to let these people know that we would not tolerate this kind of crap. President Clinton did nothing of a substantive nature and even the current president's father apart from the first Gulf War did not do anything that I can recall.
September 11, 2001 brought home to us what has been going on with Americans abroad for decades. Unfortunately, the Vatican has been significantly behind in grasping the significance of what September 11, 2001 was and how it shattered the international presuppositions that had governed at least implicitly European affairs since Westphalia (roughly three hundred odd years). The only significant Catholic commentator I have seen who recognized and has written well on this matter is Sandro Magister who did so in this excellent article on Vatican geopolitics from late 2005. (It is possible that John Allen may have written on this dynamic too but if so, I have not seen it.)
President George W. Bush has done a lot of things wrong but on the matter of recognizing the enemy we are facing, he has done a decent job thus far. Certainly he has done a lot better than those nations that let themselves be bribed by Saddam to oppose actual military action in Iraq when they had voted for such things when it looked as if it would be another non-enforced resolution. (Read: Russia, France, and Germany.) He has also done a lot better in this regard that the Vatican has that is for sure. But it is to be hoped that Russia will not forget what happened to them in 2004 with the whole Breslin situation because that was their 9/11.
The enemy we are facing views peace overtures and empty threats as signs of weakness and that emboldens them. Think of their attacks on civilians as akin to the school bully who picked on the weak kids. Like the school bully, these extremist sorts only understand one thing and that is them being forced to act differently. Let us hope that other nations do not have to have their own version of a 9/11 as we did, Britain did, Spain did, and Russia did in order to realize the folly of this whole "give peace a chance" schtick. We tried that and we ignored this problem for decades. More of the same negligence will not fix it however much one may wish otherwise.