Hey, you mean America isn’t the sole refuge of pious war-mongers? I was sent this remarkable quote from Cardinal Meisner of Köln:
Einem Gott lobenden Soldaten kann man guten
Gewissens Verantwortung über Leben und Tod anderer
übertragen, weil sie
bei ihm gleichsam von der Heiligkeit Gottes mitabgesegnet sind … Wem käme es in den Sinn, Soldaten, die auch Beter sind , dann
noch als Mörder zu diskriminieren. Nein, in betenden Händen ist die
Waffe vor
Mißbrauch sicher.
It begins “One can in good conscience give a God-praising soldier responsibility over the life and death of others” and ends with the fine sentiment that “In praying hands weapons are safe from abuse.” My German is rusty enough that I would have great difficulty detecting sarcasm in that language, so someone should tell me if I’m missing some essential subtlety in the translation.
So, I’m wondering … if a soldier faithfully wears a “Gott mit uns” belt buckle, does that suggest that he can do no evil?
Shall we assume that any Muslim who hits the prayer mat four times a day is harmless?
Is Germany planning to disarm any atheists in the ranks, because they can’t be trusted with their weapons?
There positively isn`t any sarcasm you could have missed. I can`t believe it is a correct quote of Cardinal Meissner, though. To be sure, he is one of the more conservative clerics here in germany, but I simply don`t see him saying such BS.
If those are really Meisner’words, he’s completely lost it.
I’ll do some googling on it later this evening, but rest assured, there’s not a glimps of irony or sarcasm in those lines.
My wife (catholic…sort of) can’t stand his views, especially on women’s rights and abortion, but wow…that’s heavy stuff.
In my 12 years in the Army, I found that Christianity permiated everything we did, so much so that if it were a commercial organization it would have to be considered a religous organization. In Iraq there were quite a few soldiers who seriously believed they were guarded by the Christian god and that they would be protected from attacks because “He’s stronger than Allah.” Then again, serving in a war zone does weird things even to atheists like myself, bringing out all kinds of superstitions.
There are five daily prayers in Islam, not four.
Perhaps soon your child will be kidnapped by the government and forced into re-education because of your heretical views.
Oh, sorry, you live in a country where the government doesn’t do that.
http://www.netzwerk-bildungsfreiheit.de/html/pe_erlangen_en.html
This is not the source I’d use for quotation. The quote that is on the website is not in the official document of the sermon.
jcm_pr_070111-soldatengd.pdf
Better luck next time….
@Peter: I can’t find anything about this on the usual suspects (tagesschau.de, etc.), but several atheist and anti-bundeswehr sites quote him.
David, I’m sure there are many people here who wish the U.S. government would do exactly that. Because homeschoolers are evil misguided tools of the religious right.
Golly, I wish there were some indication the good Cardinal was just trying to provoke discussion here… this is truly scary, especially coming out of the mouth of a German who should know better.
Sorry, my Deutch has faded from memory. That website is odd.
It has a .TK top level domain but its obviously by and for Germans so why not .DE? Where were the skinheads to counterprotest? certainly not in the pictures.
Scary, particulary so given the history of Germany. Since this is my very first introduction to the writings of Cardinal Meisner, these words make up my entire impression of the man, and since he is the leader of many, my impression of his followers is likewise not positive.
Who can learn from their own history?
interestingly, no such quote appears on a semi-official looking [I can not determine authority or sponsorship of the site] Catholic “cardinal-rating” website’s page for the Cardinal. The contents claim to be the various Cardinals’ beliefs in their own words [and language, google translation struggles to help us here] and solicit submissions of other writings by the cardinals.
http://www.cardinalrating.com/cardinal_64__article.htm
Of course.
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Sorry, PZ, I think you’ve gotten fooled by a bunch of liars. I did a search for the quote, and one article on an anti-Bundeswehr website had the quote and actually had a citation at the bottom, but the citation is to the Frankfurter Rundschau in 1996!
Then, I check out Wikiquote, which has the quote listed as coming from the Soldatengottesdienst in 2005, though that could easily be a misprint.
Now, the website you got this from has it coming from the 2007 Soldatengottesdienst, but a quick “find” in the article brings up nothing. Of course, that could’ve been scrubbed.
As it is, though, with three different dates and the quote’s nonexistence in the only available source, I think this is just a “Gore invented the internet” sort of thing, only even less credible.
Just a quick follow-up: the article with the citation is not from an anti-Bundeswehr website, but an atheist website. (I’m using my sister’s little Powerbook with low resolution, and I keep forgetting what page I’m on since I have to scroll down so much. O:-) )
I wouldn’t give anything on the content of the site, as it is produced by a radical political group and full of wild and unbased propaganda, as demonstrated by the very first sentences:
“Die Bundeswehr […] braucht Personal für […] Folteroperationen in aller Welt.”
“The German army […] needs personnel for […] torture operations worldwide.”
Thanks, I’ve read enough already.
The qoute itself, if accurate, indeed lacks any sarcasm und would be another embarassment for church leaders. There have been some more than usually lately, especially in context of women’s role in the society.
Fortunately they don’t effect policy in any meaningful way.
Other things this doofus has said:
“I have known the Pope for 35 years (he has the intelligence of 12 professors and is as pious as a child on the day of his First Communion) and we are friends.”
http://www.popebenedictxviquotes.com/
Got that? The Pope is worth twelve of you, PZ, so don’t mess with him.
If you ask me, Meisner and the Pope are complete idiots for believeing that god crap and they are incredibly irresponsible for foisting pure bullshit on millions of brainwashed Catholics.
They exploit people’s natural gullibility for their own gain, they extort money from people based on a bunch of false promises, and they perpetuate lies.
They are bad, bad news. The sooner they apologize and find legitimate occupations, the better.
This is the link to the speech in Köln.
http://www.cardinalrating.com/cardinal_64__article_5132.htm
You see, the citation is not even remotely similar to what he says.
So this is just some unjust propaganda of some shady anti-something website. A mea-culpa-post is in order, imho.
Don’t exactly know how reliable this website is. It’s a self proclaimed “catholic encyclopedia”
Kathpedia states:
# “In betenden Händen ist die Waffe vor Missbrauch sicher.” – Aus der Predigt zum Soldatengottesdienst im Kölner Dom 2005
According to this he said this at a soldiers’ service in Cologne in 2005.
http://www.kathpedia.com/index.php?title=Joachim_Meisner
Several Websites give the quote as coming from a speech in the Cologne Cathedral on January 30, 1996.
Didn’t the Nazis have that written somewhere? I’m reasonably sure the SS did. I’m also reasonably sure they were inhuman monsters.
I, too, would not rely on the site bundeswehr-weggetreten.tk too much, however it does not state that the quote is recent, so I would not call them liars. They only give the quote to describe what they call his fundamentalist logic.
I believe that the quote is correct and from 1996. It has been mentioned in a paliamentary debate in 1999.
According to Universelles Leben, the quote is by Meisner from “Monitor”, Feb. 15, 1996.
The text in “Bundeswehr wegtreten” just repeats that quote, it does not say that Meisner said it again.
Disclaimer: I am german, so I understand the language pretty well…
Irrespective if the above statement is from Cardinal Meissner, he surely is a conservative catholic. E.g., he equaled abortion with the Holocaust. He recently replaced his liberal press officer by a member of Opus Dei.
Indeed, ´Meissner is so conservative that the ‘liberal’ chapter of the Cologne catholics didn’t want him as the new archbishop in 1988. He was not on the list that they sent to the Vatican for approval but JPII forced them to elect him because he was annoyed by the Cologne liberals. Cologne citizens still don’t love him because he came from East Germany, doesn’t speek their dialect and doesn’t fit to their catholic way of life (leeve un leeve losse = live and let live) that assumes that we are all sinners anyway but that this doesn’t matter at all because everything will be forgiven. Therefore people in Cologne enjoy Carnival and this means one week of drinking (drinke), kissing (bütze) and dancing (danze) and they really don’t care what Meissner does. I guess Meissner did a good job in further reducing the influence of the church in Cologne. Indeed, I lived a happy atheist’ life ther for 10 years.
.tk is the country code domain for Tokelau, three atolls with a population of under 1500 administered by New Zealand.
FWIW, they seem to be a bit on the dicey side of internet advertising and domain registry.
Ich kann es nicht aufbekommen. Das link ist kaput fur mich. Schade.
Oku, the article certainly implies very strongly that the cardinal said it “today.”
“For the 31st Soldiers’ Service Cardinal Meisner today blessed the Bundeswehr and their murderous business in the Cologne Cathedral in accordance with his fundamentalist logic that ‘(quote.)” There is no mention that he spoke those words anywhere but at the most recent service (even a barely competent writer would’ve said, “‘blah-blah,’ as he said at the 29th Soldiers’ Service in 2005,” or whatever is the truth).
You’re correct that it doesn’t explicitly state that he spoke those words “today,” but the writing is so piss-poor that when you’re just reading through it for the first time, the impression is clearly made that he said it very recently, and not nearly ten years prior (if the 1996 date is correct and not the 2005 one). Furthermore, the quote’s use as a sub-headline, which can be seen in the photo, clearly makes the reader assume it’s a new quote. If the sentences have to be parsed to make it conform to reality, the writing is either intentionally deceptive or just plain incompetent: either way, it’s not a source to be trusted.
Meisner is a fool. Nobody is listening to him. Or just a few, older ones.
Germany isn’t as theist as the USA. Thank God! :)
better:
Ich kann ihn (den link) nicht öffnen. Der link ist kaputt.
Not ‘für mich’, but rather ‘bei mir’ which would refer to your computer then to yourself. And this then has to be placed in a different position: Bei mir ist der link kaputt. I must admit though, that I am always unsure if English substantives have to be capitalized in German. Schade.
I must admit though, that I am always unsure if English substantives have to be capitalized in German. Schade.
Doch. Das Link ist kaputt. Aber flip nicht daruber aus.
Liebe Leute,
Euer Deutsch müsst Ihr aber noch üben ;-) Ich weiß ja nicht, welchen Link Kristine meinte, aber mir ist keiner aufgefallen, der kaputt gewesen wäre.
Sorry for that :-)
Carsten
(always impressed by the number of Americans he meets who speak german.)
You know.. There are a series of Anime called Gundam which illistrate war quite well. Its basically an endless series of some idiot pissing in some other idiots soup, that later idiot deciding revenge is necessary and either collecting together other idiots who think their soup has been pissed in, or in some cases, staging some event that pisses a lot of people off, setting of the next war. Other than some wierd stuff in Gundam Seed, there isn’t much religion in it. Its just an endless series of people trying to survive, with a handful of war mongers getting all annoyed over how a) someone has something we want, b) someone didn’t get just punishment for that last thing they did to us, or c) they where going to shoot at us, so we shot first. The joke, if you watch all of the different series, is often that the even that triggers war #3 is something that group A blames group B for in war #1, because that is the official history, but which was actually caused by some as in group A, to start a war with group B, because he wanted revenge or thought waiting too long might give group A a huge military advantage and creating a fake pre-emptive “event” to trigger a war would bring all the peace mongers on board with fighting back against people that may in fact have been building weapons, but only because they knew some idiot on the other side was doing the same thing and would happilly start another war if given half a chance.
All you would need to place it in this day and age is religious BS and replacing the big robots with airplanes and tanks.
You can sympathize with most of the people caught up in it that didn’t want to be, understand why they fight, even understand how previous wars warped the minds of some of the idiots making the new ones (without having sympathy for what they did because of it), but one things its damn hard to do is see how you break the cycle without shooting every idiot in a uniform on both sides, then starting with any relatives that might object to it, and then any friends that might object to you shooting those relatives, and… Well, you get the point. Somehow always gets their hands on something they shouldn’t have been let within 5,000 miles of, and it isn’t going to matter if its a rock of a Gundam with laser cannons and missiles. So long as people are willing to accept that its, “those other people that did it”, even when their own side actually threw the first punch, it keeps going. And ironically, sometimes the only way to nip the current mess that’s brewing in the bud is “by” being the fool that throws the first punch.
Its all very messy and highly non-intellectual, which is why people with organized minds that do lots of thinking hate it and find it impossible to comprehend. I wish I didn’t. I would probably be a lot happier if I didn’t. And I certainly would get along a lot better with people that I agree with like 90% of everything else about.
Not ‘für mich’, but rather ‘bei mir’ which would refer to your computer then to yourself.
Danke. Ich habe so viel vergessen. (Once read books in German, knew tons of drinking songs, lowers head in shame.) ;-)
Der link geht nicht.
@Kristine, second try:
The transcript of Cardinal Meisner’s sermon on 01/11/07. It is from his diocese’s website.
jcm_pr_070111-soldatengd.pdf (German language)
Hopefully this works.
Meissner is a really nasty piece of work but it seems that the quote that is on the web page is not taken from his sermon on this occasion, which I have just read and which like everything that this man says makes me feel sick. Meissner ist ein Arschloch!
There is a somewhat more coherently written article at http://www.vvn-bda.de/bund/aktuelles.php3?id=42 which says that in his 2007 sermon Kardinal Meiser ‘probably referred to his sermon from jan 1996’ (“hatte offensichtlich bei der Vorbereitung der Rede in dem Text seiner Ansprache von 1996 nachgeschlagen”) from which the above quote is taken.
— eike
Four years in high school. One year in college.
sigh
Ich hatte es aller vergessen (und ich mußte Babelfish verwenden, um dieses zu schreiben).
If the quote is from 1996, that would explain the spelling Mißbrauch. That was phased out from 1998 to 2005; now it’s Missbrauch, and ß is only used in places where ss would be misleading. (The former rules were totally arbitrary, with no connection to pronunciation or for that matter etymology or anything.)
If the quote is from 1996, that would explain the spelling Mißbrauch. That was phased out from 1998 to 2005; now it’s Missbrauch, and ß is only used in places where ss would be misleading. (The former rules were totally arbitrary, with no connection to pronunciation or for that matter etymology or anything.)
Same old story everywhere and through every time period. People claim their god’s authority for their actions. The Nazis were no different in this regard.
Sorry John, it should be ‘Ich habe alles vergessen’. Babelfish shouldn’t be trusted all the time.
Das Kommentar gilt natuerlich nur fuer Katholiken und ist bestimmt nicht fuer diese extremistischen protestantischen Sekten gemeint, die sich in den USA als Christen bezeichnen. Der Kardinal sieht zwischen denen und den Islamisten sicher keinen Unterschied.
I must admit though, that I am always unsure if English substantives have to be capitalized in German.
From what I understand, it isn’t clear to the Germans either. I usually capitalize all substantives. But, be careful. “Mittag” (subtantive) is capitalized, but mittags (adverbe) is not.
Just how many f’s are there in Schifffffffahrt? It was hilarious to read in the German newspapers at the time of the transition that many Germans didn’t know the spelling rules, either.
I hated the neue Rechtscreibungvorschriften. It did away with the many instance of the S-set, which I strugged so long to learn.
BTW, on the subject matter of the post, if it quoted the Erzbischof correctly–which I doubt–I would presume that context would suggest that he was being misinterpreted. The interpretation here would be in stark contrast to a Rede (speech) two years earlier at a similar convocation. http://www.katholische-militaerseelsorge.de/aktuell/internas/2005/2005_0121_koeln_weltfriedenstag/index.htm (Sorry, it’s in German) It is hardly militaristic.
Bei mir ist der link kaputt.
I wouldn’t even use “bei.” “Mir ist der Link kaputt” geht. I’m not even sure if “bei mir” is correct grammar in that instance. “Mir” translates to “to me,” so why would the “bei” be necessary?
I also do not detect any sarcasm in that statement.
In fact, I am quite shocked. That guy is a complete lunatic.
They always say that they want to save mankind through christ, but when I read something like that I wonder if there is anything worth saving in the first place…
More like…
In betenden Hände ist Waffenmißbrauch sicher.
;-)
Not sure where to post this but if someone (especially the six officially declared Florida atheists) happens to be in the neighborhood they might want to check this out.
2/28/07
FROM: Louis J. Appignani
The Louis J. Appignani Foundation is co-sponsoring another important conference entitled, “Secular ISLAM Summit,” comprising an international forum of important secularists from Islamic countries. It will be held this weekend, March 4-5 at the Hilton Hotel, St. Petersburg, Florida.
It will bring together leading Islamic intelectuals, academics, journalists and politicians from around the world including Iraq. Wide international press coverage is expected, including CNN, AP, US News and World Report, BBC, and various European publications.
A better understanding of how secular democratic societies can co-exist with sectarian Islam is fundamental to world peace for the near future. This is a first step in that direction, and the Foundation is privledged to participate in this important beginning. The conference will be co-hosted by the Center for Inquiry and the Intelligence Summit.
Additional information regarding the summit is available at http://www.secularislam.org/blog/SI_Blog.php
Ad Topic 1: Meissner is really one of the more controversial cardinals in germany but even then I doubt the quote. It is too far off and I bet that even the soldiers in that church would say so. Most of them would have been drafted and mostly you end up in church because it is better than staying behind and polishing boots. Been there, done that.
Ad Topic 2:
That´s correct. But “Bei mir geht der Link nicht.” would be more common, I suppose.
Not correct. Although I think there are some tribes in the Ruhrgebiet, where you are allowed to talk like that. ;) “Mir” in this case is part of the adverbial construction to define the place where the link is broken. In other words, ablativ, not dativ. Oops, thats latin.
That would be “Mir ist der Link kaputtgegangen.” :-)
Which, of couse, would not be correct either, since it was already broken before.
Here is another link (http://www.paxan-koeln.de/) attributing Meisners insane blather to a service held for soldiers on 1/30/1996 at Cologne cathedral. It’s on a hp of a cologne group of peace-activists. I’m german and do understand what they say there and there is indeed a report on a soldier service held on 1/11/2007 BUT (!) they added the quotation to depict Meisners set of mind and scourge his “fundamentalistic logic” which made him express this bullc..p in 1996.
Living in Cologne (and I can assert what sparc already said) I myself do know how astonishingly insane and dead-conservative Meisner is and this quote fits him just perfectly.
Btw: it does not matter WHEN he said what he said. Lunacy like that is pretty durable.
I don’t know anything about the nasty old bishop, but I did enjoy dredging up my two years of German in college (1959-60)! It needs work. Danke sehr!
“Btw: it does not matter WHEN he said what he said. Lunacy like that is pretty durable.”
Du hast recht und wie!
Im Koelner Dom liegen die Knochen der dreig Konige, die Jesus besuchen hatten.
Was waere das fuer ein Schock, wenn es zu Tageslicht kaeme, dass in der Tat keine alten Konigen da begraben sind, weil die aus dem Land des Mythos stammten, und frisch erfunden worden waren.
Es ist wirklich keine Ueberraschung, dass eine Kirche , die lehrt, dass in ihrer Stadt der Ueberrest von den Konigen sind, manchmal andere Dinge sagt, dass merkwuerdig sind.
Heh heh. Very well said!
(But… but… everyone knows Americans don’t learn foreign languages, unless of course they are mind-boggling geeks who learn one language after another for fun! I’ll stay on the safe side and translate:
“The [suddenly grammatically emasculated] commentary is of course only valid for Catholics and is certainly not meant for those extremist protestant sects who call themselves Christian in the USA. The Cardinal surely doesn’t see a difference between those and the Islamists.”)
“Bei mir”, incidentally, translates literally into French as “chez moi”. “Bei” is “by” as in “by my side” — “at my place” — “here”. I blame the Splendid Isolation of English…
And no, German does not have an ablative. Not even in the Ruhr area.
Three. Schiff + Fahrt.
Under the old rules there were two because a vowel follows; Sauerstoffflasche still had three. Basically you had to be a geek like me to know this kind of rule.
Of course, one wonders why the reform didn’t change that to two in all instances instead of three in all instances.
Bingo.
Heh heh. Very well said!
(But… but… everyone knows Americans don’t learn foreign languages, unless of course they are mind-boggling geeks who learn one language after another for fun! I’ll stay on the safe side and translate:
“The [suddenly grammatically emasculated] commentary is of course only valid for Catholics and is certainly not meant for those extremist protestant sects who call themselves Christian in the USA. The Cardinal surely doesn’t see a difference between those and the Islamists.”)
“Bei mir”, incidentally, translates literally into French as “chez moi”. “Bei” is “by” as in “by my side” — “at my place” — “here”. I blame the Splendid Isolation of English…
And no, German does not have an ablative. Not even in the Ruhr area.
Three. Schiff + Fahrt.
Under the old rules there were two because a vowel follows; Sauerstoffflasche still had three. Basically you had to be a geek like me to know this kind of rule.
Of course, one wonders why the reform didn’t change that to two in all instances instead of three in all instances.
Bingo.
I said Just how many f’s are there in Schifffffffahrt?
You said Three. Schiff + Fahrt.
Now, yes. Before the Rechtschreibung reform a few years ago, no–it was two.
We were at our house in Munich at the time of the Rechtschreibung reform at the time it went into effect. The controversy was hilarious.
Any see this? I would have thought PZ would have picked it up by now!
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,468693,00.html
Correct. I said so in my next sentence.
Ah.
“It was impossible to discuss with that man”, parishioner Martin Kretzmann, who has been being pastor in St. Ansverus [an apparently Lutheran church] for seven years, remembers. “He beat one to death with Bible quotes.”
Almost literally.
Correct. I said so in my next sentence.
Ah.
“It was impossible to discuss with that man”, parishioner Martin Kretzmann, who has been being pastor in St. Ansverus [an apparently Lutheran church] for seven years, remembers. “He beat one to death with Bible quotes.”
Almost literally.
How come everybody has decided that the citation is from his 1996 speech? Any non-phony source for this?
Not that I like Meisner in any way, but the citation is way off. I still don’t believe this is true, and facts presented so far are unconvincing.
G’day.
I think the quote is genuine and from 30Jan’96:
Web Results 1 – 1 of 1 from erzbistum-koeln.de for in betenden Händen ist die Waffe vor Mißbrauch sicher. (0.29 secs)
[PDF] Nachrichten, Berichte und TermineFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
unterstreichen: “Nein, in betenden Händen ist die Waffe vor jedem Mißbrauch sicher.” Soldaten seien Praktiker darin, Liebe zu verschenken. …
http://www.erzbistum-koeln.de/export/sites/erzbistum/erzbistum/presse/pressearchiv/category_c/PEK011996.pdf
Note that you can only get the document from the Google cache via “View as HTML,” looks like the source doc might have ‘moved,’ (i.e. been deleted?)
Actual quote:
«Wem käme es in den Sinn, Soldaten, die auch Beter sind, dann noch als Mörder zu diskriminieren”, fragte der Kardinal kritisch, um dann zu unterstreichen: “Nein, in betenden Händen ist die Waffe vor jedem Mißbrauch sicher.” Soldaten seien Praktiker darin, Liebe zu verschenken. Dies treibe den so Beschenkten in die Danksagung. Und dankende Menschen seien positive Menschen, sagte Meisner.»
On the way to peace first we need justice; get it via the truth.
Start with no lies and no cheating then end with no theft and no murder; i.e. stop the US (UK, Aus) murdering for Iraqi oil, and stop Israel murdering for land and water.
First disarm USrael (defence behind fair borders) as a vital priority.
Then stop the CO2 catastrophe.
regards.
diyet