On the 31st October 1517
Martin Luther is said to have issued his “95 Theses” questioning
the morality or immorality of the practice by the Roman Catholic
Church of selling “Indulgences.”
Having committed a “venial sin” (
as opposed to a deadly one ) Christians, so the R.C.Church teaches to
this day, will have to spend time in Purgatory, where flames, pain
and suffering await them.
If, so the calculating Popes of this
time announced, letters of Indulgence would be purchased by
Christians, their time, or the time of their loved-ones in whose name
the Indulgence was purchased, in Purgatory would be shortened, if not
totally eliminated.
This practice, instituted by the Popes
and executed by hundreds of “Indulgence Preachers” is surely no
different from the Mafia, who assures the merchants of their town,
that their stores would be protected from vandalism, fire bombs and
total destruction, if they rendered regular “Protection Payments.”
Replace “Protection” with
“Indulgence” and you have an undeniable simile.
History demonstrates over and over
again that many of the Popes acted no differently than Sicilian Mafia
Dons.
So far, so good: Luther recognized an
evil and spoke against it, thereby founding the Reform movement,
referred to as “Lutheran Church”, “Protestantism” and by
several other names.
Who was Martin Luther really?
At first, Luther
was eager to convert members of the Jewish faith to Christianity and
he spoke in the kindliest but condescending of terms about them.
Once he became aware that conversion of
members of the Jewish faith to Christianity was very difficult, if
not impossible, he, in his frustration, became a virulent Antisemite,
publishing a number of treaties and essays against Jews. The worst
of them was entitled: “On the Jews and their Lies”
in which he listed 7 points regarding
the manner in which Jews should be treated:
Burn down their schools and
synagogues; this is to be done in honor of our Lord and of
Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians.
Raze to the ground and destroy
their houses and transfer them to “Community Settlements”
Confiscate all Jewish literature,
which was blasphemous and in which idolatry, lies, and cursing is
taught.
Prohibit Rabbis to teach on pain
of loss of life and limb.
Deny Jews “Safe-Conduct” on
the streets, for they have no business in the countryside.
Appropriate their wealth
Assign Jews to manual labor as a
form of penance.
Luther, at his most hate filled
writings spoke of the Jews as “a base and whoring people who are
full of the devil's feces, in which they wallow like swine” and the
synagogue is an “incorrigible whore and an evil slut.”
This, believe it or not, are the
utterings of a self professed “Christian minister” and learned
Theologian.
There are, of course, a number of
apologists who will claim that Luther's virulent Antisemitism is not
based on race, but rather on “theological differences.”
Is it really possible that there exists
a person who believes that it makes any difference whatever, why the
above 7 points are justified in one way more than in another?
400 years later, Hitler, Himmler and their gang of murdering hoodlums must have read this Essay and set into practice almost exactly all of
the 7 points. Under H & H these places, referred to in point 2
above as “Community Settlements” were simply called “Concentration
Camps” and to the millions who perished there it made little
difference whether they were put to death for “racial”or “theological” reasons.
While I am not known as a defender of
Roman Catholicism, ( in fact I consider Religion in all its
manifestations as one of the worst evils against which mankind has to
struggle), it seems to me that the practices of the Papacy and its
henchmen, of selling indulgences, against which Luther protested so
vociferously and which resulted eventually in the formation of
Protestantism is, in the moral sense, like nothing when compared to
the preaching of this fanatic as expressed in his writings.
It is, in fact, a simple "Con Job" compared to the urgings to deprive a people of its existence.
The papal promise of a
shortened stay in Purgatory was simply a blatant lie, in which
probably not even the Pope himself believed. It was a primitive
attack on the gullibility of the Catholic masses to cheat them out of part of their mostly hard earned savings. One may come to the conclusion that
the idea of Purgatory was the first step in the black mail of simple
minded believers.
It is fair to state that Antisemitism
found such fruitful soil in largely Protestant Germany, when one
considers that all the German population needed to do was to point to
the writings of the admired founder of their religious splinter
group.
This easily explains the
“Kristalnacht,” the book-burning, the illegal expropriation of
Jewish property, the willful, brutal attacks on Jews in the streets
of many German cities and finally their extermination in the gas
ovens of innumerable concentration camps.
Please, dear Lord, if you exist and if
you care, save me from Catholics and Protestants alike.
A Pest on both their houses.
Bertstravels.
