I'm back from Fr. Sigmund's funeral, which was beautiful in its way. Hearing the eulogy and talking to friars before and after the Mass, I recalled some details that I had forgotten about Fr. Sigmund's life.
Sigmund was present at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Having been there for five years, he used to say that he was scheduled to be shot the next day. After the war he dedicated himself to the hopefulness of the Esperanto movement, went all over the world promoting it, and was an Australian citizen when he finally came here to the USA.
I remember visiting Dachau. In the spring of 1993 I was supposed to be studying philosophy at NUI Galway. We had a month off for Easter, so this kid Travis and I went over to the continent and wandered around. We had no plan nor itinerary, so we were never lost or off schedule. Waking up in Munich one morning after a long evening of pretzel and beer consumption, we decided to make the short side trip to the concentration camp.
It was one of the eeriest experiences of my life. It was dusty and desolate. You didn't even want to talk. I remember seeing another tourist with his video camera going. It made me feel something like angry or sad. I wanted to say something to him, but again, I just didn't feel like speaking. I don't even feel much like writing about the experience now, but it does call out to me with something that I have come to believe, and which is at the heart of my own desire for God and conversion to Catholic Christianity: we human beings cannot trust ourselves to know what is good and right. We are too wounded. We need God.
5 comments:
Father Charles, the other aspect, in our addition to needing God, is an acknowledgement that evil exists and when it is pervasive and unchecked, it can infect an entire country and society and cause people to do the unspeakable. I think that one of the great mysteries of the 20th century is that a significant part of the populace of Germany could either actively participate or be silently complicit as evil consumed them, and then went on to cause a world conflict that consumed the greatest number of human lives in history. The historians' explanation of economic misery post WWI, the weakness of th German political system, the internal tyrany that eliminated opposition to the rise of the Nazi state, etc. cannot explain it fully. Whether you call it evil or the work of Satan or whatever, it is clear that its malevolent force caused unimagined misery and depravity.
"I think that one of the great mysteries of the 20th century is that a significant part of the populace of Germany could either actively participate or be silently complicit as evil consumed them, and then went on to cause a world conflict that consumed the greatest number of human lives in history."
This is us, right here, right now. That's the unbelievable irony, that we are being carried along into something that already makes the Nazis look like boy scouts. Not only have we slaughtered x millions of babies in the womb, we are the moral template for the rest of the world in doing the same thing. Like the Germans who did not want to think about what was going on in the death camps, there are any number of things we do not want to thnk about, among them the nuclear stockpile that could make Dachau look like the Garden of Eden, the ongoing destruction of the very idea of the family via the mass media, our complicity in all kinds of things that are bringing down the wrath of God- pornography, the hypersexualization of the young, drug use, etc. We are the Germans in the 1920's, but on steroids.
Future generations are not going to shake their heads over the Germans of the 1940's, but over the Americans of today, who had the example of the Germans and did not flee from it. Of course, there are huge differences in the two societies,(they were prejudiced against Jews, while we are prejudiced against babies)but the overall result will the along the same lines, only worse.
Like them we also like to think of ourselves as in the vanguard of all reality, as nice guys, full of gemutlichkeit and good will toward all. We are on a collision course with reality.
Abortion-on-demand is this day's equivalent. Its evil exists. It is pervasive and unchecked. It has infected our entire country and society and has caused people to do the unspeakable. It has deceived us into believing that our our children are nothing more than "products of conception." With close to 50 million abortions performed in the US alone since the passing of Roe -vs- Wade, it is a holocaust of epic proportions. That a significant part of the populace of the US could either actively participate or be silently complicit as evil consumes us points more towards evil's ability to deceive us into calling evil good and good evil under the guise of women's rights. The Dachau of abortion will be realized once all those jars of fetal remains performed at the hands of abortionists is put on display in a museum. Only then will we as a society realize the depths to which we have allowed evil to consume us.
In light of your two posts on Fr Sigmund this week, it is notable to mention that Fr.Maximilian Kolbe's memorial is typically celebrated August 15.
From Father's Charles reminiscences, Father Sigmund, despite experiencing first hand the horrors of the Nazi extermination machine in which many innocents were horribly murdered, went on to live a life of hope and faith in the blessings of Almighty God. Similarly, we should follow his example and hope that, with our prayers and through God's mercy, the scourge of abortion will be driven from this country.
Besides praying, we can also commit to support and vote for those political candidates who are pro-life, because the the laws will not change in this country until the people who make the laws change. Ostensibly self proclaimed "ardent" Catholics who are also pro-choice will someday have to answer for their actions before God.
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