Mea Culpa'd
Crusades, blood libels, inquisitions and conversions that were forced,
indifference to the blood of helpless Jews spilt in the holocaust,
a litany of crimes for which the Pope should use his bully pulpit,
and yet equivocates while in denial, hardly mea culpa’d,
will be forgotten soon, because the mantra never to forget
itself will be forgotten and the crimes of Nazi will be set
aside, diminished in importance by great other acts of genocide
and claims they never happened to six million, and the Jews just lied.
Pope John Paul II has expressed condemnation regarding the acts of the Church against the Jews but has failed to admit that the responsibility was not that of individual Catholics but of the Church. Furthermore, he maintains an eerie silence about the passive role that the Church as a whole, as Pope Pius XII in particular (whom he wishes to canonize) played during the Holocaust.
I wrote the first quatrain on 3/14/00 and the second on 2/10/-0, compiling my poems on the Shoah.
3/14/00,2/10/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Related quotes
Genesis Of Genocide
GENESIS OF GENOCIDE
Jewish history comes with homily,
the seder shared by all the family
the best example. When men talk about
the Holocaust the homilies they're taught
homogenize the fate that menaced us
the Jews, with that of gentiles. Genesis
of genocide is changed: the hermeneutic
of revision makes it therapeutic
for those who wish to drive Jews from their land.
"The Jews, " they say, "have like the Nazis sinned,
creating victims just as Nazis did,
replacing Hitler with the settlers' God, "
revisionists exclaiming "Out of order! "
when hearing at the end of every seder
the mantra, "Next year in Jerusalem! "
while they as chauvinists condemn
the Jews, in spite of their thousand years
of blood and sweat and toil, and lots of tears,
as then in Jewish wounds rub salt, declaring
that there were other holocausts, comparing
other genocidal horrors to
what happened to the Jews, a point of view
that totally distorts significance of what,
in Wannsee, Hitler's minions chose to plot,
reducing the Solution that was Final
to a competition's quarterfinal.
The greatest homily of Jewish history
is Jews' survival, a great mystery
which it's impossible to overhype,
based on the theme of their great anthem, hope.
The last part of this poem was inspired by an emotional outburst that I had after Gerald Duchovnay told Linda, Florence Zhou and me about how he teaches students in Texas about the Holocaust by using the Shoah to explain to them "the holocaust in Sudan."
Ed Rothstein ("Memories of Holocaust, Fortified, " NYT,4/22/11) writes from Skokie:
Before the $45 million Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center opened here two years ago, there was some urgency in completing its 65,000-square-foot building, which now stands so incongruously monumental in the midst of Chicago's suburban landscape. At one time,7,000 Jews bearing the scars of the Holocaust had lived in Skokie with their families, and they were aging. Many had contributed artifacts to the museum; some participated when it was just a storefront on Main Street; some had their oral histories recorded for its exhibition and their lives chronicled in the institution's imposing companion book, "Memory and Legacy."…..
If we want to find a lesson in the events, for example, is it that individuals should not be bystanders or that nations should not be appeasers? Is the lesson that everybody should have a social conscience, or that a different kind of political action is needed when such forces emerge? Was the Holocaust a product of intolerance or an expression of more specific archetypal hatreds?
One of the challenges faced by Holocaust museums as survivors die is to understand their experience by seeing it through more than their eyes, to examine the past without homogenizing it with platitudes, to offer history without homily.
This poem echoes one that I wrote on 2/17/09, inspired by a statement by the Lubavitcher Rebbe:
TOMORROW MORNING, EARLY
"Will there be another holocaust? "
they asked the Rebbe of Lubavitch.
For an answer he was never lost.
"Of course there will be. Man is savage."
"When will this happen? " they inquired.
"Morgen in der frih, " he said,
Tomorrow morning, early, has transpired,
and millions are already dead.
It's happened in Rwanda and Sudan,
as in silence we looked on.
It couldn't happen here, we say. It can,
and millions more will soon be gone.
Long ago an interviewer asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, if he believed the Holocaust could ever happen in America. "Morgen in der frih, " was his reply, Yiddish words that mean: "Early tomorrow morning."
11/6/12 #11803
poem by Gershon Hepner
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The Holocaust never quite leaves Israeli Jews alone. Arabs use it against them and they use it against Arabs. Jews use it against other Jews. Even the president of the United States, it seems, can use it against the prime minister of Israel.
quote by David K. Shipler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Compromise In Leadership
Media and Catholics
keep telling me
the Pope is the head
of the Roman
Catholic Church
for me God
Jesus the Holy Spirit
is the trinity head
of the Roman
Catholic Church.
Does the Pope
live up to his vast
responsibilities?
Show me
any man
or women
on earth
who lives up to vast
responsibilities?
Politics governments
compromise in leadership
compromise corrupts.
Who has not heard
"all power corrupts"
"absolute power corrupts
absolutely"?
The touchstone
of accountability
was is Ten Commandments
given directly by God.
This was is yardstick
measure to apply
to leadership
politics religion
all decisions.
But rogue rulers
leaders governments
have discarded
the Ten Commandments.
Historically over history
globally like dominoes
all such Empires
all when corruption
endemic infuses
any organization society.
Either there is repentance
restoration of justice
human rights applied for all
a return to divine
inspired God's laws.
Or arrogance injustice
animates bedrock
common foundation families
shaped building blocks
comprising all societies.
What blood
price compromise
World War Two
Roman Catholic Church
Sacred Pope Vatican City
Nazi Germany Hitler treaty
in total innocent
European lives lost?
What blood guilt
judgement
awaits from God?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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A Tribute to The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI
Message: “But, let there be one flock and one Shepherd.”
The world has got a Pope anew!
His name is Joseph Ratzinger;
On April, twenty-fourth, Sunday,
He’s duly installed as the Pope,
Successor to Pope John Paul II.
A German cardinal old-aged,
A Theologian ’yond compare;
A man of wisdom, silver-haired,
A conservative of the Church,
He said Inaugural Mass that day.
St. Peter’s Square was thronged by crowds
Of people of all ages, sex-
That numbered five lakhs from countries,
To witness his Investiture:
A life-time’s rare phenomenon!
Yes, Heads of States and religious;
The clerics and the laity too;
Representatives from many lands;
Some curious tourists and Faithful,
Dignitaries and pilgrims too,
Had jubilantly gathered here.
And Benedict, the XVI stood,
All dressed in cassock of pure white;
With face akin a beaming sun,
He blessed the flock that vouched support,
Became their new Shepherd of love!
A Pallium of finest wool,
With five red crosses and three nails
Just like the wounds of Jesus Lord;
A ring with St.Peter, as fisherman-
A Mitre and a Staff- he got!
Oh, what a glorious sight indeed!
All flower-decked and incensed air;
Heavenly scene on earth for once;
The sheep in finest attire-
They came to greet the new Shepherd!
The Pope then said a Latin mass-
A language of the Vatican;
With Gospels in Latin and Greek;
Pope’s homily that took an hour!
The patient crowds turned ecstatic!
Pope’s Homily in Italian:
Assuming an enormous task, he said,
“I’ll do the Will of God and not my own;
I ask for prayers from you, one and all;
I reach out to believers and to Jews,
And non-believers- ‘Listen to God’s word’;
The Lord will guide me from now on;
I’m but a weak servant of God;
My special greetings to all who will share
This great spiritual heritage.
But, let there be one flock and one Shepherd.”
The Mass went on to Holy Communion;
The priests went to the pilgrims to give it;
Applauses loud interrupted his speech;
The crowds waved flags to the new Pope
As he traveled amidst them in a jeep!
The luckier ones had a glimpse of the Pope;
The others took his photographs;
Some viewed him through binoculars;
The billion Catholics watched him by TV;
The Pope then blessed the pilgrims and his flock.
Some viewed him rather too skeptically,
Afraid of his orthodoxy dogmas;
The earlier Pope had not answered
Some modern problems that world faced;
How will he deal with Abortion,
Gay- marriages and Condom use,
Women as priests, homosexuality?
But time will tell whether this Pope
Will change the world, better the Church;
Some things can ne’er be compromised;
The Shepherd loves his flock, no doubt;
The flock must heed his word-’Follow’.
The Shepherd searches for lost sheep;
With him as guide, ‘Don’t be afraid.’
poem by John Celes
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Shaving cream
Shaving Cream
On the day that yet another car bomb exploded
in Baghdad, I forgot to buy shaving cream and
had to go back to the shop, there is weariness
about bad news from Iraq. I also forgot to buy
a litre of milk and a goat cheese.
Four thousand US troops killed, which, after
five years of war, as an amazing small number;
but then, this is a war where civilians get to do
the dying.Six hundred thousand or near a million
dead, no one knows or cares, but it might end up
as being as great a crime as the holocaust:
Was it five or six million Jews who perished?
This is a number that concerns deniers greatly,
who are of the opinion that only about 2oo Jews
died, regrettably of typhus, on a train journey
between Poland and Russia.
What we do know, is that the holocaust was
worst criminal act known to man; it is therefore
an eternal shame that Israel uses this tragedy to
silence us when they continue to unlawfully take
more of Palestinian land
It is much easier to take up Tibet’s cause, isn’t
strange that the riots it happens know as
the Olympic in Beijing looms? Forget Iraq and
the Gaza strip, where our hands are bloodied;
this new cause will make us feel morally superior
poem by Jan Oskar Hansen
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The United Nations was founded in the aftermath of World War II, just as the world was beginning to learn the full horrors of history's worst genocide, the Holocaust that consumed 6 million Jews and 3 million others in Europe.
quote by Linda Chavez
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Church without Youth is a Church without a future. Moreover, Youth without a Church is Youth without a future.
Pope Shenouda III in Pope & Patriach of Alexandria
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Only One Mediator
Friend, there is but one mediator, set between man and his Creator.
And it was the very Son of God, Jesus Christ, who received the nod.
Pray not to common folk like us, even if that be the mother of Jesus.
God’s chosen vessel, this is true, but still a sinner, like me and you.
The adoration of the Virgin Mary, and its practice is oh so contrary,
Conflicting with Words of Scripture, where we see a different picture.
A humble servant knew her Creator, was indeed her Lord and Savior.
As the chosen vessel she was blessed, yet a sinner just like the rest.
And as of today, close to a myth, is the exalted office of the Pontiff.
Only a man raised in a sinful life, named by men the Vicar of Christ.
Said to be the successive leader, of the very first Pontiff Saint Peter,
The leader of the Gentile Church, but have you done any research?
By Peter it would have been refused, as he was Apostle to the Jews.
Paul was Apostle to the Gentiles, read the epistles, there’s no denial.
Today men don’t follow Peter’s trend, for he was also married friend.
From an Apostle who had a wife, to today’s leader of the celibate life.
Call no man Father, Jesus had said, for no one can stand in His stead.
Christ’s heart it must surely bother, when they call a Pope Holy Father.
Worship of any man, there’s no denial, is akin to the worship of an idol.
This is one Commandment of the ten, which is forgotten by Holy men.
These are only two fabrications, which have deceived all the nations,
Fabrications contrary to God’s Word, that the early Church had heard.
But, God’s Truth will not be denied, no matter how long men have lied.
Though they believe it to be true, Christ will say Truth you never knew.
(Copyright ©10/2005)
I Just Wanted to Get Your Opinion
What do you think about the Pope?
And the...
Influence of the church,
These
Days...?
HEY! ?
I just wanted to get your opinion.
I did not mean to chase you away.
Oh well.
Geeessshhh...
Is it 'that' bad?
I heard about the exorcisms.
But my goodness!
Impeaching a Pope?
What is going on inside that place?
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Sex & The Church
Though the idea of compassion
Is said to be
The union of christ
And his bride, the christian
Its all very puzzling
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
And the church
And the church
All the great mystic religions
Put strong emphasis, on
Redeame this spiritual qualities
Of sex of sex
Chrstianity
Has been pretty modern
About sex
Of sex of sex of sex of sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex sex
I think there is a union
Between the flesh and the spirit
Its sex and the church
Sex and the church
All religions mother
Give me youre freedom of spirit
And the joys of the flesh
Of sex sex sex and the church
Give me youre freedom of spirit
And the joys of the flesh
Of sex sex sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
And the church
And the church
Sex sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
And the church
And the church
Sex sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex sex
Sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex sex
song performed by by David Bowie
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Pope in US
(A poetic gist by Dr John Celes, India)
A historical moment for the world;
Pope 265 set foot on US soil;
Pope Benedict XVI was his name
The Apostle of peace and human rights;
He planned his itinerary with shrewdness;
He touched upon all themes that plague the world;
He brought the only hope to US- Christ;
‘With faith, let’s encounter the living God.’
He timed his visit when he thought most fit;
‘Humanism must be revived quickly.’
Modern world dabbled with key issues now.
The foundation of faith was in doldrums.
The heart of man could not be won by war;
For lasting peace, dialogue was needed;
He left his mark, indelible behind;
America could not forget the Pope!
The Gentle Giant spoke in candid terms;
The world cannot rely on human strength;
The help of God was needed doubtlessly;
He brought to US blessings from heaven!
The nation’s heart and mind was enraptured;
They heard the Pope’s message most lovingly;
God’s humble servant made them even laugh;
All human life was sacred until death!
All Catholics were directed to follow
The teachings of the Holy Catholic Church;
They should reflect their faith in daily lives;
And leaders weren’t exception to this rule.
Human sexuality was sacrosanct;
All clerics must be pure in heart and soul;
Few good priests were better than many bad;
The Church and world were at cross-roads today!
Society’s foundations were crumbling fast!
Good families formed framework of the church;
Morality couldn’t be thrown to the winds;
Freedom entailed preserving one’s virtues.
Vicar of Christ- the Pope lauded US;
‘May God bless America even more! ’
Americans should set an example
In earthly life to others in the globe!
Prez Bush saw God very eyes of Pope!
Pope came to feed those souls hungry for God;
He prayed terrorists’ hatred hearts too change;
Love was the one weapon to win all wars!
The world was glad to see Pope in US!
May be, God would do miracles through him;
‘The sheep were happy with their Good Shepherd! ’
May be, the world would make a new beginning!
Copyright by Dr John Celes 4-22-2008
poem by John Celes
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We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.
Not Just A Bad Review
We’d not have had a Tisha B’av or Holocaust
if they’d just given us a bad review,
but we’ve been killed by them, not just divorced:
that’s what we mean by “hard to be a Jew”.
The Arabs say we are the favorite folk
of which they wish to be entirely rid;
unfortunately this is not a joke:
it’s still true that it’s shver tsu sayn a yid.
Kenneth Turan, senior movie critic for the LA Times, addressing an audience at UCLA today, was asked whether he thought the role of Jews has historically been fairly represented in Hollywood movies. He replied that it was impossible to do so. “After all, ” he said, “historically Jews haven’t just got bad reviews. I wish that were all that they’ve received.”
11/27/07
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.
quote by Pope Benedict XVI
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a proof of the priest's inner maturity; it is the expression of his personal dignity.
quote by Pope John Paul II
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The death of Pope John Paul II led many of different faiths and of no faith to acknowledge their debt to the Roman Catholic Church for holding on to absolutes that the rest of us can measure ourselves against.
quote by Suzanne Fields
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church.
quote by Pope John Paul II
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In early church polemics, Jews are deemed no longer worthy of their own Scriptures because they have failed to accept Christ as the Messiah.
quote by Jack Schwartz
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Holocaust Latvia Begins
Holocaust Latvia begins
on June 22,1941 when
the German army invaded
the Russian Soviet Union;
and the Baltic States
of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia which had
by Soviet military forces;
recently been occupied
after a proud period
of independence after
World War One finished.
Murders of Jews
Communists began
almost immediately
by Einsatzgruppen;
perpetrated by German
killer squads known
as Special Task Groups
Special Assignment Groups;
the German Security Police
Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo
the Security Service of the SS
the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.
The first recorded murders
were on the day after invasion
on the night of June 23,1941
in town of Grobina near Liepāja;
six Jews were killed
in the church cemetery
by Sonderkommando
1a members deployed;
with the 14th Army
Nazi German
Einsatzkommandos
were a sub-group;
of five Einsatzgruppen
mobile killing squads
up to 3,000 men each
composed of 500 to 1000;
officials of dread SS
Schutzstaffel (SS)
and Gestapo thugs
their vile missions;
the annihilation of Jews
Gypsies Soviet political
Commissars to kill Jews
all Polish intellectuals;
Romani, communists
NKVD collaborators
in captured territories
behind the advancing;
German front lines
Nazi occupiers
were also aided
by a unit of native;
Latvians known
as Arājs Commando
Latvian auxiliary police
Wehrmacht commanders;
bolstered the strength
of the Einsatzgruppen
with regular-army troops
whenever required.
Latvia July 29,1941
forty mental patients
from Lódz in Poland
are taken from hospital;
executed in nearby forest
July 31,1941 Hermann
Göring instructs SS Reich
Security Service chief;
Reinhard Heydrich
to evacuate eliminate
all European Jews
in German-held territory;
Göring's letter mentions
'complete solution'
to European Jewry
Jews purified in death;
July 1941 Germans
establish a Jewish
ghetto at Dvinsk Latvia
July-August 1941;
Jews are murdered
by the tens of thousands
throughout western
Soviet Union Lithuania;
Romania and Latvia
who are the murders?
German Einsatzgruppen
Romanian troops militia;
Ukrainian peasants
Lithuanian civilians
August 1941 German
slaughter of Jews;
at Cesis Latvia
is celebrated
by German troops
security police;
celebrate with
a Totenmahl
'death banquet'
August 1941;
in Belgium
collaborationist
military
organization;
Legion Wallonie
Wallonian Legion
is established
September 29-30 1941;
Babi Yar Kiev
Soviet Ukraine
33,771 Jews
killed in two days;
by SS and German
police units
November 30 and
December 8 1941;
at Rumbula forest
near Riga Latvia
25,000 Jews
killed in two days;
Einsatzgruppen
will murder
over one million
people in occupied;
territories the first
Nazi organized
policy mass killing
of European Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Our Christian conviction is that Christ is also the messiah of Israel. Certainly it is in the hands of God how and when the unification of Jews and Christians into the people of God will take place.
quote by Pope Benedict XVI
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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