Another Attempt To Explain Away The Evil Anti Catholic Media --- By Playing The Evil Nazi Card

Now the Italian Bishops are fielding the notion the abuse crisis is a rerun of the Joseph Goebbel's strategy to attack the moral credibility of the Church.

Sociologist compares today's crisis to Nazi smear campaign
by John L Allen Jr on Apr. 17, 2010 NCR Today

Perhaps the most remarkable defense of Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the sexual abuse crisis to appear in recent weeks ironically never mentions the current pope, and it comes not from a senior Vatican official but a lay Italian sociologist of religion. In a nutshell, the suggestion – never made explicit, but clear nonetheless – is that today’s drumbeat of criticism of the church over “pedophile priests” amounts to a replay of a Nazi smear campaign.

Massimo Introvigne, who directs the international Center for Studies on New Religions, published an essay in the April 16 edition of L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops, about a Nazi campaign in 1937 led by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to discredit the Catholic Church following Pope Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Introvigne argues that Goebbels created what sociologists would later call a “moral panic,” based on real facts, but facts which are distorted and amplified.

In the end, Introvigne says, the plan backfired – Goebbels’ attempt to smear the church generated more outrage than actual cases of sexual abuse in 1930s-era German Catholicism, which were reported in the German media and tried in German courts.

The entire article, including a translation of the Avenwire article can be read here.

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I thought John Allen was supposed to be covering the Pope's trip to Malta, not pushing a reverse propaganda piece for the Italian Bishop's conference.

What Goebel's did in Germany with ONE nation's completely state controlled media can under no circumstances be compared with countless independent media from dozens of countries reporting on the exact same phenomenon and exact same cover up. There is no comparison.

Except for one thing. Goebel's campaign was exagerrated from fact which shows that clerical pedophelia is not now, and never was, a novel product of Vatican II, secular relativism, gay agendas, the wild and crazy 60's, or a Jewish conspiracy. This is just another red herring and I'm surprised the NCR has undercut the brilliant reporting of Jason Berry by letting John Allen publish this piece.