{"id":1678,"date":"2005-10-04T09:48:01","date_gmt":"2005-10-04T09:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html"},"modified":"2005-10-04T09:48:01","modified_gmt":"2005-10-04T09:48:01","slug":"speeches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html","title":{"rendered":"Speeches…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpts from today’s Synod speeches are here. Very general. <\/a><\/p>\n

Also in today’s VISEN, a news item about this Sunday’s beatification:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

At 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, October 9, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins C.M.F., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, will preside at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica during which Cardinal Clemens August von Galen (1878-1946), bishop of Munster, Germany, will be beatified. Cardinal von Galen was a vocal opponent of the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews and of their euthanasia programs. <\/p>\n

A note from the Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff reads: "With the beatification of this generous pastor, the Church invites us to imitate, amid the vicissitudes of our own times, his brave and faithful witness." <\/p>\n

At the end of the ceremony, Benedict XVI will arrive in the basilica in order to venerate the relics of the new blessed, greet those present and impart his apostolic blessing. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The life of Cardinal Von Galen:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

As early as 1935 Hitler had surreptitiously begun to implement this aspect of his eugenics policy. In September 1939 he issued a secret order that all persons with incurable diseases be killed. From the beginning of 1940 regular transport buses brought the unsuspecting patients to particular medical centres where they were speedily put to death, mostly by gas poisoning but sometimes by the injection of drugs. [9] From this time on the Catholic authorities protested to the government at the growing evidence of euthanasia. They were ignored but the matter came to a head with von Galen’s intervention on 3 August 1941. [10]<\/p>\n

Now again at St Lambert’s, he condemned this ghastly doctrine which tried ‘to justify the murder of blameless men’, and which sought ‘to give legal sanction to the forceable killing of invalids, cripples, the incurable and the incapacitated’. He had ascertained at the Ministry of Health that no attempt was made to hide the fact that a great number of insane people had already been deliberately killed and that the process would continue. He called the perpetrators of these crimes murderers and demanded protection for the innocent. ‘If’, he said, ‘the principle is established that unproductive human beings may be killed, then God help all those invalids who, in order to produce wealth, have given their all and sacrificed their strength of body. If all unproductive people may thus be violently eliminated, then woe betide our brave soldiers who return home wounded, maimed or sick. Once admit the right to kill unproductive persons, then none of us can be sure of his life. A curse on men and on the German people if we break the holy commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’… Woe to us German people if we not only licence this heinous offence but allow it to be committed with impunity’. <\/p>\n

The impact of his sermon reached far beyond the crowded congregation that flocked to hear him. Copies were made by the thousand and distributed throughout the country; they were smuggled to soldiers at the front where his references to the threat of death hanging over invalids and seriously wounded soldiers spread like wildfire. Von Galen’s words had a powerful effect. By the end of August the programme for euthanasia had been suspended, but not before 100,000 people had been killed in this manner. Copies of these 1941 sermons spread all over Germany; hundreds of thousands were printed in response to requests from many cities. These and other sermons were so important to the Allies that they were printed by the million and dropped by the RAF as anti-Nazi propaganda all over Germany and the occupied territories<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are three sermons of Cardinal von Galen linked at Priests for Life:<\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/p>\n

and here, this one specifically about euthanasia<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpts from today’s Synod speeches are here. Very general. Also in today’s VISEN, a news item about this Sunday’s beatification: At 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, October 9, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins C.M.F., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, will preside at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica during which Cardinal Clemens August…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSpeeches... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Speeches... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Excerpts from today’s Synod speeches are here. Very general. Also in today’s VISEN, a news item about this Sunday’s beatification: At 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, October 9, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins C.M.F., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, will preside at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica during which Cardinal Clemens August…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-10-04T09:48:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.dw-world.de\/dw\/image\/0,1587,1400733_6,00.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Speeches... - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Speeches... - Via Media","og_description":"Excerpts from today’s Synod speeches are here. Very general. Also in today’s VISEN, a news item about this Sunday’s beatification: At 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, October 9, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins C.M.F., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, will preside at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica during which Cardinal Clemens August…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-10-04T09:48:01+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.dw-world.de\/dw\/image\/0,1587,1400733_6,00.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html","name":"Speeches... - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.dw-world.de\/dw\/image\/0,1587,1400733_6,00.jpg","datePublished":"2005-10-04T09:48:01+00:00","dateModified":"2005-10-04T09:48:01+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.dw-world.de\/dw\/image\/0,1587,1400733_6,00.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.dw-world.de\/dw\/image\/0,1587,1400733_6,00.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/speeches.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Speeches…"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}