By Smaktakula

Whose Holocaust is it anyway?

During his Good Friday address from the Vatican, the Pope’s personal preacher likened attacks on the church and the pope to the horrors of the Holocaust.  Paraphrasing a Jewish friend’s letter, Father Raniero Cantalamessa declared,

The use of stereotypes and the shifting of personal responsibility to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.

Promethean Times deplores this unacceptable Holocaust comparison, which was made even more egregious by the abundance of acceptable Holocaust comparisons from which Fr. Cantalamessa could have chosen.  Instead, he aimed low and chose to invoke this powerful comparison to defend the Church’s response to public anger over its own misdoings.

It is imperative that when Holocaust comparisons are made, they are made responsibly.  Responsible Holocaust comparison means choosing an acceptable atrocity or deplorable condition which to compare.  The following partial list of maladies and social ills have been found acceptable for Holocaust comparison:

• AIDS
• Racism
• Global Warming/Environment/Climate Change/Ragnarök
• Abortion
• Famine
• People Without Health Insurance
• The plight of Native Americans in modern American society.
• The Palestinian situation (for those who like their Holocaust comparisons served with a little irony).
• Lastly, in what is generally considered an archaic usage, the Holocaust is sometimes compared to the genocide perpetrated against the Jews, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and just about everybody else by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.