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Notes -
A pre-Lenten post that's been in the works for a while.
On April 10, 1947, a man named Rudolf Hoss went to confession, six days before his execution. Hardly a particularly unusual course of events, but Hoss had left the Catholic Church in his teens over an incident involving confession, joined the Nazi party, and would shortly therafter issue the following declaration:
He was not the only war criminal to seek absolution following WWII. On the other side of the world, Yasuhiko Asaka would convert to Catholicism in 1951. While his connection to the imperial family would prevent his being charged for war crimes, he gave the order beginning the rape of Nanking. His immediate superior, general Matsui, who was executed for the crime, spent his retirement after the massacre promoting devotion to the Buddhist goddess of mercy and advocating for full independence for captured territories, and his last request was for his family to adopt a maid, presumably a large favor in postwar Japan.
On a lesser scale, I have spoken to missionary priests who talk movingly of impoverished third worlders walking hundreds of miles, often barefoot, to go to confession, often with no interest in the faith beyond it(especially in west Africa, it seems many had been baptized by Pentecostals but wished to confess transgressions rather than simply trust in the mercy of God- He may forgive, but does your ancestor spirit?). The early Spanish missionaries in Mexico noticed the same thing- Indians clamored for confession, they clamored for baptism, for release from their sins, but before the Guadalupe apparition had few interested in the practice of the faith.
The natural state of man is to fear retribution from the immaterial- will the ancestors punish me? Is the river angry with my conduct, will it flood? Have I cursed the whole village? How can I appease them? Will there be retribution on me, or maybe on my whole clan?
We have not moved past this. WEIRD Americans speak of Karma, of what comes around goes around, of 'garbage people getting what's coming'. It's been noted that the SJW brigade seems not to forgive; transgressions contaminate you, your works, your associates... forever. I don't know any SJWs so I have to take the motte's word for it.
Scott noted new atheism as a failed hamartialogy, but he focused mostly on the question of 'why do bad things happen to good people'- there's another aspect to hamartialogy, the question of 'how can I, as a person, move past my sins? How can I end the contamination?'. In Catholicism there's a simple answer- confess to a priest, do whatever penance he gives you. There might be purely natural consequences, like health problems from drug use, but the contamination is gone. As far as I know there is no other answer, anywhere, ever. Notice general Matsui, above, never seemed to regard himself as having atoned for the rape of Nanking- and he said, at the time:
Even if you are a secular materialist, the time to think about what you have done wrong is nigh. And it's the time to remember that guilt is real, very real. How does your society remove guilt? I suspect for many, the answer is 'it doesn't'. And removing guilt serves a vital and important function. We see it, so I am told, in the internecine warfare of SJWs over being too closely associated with wrongthinkers- without it you can't reintegrate into the community. We see it in the man weighed down with guilt over his past behavior, unable to move on. And I suppose we see it more controversially with the post-religious right, hanging a sword of damocles over the heads of converts from all sorts of degenerate behavior. Former abortion doctors and homosexuals are minor celebrities in Christian spaces; I suspect many of these people would have committed suicide without the ideas of Christian mercy.
If there is a hell, then Höss in the very lowest pit, and while nobody deserves to be in hell, I can hardly think of anyone who tried harder to deserve to be there. When the utilitarians break hell, his kind shall be the last to be freed.
The amount of utility loss Höss has caused is unfathomable. A comic book villain could rape and murder a five year old every day of his bloody life, and still the QALY loss of his lifetime would be less than what Höss and his team achieved in a month. He had every opportunity to regret his actions during his tenure of running the hell he had created on earth. If god wanted him to repent, then every cry of a child he murdered was a call to repent, and he ignored them all. He did not try to blow up the gas chambers, or take his own life, or even ask to be transferred to the front to serve Hitler without directly getting his hands dirty.
And then in a prison cell, he suddenly discovered that he had done grave wrong and asked god for forgiveness. Why did the Soviets even give him a priest? And if I had been his confessor, I would have told him that a million murders were a bit about my pay grade, but that I would be very happy to forgive him a dozen murders of his choice, and let him try the Nuremberg defense at the pearly gates for the others.
Of course, the evilness of giving comfort to Höss pales compared to what the Catholic Church did for other Nazis. The same Church which had barely lifted a finger to try to stop the genocides of Hitler was not only willing to forgive famous Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann or Joseph Mengele, they were willing to bet all their moral authority on helping them to escape worldly justice as well. Thanks to Christian forgiveness, Mengele, the Nazi doctor died in freedom in Argentina, and Eichmann only got his due because the Israeli were less forgiving than the Vatican.
Anything the Catholics did after the ratlines is small fries compared to the evil they did back then. I mean, if Christian forgiveness means smuggling mass murderers to Argentina, then it obviously also means shielding priest from worldly authorities and enabling them to continue to sexually abuse children. As long as they confess from time to time, a few raped kids will not prevent them from joining Höss in the Catholic conception of paradise.
Few convert for glorious reasons.
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