Cardinal Meisner compares abortion with the crimes of Hitler and Stalin. 1 And who is pissed off? The Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Sorry, but I find Meisner's comparison absolutely outrageous for a completely different reason: he thereby puts women on the same level as dictators and mass murderers. And that weighs considerably more heavily than the violation of the Jewish monopoly on suffering ... From that perspective, Paul Spiegel's question - What can one expect from youth if a Catholic dignitary can relativize the millionfold murder of Jews in this manner and with impunity - looks quite different to me: what can one expect from a church that potentially puts 50% of its members under general suspicion of mass murder? But Aunt Catholica has always been rather limited in her worldview anyway.
I find the stance of Paul Spiegel equally concerning - doesn't he give any thought to the fact that Cardinal Meisner has greatly insulted women with his statement? Is this aspect of the whole story less important to him than pointing out that no one compares Jewish suffering in World War II to anything else because their suffering is unique? In this regard, the worldview of the Central Council of Jews is unfortunately also very narrow. What particularly bothers me is that this repeatedly provides argumentative fodder to the right-wing Nazi pack that is unfortunately still far too prevalent in Germany. 2 And no woman deserves to be compared to Hitler and Stalin - even if abortion doesn't fit into the worldview of these male-dominated organizations.
Not to mention, of course, the fact that I deny the Catholic Church any right to have a say in matters of general life because of its purely patriarchal and completely out-of-touch structure.
[1] When will we finally learn to overcome the history-falsifying totalitarianism idea - according to which Hitler and Stalin and various other dictators are lumped together into one pot? Hitler and Stalin have about as much in common as plague and cholera - both are deadly, both are sicknesses, but that's where the comparison ends. My toenails always curl up when I hear someone supposedly educated talk such nonsense ...
[2] It also produces very absurd consequences, such as the refusal to recognize other victims of the Nazi regime, like Sinti, Roma, or communist resistors (who, by the way, also had nothing to laugh about under Stalin). Which then, in combination with a memorial to the victims of National Socialism in general, actually only leaves an extremely embarrassing image.
At WDR.de there is the original article.