Yes, I am ashamed also of a lot of garbage in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. I just read to review the new book, Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades, by Jonathan Phillips (Random House); a series of Medieval popes are responsible for a lot of slaughter. And I have never been satisfied with the Church's response to the holocaust. When told that the Pope had spoken against the persecution of Jews in encyclicals which were not understood, Albert Camus (an absurd Frenchman - an Anarchist with Communist sympathies ) replied. In 1948 he addressed an abbey of Dominican monks who asked him to speak on what unbelievers expect from Christians: "What the world expects of Christians is that they should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should express their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man."
Link (here) to Fr. Raymond Schroth, S.J. his article is entitled, How to Love Israel.
11 comments:
Joe, you can disagree with Albert Camus of course, but he wasn't "an idiot", he was a very important writer and was awarded the Nobel price of literature.
Here in Italy we study his literary and philosiphical works in every high schools.
I also read Camus in Catholic High School and in secular college. With twenty plus years retrospective. He and his ideas are not dismissed but allowed to fester, anyone who freely joins the Communist and the Anarchist Parties like Camus, by definition is an idiot.
Tisk, tisk--name calling so early in the day. Camus was NOT an anarchist, and he locked horns with French communists.
BTW, anarchist and communist don't like each other!
Please read the several very good biographies of Camus out there.
Anonymous at 9:14 says
"BTW, anarchist and communist don't like each other!"
You are right, but poor Joe doesn't known the difference.
jOE why doesn't write only about subjects that you know?
Camus:"If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man."
Camus had a blind spot for meaning in life. I think maybe he smoked too many gauloises and it fogged his sense of natural joy in his children. Too bad, he would have been a great Catholic. What is it the French Cardinal said: "The existentialists have never adequately explained the smile of a child."
How absurde!
Ha, Ha
JMJ
Joe
For a little clarity, from the Camus wiki page.
Camus joined the French Communist Party in the Spring of 1935 seeing it as a way to "fight inequalities between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria." He did not suggest he was a Marxist or that he had read Das Kapital, but did write that "[w]e might see communism as a springboard and asceticism that prepares the ground for more spiritual activities".[5] In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party (PCA) was founded. Camus joined the activities of the Algerian People's Party (Le Parti du Peuple Algérien), which got him into trouble with his Communist party comrades. As a result, he was denounced as a Trotskyite and expelled from the party in 1937. Camus went on to be associated with the French anarchist movement.
The anarchist Andre Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des Etudiants Anarchistes (Anarchist Student Circle) as a sympathiser who was familiar with anarchist thought. Camus went on to write for anarchist publications such as Le Libertaire, La révolution Proletarienne and Solidaridad Obrera (the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT).
Camus' biographers acknowledge that he was, for a short time, affiliated with or a member of the CP as a young man. He left the party and denounced it. He was never identified as an anarchist--but wrote widely for many publications. Camus considered himself an independent leftist and moved in intellectual circles that included Catholics intellectuals who embraced "personalism." He was friends as well with the Catholic poet and essayist Czeslaw Milosz.
You may disagree with what he wrote but to call him a communist and an anarchist is simply incorrect (at least without explaining the context). And to call him an "idiot" is downright silly and crude.
So describe "independent leftist"
Were you serious about your question?! You do know that there are leftist out there who are not communist or anarchist, right? Not to be snide but you'll have to to some reading on your own. I recommend Tony Judt's THE BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY as a good introduction to Camus and his intellectual and political views.
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