War and scandals tarnish sainthood move for emperor

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The Times
By Roger Boyes
Bishop who lobbied Vatican to beatify last Hapsburg ruler resigns to avoid embarrassment



A SEX scandal and a fierce row over the use of poison gas during the First World War have tainted the beatification tomorrow of Kaiser Karl, the last ruler of the Hapsburg Empire.

A desire not to embarrass the Vatican has prompted the resignation of Kurt Krenn, the Austrian bishop who led the campaign for beatification. He bore administrative responsibility for a seminary in Lower Austria where sexual abuse was rife. Photographs were recently published of seminary priests kissing and fondling their students and 40,000 images depicting paedophile acts were found on the seminary computer.

The rector of the seminary and his assistant stepped down, but Bishop Krenn initially refused to go, despite heavy pressure from the church leadership. As leader of the campaign for the beatification of Kaiser (Emperor) Karl, he was due to travel to the Vatican and pray with the Pope tomorrow.

But to avoid what would have been profound embarrassment for the Vatican, Bishop Krenn, once a stalwart conservative ally of the Pope, had to leave his job before tomorrow’s ceremony.
More:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1290165,00.html

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1. Burden of proof? Polish nun's varicose veins "miracle":

A Polish nun was found, 38 years after Kaiser Karl’s death in 1922, who claimed that her varicose veins had been cured by the healing intervention of the late Hapsburg ruler. This provided the miracle obligatory for a beatification. ....................

[Tansy_Gold]

2. My faith in the Catholic Church has just been restored.

Oh, wait, to REstore something it has to be there in the first place. I never had any faith in the Catholic church.

It never fails to amaze me, however, how easily some people will accept as "true" that which others of us look at and say, "You gotta be fucking kidding me!"

I wish I could say I'm not ridiculing someone's faith, but I guess the truth is that I am. I simply cannot understand how otherwise rational, intelligent, educated, and sensible people fall for this. . . . scam.

Tansy Gold, who is tempted (by Satan, she is sure) to send this news article to some devout Catholic friends of hers but won't because she's a nice person (NOT!)

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4. Maybe not Satan, Tansy Gold, but the Voice of Reason Crying

in the Wilderness????????Send it anyway!

[R Hickey]

5. I had a hemoroid that vanished after praying to Kaiser Karl

It was just a small hemoroid, but it took just a short prayer to clear it up.

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7. KK a fickle militarist, said Phosgene gas attack 'very effective':

Historians and critical clergymen, however, paint Kaiser Karl as a fickle militarist. When the Austrians were unable to break through against the Italians in the Isonzo Valley in October 1917, the troops fired some 100,000 grenades containing the poison gas Phosgene. Photographs of the attack show horrific scenes — corpses who had been struggling with inadequate gas masks, soldiers lying next to dead horses and rats, Italian troops who were gassed while playing cards or shaving. Some 40,000 died in the attack. Emperor Karl later described the gas as “very effective”.

“How can you beatify a man who justifies the use of weapons that had been explicitly banned by the Hague war conventions?” asked Father Rudolf Schermann, who publishes the critical church periodical Kirche In. “It is incomprehensible to me as a priest that he can be honoured in this way. It is as if the Muslims were to make a religious icon out of Saddam, who used poison gas against Kurds.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1290165,00.html

[SquireJons]

10. A Golden Opportunity

Who owns the marketing rights to Kaiser Karl? With health care costs raising so fast, we could make a fortune on this guy. Get me the Kaiser Roll Company on line 1, and The Vatican on line 2...

[Isere]

3. Egads!!

When I read the tile of this thread I thought it was about C+ Augustus!

[SquireJons]

11. Me too, and he had to buy that C+ n/t

[readmylips]

6. Faith is between you and which ever God you like....

I'm a Catholic and for sure my Faith has nothing to do with the church. Like all religions, Catholic religion is not perfect but this is the religion I was born in and will die in. My priest is a bush supporter so you can imagine how angry I am at him but not at the church.

[Tansy_Gold]

9. Whenever I criticize the Catholic Church,

I always try to make sure I capitalize the C and C, to emphasize that I am not criticizing any individual's personal faith. I may not agree with their faith, but that is their business. I may wonder how they can continue in their faith, but again, that is their business.

The greater portion of my scorn is for the Catholic Church, the quasi-secular body that attempts (and sometimes succeeds) to control people's non-religious lives -- even those of non-believers -- through dubious faith-based political moves, including the "beatification" of a Hapsburg emperor based on the spurious claims of a Polish nun with varicose veins.

Faith in god or gods or goddesses or great spirits or even in oneself is a personal matter. I think I have an even lower opinion of the Catholic Church BECAUSE it tries to make something so personal into such an object of scorn and derision. To me -- just my personal, non-spiritual opinion -- the Church mocks its own flock in this way. Shame on it.

Tansy Gold, who really would never in person knock a friend's religion except for one time when a friend used that religion for nefarious ends and to deny the truth of history

[SquireJons]

12. I was brought up Catholic too

But I was also brought up to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I have since grown out of these childish beliefs. I used to have respect for the American Catholic church, when the Council of Catholic Bishops stood up to Reagan and Poppy Bush, but these day's they're just a hopeless embarrassment. Even Notre Dame football doesn't help anymore.

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8. The Pope's many saints:

The Pope has beatified 1,340 people during his 25-year pontificate and created 464 saints — more than all his predecessors combined
Many were “martyrs” of Communism, Fascism or Nazism. In one go he beatified 233 nuns, priests and others killed by Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War

Those he has canonised include José María Escrivá de Balaguer, the Spanish founder of Opus Dei, who was said to have been close to the Franco regime; Padre Pio, a mystic and healer said to have borne the “stigmata” of Christ; and Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who perished in Auschwitz in 1942

The Pope has long wanted to canonise Pius XII, the wartime Pope, but critics claim that he turned a blind eye to the Nazi Holocaust and failed to do enough to help Rome’s Jews

[ScrewyRabbit]

13. From the headline I thought this was a NY Times article about Bush

<smirk>