Do we turn a blind eye to evil around us?

		Making Sense  Out of Bioethics  Fr. Tad  Pacholczyk

When I traveled to Auschwitz a few years ago, one question played over and over in my mind: Did they know? Did the German people know what was happening in this camp near their own border, in their own occupied territories?

With the trains coming and going year after year, with the long lines of prisoners and the billowing smokestacks, did they just turn a blind eye to the atrocities? Had they become desensitized to the point that they could no longer see the carefully choreographed death operations nearby?

Some concentration camps, like the one in Dachau, were set in comfortable suburbs inside Germany itself; the townsfolk could stroll past them during their daily routine. The grass in those suburbs continued to grow as green as anywhere else, young people got married, babies were born, men went to work, and life went on.

Disturbing parallels today

Walking through a place like Dachau or Auschwitz, one wonders: could it ever happen again? Could a similar scenario play out today in middle-class America? Most would instinctively say "no." After all, we live in a more enlightened time and culture.

A more perceptive eye, however, can discern troubling parallels. Nowhere are these parallels more evident than in the bioethical issues of our day. Our society, in fact, faces virtually the same temptation that Germany did: the temptation to normalize certain well-scripted death operations in the midst of polite society.

Within our own culture and time, we will see that suction machines have replaced smokestacks and that fertility clinics and women's health centers have replaced the barbed wire.

Unborn humans and embryonic children are now dispatched with the same desensitized ease as camp inhabitants once were, and ne'er a word is mentioned in respectable society.

Our great universities, which need to serve as a moral voice, remain mute or even foster such evil, as does the press, and few dare mention the pall of death that quietly permeates the air.

We need look no further than the Planned Parenthood clinics dotted across our country. Future generations are likely to be appalled by the statistics: nearly two million deaths per year. They are sure to wonder about a people that ended the lives of their own children at the rate of one every 23 seconds through elective abortion. They are sure to ask, "How could they?" and, "Did they know?"

We need look no further than the fertility clinics present in every major American city. Future generations are sure to be scandalized by the numbers: in vitro fertilization making hundreds of thousands of embryonic humans, to be chilled in liquid nitrogen and turned into, in the words of one commentator, "kidsicles."

They are sure to deplore the many other human embryos treated as objects, discarded as medical waste, poured down the sink, or experimented upon and strip-mined for their embryonic stem cells.

'Banality of evil'

There is a certain banality about evil. It doesn't necessarily present itself in a monstrous or dramatic way. It can take the shape of simple conformity to what everyone else is doing, to what the leadership says is right, to what the neighbors are doing.

The gradual encroachment of evil in our lives can be something we might not even notice because we are not paying attention. The majority of those who collaborated with some of history's most terrible crimes and falsehoods need not be cast as inhuman monsters; instead, they were often like us. Heroism, loyalty, family, and culture could co-exist with almost unbelievable evil.

During the Nazi years, there often were no momentous decisions made for or against evil. Nazism seemed good: it seemed to bring prosperity, it made things work, it allowed people to feel good about themselves and their country. The moral issues - the ones we now see as central - were carefully avoided.

Turning a blind eye

When the full horror of Nazism was revealed at the end of the war, the German people responded, "We didn't know." When a local townsperson was asked whether he knew what was going on in the camp, he gave a more complete answer. "Yes, we knew something was up, but we didn't talk about it, we didn't want to know too much."

Primo Levi, a writer and survivor of Auschwitz, described the German ethical blind spot: "In spite of the varied possibilities for information, most Germans didn't know because they didn't want to know. . . . Those who knew did not talk; those who did not know did not ask questions; those who did ask questions received no answers.

"In this way the typical German citizen won and defended his ignorance, which seemed to him sufficient justification of his adherence to Nazism. Shutting his mouth, his eyes, and his ears, he built for himself the illusion of not knowing, hence not being an accomplice to the things taking place in front of his door."

Courage of the Church

Martin Luther King, Jr., used to say that what pained him the most was the silence of the good. Albert Einstein, who fled Germany when Hitler came to power, articulated the same sentiment in an interview for Time Magazine on December 23, 1940:

"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany I looked for the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom. But they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks.

"Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I had never any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom."

The courageous, even daring question we must ask is, "What is our own response to the evil around us?"

Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. A priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., he serves as the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pa.

Interfaith relations:
why Weigel disappoints

	Guest commentary  Randy Henderson

George Weigel, while highly respected and lettered in the field of theology and ethics, at every turn takes the wind out of my sails.

His repeated attempts to redefine the Just War tradition to justify "preventative wars" and his persistent cynicism and pessimism regarding inter-religious dialog are a slap in the face not only to the Magisterium of the Church but do not honor the many steps taken throughout history by religious leaders towards peace and justice.

Highlighting and promoting the positive steps in understanding the prevention of war and fostering dialog have been the priority of the Church, particularly Pope John Paul II, and the USCCB in the form of several documents and actions throughout Catholic communities world-wide.

'Genuine dialog' exists

In his recent article, "Muslims' call for dialogue: Why it disappoints Christians," Weigel seems bent on wringing the life out of this positive step taken by 138 Muslim leaders. He begins by attacking the 138 suggesting they are connected to extreme regimes or the Wahabi style Islam found in Saudi Arabia. If this is true, who should we be talking to, if not the people who perpetuate extremist Islamic teachings?

He also suggests that their proposed beginning dialog centered on the two Great Commandments would lead to "banalities." Mr. Weigel, would Jesus characterize an understanding of these two commandments as "banal"?

Inter-religious cooperation and dialog have long flourished throughout the world and throughout history. If you look to historical documents stored in the Vatican libraries, you could spend a lifetime studying the cooperation of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean. What's fascinating is a frequent concern with issues of social justice and respect of one another's beliefs.

If one looks for signs of life they can be seen. This "genuine dialog" of which Weigel speaks is historical and is happening in communities here in the United States and abroad. Yet he seems blind to it only focusing on what might be wrong or what hidden agenda people of the Muslim faith must have.

'Legitimate positive step'

Throughout our coexistence with one another as Jews, Christians, and Muslims, there have been pronounced conflicts. One may speak of the Christian crusades to recapture the Holy Land that resulted in very un-Christian militancy, or the Pogroms against the Jewish people, the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of course the "War on Terror" in response to the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001. There are indeed extremist elements within some Muslim communities, but similar elements within Christianity and Judaism exist which are obsessed with land control in the Holy Land and the second coming of Christ.

The majority of Jews, Muslims, and Christians need to cease being "silent" as many suggest but often need permission and an assurance that their leadership is behind them. The letter from 138 Muslim leaders is precisely the concentrated effort, permission, and assurance moderate Muslims throughout the world need.

It is not a "magic bullet," but should be seen as a legitimate positive step in an ongoing historical legacy of peace and cooperation between Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

Randy Henderson is a youth minister at St. Patrick Parish, Lodi, and St. Michael Parish, Dane.