Word: dibelius
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...twelve stormy years, Berlin's crusty, goateed Bishop Otto Dibelius has been head of the German Evangelical Church, the last important institution in Germany that the Communists have not succeeded in dividing between "imperialist West" and "peace-loving East." Year after year, the Red regime chipped away at Protestant prerogatives, persecuted pastors, and drove thousands of others into flight to the West. They played on pacifist tendencies wherever they showed themselves and vilified outspoken anti-Communists as atom-happy militarists...
Five years before, charged the Communists, Dibelius had also written: "In spite of the ugly sound often attached to the word, I have always regarded myself as an anti-Semite. The fact cannot be concealed that the Jews have played a leading part in all the symptoms of disintegration in modern civilization...
After the Gas Chambers. Accustomed to Communist polemics against the staunchly anti-Communist bishop. Western newsmen went through the routine of checking with Dibelius' office. Instead of the heated denial the reporters expected, they were jolted by the reply that the quotations were accurate. Embarrassed West German newspapers, which regard Dibelius as something of a hero, handled the story like fissionable material; the important Die Welt, for instance, ran the story on page 4 with no direct quotes...
Before the 240 members of the Evangelical synod, Dibelius explained that the controversial Biblical passage in Romans 13* had been his guide in these matters. He recalled the insults he had suffered from the Nazis and continued in a voice shaking with emotion: "All that was torture for me. But I had to tell myself that Christians in other times have experienced similar torture and have not tossed Romans 13 overboard. The turning point came for me when the business of euthanasia for so-called worthless life and the gassing of Jews became apparent...
Different Conditions. Some of Dibelius' own pastors, who remembered the atrocities against the Jews which long preceded the gas chambers, were not reassured by this explanation. But when the 80-year-old bishop announced that he would resign all his ecclesiastical offices next year (when his term ends as one of the six presidents of the World Council of Churches), the synod was willing to let bygones be bygones. As Bishop Dibelius put it: "These utterances date from a time now 30 years past and can be explained as part of completely different conditions. Since then I have always...