By: Julian Delphiki

Julian Delphiki — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:47:54 +0000

I’ve never commented here, though I’ve read this blog for at least a few years now. I have nothing to add to the topic at hand- I just want to thank you. You could easily have parroted the ideas presented and thrown in a few “child molesting priests” jokes for the extra page views, but you didn’t. I can not tell you how much I appreciate that.

By: Aniota

Aniota — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 03:14:57 +0000

Being a pretty liberal German myself, I never would have thought I’d ever defend the conservative newspaper “Die Welt” – but alas, here I go, hopefully clearing some things up.
“Die Welt” didn’t author the article, but merely publish it. It was written by Bernhard Müller, who is the executive editor of the “PUR magazin”. In the article, he describes said magazine as “conservative” and “catholic with sympathy towards pope and church” which already is saying quite a lot, actually (the German Catholics being heard do tend to be some of the most conservative around). Pointing towards kath.net (which is what you would get if the Westboro Baptist Church were German and catholic) at the end of his article further implies that this is one very conservative man bitching about how a church-owned company is not adhering to what he thinks “catholic” ought to mean (I will use quotation marks when I use the term in Müller’s very conservative understanding).
However, the article does not ever imply that German porn promotes Satanism. The whole “spread of sex books, glorification of violence, esotericism, magic and Satanism” thing is just to illustrate how non-”catholic” the “Weltbild” company is by selling – in Müller’s own words – “media, that cannot be compatible with catholic faith” and “books, that mock every page of the catechism”. To him, the question is “money or morals?” and “Weltbild” sided with money, where they ought to have chosen “catholic” morals. The whole “credibility of the church” is at stake, because “priests are not living up to their personal responsibility” (of prohibiting “their” company from selling such non-”catholic” media) – yeah, he actually wrote that. Talk about laying it on thick.
The idea of mixing up hatred for atheist books and erotic publishing is not at all absurd if you look at it from his perspective – yes, it is an objection to every kind of mainstream publishing, but to him this ought to be a “catholic” company that doesn’t do such things, because they are incompatible with “catholic” faith.

And no, this whole thing doesn’t look even a tidbit fishy to me, but simply to be the German and catholic equivalent of American evangelicals like the aforementioned Westboro Baptist Church (my condolences, these guys are awful! Lucky for us Germans such lunatics don’t have nearly as much political power here).
Needless to say he is not at all implying that the catholic church supports satanism (well, most indirectly it actually does, by owning and financing “Weltbild” which sells books about it, but he does want this company to stop doing this) but concerned that a church-owned company sells media he deems unworthy of and even harmful to anything related to the catholic church.

So all together, I think you nailed it with classifying this whole story a vendetta by a conservative German Catholic group. Said group seems to have been ignored by the church (wise decision!), which upset them and lead Müller to write the article in “Die Welt”. He seems to be part of said group – in fact, I have little doubt from reading his article that he is a leading force behind the movement “Katholisches! Weltbild” (to which I unfortunately didn’t find any confirmation).
Müller is anti-Catholic the same way Fred Phelps is anti-Protestant – but luckily Müller has far, far less influence.

PS: Germans not only capitalize nouns, we also use very long and complicated sentences as well as lots and lots of commas.

Comments on: Do German Catholic Bishops Own a Porn Company?

By: Julian Delphiki

By: Aniota