"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"
It is my understanding that in order to know God, one must admit the the deity is, in fact, unknowable; that God is beyond human understanding but his various prophets have supposedly spoken of this God's vision for the world and how people ought to treat each other. They're actually very simple rules and, if you are a Christian who does not follow them, eternal life will be hell.
So, what I don't understand is how a pope can wonder how 'God' stayed silent as atrocities occurred. If God is seen through the actions of those who believe in him/her/it, then those who opposed those horrors spoke for him/her/it. You can't really have expected that God would have sent a few lightning bolts or a flood just to voice his displeasure. That may be the way things worked in the Old Testament. In the New Testament - not so much.
As for how God could 'tolerate' such a thing as the Holocaust, does anyone really know what God tolerates or even if she/he /it exhibits such a human trait? It seems to me that this all boils down to free will: men have it and they use it. Is that God's fault? And, is free will really a gift from God or is it a curse? If it was a gift and mankind had no choice but to accept it, then how much free will do we really have?
But, I digress.
It simply bothers me that the pope would wonder where God was in 1942.
As an atheist Buddhist, I don't have to wrestle with such questions. I don't spend time wondering why an omnipotent power would do or not do anything. I simply accept that we are all, ultimately, responsible for our actions and that the choices we make moment by moment impact not only our lives, but those around us. That's why it's not that difficult to decide that people need to be treated with compassion and humanity (except Republicans and Conservatives, occasionally).
It really isn't that complicated. And when a group of people such as the Nazis, under the influence of their very powerful leader in a controlling type of culture, turn their wills over to that of a tyrant who would not only destroy his enemies but the lives of those he leads - it ought not be surprising that mass hysteria is the result. It's a phenomenon that occurs daily on many different fronts and really has nothing to do with a God or with 'evil' - the handy excuse for psychological/physical/psychosocial abnormalities which science has proven to be the cause of so-called evil disturbances, not demons , spells or witches to be burned at the stake.
When you remove the mystery, only stark reality is left. And, when it comes to what happened at Auschwitz, the reality is that many humans refused to 'tolerate' it and did not stay 'silent'. So, if God created man in his image, he/she/it did not tolerate the atrocities or stay silent about them either.
Then again, I'm not the pope so what the hell do I know?
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