Armin Laschet, now the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, speaks at the party headquarters in Berlin, Jan. 11, 2017. Credit: photocosmos1/Shutterstock.
Berlin, Germany, Aug 11, 2021 / 10:42 am (CNA).
An anti-Catholic video targeting the election campaign of a potential successor to Angela Merkel has drawn criticism from bishops and politicians in Germany amid growing concerns about a wider erosion of religious freedom in an increasingly secular Europe.
The video was published online and shown at an election event of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in early August. It depicts Armin Laschet, the Christian Democratic Union’s candidate to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel, as a Russian Matryoshka doll that “hides” several other dolls inside.
“Whoever votes for Armin Laschet and the CDU, votes for … ultra-Catholic Laschet confidants for whom sex before marriage is a taboo,” an ominious voice-over tells viewers, while a further Russian doll, bearing face the face of a close aide to Laschet, is revealed from inside the bigger doll.
The aide is a 35-year-old Catholic in charge of the Laschet’s office in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia by name of Nathanael Liminski. As a practicing Catholic, Liminski in 2010 defended the Church’s views on pre-marital sex and homosexuality in a TV show. He also co-founded the group “Generation Benedict” following World Youth Day 2005. (The organisation changed its name to “Pontifex Initiative” after Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation from office).
In response to the video clip, the German Bishops’ Conference called for a fair election campaign. “We consider the way in which the election commercial deals with the expression of a religious conviction to be inappropriate,” a spokesman of the conference told media. A parliamentarian and spokesman for religious affairs of the CDU, Hermann Gröhe, also weighed in, accusing the SPD of stoking up anti-Catholic sentiment.
The controversy has also sparked a wider debate over concerns for religious freedom and growing anti-Catholic sentiment in particular in German society, with one expert on constitutional law, who is also a Catholic canon lawyer, warning of a break with Christian tradition in German society. Professor Hans Michael Heinig told the Berlin newspaper “Tagesspiegel” on August 7, the SPD spot constituted a “paradigm shift” that identified the minority of practicing Catholics as problematic in wider society. He warned that this shift “can undermine religious freedom and a sufficiently clear distinction between religion and politics.”
Attacking political opponents, in particular their personal faith, has so far been considered a taboo in modern German elections. The socially powerful consensus so far has been that election commercials and campaigns should focus on policies and issues, not polemics and populist claims about opponents. Nonetheless, Liminski’s Catholic faith has come under intense media scrutiny in recent months, with a number of secularist and left-wing media such as the “Tageszeitung” running critical portraits of “Laschet’s right-hand man“.
German voters will go to the pools on September 26 to vote for a new federal government and a successor to long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has led the country since the year 2005. The question of how a clearer separation of Church and State can be achieved in light of an increasing number of German Catholics turning their backs on the Church will be one of the challenges facing the new government.
The Church in Germany received 6.76 billion euros from the church tax in 2019, an increase of more than 100 million euros compared to 2018. The rise is believed to be due to the growth of Germany’s economy in 2019.
While the number of Catholics abandoning the faith has increased steadily since the 1960s, the Church’s income has risen. In 2019, a record number of Catholics left the Church in Germany, with 272,771 people formally leaving.
Pope Francis took the historical step of writing a 28-page letter to German Catholics in 2019, urging them to focus on evangelization in the face of a “growing erosion and deterioration of faith” in their country. More recently, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI., who hails from the German State of Bavaria, expressed strong concern about the lack of faith within Church institutions in Germany.
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Jack Traynor (next to child on first row) as a pilgrim to Lourdes in 1925, two years after his healing. / Credit: Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales
In the book he recounts how, during a 10-hour train ride to Lourdes on Friday, Sept. 10, 1937, Royal Navy seaman Jack Traynor told him firsthand how he was healed in 1923 at the Lourdes Shrine from the crippling wounds he had suffered from his participation in World War I.
Over a century later, on Dec. 8 of this year, the archbishop of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, Malcolm McMahon, announced that Traynor’s healing has been recognized as the 71st miracle attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.
O’Connor described Traynor as a “heavy-set man, 5’5”, with a strong, ruddy face” who, according to his biography, “should have been, if he were alive, paralyzed, epileptic, covered in sores, shrunken, with a wrinkled and useless right arm and a gaping hole in his skull.”
Traynor was, in the missionary’s view, a man “with his manly faith and piety,” unassuming, “but obviously a fearless, militant Catholic.” Despite having received only a primary education, he had “a clear mind enriched by faith and preserved by great honesty of life.”
This enabled him to tell “with simplicity, sobriety, exactness” how he was healed at the place where the Immaculate Conception appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.
O’Connor wrote down the account and sent it to Traynor, who revised it and added new details. He read the official report of the doctors who examined him and searched the newspaper archives of the time to corroborate the account.
Front page of the December 1926 Journal de la Grotte, reporting on the miraculous cure of Jack Traynor. Credit: Lourdes Shrine
How Traynor came to be considered incurable
Traynor was born in Liverpool, according to some sources, in 1883. His mother was an Irish Catholic who died when Traynor was still young. “But his faith, his devotion to the Mass and holy Communion — he went daily when very few others did — and his trust in the Virgin remained with him as a fruitful memory and example,” O’Connor recalled.
Mobilized at the outbreak of World War I, he was hit by shrapnel, which left him unconscious for five weeks. Sent in 1915 to the expeditionary force to Egypt and the Dardanelles Strait, between Turkey and Greece, he took part in the landing at Gallipoli.
Jack Traynor. Credit: Courtesy of Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes
During a bayonet charge on May 8, he was hit with 14 machine gun bullets in the head, chest, and arm. Sent to Alexandria, Egypt, he was operated on three times in the following months to try to stitch together the nerves in his right arm. They offered him amputation, but he refused. The epileptic seizures began, and there was a fourth operation, also unsuccessful, in 1916.
He was discharged with a 100% pension “for permanent and total disability,” the missionary priest related, and in 1920 he underwent surgery on his skull to try to cure the epilepsy. From that operation he was left with an open hole “about two centimeters wide” that was covered with a silver plate.
By then he was suffering three seizures a day and his legs were partially paralyzed. Back in Liverpool he was given a wheelchair and had to be helped out of bed.
Eight years had passed since the landing at Gallipoli. Traynor was treated by 10 doctors who could only attest “that he was completely and incurably incapacitated.”
Unable to walk, with epileptic seizures, a useless arm, three open wounds, “he was truly a human wreck. Someone arranged for him to be admitted to the Mossley Hill Hospital for Incurables on July 24, 1923. But by that date Jack Traynor was already in Lourdes,” O’Connor recounted.
Traynor tells about his pilgrimage to Lourdes
According to the first-person account originally written by O’Connor and corrected and adapted by Traynor, the veteran sailor had always felt great devotion to Mary that he got from his mother.
“I felt that if the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes were in England, I would go there often. But it seemed to me a distant place that I could never reach,” Traynor said.
When he heard that a pilgrimage was being organized to the shrine, he decided to do everything he could to go. He used money set aside “for some special emergency” and they even sold belongings. “My wife even pawned her own jewelry.”
The Lourdes Grotto in France. Credit: Courtney Mares/CNA
When they learned of his determination, many tried to dissuade him: “You’ll die on the way, you’ll be a problem and a pain for everyone,” a priest told him.
“Everyone, except my wife and one or two relatives, told me I was crazy,” he recalled.
The experience of the trip was “very hard,” confessed Traynor, who felt very ill on the way. So much so that they tried to get him off three times to take him to a hospital in France, but at the place where they stopped there was no hospital.
On arrival at Lourdes, there was ‘no hope’ for Traynor
On Sunday, July 22, 1923, they arrived at the Lourdes Shrine in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. There he was cared for by two Protestant sisters who knew him from Liverpool and who happened to be there providentially.
The pilgrimage of more than 1,200 people was led by the archbishop of Liverpool, Frederick William Keating.
On arrival, Traynor felt “desperately ill,” to the point that “a woman took it upon herself to write to my wife telling her that there was no hope for me and that I would be buried at Lourdes.”
Despite this, “I managed to get lowered into the baths nine times in the water from the spring in the grotto and they took me to the different devotions that the sick could join in.”
On the second day, he suffered a strong epileptic seizure. The volunteers refused to put him in the pools in this state, but his insistence could not be overcome. “Since then I have not had another epileptic seizure,” he recalled.
Paralyzed legs healed
On Tuesday, July 24, Traynor was examined for the first time by doctors at the shrine, who testified to what had happened during the trip to Lourdes and detailed his ailments.
On Wednesday, July 25, “he seemed to be as bad as ever” and, thinking about the return trip planned for Friday, July 27, he bought some religious souvenirs for his wife and children with the last shillings he had left.
He returned to the baths. “When I was in the bath, my paralyzed legs shook violently,” he related, causing alarm among the volunteers who attended to the pilgrims at the shrine, believing it was another epileptic seizure. “I struggled to stand up, feeling that I could do so easily,” he explained.
Arm healed as Blessed Sacrament passes by
He was again placed in his wheelchair and taken to the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. The archbishop of Reims, Cardinal Louis Henri Joseph Luçon, carried the monstrance.
“He blessed the two who were in front of me, came up to me, made the sign of the cross with the monstrance, and moved on to the next one. He just passed when I realized that a great change had taken place in me. My right arm, which had been dead since 1915, shook violently. I tore off its bandages and crossed myself, for the first time in years,” Traynor himself testified.
“As far as I can remember, I felt no sudden pain and certainly I did not have a vision. I simply realized that something momentous had happened,” Traynor recounted.
Back at the asylum, the former hospital that today houses the offices of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes, he proved that he could walk seven steps. The doctors examined him again and concluded in their report that “he had recovered the voluntary use of his legs” and that “the patient can walk with difficulty.”
Traynor makes it to the grotto
That night, he could hardly sleep. As there was already a certain commotion around him, several volunteers stood guard at his door. Early in the morning, it seemed that he would fall asleep again, but “with a last breath, I opened my eyes and jumped out of bed. First I knelt on the floor to finish the rosary I had been saying, then I ran to the door.”
Making his way, he arrived barefoot and in his pajamas at the grotto of Massabielle, where the volunteers followed him: “When they reached the grotto, I was on my knees, still in my nightclothes, praying to the Virgin and thanking her. I only knew that I had to thank her and that the grotto was the right place to do so.”
He prayed for 20 minutes. When he got up, a crowd surrounded him, and they made way to let him return to the asylum.
A sacrifice made for the Virgin in gratitude
“At the end of the Rosary Square stands the statue of Our Lady Crowned. My mother had always taught me that when you ask the Virgin for a favor or want to show her some special veneration, you have to make a sacrifice. I had no money to offer, having spent my last shillings on rosaries and medals for my wife and children, but kneeling there before the Virgin, I made the only sacrifice I could think of. I decided to give up smoking,” Traynor explained with tremendous simplicity.
“During all this time, although I knew I had received a great favor from Our Lady, I didn’t clearly remember all the illness I previously had,” he noted in his account.
As he finished getting himself ready, a priest, Father Gray, who knew nothing of his cure, asked for someone to serve Mass for him, which Traynor did: “I didn’t think it strange that I could do it, after eight years of not being able to get up or walk,” he said.
Traynor received word that the priest who had strongly opposed his joining the pilgrimage wanted to see him at his hotel, located in the town of Lourdes, outside the shrine. He asked him if he was well. “I told him I was well, thank you, and that I hoped he was too. He burst into tears.”
Early on Friday, July 27, the doctors examined Traynor again. They found that he was able to walk perfectly, that his right arm and legs had fully recovered. The opening in his skull resulting from the operation had been considerably reduced, and he had not suffered any further epileptic seizures. His sores had also healed by the time he returned from the grotto, when he had removed his bandages the previous day.
Weeping ‘like two children’ with Archbishop Keating
At nine o’clock in the morning the train back to Liverpool was ready to leave the Lourdes station, situated in the upper part of the town. He had been given a seat in first class, which, despite his protests, he had to accept.
Halfway through the journey, Keating came to see him in his passenger car. “I knelt down for his blessing. He raised me up saying, ‘Jack, I think I should have your blessing.’ I didn’t understand why he was saying that. Then he raised me up and we both sat on the bed. Looking at me, he said, ‘Jack, do you realize how ill you have been and that you have been miraculously cured by the Blessed Virgin?’”
“Then,” Traynor continued, “it all came back to me, the memory of my years of illness and the sufferings on the trip to Lourdes and how ill I had been at Lourdes. I began to cry, and so did the archbishop, and we both sat there crying like two children. After talking to him for a while, I calmed down. I now fully understood what had happened.”
A telegram to his wife: ‘I am better’
Since news of the events had already reached Liverpool, Traynor was advised to write a telegram to his wife. “I didn’t want to make a fuss with a telegram, so I sent her this message: ‘I am better — Jack,’” he explained.
This message and the letter announcing that her husband was going to die in Lourdes were all the information his wife had, as she had not seen the newspapers. She assumed that he had recovered from his serious condition but that he was still in his “ruinous” state.
The reception in Liverpool was the culmination. The archbishop had to address the crowd to disperse at the mere sight of Traynor getting off the train. “But when I appeared on the platform, there was a stampede” and the police had to intervene. “We returned home and I cannot describe the joy of my wife and children,” he said in his account.
A daughter named Bernadette
Taynor concluded his account by explaining that in the following years he worked transporting coal, lifting 200-pound sacks without difficulty. Thanks to providence, he was able to provide well for his family.
Three of his children were born after his cure in 1923. A girl was named Bernadette, in honor of the visionary of Lourdes.
He also related the conversion of the two Protestant sisters who cared for him, along with his family and the Anglican pastor of his community.
From then on, Jack volunteered to go to Lourdes on a regular basis until he died in 1943, on the eve of the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
Paradoxically, and despite the factual evidence of his recovery, the Ministry of War Pensions never revoked the disability pension that was granted to him for life.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Olympia, Wash., Mar 9, 2021 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- American conflicts over religious freedom continue, as the Washington Supreme Court has reversed a ruling that blocked a bisexual lawyer’s discrimination lawsuit against a Christian nonprofit that se… […]
4 Comments
An ominous sign.
They can only do this because they know they can get away with it.
In modern Germany, perhaps the Catholics would be more easily identified if they wore mandatory patches on their outer coats. This time around, the star of Christmas comes to mind.
Since the church hierarchy is evidently powerless ( or more likely, unwilling) to assert itself in today’s morality, its a given that no non-clerical Catholic, no matter how devout, no matter political position, could manage anything either. The church is slipping due to its fear of calling a sin, a sin. Afraid of more folks leaving. But they leave nonetheless. Better to speak the truth and work with the genuine followers who remain. As for the Germans attacking people on the basis of religion, they have been down this road before. It didnt go well for them. Maybe someone ( like the Pope) should remind them.
America has set world cultural standards for many decades now, the most significant and deleterious is the dissolution between “religion and politics.” Watch America, view it on android screens, this vivid tutorial destroy itself politically, becoming in apocalyptic language a haven for every filthy bird. Religion in process of delegitimization here Germans are learning over there. Politics in Germany acquiring similar religiosity the immoral now the licit. If Catholics in Am as well as Germany raise their heads to criticize aberrant sexual behavior, vilification is passé, we’re already subject to legal sanction. Rights have evolved since the Sixties. Antithetical to Christian propriety transforming Christian beliefs into hatred. The disease is spreading inexorably to all Earth’s corners. Fearsome to what it portends nothing close to it historically, since we have a wicked ideological inversion from morality to immorality. Faith in Christ, Christ the cornerstone of order, diluted deformed and disbelieved. Brother Francis! Where art thou?
An ominous sign.
They can only do this because they know they can get away with it.
In modern Germany, perhaps the Catholics would be more easily identified if they wore mandatory patches on their outer coats. This time around, the star of Christmas comes to mind.
Since the church hierarchy is evidently powerless ( or more likely, unwilling) to assert itself in today’s morality, its a given that no non-clerical Catholic, no matter how devout, no matter political position, could manage anything either. The church is slipping due to its fear of calling a sin, a sin. Afraid of more folks leaving. But they leave nonetheless. Better to speak the truth and work with the genuine followers who remain. As for the Germans attacking people on the basis of religion, they have been down this road before. It didnt go well for them. Maybe someone ( like the Pope) should remind them.
America has set world cultural standards for many decades now, the most significant and deleterious is the dissolution between “religion and politics.” Watch America, view it on android screens, this vivid tutorial destroy itself politically, becoming in apocalyptic language a haven for every filthy bird. Religion in process of delegitimization here Germans are learning over there. Politics in Germany acquiring similar religiosity the immoral now the licit. If Catholics in Am as well as Germany raise their heads to criticize aberrant sexual behavior, vilification is passé, we’re already subject to legal sanction. Rights have evolved since the Sixties. Antithetical to Christian propriety transforming Christian beliefs into hatred. The disease is spreading inexorably to all Earth’s corners. Fearsome to what it portends nothing close to it historically, since we have a wicked ideological inversion from morality to immorality. Faith in Christ, Christ the cornerstone of order, diluted deformed and disbelieved. Brother Francis! Where art thou?