The all out assault on Catholicism continues

Catholic bashing seems to be the flavour of the month!

This time round it's Stephen Fry. Now I actually happen to think Stephen can be most entertaining but this really is a dreadful slur on 1) Catholics and 2) Poles.

From Gerald Warner at The Telegraph:

Fry, who joined Labour luvvies in signing an open letter protesting against the Tories’ alliance in the European Parliament with the Polish Law and Justice Party, said on Channel 4 News: “There’s been a history, let’s face it, in Poland of a right-wing Catholicism which has been deeply disturbing for those of us who know a little history and remember which side of the border Auschwitz was on”…

That is beyond outrageous. It slanderously suggests that Auschwitz was run by Polish Catholics, not by German Nazis. “A little history” is right. Just how very little history Fry knows is demonstrated by that crassly ignorant statement. Auschwitz was on Polish soil, ergo it was a Polish institution? As for which side of the border Auschwitz was on, it was actually in Upper Silesia which had been annexed to Germany in 1939. It might, of course, be argued that the Poles built Auschwitz – if slave labour counts.

The first prisoners in Auschwitz were Polish intellectuals and members of the resistance. Altogether, 150,000 Catholic Poles were murdered in Auschwitz, including Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Between two and three million Catholic Poles were killed in the Second World War. Polish pilots fought in the RAF in the Battle of Britain.

Note Fry’s insidious use of the dog-whistle term “right-wing Catholicism”: the propagandist employment of the phrase “right wing” has recently been expounded by several bloggers on this site. Catholicism is neither “right-wing” nor “left-wing”: it professes certain moral precepts that are unchanging and non-negotiable at the behest either of focus groups or pressure groups.

See the full article on Gerald Warner's blog here