The De-Judaization of the Image of Jesus of Nazareth (The Virgin Mary) at the Time of the Holocaust: Ensoulment and the Human Ovum

By Thomas Alexander Blüger

Thomas has been researching his family's Jewish background for the last thirty years. Herein he investigates how his Jewish grandparents, and aunt-defined as a nonprivileged Mischling, survived the war while living in the heart of Nazi Germany. This led Thomas to research Hitler's fear of having partial Jewish ancestry and expanded into a full-blown study of following Christianity’s understanding of the Jewish identity of Jesus of Nazareth throughout history. Not leaving matters here, Thomas outlines how Marian dogmatic theology, used at the time of the Shoah, brought to conclusion the Church's long journey in defining the "time" of ensoulment as articulated in the papal document Ineffabilis Deus, promulgated by Pius in 1854. This happened twenty-seven years after the discovery of the human ovum in 1827 by Karl Ernst von Baer. Years later, with the emergence of Nazi racial ideology, many anti-Christian Christians attempted to invert Christianity's core message of salvation through faith toward biological ends. This would not do. Roman authorities had consistently held throughout the centuries that faith is about salvation and not about biology. According to that same end, the "ideal" of ensoulment, since the time of the Church's renewed understanding of it—beginning in 1854—and indeed as it was first articulated through the writings of Aristotle and received into Christianity through the writings of Saint Augustine and later Thomas Aquinas—was newly preserved within the confines of Western civilization. This is the first book, the author knows of, that follows Augustine's concept of ensoulment, as well as Aquinas's thinking on the matter, while linking these to Karl Ernst von Baer's discovery of the human ovum in 1827, up until the events of Shoah and beyond. This study is phenomenological in nature in that it does "not" follow Jesus of Nazareth (the Virgin Mary) throughout history, but rather follows the "image" of Jesus of Nazareth (the Virgin Mary)—a monumental difference. This study supports the Second Vatican Council, the Church's latest and ongoing efforts in affirming the Jewish identities of both Jesus of Nazareth and the Virgin Mary, John Paul II's call for a purification of memory beginning in a year of Jubilee, as well as the many present efforts in Catholic-Jewish relations. This study builds upon the author's past article: "Following the Virgin Mary through Auschwitz: Marian Dogmatic Theology at the Time of the Shoah," published in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 14, winter 2008, No. 3, pp. 1-24.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664149410

Thomas Alexander Blüger

As the grandson of two Jews who survived the war while living in Berlin, our author sets out to reconcile his Catholic faith with the role of the Catholic Church at the time of the Shoah. With degrees in sociology, philosophy, systematic theology, and pastoral counseling, he later enrolled at the Summer Institute for Holocaust Studies for educators at the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem—offered through the Sisters of Charity at Seaton Hill in Greensborough, Pennsylvania. During this time, he was appointed Spiritual Director of the Edith Stein Association for the Archdiocese of Ottawa. Following, came a short stint at Catholic Theological Union for a graduate course in praxis theology at the doctor of ministry level. Still practicing his faith, Thomas addresses a majorly overlooked aspect of Holocaust studies.

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Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Alexander Blüger.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Part I: General Introduction

Section I:  The Blüger Family

Chapter 1     Placing Myself In Context: Praxis Theology

Chapter 2     The Blüger Family History

Chapter 3     Walter Leaves Germany

Chapter 4     The Blüger Family After Walter Leaves Germany

Chapter 5     Erika Franklin And The Battle Of Berlin

Chapter 6     Johnny Frankl (Franklin)

Section II:  Methodology

Chapter 7     Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial

Chapter 8     Methodological Considerations

Chapter 9     Carl Jung And The Virgin Mary—A Psychological Perspective

Section III:  Hitler And Jesus As Mischlinge

Chapter 10   Hitler’s Fear Of Jewish Ancestry (Mischling Identity)

Chapter 11   The De-Judaization Of The Image Of Jesus Of Nazareth

Section IV:  Karl Adam And Others

Chapter 12   Karl Adam And The Blessed Virgin Mary

Chapter 13   Hitler’s Brown Priests

Chapter 14   Hermann Muckermann, Wilhelm Schmidt, And Georg Bichlmair

Section V:  Patristic Adversus Judaeos Tradition

Chapter 15   Mary’s Image And The Jews Before Ineffabilis Deus (1854)

Chapter 16   Apostolic Constitution On Mary: Ineffabilis Deus

Section VI:  Ensoulment Throughout The Ages

Chapter 17   Pius IX And Darwin’s Origin Of Species

Chapter 18   Effects Of Aristotle’s Theory On Christianity

Chapter 19   St. Augustine, 345–420 CE

Chapter 20   Constantinus Africanus, St. Albertus, St. Thomas Aquinas, And Others

Chapter 21   Karl Ernst Von Baer And Embryology

Chapter 22   Some Implications Of The New Embryology

Chapter 23   Pius IX, Apostolicae Sedis (1869) And After

Chapter 24   Embryological Discoveries, Catholic Theology, And The Shoah

Section VII:  Mary And The Jews Up Until The Shoah

Chapter 25   Mary And The Jews After Ineffabilis Deus Until The Shoah

Chapter 26   Katri Børresen And Karl Ernst Von Baer

Section VIII:  Cardinal Faulhaber And The German Bishops

Chapter 27   Introduction To Cardinal Faulhaber

Chapter 28   Cardinal Michael Von Faulhaber Of Munich

Chapter 29   Cardinal Faulhaber And His Advent Sermons

Chapter 30   Advent Sermons And Mit Brennender Sorge

Chapter 31   After Mit Brennender Sorge

Chapter 32   The Final Solution

Chapter 33   The Events Of The Rosenstrasse

Chapter 34   After The War

Chapter 35   Conclusion On Faulhaber

Section IX:  Bringing Things Together

Chapter 36   The Virgin Mary And The Jewish People After The Time Of The Shoah

Chapter 37   George Steiner, Hyam Maccoby, And Cardinal Ratzinger

Chapter 38   Closing Remarks

Bibliography

Appendix I: Glossary Of Terms

Appendix II: Phenomenology

Appendix III: Letter From The Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith

Appendix IV: Letter From Hans Küng Affirming What He Wrote About Marian Dogmatics In Judaism

Appendix V: Letter From Johann Baptist Metz

Appendix VI: Was Jesus A Jew? By Father Richard Kleine

Endnotes

The De-Judaization of the Image of Jesus of Nazareth (the Virgin Mary)

at the Time of the Holocaust: Ensoulment and the Human Ovum

Thomas Blüger

Give me an army saying the rosary and I will conquer the world.

— Bl. Pius IX.

Acknowledgments

First to acknowledge is Clarissa, my wonderful wife, who stood by me all these years as I worked matters through. Then to acknowledge are my parents, Walter and Ruth whose lives were not easy. Although the silence was deafening, it was done out of love.

A number of hugs go to deceased family members whom I can hardly wait to meet in the great beyond. First are Aunt Erika and Uncle Johnny (Franklin). After many visits to Johnny in Pickering, Ontario, came his detailed correspondence outlining his incarceration at Dachau as well as his experiences at Lübeck Bay as a British commando 10 (No. 3) Jewish section—tasked with overseeing the burial detail after one of Himmler’s gruesome death marches. It was Johnny’s incarceration at Dachau that spurred me on to investigate why so many priests were detained at that one place.

Aunt Erika’s rendition of the Battle of Berlin set me in another direction, namely, that of unraveling the concept of Mischling(e)—or partial Jewish identity, which came through the Nuremberg laws of 1935. Through Erika’s accounting, I was able to discover not only how these new racial concepts applied to her, and the rest of the Blüger family, but also to Hitler and his own fear of having Jewish ancestry. Then on to examine how these same racial concepts would have applied to Jesus of Nazareth if he had been living at that time—a taboo subject still today.

Also, along family lines, goes a thank you to my grandparents, Alexander, and Casimira—who protected him for the entire duration of the war. With this comes a sense of gratitude to those brave German women who stood their ground while facing Hitler’s elite SS, Kompanie Leibstandarte SS,—what courage! Without those brave women, Alexander would have certainly perished. Then there is Jana Lechering’s recounting of how Margarete Sommer, a Catholic social Worker, who worked for the Catholic bishops, contacted the detainees’ relatives, which in turn enabled them to organize their protest at the Rosenstraße. Another thank you goes to Erika for saving her parents by coming to where they lived to share her meager salary, as well as her accounting of surviving the Battle of Berlin.

Then there were the Blügers back in Odessa whose violent murders spurred me to never rest until I came to the completion of what I needed to do. A spirit of gratitude also goes out to other Blügers who survived the Shoah and are now living in Israel. Without Michael Blüger’s help it would have been difficult to get a handle on the direction my research should take.

A big and heartfelt thank you to Johnny Franklin’s sister, Ruth, who put me on to a Berlin Research Group led by Thea Koberstein and Norbert Stein who were researching the Jews of Lichtenberg. Through them, I was able to confirm my previous research on the Blüger family narrative, which is now recounted as Rekonstruktionsversuch einer Geschichte Familie Blüger, 0112, Weichselstr 30, in Juden in Lichtenberg mit den früheren Ortsteilen in Friedrichshain, Hellersdorf und Marzahn. From there, I was able to launch into a unique study on what was happening in Nazi Germany through the lens of Mischling(e)—or partial Jewish—identity.

When in Israel, I called upon Rabbi Emile Fackenheim who had come over to Canada on the same prison ship as my father—the HMCS Ettrick. Our conversation was exhilarating. How history comes alive!

After friends and family, comes a hearty thank you to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. I found his writings on the Shoah to be of great help. Needless to say, I was bowled over when he gave me access to the Munich archives—when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—through Cardinal Wetter of the Munich diocese. I also thank J. B. Metz for responding to my concerns as well as pointing me in the direction that "dogma must serve the human condition, as well as Hans Küng, in his response to me, that he did not change his mind on Karl Adam since what he (Küng) wrote in his book Judaism.

Also were my studies at the Summer Institute for Holocaust Studies for Educators at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, under the auspices of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education out of Greensborough Pennsylvania, financed in large part through the Sisters of Charity. In Israel, I had the added privilege of two periods of study—one at Ecce Homo and the other at Bat Kol (both run by the Sisters of Zion). These sisters are totally committed—as the record clearly shows—to Catholic-Jewish relations.

Thank you to Professor Tom Lawson who published my first article in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History entitled, Following the Virgin Mary through Auschwitz: Marian Dogmatic Theology at the Time of the Shoah. Also thank you to the folks at the University of Winnipeg who facilitated my STM degree in systematic theology.

As a continuation for forming the theoretical basis for this study, I am thankful for my time spent at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago at which time I managed to complete a course at the doctor of ministry level in praxis theology.

Then there was the Society of Ex-Berliners and its president Dr. Kallmann who happened to live in my hometown of Ottawa. It was through Dr. Kallmann that I was able to unravel the mystery of how my father graduated from the last Jewish teacher’s college in Berlin—Jüdische Lehrerbildungsanstalt (Jewish Normal School) in 1939 at which time he obtained his certification for teaching in Jewish schools.

Then there was the gentleman, one of the few survivors of the MS St. Louis, who put me on to investigate what agency paid for my father’s transportation out of Germany—the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden. From here I proceeded to write the Canadian Jewish Congress for the release of my father’s file.

Then there was the administrative assistant at Good Shepherd Parish in Ottawa, Marianne Bergen who encouraged me to continue investigating my family’s past. Marianne was instrumental in getting our family documentation translated through an official interpreter at the German embassy. For her support, thank you. Then comes Prisoner 88 Sigmund Sobeleski, who was on one of the first trains to Auschwitz. Sigmund was fearless in speaking out for what much of the world still tries to forget. Through him, I learned that to break the silence is a lifelong mission that knows no rest.

A big and hearty thankyou to Dr. Sylvester Dumas who spent a number of days with me poring over the Volk collection at St. Paul University in Ottawa, and to his wife Signhild Damus who translated Hitler’s meeting with Cardinal Faulhaber, as outlined in that same Volk collection.

I also thank Father Kevin Spicer whose research went a long way in helping me place my family narrative into its proper context as well as his reading and correcting that part of my family’s accounting that led to subsequent research. Also is Susannah Heschel and her book The Aryan Jesus who, along with Spicer, freely offered important research material that helped me dig further.

Thank you for those who helped in the editing namely Stepan Gambati, Linda Dyarmond, Paulina Bouey - OSA and Esperanza Maggay.

Then there is Christiana Hoppe at Stolpersteine Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin who facilitated the honour of laying four Stolpersteine—stumbling stones—outside the apartment where Alexander and Casimira lived during the war.

Lastly, a big thank you goes to Edith Stein, now a Saint within the Catholic Church. I write this not out of a sense of triumphalism but rather out of deep sorrow tinged with the certain hope that Edith would appreciate me setting a number of neglected realities straight. As past spiritual director of the Edith Stein Association, I have no illusions that it will be a long time before Christians see her actions for what they really were—namely, her having been in solidarity with her sister Rosa and the Jewish people in the face of a myopic Christianity.

The De-Judaization of the Image of Jesus of Nazareth (the Virgin Mary)

at the Time of the Holocaust: Ensoulment and the Human Ovum

Thomas Blüger

Dedicated to Saint Edith Stein.

There can be no credible Christology after the Shoah

Without addressing Christology at the time of Shoah.

—Author

Preface

The De-Judaization of the Image of Jesus of

Nazareth at the Time of the Holocaust

The purpose of this study is to follow the image of Jesus of Nazareth (inclusive of the Virgin Mary) from early Christian beginnings through to the time of the Holocaust, and beyond. Was Jesus a Jew? What about the Virgin Mary, was she not a Jew? What about the twelve apostles were they not Jews? How could Christians worship Jesus the Jew and venerate other Jews with Hitler now in power? Throughout this investigation, an as yet unnamed paradigm of understanding emerges pertaining to the de-Judaization of Jesus at that time. Herein I evaluate bystander historiography according to six typologies.i

First Typology: Jesus of Nazareth in Opposition

to Judaism—Not Racial in Character

Here, Jesus is depicted as having great hatred toward the Jews such that there could be little empathy toward them. This was best described by the Protestant theologian Adolf Schlatter—shortly before the war—as laid out by the Lutheran historian James E. McNutt:

In the process of carrying out his will, God bears vessels of wrath, prepared to perish, with great and often enduring long suffering. . . . That they [the Jews] came to exist through wrath is made evident in that loss of life is their end.¹

This approach, although both widespread and radical in nature, was not based upon race.

Second Typology: Jesus as Aryan

A second typology has to do with the pervasive political ideology, which held to the belief that Jesus was Aryan—of German blood.² Practicing Roman Catholics could not go this route. The Catholic Church had always taught that Jesus was of the Hebrew race.

A Third Typology: Jesus as a Mischling

A third typology concerning the de-Judaization of Jesus of Nazareth comes to us through the Nuremberg laws of 1935. With these new laws, Jesus’s racial identity could be newly defined—from the Nazi side of things—as a "first-degree Mischling" (half Jew) and not a full Jew.ii How could Jesus be a half Jew? If we look to the Christian scriptures, we learn that Jesus had two Jewish grandparents—Anna and Joachim, God being his heavenly Father and Joseph being his adoptive earthly father. Also was the fact that according to Hitler, Jesus fought against Judaism all his life, thereby placing him into the later-invented category of a privileged Mischling. Accordingly, Jesus would not have had to wear the yellow star or face deportation and extermination. This approach was unacceptable according to Catholic teaching.

A Fourth Typology—Jesus as Mischling

and Born of Mary’s Sinless State

With these new Mischling(e) categorizations, coming through the Nuremberg laws of 1935, also came the realization that Jesus could be moved from the category of a privileged Mischling (a half Jew who stood against Judaism) into the category of a pure Aryan due to the holy and sinless state of his mother, the Virgin Mary.iii This typology, an extension of our third typology, again was unacceptable according to Catholic teaching.

A Fifth Typology—Jesus Born of the Sinless Virgin

Mary, Not Related to Mischling Identity.

A fifth typology, similar to the fourth, utilized Mary’s sinless state while making no reference to Mischlinge categorization. This approach was used by Catholic authorities. Here, Jesus was viewed as having no significant racial connection to postbiblical Judaism because of the sinless state of his mother, the Virgin Mary. Although the Catholic Church had always held to this disassociation, it never had the need to define Jesus against the backdrop of Nazi racial ideology. This created a new and unprecedented problem. If Jesus was to be defined through his mother’s sinless state, then what about those other Jews within the Hebrew scriptures? Would not these, along with the entire canon of the Hebrew scriptures, have to be relinquished? How could the church venerate biblical Jews and harbor the Hebrew scriptures, a Jewish book?

Simply put, a similar set of graces as those given by God to the Virgin Mary, were now extended to possibly apply to biblical Jews as well. With this unique Marian privilege extended to biblical Jews, the Hebrew scriptures could be claimed solely for Christianity—a matter of institutional survival. This was the approach taken by Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich in his Advent sermons of 1933.³

A Sixth Typology: Jesus the Jew

A sixth typology for defining Jesus of Nazareth had nothing to do with replacing or displacing Jesus’s Jewish identity, but rather came through its affirmation. This had nothing to do with bystander complicity. On April 12, 1933, Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun and Jewish convert to Christianity, later murdered at Auschwitz and now a Saint within the Catholic Church, wrote to Pius XI:

Isn’t the effort to destroy Jewish blood an abuse of the holiest humanity of our Savior, of the most blessed Virgin and the apostles? Is not all this diametrically opposed to the conduct of our Lord and Savior, who, even on the cross, still prayed for his persecutors? And isn’t this a black mark on the record of this Holy Year, which was intended to be a year of peace and reconciliation?⁴

Here, Edith was referring to real Jewish blood—the same blood coursing through the veins of Jews living in Germany. Of note is that, when it came to the blood of Jesus—as interpreted by catholic authorities throughout the centuries—we are referring to something completely different than real Jewish blood—namely, the resurrected blood of God’s only Son. Although Jesus was a Jew, his blood was seen as having little in common with the blood of nonbaptized postbiblical Jews.iv

As an Aside

Recently, Edith Stein was declared a saint within the Catholic Church. As past spiritual director of the Blessed Edith Stein Association for the Archdiocese of Ottawa, I realized that this move of making her a saint angered and upset a number of Jewish people. As you the reader may know, Edith converted from Judaism and became a Carmelite sister. As one of Europe’s foremost intellectuals—a well-known philosopher-phenomenologist and Catholic educator—Edith spoke out on behalf of her people. When the Jews were rounded up for deportation, she could have easily escaped but instead chose to remain with her sister Rosa and paid the price.

In 1994 I was appointed Spiritual Director of the Edith Stein Association for the Archdiocese of Ottawa. Edith’s cause for sainthood was swiftly moving toward completion. The whole affair made me feel uneasy in that the symbolism behind her canonization could easily be interpreted as a form of Catholic triumphalism, meaning that there was no need for Roman Catholics to further examine their consciences’ after the events of the Shoah. Just as Edith became a Christian, so too could the Jewish people in today’s post-Shoah world do the same. Of course, this would be a complete adulteration of the intentionality behind her canonization. Such an attitude would offer Catholics an excuse to continue to practice their faith while not having to face the horrors of Auschwitz. In all of this, however, there is another side to Edith’s canonization. Through the leadership of John Paul II came the many acts of repentance, which Catholics made at the dawn of the new millennium. Supporting these acts of contrition is the Jewish-Christian dialogue hopefully happening in every diocese throughout the world. Then there are the many and various documents within the church supporting and affirming the Jewish people in their covenantal belief.

It is my belief that Edith went to her death as a proud Jew who refused to accept any compromise as to Jesus’s Jewish identity. She stood in solidarity with the Jewish people.

Believe as One Saw Fit

Throughout the time of the Third Reich, Christians were left to believe in Jesus as best they saw fit, as long as they did not contest the fact that he stood on Germany’s side in the great conflagration. Then there were those baptized Christians—Roman Catholics included—who were ardent Nazis and who willfully participated in the horrors and atrocities, which followed. These were those who could not care less about how Jesus was defined. Mark Edward Ruff, as does Hans Müller, holds that had the Nazis not threatened the church, the two could have easily coexisted symbiotically. The chasm between church and state was not that great.⁵ This study affirms both Ruff’s and Müller’s hypothesis.

But how did these conceptualizations for Jesus of Nazareth come about? Shockingly, we discover that Adolf Hitler had fears as to his own possible Mischling, or partial Jewish identity. It was he, and only he, who commanded the final say as to who was to be defined as a Jew.

Jesus of Nazareth

Keeping in mind that the present Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 487 states, What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ⁶—we will discover that Marian theology, at the time of the Shoah (our fifth typology), was turned into—Christology. Once Jesus and Mary are understood according to this dualistic modality, a whole new scenario for interpreting historical events emerges.⁷

Not about Blame

The aim of this presentation is to help you the reader become aware of an inherited spiritual myopia on the part of Western civilization at the time of the Shoah. This study is not about blame.v

This study supports the work of Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck who comment on the failure of researchers of the Shoah to study racial persecutions in parallel and that this has greatly impeded our understanding of events.¹

Part I: General Introduction

Jewish Grandparents

This study investigates the author’s familial background, on his father’s side, through the lens of Mischling—or partial Jewish identity—as defined by the Nuremberg laws of 1935. By engaging in this exercise, a whole new set of conceptualizations comes into play for understanding the events of the Shoah.vi

Although this study originally began as an attempt to unravel the mystery of how this author’s Jewish grandparents survived the war while living in Nazi Germany, it expanded into an in-depth examination of following the de-Judaization of Jesus of Nazareth, and his mother the Virgin Mary before and throughout that same time period.¹

Who Is This Study For?

This study is directed toward those who have a general knowledge and interest in the events of the Holocaust, but primarily it is written for those within the Roman Catholic community involved in the study of systematic theology and/or Catholic-Jewish relations. It has little to do with the Protestant churches, although it may prove of interest to those seeking to understand the Catholic parallel to the felonious doctrine of the Aryan Christ—well researched by Susannah Heschel and Richard Steigmann-Gall.² Readers could also include priests, theologians (especially those interested in praxis theology), historians, philosophers (those interested in phenomenology), and psychologists (especially those interested in Jungian (analysis). In some ways this approach might prove to be a help to those Catholics who feel that they are locked into a type of catholic fundamentalism, which keeps them from accepting the documents of Vatican II, while at the same time, having difficulty in entering into the official catholic response to the events of the Shoah.

In some ways, this study is not tailored toward Jewish sensibilities and may prove offensive to some. Mary Christine Athans, while citing Avital Wohlmann, makes three points to this end. First, is the difficulty for Jews to understand why Mary is honored as a virgin in that the concept of virginity is not central within Judaism. Second is that Jews cannot comprehend how Mary can be both the mother of God and also the spouse of God. For Jews to mix images in this fashion is foreign to their faith.³ Third is that Mary’s image is seen by Jews as establishing a quasi-divine intermediary between humanity and God—a form of idolatry.⁴ With these three qualifications, some Jewish people might be interested in what is written below.

A possible link to the Islamic faith

With the rediscovery of Aristotle’s writings, as well as a number of medical books within the Arab world, came a further integration of these same writings into the corpus of Christianity through the works of Saint Albertus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. According to these ends, some within the Muslim faith may find what is presented here of considerable interest.

Jesus the Jew

At the center of this investigation stands Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew and how his Jewish identity was compromised at the time of the Shoah.

Not about Undermining Present Efforts

This study supports the many and recent efforts made in Catholic-Jewish relations. One book of note is Frank Coppa’s The Papacy, the Jews, and the Holocaust published through Catholic University Press of America.⁵ There is no need to repeat here what is so capably presented in Coppa’s book although throughout this study, I name a number of milestones in Catholic-Jewish relations. I will, however, try to fill in some of the gaps not addressed by Coppa and others.

Outline

Section 1, chapter 1 introduces me the author while outlining some basic facts and premises of this study. Chapters 2 through 4 introduces the Blüger family. Here, we follow the life of Alexander Blüger, a Jew from Odessa from the Ukraine, and his Aryan wife Casimira Luckner—a German-born Roman Catholic who makes a formal conversion to the Jewish religion before her marriage in 1910. Both Alexander and Casimira survive the war while living in Berlin in what was called a protected nonprivileged Mischling (racially mixed) union as defined through the Nuremberg laws of 1935. From here, we follow Walter Blüger, the author’s father—a Geltungsjude who left Germany before the war in 1939. Also, we follow Walter’s older sister (of the same parents), Erika Luckner, a baptized Roman Catholic (baptized before her mother’s conversion to the Jewish faith) and not registered with the Jewish community. Erika is classified as a nonprivileged Mischling and conceals her identity while remaining in Berlin for the duration of the war.

Chapter 5 picks up with Erika as she recounts her experiences of the Battle of Berlin. At the end of the war her true identity is discovered forcing her to work on a Mischlinge crew or face deportation and certain death. Chapter 6 introduces the author’s uncle, Johnny Franklin (Erika’s husband John Frankl), another Jew from Berlin. In his memoirs, Johnny recounts the events behind his short incarceration at Dachau concentration camp in 1939 after which time he was released through his sister’s intervention. Johnny makes his way to England and joins the British Commandos No. 10 unit (Jewish section No. 3) and ends the war at Lübeck Bay in northern Germany overseeing a burial detail of those forced on a death march. I use Johnny’s account to consider how over 2,700 priests ended up at Dachau. What were the circumstances that brought them to this one place?

Section 2, chapter 7 begins at Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem where stands a cattle car, placed on railway tracks, high in midair, coming to an abrupt end before a giant precipice. Below and in front stands a brass-etched plaque telling the story of how this particular cattle car was used to transport Jews to their deaths. Chapter 8 and 9 outlines the methodology of praxis theology as I link what happened to the Blüger family members to what was happening within the wider Roman Catholic community at that time.

Section 3, chapter 10 continues by uncovering Hitler’s fears of possessing Jewish ancestry. In conclusion, I concur with John Toland, Robert Waite, Bryan-Mark Rigg, the psychiatrist Dr. Fritz Redlich, as well as many others, who advance that although Hitler had fears about having Jewish ancestry it probably can never be proved or disproved as such, however, it is important to recognize that such hauntings contributed to his perceptual universe.

Chapter 11 examines Hitler’s understanding of Jesus of Nazareth while challenging the presently opined view that Hitler and the Nazis saw Jesus only as Aryan. Without totally rejecting this Aryan claim, I add to the conversation by asking, how could Jesus be defined as an Aryan when Christians knew that he had two Jewish grandparents—Anna and Joachim? Also, at that time there were over thirteen million Roman Catholics that were bound according to their catechism to accept the fact that Jesus was of the Hebrew race. I solve this mystery. For Hitler to convey that Jesus was not a Jew, did not necessarily mean that Jesus was not Mischling—in this case, a half-Jew. After turning Jesus into a half-Jew—and with the addition of Mary’s sinless state—Jesus could, once again be turned into an Aryan.

Section 4, chapters 12 through 14 investigates a statement made in 1943 by the world-famous German theologian Karl Adam who personally found it an uplifting thought that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin and that because of this she had no physical or moral connection with those ugly dispositions and forces which we condemn in full-blooded Jews.⁶ To explore what lay behind Adam’s Marian statement, chapter 12 investigates Adam’s comment and wider theology within the context of the dogmatic theology of the Catholic Church. Chapter 13 expands our inquiry to investigate the theology of Father Richard Kleine, a brown (Nazi) priest, who was openly known for trying to build bridges between the Catholic Church and the Nazi regime. Chapter 14 investigates three Catholic clerics who thought toward similar ends.

Section 5 places Adam’s Marian statements within the broader context of the church’s adversus Judaeos tradition. Chapter 15 examines the Virgin Mary’s image in relation to postbiblical Jewry—from the early time of Christianity, up until the papal encyclical Ineffabilis Deus in 1854. Chapter 16 introduces and reviews the Apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, on the Immaculate Conception of Mary, revealing a deep psychological and spiritual disconnect within Catholic religious imagination between Mary the Jew and Mary the Mother of God.

Section 6, entitled Ensoulment throughout the Ages,vii examines some of the theological realities, which lay behind the dogma on Mary’s Immaculate Conception, relating to the concept of ensoulment as well as the how and why this new Marian dogma came to be proclaimed at this particular time in history. To further explain, Section VI, chapter 17 begins by recounting how in 1876, shortly after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 a noted biologist by the name of St. George Mivart published his book The Genesis of Species showing there to be no apparent contradiction between Darwin’s writings and Catholic teaching. Catholic scholars complained to Rome. Surprisingly, Pius IX awarded Mivart a doctoral hat in philosophy.⁷

Part 2, chapter 18–22 outlines how the concept of ensoulment developed throughout the centuries starting with Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and his hypothesis of delayed animation as advanced in his theory of three types of souls. Aristotle discerned that human embryonic development came through a secession of souls. First, the vegetative soul followed by the animal soul and finally the rational soul. The third or rational soul was believed to come into existence roughly forty days for a male and eighty to ninety days for a female, after the time of conception. For Aristotle, ensoulment did not happen until the third or rational soul manifested—hence, his theory of delayed (or mediate) animation. From here, we follow Aristotle’s concept of delayed animation into Christianity by way of the Greek Septuagint Bible and later legislations beginning in 380 CE—the time when Christianity became the state religion. Chapter 19 follows Augustine and others, showing how the church wrestled with the concept of ensoulment and how it came to be linked with original sin and the ensoulment of the Blessed Virgin Mary—central to this presentation.

Chapter 20 brings us to a shipwreck in the eleventh century when a fellow by the name of Constantinus Africanus salvaged and later translated medical texts from Arabic into Latin. Through Africanus’s translations, the concept of delayed animation was appropriated anew for Western civilization. From here, we follow Aristotle’s concept of delayed animation through the writings of Saint Albertus, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, the Council of Basel (1493), the Council of Trent (1545–1563 CE), up until the time of Benedict XIV.

Chapter 21 introduces and reviews various discoveries in the field of the embryological sciences beginning with William C. Harvey and his publication of De generationer animalism in 1651, at which time he postulated the reality of a mammalian ovule. One hundred and seventy-six years later, in 1827, Karl Ernst von Baer actually discovers what Harvey predicted—the human ovule. With von Baer’s discovery came a profound paradigm shift in Western civilization. Twenty-seven years later, in 1854, the document Ineffabilis Deus is promulgated by Pius IX. With von Baer’s discovery—after more than fourteen hundred years of theological speculation—church authorities feel sufficiently confident in their new scientifically based knowledge to abandon (or, better put, to update) Aristotle’s theory of delayed animation. Chapter 22 illustrates the effects of von Baer’s discovery on Catholic theology. Here we convey to you the reader that delayed animation, as it had always been speculatively applied to the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (not Jesus), was, for the first time in human history, rejected in the document Ineffabilis Deus. Mary’s ensoulment is defined as happening at the first instance—of her conception—immediate animation. Part 3, chapter 23 considers our third trajectory as outlined in the document Apostolical Sedis written in 1869—dealing with specific laws and censures.

Chapter 24 addresses the effects of von Baer’s discovery on Catholic thinking. The Dominican priest Cletus Wessels recounts that with the discovery of the human ovum in 1827, all the old understandings about human fertility based upon the physiology of the ancients was displaced.⁸ This marked a shift in consciousness not only in Catholic teaching but for Western civilization as well. Women were suddenly and newly perceived as equal contributors in the genetic and biological makeup of their children. No more were they to be understood as simply supplying the nurturing force or as living receptacles for their offspring. They are now seen as full and equal partners in contributing to the biological makeup of their offspring. The whole worldview of male-female relations was forever changed. The pernicious animus-driven ideology of a war-torn Europe must now reconfigure itself to accommodate the fact that women should have equal partnership in the realities that affected their lives. This did not happen. Why? The male-centered European culture could not integrate the significance of von Baer’s discovery. These matters remained repressed.

Shortly after von Baer’s discovery in 1854 came the papal encyclical Ineffabilis Deus—on Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Millions of Catholics throughout the world intensify their devotion to Mary while, on a psychological level, they collectively elevate the feminine principle.viii Although Catholics had always offered devotion through the intercession of Mary, Marian devotion intensified and increased exponentially for the next hundred years, and beyond. It would seem that intuitively, Roman Catholics grasped the importance of the document Ineffabilis Deus on levels other than intellectual.

Looking at how Ineffabilis Deus supported the science behind von Baer’s discovery, we come to a deeper understanding of Pius IX’s actions, when in 1847 he reinstated the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which had its roots in the Academy of the Lynxes (Accademia die Lance), founded in Rome in 1603, now named the Pontifical Academy of the New Lynxes.⁹ Also was Pius’s excommunication of the priest Jakob Frodsham in 1857, who wrote On the Generation of Human Souls, published in 1854, which contradicted Ineffabilis Deus—covered below.¹⁰

Moving to section 7, in chapter 25 we examine Mary’s image in relation to postbiblical Judaism after the time of the encyclical Ineffabilis Deus up until the time of the Shoah.

Chapter 26 considers the theologian Katri Børresen from the University of Oslo and her analysis of androcentric anthropology in the development of Christian doctrine specifically within the context of the discovery of the mammalian ovule by Karl Ernst von Baer (1827). Børresen holds that originally, Mary’s role in salvation history had been defined according to certain and various outdated embryological presuppositions. Once the human ovule was discovered, the significance of her role expanded beyond the intentions of those who originally defined it. Although misinformed in her analysis of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, Børresen’s thesis holds. From here, we review the work of Karl Eschweiler, a priest-professor in Nazi Germany.

Section 8, chapter 27 through 35 introduces and follows the life and career of Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of the Munich-Freising Archdiocese as well as the German hierarchy’s response to the Jewish question throughout the duration of the war. Cardinal Faulhaber is singled out in the Vatican document We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah dated March 1998 as clearly expressing rejection of the Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda.¹¹ We investigate.

Section 9, chapter 36 reviews the Virgin Mary’s role after the time of the Shoah till present with respect to her Jewish identity vis-à-vis postbiblical Judaism. Chapter 37 raises a number of concerns through the writings of George Steiner and Hyam Maccoby while chapter 38 concludes this study.

Section I

THE BLÜGER FAMILY

Section 1, chapter 1 introduces this topic through some preliminary accountings from the author. Chapter 2 through 4 recounts how a Jew from Odessa in the Ukraine, Alexander Blüger, and his Aryan wife, Casimira Lückner—a German-born Roman Catholic, who makes a formal conversion to the Jewish religion before their marriage in 1910—survived the war while living in Nazi Germany. Chapter 4 follows their son, Walter Blüger, the author’s father, throughout that same time period. Chapter 5 follows Walter’s sister, Erika, as she recounts her experiences of the Battle of Berlin. As a nonprivileged Mischling, half Jew, Erika is forced to work on a Mischlinge crew or else face deportation. Chapter 6 introduces the author’s uncle, Johnny Frankl (Franklin), also a Jew from Berlin, who recounts his experiences at Dachau concentration camp in 1939. Johnny makes his way to England and joins the British commandos in a special deployment of Jewish soldiers and ends the war at Lübeck Bay in northern Germany overseeing a burial detail of prisoners forced on a death march. I use Johnny’s accountings at Dachau to ponder how over 2,700 Catholic priests ended up at that one place.

I feel obligated not to fall into the trap of studying the events of the Shoah according to some intellectual framework, which bypasses the locked-in vicarious trauma of a second-generation son of a Holocaust survivor.

—Author

Chapter 1

PLACING MYSELF IN CONTEXT:

PRAXIS THEOLOGY

I am the third child of four, I have two older sisters and one younger brother. My middle name is Alexander in honor of my grandfather, on my father’s side of the family, Alexander Blüger. Alexander was a Russian-German speaking Jew from Odessa, Ukraine. Originally, the spelling of Bluger was with an umlaut over the (ü) and so throughout I spell it as such—Blüger.

In 1952, Dad approached the local Anglican priest and asked to have me baptized. This made sense as my mother was raised a devout Anglican and wanted her tradition to have influence within the family. At the time of my baptism, Dad who had never been baptized, was confirmed by the bishop. If anyone knows anything about Christianity, then they would surely know that confirmation before baptism is a violation of sacred church practice. Confirmation signifies the completion of one’s baptism at which time the individual embraces the full message of the Christian faith. Why would a Bishop confirm my father when he had never been baptized? This was a mystery to me.

At around age six, our family moved and settled in Ottawa, Ontario, in Canada. As a little boy in grade two, I had heard my teacher talk about a terrible war that ended with many people getting killed. Why were all these people killed? I had never heard of war before, and never understood at that young age, how it had affected the world.

From as early as I can remember, I was told that I was part Jewish coming from my father’s side of the family. In the Blüger household, family dynamics were such that these things were never mentioned. Much later, as I researched the literature on children of Holocaust survivors to discover that many, in their adult lives, committed suicide or were institutionalized. Perhaps this was one reason why the war, and my father being Jewish, were never discussed.

One memory that stands out for me happened in fifth grade after my watching the Bugs Bunny television cartoon show. At that time, after the cartoons, it was common for the network to show old black-and-white movie reels about WWII. As I was watching, the ovens of Auschwitz and the skeletons of incinerated Jews suddenly appeared. I was shocked. It made me question who I was, and what was my heritage. Was I Jewish or part Jewish or German or part German or what? As long as I can remember, I was told that I was part German and part Jewish. How could I be from a people that murdered Jews and at the same time also be from a people who were murdered by Germans? I went to the kitchen and asked my mother:

Mom, am I Jewish or German?

Ask your father, came her reply.

Dad, am I Jewish or German or what?

You are part German and part Jewish.

How much of a Jew am I—a quarter, a half? Different rumors were floating around the family.

I do not wish to talk about it, came the reply as he picked up his newspaper and continued reading. That was the end of that! Did that mean I would have to spend the rest of my life as a stranger to my own history? From that time on I looked at my father in a different way. I felt that by his refusal to engage me, that I was being denied the key that could somehow unlock the confusion as well as what I was the agitated feelings, I was experiencing deep-down inside.

In the days of my growing up, children were disciplined with spankings, and some were quite severe. As an educator, with his master’s degree in education from McMaster University in London, Ontario, Dad oscillated between corporal punishment and handing out math penalties. One penalty was to figure out the prime numbers from one to a hundred. Another was to remember the total of the squares from 1 to 25. On other occasions, I received corporal punishment. Looking back, I realize that the physical punishment I received, in some strange way, was more painful than the mere physicality of the event. It had something to do with my father’s wounded spirit. This is not to say that I did not love my father, quite the opposite, I loved him deeply; but somehow such punishments made me later wonder who my dad really was. How did his upbringing in Germany make him into the man he was?

By high school, I began to see life for what it really was—or at least for what I thought it to be. In a snap decision, I left the Anglican church where I had been an altar server, sang in the choir, and attended Cubs and Boy Scouts, etc. I suppose one could say that I was turning into a typical alienated youth. Underneath it all; however, there was something more than typical youthful rebellion—something I did not know how to name.

One time in high school, a group of teenagers made fun of a German kid who peddled stolen cigarettes from his locker. They marched by like storm troopers giving the Nazi salute. Suddenly, they turned to me and yelled, Herr Blüger! and We must incinerate all the Jews!—all in adolescent fun and yet deeply painful to me.

There were many interesting characters that visited my parents’ house. One such person was a gentleman named Herbert Cohen. When he visited, he was always treated like royalty. I discovered that he came from a small town in Poland. When he was young, he would invite his friends over to play cards in the back of his dad’s shoe store. Years later, the Nazis arrived in his town to round up all the Jews. When they came to Herbert’s house, the solder driving the truck happened to be one of his old card-playing buddies. He ordered Herbert to come with him. Instead of putting him in the back of the truck with the others, he stuck him inside the cab. This was how Herbert came to be sitting in our backyard and sipping lemonade.

Then there was Sam Greenberg and his wife Rachel. Sam was from a small town in Austria. He escaped the Nazis, leaving his sisters and parents behind. Once we were told that he named his daughter after one of his sisters who had been murdered by the Nazis. He never shared this with his wife, however, our family knew and became the gatekeepers to his cherished secret of honoring his sister’s memory.

Most of my family members were of above-average intelligence. My father was invited to do his PhD but declined. My mother, Ruth, was magna cum laude from McGill University in Montreal, winning the French language Medal for the province of Quebec. She also won a scholarship to Bryn Mar in Pennsylvania—one of the Seven Sisters—where she completed her master’s degree in German mythology and music. Years later, she completed another baccalaureate in library science. My mother was a person of considerable knowledge and helped with my education in any way she could. To cultivate my curiosity, she would take me on short adventures and trips. One time we went by bus to Louisville, Kentucky, to visit the famous horse stable of Man of War as well as one of the world’s longest caves, Mammoth Cave, where they had fish with no eyes and a aboriginal mummy. The story that was told was this poor fellow, during the fourth century BCE, wandered into one of the caves and never found his way out. Mom and I made our sojourn shortly after John Glenn had made his famous flight into space on February 20, 1962—exciting times!

Mom came from a long line of United Empire Loyalists on her father’s side of the family. When the American Revolution ended, the Mallory family, her family name, lived in Penobscot, Maine. When Penobscot went to the Americans, some of the residents rolled their homes down to the shoreline and floated them to St. Andrews in New Brunswick, Canada. When they came to New Brunswick, they opened a livery stable. Generations later, my grandfather, Edward Mallory was born.

One day, Edward got fed up with school and threw an apple at his teacher, only to be expelled. The next day, his friends found him on the beach cooking clams on a big metal sheet. That summer, Edward learned telegraphy and landed a job with the Canadian National Railway where he worked himself up to the position of executive to the president. At one time, the Senate in Canada sent him, along with his entire family, to Mexico to help build their new nationalized railway. Edward even had an office in the Mexican Parliament Buildings as well as his own caboose guarded by soldiers. It was sometime after Edward’s telegraphy job and before he joined the Canadian National Railways that he ran off and joined the Canadian Dragoons—the first Canadian regiment. Being visually impaired, and having to pass an eye exam, he placed one hand over his bad eye. When asked to do the same with his other eye, he simply took his other hand and placed it over his same bad eye. He was in! He was off to fight for the British in the imperialist Boer War.

In South Africa, he met and fell in love with Anna-Marie Richter, one of our two German grandmothers. Anna-Marie had come to South Africa under doctor’s orders to escape the dampness of Lübbenau in the Upper Spree Forest-Lusatia District of Brandenburg—a little less than an hour’s train ride from Berlin. The Spreewald was a system of canals inhabited by—or so my mother told me—the last cannibals in Europe who happened also to be Gypsies. When the authorities came looking for horse thieves, the clan members simply cut down a few trees and blocked off the canals.

One family story—we have the love letters to prove it—was that before Anna-Marie left for South Africa, Richard Hellmann, later of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, asked for her hand in marriage. She turned him down. Then there was the story when my grandmother and mother visited the Spreewald. At the train station, Ruth, my mother, as a little girl was hoisted up on a table and asked to sing a song. She chose The Maple Leaf Forever. They loved her performance and gave her candy. Another account involved a sad family secret. As the Second World War drew to its close and the Communists advanced, a member of our extended family took his five daughters to the barn and shot them dead. He could not bear to think what would happen once the Communists got a hold of his children. That was war and the horror of my family and their stories.

After becoming a Catholic priest, I wanted to see the old family homestead in Lübbenau as well as find my great-grandfather’s tombstone. Apparently, he had red hair and was a Gypsy foundling. In Lübbenau I learned that after the war, when the Communists came, they took all the gravestones and used them for roads.

After high school in 1971, I enrolled in Honours Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, then on to sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa. At Carleton, I studied under a professor coming from the Frankfurt School in Germany. The Frankfurt School was founded in 1923 and was initially Marxist and interdisciplinary in its approach. Hitler expelled them out of Germany in 1933. Upon their return, after the war, they underwent a succession of changes. Their members included such greats as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin. Undergirding their methodology was a search for the much-needed explanation of why the Second World War had come about. Most of Germany’s parents had remained silent as to what had happened under the Nazis. Their children rebelled and took to the barricades. They wanted answers. It was Adorno and the Frankfurt School who broke the silence. In response several parents accused Adorno of misleading their youth. He was forced to leave Germany for an extended period. One must realize that at that time, Western civilization had experienced a gargantuan rupture under the Nazis. Through the Frankfurt School this rupture was grappled by applying a synthesis of Marxian dialectics, Hegelian philosophy while also utilizing insights of psychoanalysis, sociology, existential philosophy, and other disciplines.¹ Their approach came to be known as critical theory.² Eventually, the school disavowed orthodox Marxism and concentrated on Freudian analysis and the authoritarian personality.

When I studied at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Jürgen Habermas—one of the many subsequent reincarnations of the Frankfurt School—was touted as all-important within theological-praxis-circles.

Habermas spoke about speech acts and authenticity as a basis in forming policy and social coordination. Only when the conditions of truth were met could social coordination be constructive. In its final distillation, the Frankfurt School challenged the idea of objective realities enshrined by certain classes and interest groups while opting for the transformation of culture in the service of humanity. I wondered whether inculcated in its very design, the Frankfurt School was not calling for the total dismantling of Western civilization, thereby failing to ensure that even more insidious ideologies would eventually prevail. Was not a belief in God now simply being replaced by some obscure social consensus masked in terms of rightness and sincerity, another form of social relativism, being made into the new collective absolute?

Recently, I discovered an interesting book entitled The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, which outlines an exchange between Jürgen Habermas and then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the Holy Father Emeritus Benedict XVI.³ Of significance was that both men agree that religion has a role to play in the modern state.

Priesthood

How did my experiences at Carleton University bring me to the Catholic priesthood? It was at Carleton that I began to consider the importance of faith. I became involved in the Carleton Christian Fellowship. Here, I experienced friendship in a way I had never known.

What finally drew me to the priesthood happened after spending several summers at Chetwynd, British Columbia, and Teslin, Yukon, in the north of Canada, with the Oblates (an order of catholic priests). Our What finally drew me to the priesthood happened after spending a number of summers at Chetwynd in Northern British Columbia, and Teslin in the Yukon Territories. Here I assisted First Nations people—at the invitation and under the direction of the band chief and parish priest—to host a number of day-camps for young people. There I made friends with a number of First Nation’s youth and became pen pals with one. Through him I gained a deep, respectful understanding for his people and his culture.

After my experiences in Western Canada, while assisting a few Roman Catholic Oblate priests, I applied to be a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. I ended up at Emmanuel & St. Chad seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. What I remember most about Emmanuel and St. Chad was a six-week field course entitled Canadian Urban Training, wherein we examined various social structures within Canadian society along the lines of transcendent and pathological interaction. Some of the topics our little group chose to examine were alcohol abuse, inner-city life, aboriginal friendship centres, the seal hunt, credit unions, violence against women, agents of change, street ministry, and much more. The whole experience assisted with what I had learned in sociology at Carleton University.

I remained at Emmanuel and St. Chad for almost two years, but probably because of my experiences with the Oblate priests out West, I decided to leave and become Roman Catholic. Upon returning to Ottawa, I registered for the Bachelor of Theology at St. Paul University Ottawa. When asked by Archbishop Joseph-Aurèle Plourde if I wanted to become a Catholic priest, I responded that I was more interested in the diaconate—deacons can marry. I was told that it was not an option, and so we agreed that I would proceed slowly. I first had to spend a year in formation at a place called College House—a house of spiritual formation.

At College House, I entered into what is known as the Rite for Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), obligatory in many parishes before one is admitted into the Catholic faith. After completing RCIA, I was welcomed into the church at the Easter vigil. The Easter vigil happens after dark on the Saturday evening before Easter Sunday. Throughout the world, the catholic faithful gather around their priest at the front of the church and light the Easter fire. The church remains in total darkness. After lighting the Paschal candle—the Christ candle—from the Easter fire, the priest proceeds to the front of the church, stopping three times so the faithful body of the church can light their candles. Each time, he chants, The Light of Christ. The people respond, Thanks be to God. That night, I was not baptized—while others were—as my baptism within the Anglican Church had been accepted. I was, however, confirmed and given First Communion.

Throughout the experience, I felt an abiding warmth inside. On other levels, however, nothing had changed. True, I did have a new set of friends with whom I felt I could share my faith. I loved my studies in theology and pastoral sciences. Also, I was now a Roman Catholic, and hopefully on my way to the priesthood!

At seminary, I regularly saw our resident psychologist. Never during that entire time did I imagine that the Blüger family’s silence around the events of the Shoah could have anything to do with my emotional and psychological well-being. However, during these meetings the buried feelings around my family narrative were starting to emerge .

After confirmation, I became master of ceremonies for the Auxiliary Bishop of the English Sector of the Ottawa Diocese, Bishop John Beahan. I assisted at confirmations throughout the diocese. Bishop John was a wonderful blessing in my life. One evening, we arrived at Assumption Parish for confirmations. I noticed that in the front hallway of the rectory hung a large painting of the Virgin Mary standing on a crescent moon. Around her feet were little cherubs. This is a traditional Catholic painting depicting the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. I thought to myself that somehow the qualities of purity and innocence depicted by these little cherubs, as well as the Virgin Mary standing in their midst, represented an invisible field of protection around the faithful. I mentioned this to the bishop, and his response floored me. His brother, a Redemptorist priest who had recently died in an auto accident, had painted it.

In 1981, I completed my bachelor of theology and registered for a master’s degree in pastoral sciences—counselling (individual) at St. Paul University in Ottawa. I graduated with two master’s degrees, one in philosophy and the other in pastoral counselling.

While studying at St. Paul University was my discovery of affirmation therapy, first advanced by the Dutch psychiatrist Dr. Terruwe and made famous through another psychiatrist by the name of Conrad Baars. Affirmation therapy is about reclaiming one’s emotional life. This powerful form of therapy, not only for obsessive-compulsive disorders but also for deprivation neurosis, has helped thousands of priests and religious throughout the world regain their vitality and sense of purpose in Christian ministry. What makes it so powerful is that it is linked to the wisdom of the Catholic Church throughout the centuries—inclusive of neo-Thomistic underpinnings—while at the same time addressing the unconscious. In short, affirmation therapy is based on a grand theory that helps one to be emotionally reborn. What I appreciated was the way by which this form of therapy came to me. After the death marches in Nazi Germany, Conrad Baars, one of the authors of the book Healing the Unaffirmed: Recognizing Deprivation Neurosis himself a prisoner in Buchenwald for a lengthy period of time, reflected on why some prisoners had made it out alive and others did not. Those who had been affirmed throughout life and had strong family ties were more apt to survive. This may sound simplistic, and yet this was the key to the analytical approach of both Dr. Terruwe and Dr. Baars. At one time, Terruwe had a lengthy audience with Pope Paul VI. The pope was so impressed that the meeting lasted for more than two hours. Affirmation therapy holds the belief that our strength comes ultimately from God. We bloom through the many experiences of love and affirmation we receive from others throughout life. But what about all those people who were, and are, emotionally deprived through no fault of their own? It was according to this modality that Terruwe dedicated her life to create an approach that allowed the unaffirmed individual to bypass faulty intellectual ideations and unconsciously realign themselves toward healing and psychic wholeness.

After seminary, I was ordained a transitory deacon for the Ottawa diocese on December 8, 1983—the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Archbishop Plourde assigned me to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Ottawa. The period of diaconate begins with the vow of celibacy. Once ordained a priest, this vow, as well as the responsibilities and tasks assigned to it, are subsumed into the priesthood. After priestly ordination on June 16, 1984, I was sent as pastoral assistant to Fatima Parish. I was given the task of vocations director and youth coordinator. As vocations director, it would be my responsibility to help young people discern their vocation to priestly and religious life.

On June 19, 1987, I was assigned my first parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. A couple of days before arriving, my father