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	Nazis - Cleansers of the Church? By Leon J. Podles Dialogue March 2, 2010 http://www.podles.org/dialogue/nazis-cleansers-of-the-church-288.htm Abuse Tracker has chronicled the revelations of sexual abuse by clerics in Germany. It is a story of abuse and cover-ups all too familiar to those who have followed similar revelations in the United States and Ireland. While in quality the abuse in Germany is as bad as in English-speaking countries, in quantity it seems to be significantly less. If this is in fact the case, and not simply a matter of lesser reporting, peculiarities of European continental history may account for the lesser amount of abuse. In the nineteenth century, Europe began to develop an image of Modern Man, and I mean man, not woman. The New Man was nationalistic, militaristic, rational, scientific. He rejected he world of Catholicism, which was international, pacifist, and superstitious – and feminine. In France, Italy, and Germany the Catholic clergy was attacked as the enemy of true masculinity. Some who attacked the church more or less explicitly accused the clergy of perversion, either homosexuality or pedophilia.
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