As mentioned in another thread..another Catholic Church in Washington State..this time in Shoreline, Washington, had the congregation give the Nazi salute. It looked to the casual observer, me, and I must say the friend I was with, exactly like what you would see in historical films or photos. It is not an unbroken gesture that the church has always used, so there is no excuse whatsoever for doing it. If it had been done for 400 years and the Nazis had appropriated it, I would say continue to use it. This is new, and I have only seen it in two places.

Of course I had to put a note in the collection plate, raced downstairs to talk to the nearest usher and corralled the priest after Mass...the only response to being told that your congregation is giving the Nazi salute is to say oh I never saw the connection but now that you point it out we will inform the congreation that another gesture will be substituted. Priest was not going in that direction. I said what if Jewish people had seen this? I could also have said Poles, Gypsies, any war veterans, etc. He said and I quote: I don't think they would mind. I resolved to talk to at least 10 Jewish people to see what they would say about this. It looked like the congretation was calling down evil. I am sure they did not mean it, but I looked in shock at the woman I was with and she knew what was going on and said she spreads her fingers a bit. This was a younger congregation, and might not make the connection. My home parish is an older congregation and you can be assured that some of them were horrified..fortunately they haven't done that in some time, perhaps thanks to my putting up a stink whenever they did. Go ahead, make excuses and enable them. That is how evil spreads..by people looking around and seeing other people doing it and thinking it must be OK..and any sane person who does not think a Nazi salute is evil..regardless of what you call it..well, I just don't know. mg

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That was me. I will be writing to the Seattle times. Is there any point in writing to any church official? Maybe I will send them a cc. The eyes of the world are on Catholics, and for good reason, and they do something dimwitted like this. mg