WobLog

Amazingly, on a trip plagued by rain, the sun broke free during Benedict XVI's visit to the Birkenau death camp. As the Holy Father paid his respects to the dead, a rainbow appeared in the sky above. A commenter at Amy Welborn's blog noted that perhaps it was God's way of promising that such a horror would never happen again.

However, Michael Ledeen makes a necessary point at National Review Online:

Let us hope that no future Pope has to ask these questions about Western appeasement of evil in our own times:

Benedict said it was almost impossible, particularly for a German Pope, to speak at such a horrible place.

"The place where we are standing is a place of memory and at the same time, it is the place of the Shoah," he said.

"In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence which is a heartfelt cry to God — Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

"Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?"

Benedict is a great leader, and we can all be grateful that the Catholics have now given us two such men in succession. But I think the question is more properly directed at man rather than the Almighty, who gave us the ability to distinguish between good and evil and the obligation to make our own choices. It is the question we should ask ourselves, and our leaders, every day. Why is the West once again silent, in the face of a monstrous evil? Why do even the few leaders who recognize our menace, content themselves with words rather than the decisive deeds required to rid this world of the threat of a new Shoah?

Popes are not supposed to say such things, I suppose, but we are. And we must.

Ledeen is right. If the Holocaust is never to happen again (at the hands of a madman such as Ahmadinejad, for example), then it is up to free men of good will to prevent it. That rainbow might be a promise by God, but the burden of responsibility falls on us.

For the text of the Pope's speech at Auschwitz, check out Gerald's blog.