DIOCESAN NEWS
01/19/07
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Holocaust Museum honors Rychlak
        OXFORD — Ronald Rychlak, Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Mississippi School of Law, will be honored in February at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
        Last summer, Rychlak took part in a meeting of religious scholars in Nashville, Tennessee. The scholars came from a variety of Christian and Jewish backgrounds, and together they developed “The Nashville Declaration” — a six-point statement of principles designed to minimize the risk of religious persecution in the future. Rychlak and the other participants will be honored by the Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Church Relations and Holocaust at a dinner to be held on Feb. 6.
        The meeting in Nashville was prompted by Robert Ericksen’s book, Theologians Under Hitler and a film of the same name. The book and film explore three noted Protestant theologians who became staunch supporters of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s.         Rychlak and the other scholars attempted to discern how and why that happened. In the process, they identified certain principles which might help prevent people of faith from making similar mistakes in the future. These principles are central to the Nashville Declaration.
        Rychlak is particularly interested in legal structures that might help prevent the tyrannical religious and racial persecution that defined the Nazi regime.
        “Our Bill of Rights protects free speech, free press, and the right to practice the religion of your choice, and those rights are so important,” he explains. “People must be able to express themselves, regardless of whether their opinions are popular, offensive, or come from a particular religious viewpoint.”
        In 2004, Rychlak was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (“OSCE”) meeting on the Relationship Between Racist, Xenophobic and Anti-Semitic Propaganda on the Internet and Hate Crimes.
        At that meeting, which took place in Paris, Rychlak made a presentation to delegates from 65 nations outlining the danger of giving government the power to restrict speech. “I gave my talk,” explained Rychlak, “but my point — that the power to restrict speech is also the power to restrict religion was most clearly illustrated when the Russian delegate argued that Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hare Krishnas had to be removed from the Internet because they claim to know the truth, and that constitutes hate.”
        Rychlak, who was recently awarded the 2006 Blessed Frederic Ozanam Award for Catholic Social Action by the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, says that he is particularly honored to be invited to the Holocaust Museum.
        “I’ve written a couple of books defending Christianity and the Catholic Church from unfair charges of collaboration with the Nazis. I would never, however, diminish the magnitude of the Holocaust or try to protect those who committed these evil acts.”
        Theologian Michael Novak has written of Rychlak: “We are all in his debt. He has made an enormous contribution to the healing of relations among Catholics and Jews, and to the possibility of discussing important parts of our mutual past in a factual and discriminating way.”
        The scholars who drafted the Nashville Declaration also put together a study guide for the film “Theologians Under Hitler.” It is entitled “A Question o/Power,” and it contains Rychlak’s essay, “Even Good People Can be Deceived.”
        The guide can be previewed on the Internet at “www.vitalvisuals.com.” Rychlak’s books can be previewed at www.Pius-XlI.com.

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