Contrary to popular misconceptions, including those of some Christians themselves, to believe in God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not mean that one is henceforth perfect and faultless in all realms of life.

It simply means that one is constantly aware that as human beings, one is always tempted to commit errors and mistakes, and that one must resist the temptations and, if errors and mistakes have been committed, one is courageous enough to beg for forgiveness and forgive others.

The moral and spiritual courage is best epitomised by His Holiness John Paul II when he, as the supreme pontiff of the Catholic (Universal) Church publicly admitted that the atrocities committed by Crusaders in the Middle Ages against Muslims and the Jewish people were wrong, and asked for their forgiveness.

God-loving and brave Protestants like German pastor, Martin Niemoller also experienced the sorrow of having committed a grave error of political judgement, as well as the joy of being morally and spiritually courageous enough to admit it publicly and share his wisdom with the world so that others would not repeat his mistake.

Born into a pious Lutheran family, Martin Friedrich Gustav Emil Niemoller (1892-1984) joined the German navy after graduation and rose to the rank of a U-Boat captain in World War I (1914-1918).

After Germany was defeated in the Great War, Martin Niemoller returned to civilian life and became a Christian pastor but his misguided patriotism led him to become a sympathiser of the nascent Nazism which promised 'national salvation and rejuvenation'.

Historical masterpiece

American journalist William Shirer who was reporting as a foreign correspondent in Germany in the late 1920s and throughout 1930s remembers Martin Niemoller well in his masterpiece on the history of the Nazi Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich A history of Nazi Germany (New York, Touchstone, 1990; first published in 1959)

"The Reverend Martin Niemoller had personally welcomed the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933. In that year his autobiography, From U-Boat to Pulpit, had been published. The story of how this submarine commander in the First World War had become a prominent Protestant pastor was singled out for special praise in the Nazi press and became a best seller.

"To Pastor Niemoller, as to many a Protestant clergyman, the fourteen years of the (Weimar) Republic had been, as he said 'years of darkness' and at the close of his autobiography he added a note of satisfaction that the Nazi revolution had finally triumphed and that it brought about the 'national revival' for which he himself had fought so long ..." (P.235)

To be sure, Martin Niemoller and other German Protestants were not alone in making that political judgement at that time.

On 20 July, 1933, the Nazi government also signed a treaty (' concordat ') with the Vatican in which it 'guaranteed' the freedom of the Catholic religion and the right of the Church "to regulate her own affairs".

William Shirer insightfully observes in his magnum opus that:

"But coming as it did at a moment when the first excesses of the new (Nazi) regime in Germany had provoked world-wide revulsion, the concordat undoubtedly lent the Hitler government much badly needed prestige" (p.234)

However, a few days after the signing of the concordat , measures were taken by the Nazi government to dissolve the Catholic Youth League, and:

"During the next years, thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many of them on trumped-up charges. Scores of Catholic publications were suppressed, and even the sanctity of the congressional was violated by Gestapo agents.

By the spring of 1937 the Catholic hierarchy in Germany, which, like most of the Protestant clergy, had first tried to co-operate with the new regime, was throughly disillusioned. " (Shirer, ibid, p.235)

On 14 March 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical titled Mit Brennender Sorge or With Burning Sorrow, condemning the Nazi government for violating the concordat , and accusing it of, among others, "sowing the tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church".

In the encyclical which was smuggled into Germany from the Holy See and secretly distributed among German Catholics for moral guidance, the form of patriotism and nationalism as propagated by the Nazis was denounced as an "idolatrous cult of race and state" and a "perversion of Christian doctrines and morality".

Idolatrous glorification

Pope Pius XI also called on Catholics to resist the idolatrous glorification of 'race' and the state. (see Richard Pierard, ' An Age of Ideology ', in "A Lion Handbook of the History of Christianity," Oxford, Lion, 1990, pp. 584-593)

The year 1937 saw not only a widespread disillusionment of German Christians, Catholics and Protestants alike, with the Nazi regime, but also the emergence of organised and active opposition of Christians against the Hitler and his 'popular' dictatorship which practised detentions without trial, media censorship, curtailment of academic freedom and above all, arms race, war-mongering, murderous xenophobia disguised as 'patriotism'.

Martin Niemoller himself also began to organise anti-Nazi groups among German Protestants in the Confessing Church, but he was arrested soon by the Gestapo in 1937. Niemoller was detained and incarcerated in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps until he was freed by the Allied Forces which finally defeated Nazi Germany.

After the end of the War, Niemoller became an important figure in the World Council of Churches, and travelled all over the world, including the United States to share his sorrows and joys, as well as wisdom. In one occasion, Niemoller recalled:

"In Germany they (the Nazis) came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

"Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up for me".

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia . Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.