Germany:Germany's Jewish community has labelled Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne a "spiritual firebrand" for warning that modern culture which ignores God is "degenerate", a taboo term with Nazi associations.
Cardinal Meisner made the remark during a homily on Friday in which he said there was an "indisputable" connection between culture and religion.
"Wherever culture is decoupled from . . . the worship of God, religion becomes moribund in rituals and culture degenerates," he said in Cologne cathedral.
Degenerate art - "entartete Kunst" - is indelibly linked with the Nazi regime, which seized some 16,000 works considered incompatible with its own notions of art.
At an exhibition in Munich in 1937, people were encouraged to come and laugh at the works of such painters as Kirchner and Klee. Many exhibits were later destroyed.
The archbishop's remarks prompted huge protest from politicians, artists and members of Germany's Jewish community.
"Meisner . . . is a notorious spiritual firebrand who tries, not just to test the boundaries of what is allowed, but to deliberately overstep them," said Stephan Kramer, general secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews.
Yesterday Cardinal Meisner said the criticisms of his remarks were "absurd" and he denied he used the term in the Nazi context.
Earlier this month, he declined to attend the unveiling of new stained glass windows at Cologne cathedral by German artist Gerhard Richter, saying the abstract windows "belonged in a mosque . . . but not here".
The archbishop has come under fire over the years for making comparisons between abortion and the Holocaust. In 1998 he compared the so-called "morning-after" pill to Nazi poison gas Zyklon B. In 2005 he said abortion "leaves all previous crimes against humanity in the shade". Last year he apologised for suggesting that abortion was the contemporary equivalent of the mass killings of King Herod, Hitler and Stalin.