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To: Mrs. Don-o

It took one or more popes how many years to speak out against Hitler? Are you aware German Catholics were required to be loyal to the Third Reich. Imagine that, CHRISTIANS KILLING CHRISTIANS. Yahweh/Jehovah would never approve. Currently, you

“As John Connolly, a scholar of modern European Catholicism at the University of California, Berkeley, writes in From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1945, after Pacelli became Pius XII he pondered and ultimately rejected a condemnation of Hitler. On the eve of World War II, Father John Oesterreicher, a Catholic convert of Jewish descent born in Moravia, and Karl Thieme, a German Catholic, implored the Vatican to release Catholic German soldiers from their oaths of loyalty to Hitler on the grounds that he was about to launch an unjust war. Writing in April 1939, Osterreicher argued that Catholics are “not bound in obedience” to a ruler if the ruler “launches war in criminal fashion.”

The proposal garnered no support. Pacelli—now Pius XII—told to a confidant that a papal bull condemning Nazism or excommunicating Nazis who were Catholics would help neither Catholics nor Jews. And just what Pius XII feared took place in Holland in July 1942. Without informing the Vatican, the cardinal of Utrecht issued a pastoral letter condemning the persecution of Dutch Jews. The Nazis responded by arresting all baptized Dutch Jews, including the philosopher-nun Edith Stein, and sent them to extermination camps.”

Fast forward to current day -

Islamic Prayers at Vatican for First Time as Pope Hosts Interfaith Prayer

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/06/08/Islamic-Prayers-Heard-at-Vatican-For-First-Time-as-Pope-Hosts-Israeli-Palestinian-Leaders-For-Interfaith-Prayer

Now, do you think THE Christian God would allow prayers to any other gods at HIS temple (temporal temple prior to tribulation)? Another modern-day pope kisses the koran, and another says the plan of salvation includes Muslims. How any intelligent, discerning adult cannot see through this facade of Christianity boggles the mind. Then again, anyone who needs a physical object to remind them of how to worship is already lost. That’s what the 2nd commandment was all about...as nothing physical is needed to be saved.


41 posted on 11/17/2014 2:14:09 PM PST by 82nd Bragger (Count to four except when in a helicopter)
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To: 82nd Bragger
"anyone who needs a physical object to remind them of how to worship is already lost. That’s what the 2nd commandment was all about...as nothing physical is needed to be saved."

With all due respect, this is about as mistaken as it could possibly be. It completely negates the significance of our being, by God's design, incarnate persons --- body and soul, flesh and spirit --- and our God being an incarnate God. "And the Word was made flesh, and dwells among us." The Incarnation changed everything.

I's like saying, "His flesh means noting, His blood means nothing, His Cross means nothing, His outward signs mean nothing; my own flesh means nothing; material creation means nothing (or at least, nothing good), Matter Doesn't Matter ---Manicheeism.

To address your other point: papal responses to the Holocaust:

POpe Pius XI spoke out against Hitler in a dramatic manner in 1937, with "Mit Brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Anxiety,") the only encyclical ever written in German, not Latin, and frontally repudiating the Nazi ideology of race.

The Encyclical was smuggled into Germany and read from Catholic pulpits on March 21, 1937.

Although ignorant critics today dismiss the Encyclical as a light slap on the wrist, the Germans saw it as a security threat. For example, on March 26, 1937, Hans Dieckhoff, an official in the German Foreign Ministry, wrote that the "Encyclical contains attacks of the severest nature upon the German Government, calls upon Catholic citizens to rebel against the authority of the State, and therefore signifies an attempt to endanger internal peace".

Unlike many of the Pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him and his successor,Pius XII, very well. After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: "In a manner never known before, the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order.... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." (Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report.)

Up until Pius XII's death in 1958, many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts. To cite one of many examples, in his April 7, 1944, letter to the Papal Nuncio in Romania, Alexander Shafran, Chief Rabbi of Bucharest, wrote: "It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the Supreme Pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews.... The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance"

The barrage of criticism didn't start until the 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth (a Communist, and --- ironically in hindsight --- an ally of Holocaust denier David Irving!) which portrayed Pope Pius XII as having failed to take action or speak out against the Holocaust. The Encyclopedia Britannica assesses the play as "a drama that presented a critical, unhistorical picture of Pius XII" and Hochhuth's depiction of the pope having been indifferent to the Nazi genocide as "lacking credible substantiation"

I have no problem with a and scathing critique of German (and non-German) Catholic laypeople and clergy who were passive enablers or vicious collaborators with Hitler. Research them. Repudiate them. So much of the record is shameful.

But don't attack your own allies-- such as the two popes, Pius XI and Pius XII --- who stood with the Jews at terrific cost, and who deserve not the opprobrium of the world, but its gratitude.

42 posted on 11/17/2014 3:08:52 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o ("Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. " John 7:24)
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