Posted on 03/15/2008 10:17:55 AM PDT by big'ol_freeper
So Lutherans did not have a centralized hierarchy with one leader centered in Germany. It is easier to hold the RCC to account because of its organizational structure. However, I don't think it's complete picture.
For example, in the 1930's the RCC representative entered into agreements with the Nazis that they thought were in the best interest of the RCC given the circumstances. However, that's not the same as the Pope coming out on the balcony at St. Peters and saying Nazism is good and killing all the Jews is okay.
There are those on this thread who would indict Lapide AND Yad Vashem solely on their temerity to disagree with the Liar Cornwell.
“Perhaps we are supposed to believe Yad Vashem does not employ “reputable historians.”
Of course not. You do know and are aware that historical documentation is never allowed to interfere with entrenched ideology.
The simple fact is that the ONLY Protestants who distinguished themselves as Catholics did in saving Jewish lives were the Swedish Lutherans who actually had a rather large presence in Northern Germany. Even though they were called Swedish Lutherans they were really a German church with some Swedish clergy.
Yes.
Entrenched Traditions of Men like Luther and Cauvin.
God bless them for that!
C: Could he? Yes.
This is probably one area where the Pope and the RCC could come under criticism. Once it became known what was going on in Nazi Germany, what did the Pope do or demand of RC Germans? The centralized hierarchy cuts both ways. It lends itself to better discipline and responses but it also makes it easier to be held accountable.
This is the encyclical from 1937
8. “Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who “Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly” (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.
8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.”
“33. Thousands of voices ring into your ears a Gospel which has not been revealed by the Father of Heaven. Thousands of pens are wielded in the service of a Christianity, which is not of Christ. Press and wireless daily force on you productions hostile to the Faith and to the Church, impudently aggressive against whatever you should hold venerable and sacred. Many of you, clinging to your Faith and to your Church, as a result of your affiliation with religious associations guaranteed by the concordat, have often to face the tragic trial of seeing your loyalty to your country misunderstood, suspected, or even denied, and of being hurt in your professional and social life. We are well aware that there is many a humble soldier of Christ in your ranks, who with torn feelings, but a determined heart, accepts his fate, finding his one consolation in the thought of suffering insults for the name of Jesus (Acts v. 41). Today, as We see you threatened with new dangers and new molestations, We say to you: If any one should preach to you a Gospel other than the one you received on the knees of a pious mother, from the lips of a believing father, or through teaching faithful to God and His Church, “let him be anathema” (Gal. i. 9). If the State organizes a national youth, and makes this organization obligatory to all, then, without prejudice to rights of religious associations, it is the absolute right of youths as well as of parents to see to it that this organization is purged of all manifestations hostile to the Church and Christianity. These manifestations are even today placing Christian parents in a painful alternative, as they cannot give to the State what they owe to God alone.”
This is another exerpt.
It’s nice to see everyone sitting in their comfy chairs in front of their nice computers without a thought that the Storm Troopers are going to come through your front door because you didn’t put your kid in the Nazi Youth.
You wrote:
“The centralized hierarchy cuts both ways. It lends itself to better discipline and responses but it also makes it easier to be held accountable.”
What you’re saying is true - if there is complete freedom of action on the part of the pope. But there wasn’t such freedom. Pius XII wanted to do what would save the most lives.
What exactly was Pius XII supposed to do? He has already denounced Hitler, the Nazis, the war, racism, religious bigotry, anti-semitism and extreme nationalism. He was in the Vatican, a prisoner. He was not in Germany. German Catholic publications were under the control of the Nazis since 1934. The Germans had already shown that they were more than willing to shut down the Catholic Church whenever it got too vocal about governmental policies since the 1870s! Ever hear of the Kulturkampf? That was Hitler’s basic blueprint for working against the Catholic Church in Germany.
I would completely agree. I only ask that you read your response and note how you brought others to account as well when recognizing you own church's shortcomings.
Today we are in a similar situation in the middle east. We have a violent, radical ideology masquerading as a religion. Our country is attempting to fight these people. Is your church supporting this effort or equivocating. I will admit from the get go my church (Baptist) is all over the place, some really good some pretty bad.
This is about the time in the course of these anti-Catholic slander-fests when the battle has been joined, the same tired lies have been refuted all over again, and the hatemongers disappear, their clocks cleaned, their poisonous souls exposed.
Nazi anti-Catholic cartoons. The one on the left "The Cardinal's French Journey," from 1937, mocks the future Pope Pius XII as a friend of Jews, Communists, and anti-Nazis. The cartoon on the right, from 1935, "Found out at last" depicts an SA man discovering a Jew, a Mason, and a Jesuit plotting together.
Does anyone seriously want to claim that the Nazis were somehow in doubt about where the Catholic Church stood?
As is appropriate!
The rise of Nazism is a failure of humanity, not merely the failure of the Roman Catholic Church.
It would take incredible courage to do it. If nobody responded than he would be exposed as an empty suit.
What gets me is how they don’t even try to present evidence except a few half-hearted attempts. What’s up with that? They say truth is on their side and then they fail to present or defend what they call truth.
“Today we are in a similar situation in the middle east.”
” Is your church supporting this effort or equivocating.”
We’ve gone from indicting the pope for his lack of action on the Nazis to indicting the pope on the Middle East?
So you condemn somebody to hell, but don’t hate them? How Christian of you.
Heh!
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