Martin Luther: Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor

Catholic Apologetics ^ | Peter F. Wiener

[big'ol_freeper]

More than once during these talks I referred to Luther and what always occurred to me as his destructive influence. I pointed out that even in such an admirable book as Rohan Butler's “The Roots of National Socialism” the spiritual origins of Nazism and Luther's influence had not been given the necessary importance. Then I was asked if I would be prepared to elaborate to them—about a dozen of the very senior boys, that is—my own views on Luther and Lutheranism. I agreed—with the proviso that they would be my own views and nothing else. Admittedly, I had read more on Luther and about Luther than on most other subjects. But I wanted to make it quite clear that I would not speak to them with the voice of a great authority, but would merely give them my own interpretation. I told them, moreover, that I should try to prove how dangerous it is to accept legends; and that the picture I had of Luther and his influence was thoroughly contradictory of the customary Luther of the legend.

[big'ol_freeper]

As a general observation, I would guess people who put their “credentials” in their profile name suffer from either an inflated ego or are trying to cover for some deficiency.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

860,000 SURVIVING JEWS know the truth, but you want to deny they even exist.

Didn't you hear one of the other posters yesterday? I think it was ConservativeMind.

He saved 500,000 Jews. I only managed to save 240,000 because I had shopping to do.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Just yesterday we were told by Catholic apologists that it "would have been worse for the Jews if Pacelli had spoken out."

Deny it if you want. It's par for the course.

[Quix]

I don’t know if Pearl Optical or SAMS has the best choice in new glasses. But that observation problem could stand some remedial attention.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Insulting a stone would be equally fruitless.

Sarcasm without wit is like a balloon without air.

[Marysecretary]

I love your tagline. LOL.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

As a general observation, I would guess people who put their "credentials" in their profile name suffer from either an inflated ego or are trying to cover for some deficiency.

And people who apparently have never picked up a book often confuse titles with prose.

Generally.

[big'ol_freeper]

As evidenced by all of those attacking the author of the linked article who have never even read the article.

[Marysecretary]

Is this the pot calling the kettle black? LOL.

[Quix]

It was predictable and slightly interesting . . .

When I pointed out

basic FR historical, sociological facts . . .

The personal assaults were close beind . . . was it in seconds or minutes?

I’d have thought that Magnificent Magical Mary would have taught her reps a bit better reality testing and maturity

. . . by NOW! LOL.

How is it that the RC magicsterical and RC edifice are so high and lofty . . . along with the Magnificent Magical Archetypal Earth Mother goddess . . .

and the troops are so harsh, abusive and crass?

Or is it that the labels for the first were fantasy to begin with?

Alas, we should probably take this to our blog. Wouldn’t want their blood pressure to blow a gasket.

[big'ol_freeper]

Better get back to the kitchen I believe the macaroni and cheese is done.

[Titanites]

Deny it if you want. It's par for the course.

Yes, it is par for the course for me to deny fiction is truth.

For those who desperately grasp onto the delusion that Pacelli was silent:

Any fair and thorough reading of the evidence demonstrates that Pius XII was a persistent critic of Nazism. Consider just a few highlights of his opposition before the war:

• Of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as papal nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology.

• In March 1935, he wrote an open letter to the bishop of Cologne calling the Nazis "false prophets with the pride of Lucifer."

• That same year, he assailed ideologies "possessed by the superstition of race and blood" to an enormous crowd of pilgrims at Lourdes. At Notre Dame in Paris two years later, he named Germany "that noble and powerful nation whom bad shepherds would lead astray into an ideology of race."

• The Nazis were "diabolical," he told friends privately. Hitler "is completely obsessed," he said to his long-time secretary, Sister Pascalina. "All that is not of use to him, he destroys; . . . this man is capable of trampling on corpses." Meeting in 1935 with the heroic anti-Nazi Dietrich von Hildebrand, he declared, "There can be no possible reconciliation" between Christianity and Nazi racism; they were like "fire and water."

• The year after Pacelli became secretary of state in 1930, Vatican Radio was established, essentially under his control. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano had an uneven record, though it would improve as Pacelli gradually took charge (extensively reporting Kristallnacht in 1938, for example). But the radio station was always good—making such controversial broadcasts as the request that listeners pray for the persecuted Jews in Germany after the 1935 Nuremberg Legislation.

• It was while Pacelli was his predecessor's chief adviser that Pius XI made the famous statement to a group of Belgian pilgrims in 1938 that "anti-Semitism is inadmissible; spiritually we are all Semites." And it was Pacelli who drafted Pius XI's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, "With Burning Concern," a condemnation of Germany among the harshest ever issued by the Holy See. Indeed, throughout the 1930s, Pacelli was widely lampooned in the Nazi press as Pius XI's "Jew-loving" cardinal, because of the more than fifty-five protests he sent the Germans as the Vatican secretary of state.

To these must be added highlights of Pius XII's actions during the war:

• His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, rushed out in 1939 to beg for peace, was in part a declaration that the proper role of the papacy was to plead to both warring sides rather than to blame one. But it very pointedly quoted St. Paul—“there is neither Gentile nor Jew”—using the word "Jew" specifically in the context of rejecting racial ideology. The New York Times greeted the encyclical with a front-page headline on October 28, 1939: "Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism." Allied airplanes dropped thousands of copies on Germany in an effort to raise anti-Nazi sentiment.

• In 1939 and 1940, Pius acted as a secret intermediary between the German plotters against Hitler and the British. He would similarly risk warning the Allies about the impending German invasions of Holland, Belgium, and France.

• In March 1940, Pius granted an audience to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister and the only high-ranking Nazi to bother visiting the Vatican. The Germans' understanding of Pius's position, at least, was clear: Ribbentrop chastised the pope for siding with the Allies. Whereupon Pius began reading from a long list of German atrocities. "In the burning words he spoke to Herr Ribbentrop," the New York Times reported on March 14, Pius "came to the defense of Jews in Germany and Poland."

• When French bishops issued pastoral letters in 1942 attacking deportations, Pius sent his nuncio to protest to the Vichy government against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews from the French-occupied zone to Silesia and parts of Russia." Vatican Radio commented on the bishops' letters six days in a row—at a time when listening to Vatican Radio was a crime in Germany and Poland for which some were put to death. ("Pope Is Said to Plead for Jews Listed for Removal from France," the New York Times headline read on August 6, 1942. "Vichy Seizes Jews; Pope Pius Ignored," the Times reported three weeks later.) In retaliation, in the fall of 1942, Goebbels's office distributed ten million copies of a pamphlet naming Pius XII as the "pro-Jewish pope" and explicitly citing his interventions in France.

• In the summer of 1944, after the liberation of Rome but before the war's end, Pius told a group of Roman Jews who had come to thank him for his protection: "For centuries, Jews have been unjustly treated and despised. It is time they were treated with justice and humanity, God wills it and the Church wills it. St. Paul tells us that the Jews are our brothers. They should also be welcomed as friends."

These are just a few.

[Marysecretary]

And what are we to think of seeing priests giving the Heil Hitler sign?????

[Marysecretary]

Yep, I agree.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

David Dalin?

The David Dalin who is employed by Catholic Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, built by Domino Pizza's Tom Monaghan.

That David Dalin, without an axe to grind or any horse in this race?

Him?

For all those who would rewrite history...

"On March 23 (1933) Hitler gave a policy statement in which he promised, among other things, to work for peaceful relations between Church and State; the Reichstag in turn approved the Enabling Act, which for a period of four years transferred the power of legislation from parliament to the cabinet. Five days later the German Catholic episcopate, organized in the Fulda Bishop's Conference, withdrew their earlier prohibitions against membership in the Nazi party and admonished the faithful to be loyal and obedient to the new regime." ( p. 3) -- from "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany" by Guenter Lewy.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“And what are we to think of seeing priests giving the Heil Hitler sign?????”

That they were German.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“That David Dalin, without an axe to grind or any horse in this race?”

Dalin was defending Pius XII BEFORE he ever was hired by Ave Maria.

Also, thanks for proving that the German bishops did excommunicate all Nazis. When did any Protestant sects ever excommunicate any Nazis?

[vladimir998]

You’re using a Liberal website for your info?

“Liberals Like Christ”? http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/Hitlerspope.html

Like I said, Protestants are Liberals.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

The Nazis were "diabolical," he told friends privately. Hitler "is completely obsessed," he said to his long-time secretary, Sister Pascalina.

You mean the sister Pascalina who was a German nun who lived with Pacelli for decades? That "secretary?"

That secretary whose name was really Lehnert and whose biography is entitled, "La Popessa: The Controversial Biography of Sister Pascalina, the Most Powerful Woman in Vatican History."

[big'ol_freeper]

I invite your attention to post #171 and the following:

September 1933: German Protestant deacons meet in Hamburg to celebrate the centennial of their association. A Protestant pastor addresses his comrades in a speech entitled Deaconry as attack: "All this is Protestant deaconry: Service and fight. We greet you all as the SA of Jesus Christ and the SS of the Church, you brave ... [fighters] of need, misery, despair and dereliction." [KS57] After the war the swastika was removed from most of the photographs of the meeting. Only a few survived unaltered, such as this one.

November 15, 1933: More than a thousand Lutheran nuns, meet under the swastika. The Bishop of Berlin in his speech: "Permit me to compare our sisters with the SA!" (a paramilitary Nazi troop). (Though it may be coincidental, even the layout of this meeting, at least on this photograph, seems to resemble a huge swastika.