Posted on 04/13/2009 8:09:17 PM PDT by PanzerKardinal
In an Easter sermon that has drawn widespread criticism, the Catholic bishop of Augsburg has linked the crimes committed under Nazi and Communist regimes to atheism. Atheist groups have reacted with fury and accuse the cleric of rewriting history.
A Catholic German bishop has come under fire for his remarks condemning atheists. In a sermon given on Easter Sunday, the bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, warned of rising atheism in Germany. "Wherever God is denied or fought against, there people and their dignity will soon be denied and held in disregard," he said in the sermon. He also said that "a society without God is hell on earth" and quoted the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."
Most controversially, he linked the Nazi and Communist crimes to atheism. "In the last century, the godless regimes of Nazism and Communism, with their penal camps, their secret police and their mass murder, proved in a terrible way the inhumanity of atheism in practice." Christians and the Church were always the subject of "special persecution" under these systems, he said.
[...]
The Easter sermon was not the first time that Mixa has made comparisons to Nazism for rhetorical purposes. In February, the bishop compared the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust with the number of abortions performed over the past decades, according to a newspaper report. The bishop's spokesman also responded to criticism of Mixa from Germany's leading Green Party politician, Claudia Roth, who called the bishop a "crazy über-fundamentalist," by comparing her words to Nazi propaganda.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Karl Marx was never Jewish. His parents converted to Lutheranism before he was born. His father had deist tendencies.
The link of Nazi Germany to atheism also leads directly back to Spinoza through the German philosopher Hegel who was a BIG admirerer of Spinoza. People dispute that Hegel had anything to do with the rise of Nazi party , but that can be seen as an effort to salvage Hegel’s reputation and works from infamous associations. Clearly the sheer volume of material attributing nazi thinking to Hegel philosophy casts aspersions on his work.
Why do communist marxixts have a compulsive need to lie? The information in my posting is readily avbailable and verifyable on line. Marx was of jewish blood from a family of rabbis as can be found at wikipedia “”””Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier, in the Kingdom of Prussia’s Province of the Lower Rhine as the third of his parents’ seven children. His father, Heinrich Marx (1777–1838), born Herschel Mordechai, the son of Levy Mordechai (1743-1804) and Eva Lwow (1753-1823), descended from a long line of rabbis but converted to Lutheran Christianity”””
here is the family history on Spinoza...also jewish with mention of a forced convertion to christianity. Family still practiced the jewish faith but for their own survival as refugees had to pretend they were christian.”””Some historians argue the Spinoza family (”Espinosa” in Portuguese) had its origins in Espinosa de los Monteros, near Burgos, Spain.[4] Others claim they were Portuguese Jews who had moved to Spain and then returned to their home country in 1492, only to be forcibly converted to Catholicism in 1498”””
Some good ammo from original sources, on this topic.
Hitler’s Persecution of the Christian Churches
http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id2.html
The modern Left’s claim that “Hitler was a Christian” is absurd, at best.
Your own post points out that Marx' father converted to Lutheran Christianity. (which happened before his son Karl was born) Your own quote from Wikipedia confirmed exactly what I said.
Yes but I think you will find that when it came down to Wagner -vs- Nietzsche, Hitler clearly went with Wagner.
Also Martin Heidegger the atheist nazi philosopher.
You wrote:
“Actually, the Bishop is wrong.
Nazi crimes were the result of paganism. National Socialism was an occultic theocracy.”
Some Nazis were pagans. The socialism of the Nazis, however, shows that many were enthralled by atheism. Nazis like Baldur von Schirach (Hitler Youth leader from 1931 until 1940 and convicted war criminal), Artur Axmann (Hitler Youth leader from 1940 until 1945) and Martin Bormann were all atheists.
I think it shows where Hitler wanted the Nazi movement to go in terms of religious beliefs thathe had two athiests in a row lead the Hitler Youth - after all the Hitler Youth were the future of the Nazi society.
In the meantime, Hitler allowed people of all religious backgrounds (except Jews of course) to join the Nazi party or serve the regime (including Muslims and even a few Jews in odd circumstances).
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Nietzsche was a preferred philosopher of Nazism. His “superman” theory fed directly into the eugenics and Aryan directions of Nazism.
I can see where the argument can be made that Nazism also had some pagan influences, but it cannot be denied that Nietzsche's atheism influenced their actions.
Wagner's operas from Norse mythology were a huge factor (and also based on Nietzsche's "superman" theory). However, even within the realm of paganism, Norse mythology is a particularly brutal and "godless". Plus remember the term "mythology" indicates that people have long since stopped believing it.
Nazis tried to make THEMSELVES into Norse gods and, in my opinion, at its core atheism IS NOT about the non-existence of God, it is about trying to make YOURSELF a god.
I agree with him. The evil work that people did back then was indeed atheist whether they had on a Nazi uniform, Communist uniform or even a the vestments of a priest.
There was nothing incorrect about what I said. Just because Karl Marx’s father converted to Luther Christianity does not mean this rabbinical family turned away from Judaism before Marx was born. Lots of jewish families “
converted” to christianity in order to have class and standing in european society. In most cases it was just for show and to avoid persecution. Privately in their homes, such families continued to observe the jewish faith. So again, communism much like the Atheism of Spinoza is founded by a man of jewish blood who committed apostacy to the jewish faith rejecting the family traditions and the God of Abraham. There is probably jewish blood of an apostate in Hitler’s family as well. I have not yet researched it.
Good for the bishop. The truth needs to be told. Enough of pretending Hitler was a Christian.
What kind of religious services did Nazis perform?
The Nazi's publicly condemned atheism and went about bashing a few heads in of any who espoused atheism.
One might construct an elaborate conspiracy theory whereby the Nazi's were super secretly atheists or pagans or something else; but they prayed in Church on Sunday and went to war with crosses painted on their equipment.
When people try to deny the antisemitic undercurrent of (particularly German) European Christianity they do themselves and history a great disservice.
The Holocaust was the last great pogrom (hopefully the last) of Europeans who claimed Christianity while doing rather unchristian things to the Jews.
reopened the fight against the Christian churches, declaring in a confidential memo to Gauleiters in 1942 that their power 'must absolutely and finally be broken.'Nazism, based as it was on a 'scientific' world-view, was completely incompatible with Christianity whose influence was regarded by Bormann as a serious obstacle to totalitarian rule.
Hitler hated any belief system which stood in his way.
The Jewish Virtual Website says Hitler’s close collaborator, Martin Bormann thought that the power of the Christian Churches “must absolutely and finally be broken.”
I’m beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t say that Hitler’s true religion was “science without morals”
Thanks for the idea for a tagline.
The Nazi movement and Germany under the Nazis thought of themselves as Christian. They went to Church on Sunday and went to war with Crosses painted on their vehicles. The Nazi SS belt-buckle said (in German) “God is with Us”. Not exactly an atheistic sentiment.
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