Posted on 12/19/2010 4:37:25 PM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Two interesting maps of Germany. On the first, the black areas are those with the highest concentration of Catholics according to the 1934 census:
On the second map, the black areas show the highest concentration of Nazi votes in the 1932 election (white the lowest)
Well fancy that!
The post Catholic Church Conservation:Catholics fiercest anti-nazis in pre-war Germany has larger versions of the maps if you want to see more detail.
What’s interesting to me is that what Bonhoeffer was saying then is the same thing the Pope is saying today. Bonhoeffer spoke against the collective salvation that the nazified churches were preaching. The Pope recently called collective salvation “demonic”.
He most certainly was “associated with” ~ you can’t deny that.
“Hitler was no Catholic.”
Yes, yes he was. Baptized Catholic. Fallen away, apostate, evil he was, but he was all of that after he was Catholic. Unlike our protestant “once saved, always saved” brethren, Catholics know that simply being Catholic is not enough for Eternal Salvation. Hitler chose to serve the world rather than the Word. It is very likely he is in Hell for Eternity, along with Lucifer and the Fallen Angels. But he certainly lived as a sinfilled, evil Catholic, fallen away and an enemy of the Church that wanted him to be a saint. Very sad.
As Catholic as, for instance, Pelosi or Biden or Ted Kennedy?
Hitler had a marginal Catholic upbringing. To argue he was even a nominal Catholic as an adult is preposterous.
Forced conversions were forced conversions. That’s the way it was done back then.
RE: He sure wasn’t a Protestant!
Oh, I don’t know about that. There was a reason all the protestants flocked to Hitler...
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/spancestor.htm
OK. He was associated with it. Like a person born in, say, Alabama is “associated” with the Baptist faith? Is that what you mean?
BTW, when someone sets out to show some sort of fundamental underlying relationship between Protestantism in Germany and Nazism, then that's when Hitler's Catholic connection (baptised was he? ~ aren't all baptisms by the Catholic Church valid forever?) becomes meaningful.
Best way to ever avoid that issue is to NOT try to equate Protestantism with Nazism.
I bet you didn't do well in public school did you?
There are very important factors other than relgion at play here.
The Rhineland and Ruhr White on white, industrialized and trade unionised.
Bavaria white on white, was literally a Communist state immediately after the war.
Note particularly the geographically small white voting spot that was Berlin yet is black in religion, industrial trade unionism.
Prussia is indeed mostly back on black, it was the gravitas of the centrifugal German state. The others could in historical reference cling outsiders like france, not so the founder of the state if there were to be a state, a culture, a future.
A book published earlier this year sheds some light on the question of religion and the Nazis. In "Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism" (Oxford University Press), Derek Hastings shows how in the early years there was indeed a strong Catholic element in the Nazi movement. He also affirms that there was a sharp discrepancy between the nature of the Nazi regime in power in the 1930s and 1940s and the early movement in Munich in the years following World War I....
-- from the Zenit article Catholics and the Nazis
Italy was also late to organize. France and the United Kingdom, even Poland, had been modern states longer.
There still exist meaningful cultural divisions.
Heck no. Not at all. But the idea that Catholics supported Hitler is one of those urban legends that must be laid to rest, alongside the BS that the Pope did nothing to help the Jews during WWII.
Once one resorts to ad hominem attacks it is apparent they have nothing intellectually to add to the discussion.
Bye now.
BTW, I'm pretty fundamentalist ~ I think baptism counts. So does the Pope.
Will you be rebuking the OP for trying to associate him with Protestants then, lol?
Hitler is quite the hot potato, for obvious reasons. Fact is, he was baptized Catholic. Another fact is, he did not by any stretch of the imagination live his life as a Catholic. Yet another is that he was embraced by quite a few Protestants.
Beyond that, blame-storming such as this leads nowhere. As far as actual religious belief, he appears to have leaned upon presumed ancient, Teutonic paganism, mixed in with occultism of far more modern vintage. He hated Christianity, but used Christians to further his ends, to the point of attempting to co-opt the Church for propaganda purposes.
The people of Germany were susceptible to such demagoguery due to their very recent desperation under the Weimar Republic, hyperinflation and destitution were widespread. Hitler promised not just subsistence but a return to former glory. Many fell for it.
http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/apr/article397.html
One of the most unforgiveable things the Church did was to allow the National Socialists access to their birth and baptismal records, which they used to identify Jews.
One of the others was the infamous `Rat’ line following the war in which they assisted Nazis fleeing to south America.
I believe the only Catholic Nazi ever excommunicated was Goebbles. His `crime/ was marrying a Lutheran.
The Pope at the time you mention wrote a gushing letter to A. Hitler offering his support and congratulations on his election.
Suggesting that German Catholics and the Catholic church resisted Hitler and the Nazis is pure nonsense.
Eric Metaxas’ book is terrific. Bonhoffer opposed Hitler from the git-go, and he could not get the other Protestant pastors to listen. They thought he was over-reacting.
When I leaf through a book at there's a picture of a snake on the page, I always avoid touching that page, and immediately flip over to another one.
That's the phenomenon we have here ~ bunch of people actually afraid of a title ~ but accepting the legitimacy of the lede and the maps as having any relationship to religious affiliation opens one up for finding the baby Hitler in their lap!
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