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.
I do this for everybody ~ guess church day brings out the worst in folks ~ this is the second thread like this.
As far as the Nazis were concerned, he already had and continued to do so on an ongoing basis, beginning when he was still Vatican Secretary of State:
In a letter dated March 12, 1935 to Cardinal Schulte of Cologne, Pacelli attacked the Nazis as "false prophets with the pride of Lucifer," labeling them "bearers of a new faith and a new gospel" who were attempting to create a "mendacious antimony between faithfulness to the Church and the Fatherland."
The following month, Cardinal Pacelli delivered an address before a quarter of a million people at Lourdes, April 25-28, 1935, where he described the Nazis as “possessed by the superstition of race and blood” and declared that “the Church does not consent to form a compact with them at any price.” Describing the speech, the New York Times headlined its story: “Nazis Warned at Lourdes” (April 29, 1935).
In his encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, Pope Pius XI condemned anti-Semitism: “None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are ‘as a drop of a bucket’ (Isaiah XI. 15).”
The encyclical, prepared under the direction of Cardinal Pacelli, then Secretary of State, was written in German for wider dissemination in that country. It was smuggled out of Italy, copied and distributed to parish priests to be read from all of the pulpits on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937.
No one who heard the Pontifical document had any illusion about the gravity of these statements or their significance. Certainly the Nazis understood their important message. An internal German memorandum dated March 23, 1937 stated that it was “almost a call to do battle against the Reich government.” The encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, was confiscated, printers arrested and presses seized. The following day Das Schwarze Korps [the newspaper of the SS] called it “the most incredible of Pius XI’s pastoral letters: every sentence in it was an insult to the new Germany.”
[quotations from the website www.popepiusxii.info]
I have posted this cartoon before:
It is from Schwarze Korps, July 22, 1937, indisputably a Nazi source. Also without dispute, it castigates then-Cardinal Pacelli as anti-Nazi (in case there's any doubt, the flask on the lab bench behind the two figures says "anti-Nazi" on it [next to a bottle labeled "Atrocity Lies" and below a poster labeled "Poison Cookies of the Popular Front"], and the Cardinal's name is written immediately above and to the right of his head!)
Can anyone seriously suggest that the Nazis were unaware of Cardinal Pacelli's antipathy toward them??
Nor did this antipathy end with his election to the papacy. The Reich Central Security office had this to say about his 1942 Christmas homily:
In a manner never known before, the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His radio allocution was a masterpiece of clerical falsification of the National Socialist Weltanschauung...the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for...God, he says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews...That this speech is directed exclusively against the New Order in Europe as seen in National Socialism is clear in the papal statement that mankind owes a debt to 'all who during the war have lost their Fatherland and who, although personally blameless have, simply on account of their nationality and origin, been killed or reduced to utter destitution.' Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice towards the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.
Sounds like the Nazis considered this a denunciation. Nor was this the first time; even the New York Times commented on his 1941 Christmas sermon, calling the Pope a:
...lonely voice of protest against Hitler...the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism
Again, can anyone seriously doubt what the Pope thought of Hitler and the Nazis? How many more denunciations would it have required to satisfy you?
How many more denunciations would it have required to satisfy you?
What makes you think that I needed to be satisfied?
The Catholic Church under Pope Pius XII was at the forefront of the opposition to the Nazis and the Communists.
On March 14, 1937, Pius XI published the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge,” stating that Catholics must never be anti-Semite.
The Encyclical exhorted that Catholics must never be anti-Semitic because “we are all Semites spiritually” and ought to hold the Jewish people in high regard accordingly. The Encyclical exposed to the world the III Reich’s persecution of the Catholic Church as well as the incompatibility between the principles of the National Socialism and those of the Catholic faith. The German government prohibited the entrance of the Encyclical to the country and it became necessary to smuggle it into Germany under the nose of the ruthless Gestapo. On Sunday March 21, The Encyclical was read from 12,000 Catholic pulpits across Germany. As a result, the Nazi’s campaign of innuendoes against The Church as well as the persecution of Catholics worsened.
The German Catholic hierarchy thanked Pope Pius XI for the letter, which strongly condemned both, racism and anti-Semitism. The Pope pointed to Cardinal Pacelli saying that it was he who had been responsible for the Encyclical. It was the Secretary of State, who asked the German Cardinal Faulhaber to submit a draft text, which he amended carefully. Pacelli also bore the burden of its defense when the Encyclical was the subject of strong German diplomatic protests; he did so personally, not by delegation.
The Vatican condemns Communism with the Encyclical “Divini Redemptori” on March 19, 1937
Pius XI and his Secretary of State were following the Magisterium of the Church when they published on March 19, 1937, the Encyclical “Divini Redemptori.” It was a most comprehensive and devastating condemnation of Communism as “intrinsically perverse.” Already Pius IX, as early as 1846, pronounced in the Encyclical “Qui pluribus,” a solemn condemnation of Communism “that infamous doctrine which is absolutely contrary to natural law itself, and if once adopted would utterly destroy the rights, the property and possessions of all men, and even society itself.” Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical “Quod apostolici muneri,” defined communism as “the fatal plague that insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin.” Pius XI and Pius XII were highly active, energetic and zealous opponents of totalitarianism and oppression in every form-for them, National Socialism and Communism were both intrinsically evil.
Pope Pius XII’s first Encyclical, “Summi Pontificatus”, in 1939, attacks Nazism and Communism
Pius XII’s first encyclical on October 27, 1939, “Summi Pontificatus” reiterated the attack on the German regime and the Gestapo was ordered to prevent its distribution. In it, the Pope declared his position “against exacerbated nationalism, the idolatry of the state, totalitarianism, racism, the cult of brutal force, contempt of international agreements”, against all the characteristics of Hitler’s political system; he laid the responsibility for the scourge of the war on these aberrations. The Allies airdropped 88,000 copies of the Encyclical over Germany.
Nazis and Communists shared a common hatred and a common goal towards the destruction and the character assassination of Pope Pacelli and his legacy.
The defamation campaign against Pius XII turning point was triggered by the play “Der Stellvertreter [The Vicar]” by Rolf Hochhuth, which was performed for the first time in Berlin on 20 February 1963, almost four years after the death H.H. Pius XII. Hochhuth as a youth belonged to the Hitler Youth where he was reinforced in the Nazis view of Aryan ideals and emphasized the teaching of loyalty to Hitler and the regime, and it sponsored youth activity to reinforce the importance of male physical strength, vitality, and militarism at a very young age. They were devoted to the Nazi thoughts and they wore scarves. Parents could send their children to become members of the organization up to the age of fourteen. The Nazis believed that teaching children how to become tough would free them from their weaknesses. It showed anti-Semitism through indoctrination.
Nazis and Communist hated and feared the Catholic Church and the Soviets used for their defamation campaign against the Church, Hochhtuth extreme anti-pope Pacelli opinion and the strong debates it immediately provoked, it had an enormous influence on the imagine of Pius XII and the Holy See both in the public opinion and in the historical debate itself.
Cardinal Montini, wrote an article in defense of Pius XII, published in the English Catholic magazine “The Tablet” in the issue published on 11 May 1963. Amongst other things, it underlined the similarity between Hochhuth’s play and a “communist publication” on the Vatican and the Second World War.
In a letter that reached “The Tablet” on the same day as he was elected pope, on 21 June 1963, when he took the name Paul VI, the cardinal of Milan defended Pius XII’s behavior in the face of the persecution and extermination of Jews by the Nazis. In Hochhuth’s opinion, the pope was partially to blame for these crimes because he failed to condemn them.
“This attitude of condemnation and protest, for the absence of which the pope is being reproached, would not only have been futile, it would also have been dangerous. That’s all,” writes, amongst other things, the former advisor of pope Pacelli. He concludes:
“Subjects like these and historic people we know should not be played with through the creative imagination of playwrights, who are lacking in historic discernment and, God help us, human honesty. Otherwise, just like in the present case, the drama would be another: that of someone trying to offload the horrible crimes of German Nazism onto a pope who was extremely conscientious in his duties and aware of history and who in the opinion of more than one friend was certainly impartial, but also very loyal to the German people. Equally, Pius XII had the merit of having been a ‘Vicar’ of Christ who tried to fulfill his mission as best he could with courage and integrity. Could the same thing be said of this theatrical injustice, in the context of culture and art?”.
.
Montini defended Pius XII, first in 1963 when he had just been elected pope, and then again in January 1964 during his historic journey to the Holy Land, and so again pointed out the elements of political propaganda in the play that had just been shown in Rome. He said that the then-cardinal of Milan “had stood up, with the loyalty of an advisor and disciple who does not forget, against the absurd and unjust indictments of a political propaganda thinly disguised as moralism”. And when “Paul VI laid foot on Israeli ground in what was the most significant and revolutionary step of his Palestinian mission, everyone could tell that the pope wanted to respond to the systematic attacks from the communist world, which had managed to find complicity or indulgence even in Catholic hearts – or at least some Catholics who were known even in Italy”.
With the passing of time, the question of Pius XII’s silence has become increasingly complicated, because the repeated accusations against pope Pacelli have turned into a “black legend”. This has certainly not helped the new, positive relations between the Catholic Church and Judaism. In the meantime, the origins of the accusations promoted above all through soviet and communist propaganda and those who have a sense of nostalgia for it, and will not forgive Pius XII for his anticommunism.
During Pope John Paul II’s visit to Israel, Jews demanded he apologize for Pope Pius XII’s failure to publicly condemn the Nazi regime during the war. The World Council of Churches, International Red Cross, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and others remained silent. Roman Catholic Oskar Schindler was responsible for saving between 3,000 and 5,000 Jews. Raoul Wallenberg a like number. Neither had 860,000 trees planted southeast of Jerusalem in the Negev Desert by a grateful Israeli government representing the Jews saved the Catholic Church by orders of Pius XII. Schindler had a motion picture produced by Steven Spielberg chronicling his courageous efforts. Pius XII did not.
Pulitzer prize winner John Toland had this to say about Pius XII, “The Church under the Pope’s guidance...saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions, rescue organizations combined... The British and Americas, despite lofty pronouncements, had not only avoided taking any meaningful action but gave sanctuary to few persecuted Jews.”
Ironically the allegations, lies, calumnies, innuendoes and false charges are refuted by the statements of the best witnesses—the Jews themselves.
The Franks and Saxons blended across some. Which is how I recently found long lost relations in France.
Incorrect. A violent attack on a priest or religious (other than in self-defense) resulted in immediate latae sententiae excommunication, according to canon law in force at the time. On that ground alone, Hitler (assuming he was actually a Catholic, subject to church discipline, in the first place) excommunicated himself hundreds of times over, by his murders of Catholic priests in Poland and elsewhere.
The issue with Goebbels' wife was not that she was a Lutheran, but that she was divorced. There was no church annulment. The marriage took place in a Lutheran ceremony, which made it invalid twice over according to the Catholic church (again, assuming that Goebbels was a Catholic at all and had not defected from the faith).
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.
I wasn't aware that Jews kept baptismal records at all, much less that they kept them in Catholic churches. :-0
You are no doubt familiar with the immense numbers of Jews who were granted (spurious) baptismal records by the Catholic Church, to help them evade the Nazis*? Cardinal Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) spent the war as Papal nuncio in Istanbul, where he issued phony baptismal papers for thousands of Jews. When thanked for his actions later, he said, in effect, "Thank Pius XII -- I did everything I did on his orders."
*Of course, this was only effective insofar as it convinced the Nazis that the bearer was not Jewish at all. The Nazis in general were perfectly willing to persecute or kill a Jew who converted to Christianity.
Suggesting that German Catholics and the Catholic church resisted Hitler and the Nazis is pure nonsense.
Suggesting that some German Catholics resisted Hitler is simply reciting a historical fact. Ever heard of Franz Jägerstatter? Bishop August Clemens von Galen?
But, bless their little Nazi hearts, they figured out who he meant anyway, didn't they ...
What makes you think that I needed to be satisfied?
This:
But IMO the better question is, what could the Catholic Church have accomplished if the Vicar of Christ had denounced Hitler?
Thanks for that history. A quick google search revealed that literally thousands of Catholic clergy ended up in concentration camps like Dachau and Auschwitz.
Hitler was apostate Catholic, as was Goebbels.
Dachau was the first concentration camp. It was filled with communists, social Democrats and liberal Catholic priests and union leaders. Few Jews. If you want to charge the bishops with a crime, it was letting their Catholics join the Nazi Party. This cuts the legs from under the Pope efforts to negotiate with the new government. The naive notion that somehow they could influence the Party, means they did not know they were dancing with the Devil.
And of course the man who tried to blow Hitler up. Did in fact, but did not kill him, because the Devil needed Hitler alive to ruin Germany.
You wrote:
“Nothing forcible about it, for the record. Goths et al were Christian before they even approached Rome, having already been converted by emissaries of early popes.”
No, they were Arians. The Ostrogoths were still Arians when they occupied Rome. The Visigoths were Arians for centuries after they settled in Western Europe.
“The deal then was simple—convert the leader, king, or whoever was in charge, and everyone else followed.”
True enough.
With all due respect when the TITLE WAS CHANGED the game changed. This is one of the reasons to NOT adjust headlines.
My mistake then. however, the reasoning behing Dr. B’s post was that we’ve had a spate of anti-C’s who have been making odious comparisons between C’s and N’s. This article does not make a comparison between N’s and P’s but just indicates that C’s were not the big N supporters. P’s in other countries (USA, UK, Norway etc.) fought against the Ns.
Amazingly Nazis made enemies of a lot of people.
On the other hand there was this problem with Spain, Argentina, Paraguay, etc. ~ and even today in the United States the Democrat party advocates for Nazi party solutions to everything.
The trick is the rise of Nazism was not fueled by religious difference.
Now, about a spate of threads that were/are anti-C, someone should identify them. It's been a good while since I've seen any of them ~ maybe they slipped by when I was asleep.
The forcible conversion was only of the Saxons and for a political reason as well — the pagan Saxons were a thorn in the flesh of the Carolingian Frankish dynasty. Two folks of the same religion could be allies but not a Christian and a pagan — hence the Christians Slavs in Bohemia supported the Franks (germanics) against the germanic saxons. Also, the Christian Poles joined with the pagan Lithuanians only if the Lithuanians became Christian.
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