Posted on 04/23/2013 9:37:23 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
In a segment titled “God and Hitler,” Gordon Robertson (son of Rev. Pat Robertson), hosted a discussion on the Catholic Church’s response to Hitler. Several errors of fact were made.
1) It is wrong to paint Hitler as a Catholic. Though he was baptized, he excommunicated himself, latae sententiae, when he sought, in his words, to “crush [the Catholic Church] like a toad.” He made good on his pledge by persecuting 8,000 priests, over 500 of whom were killed in concentration camps. He also sought to assassinate the pope.
2) The 1933 Nazi-Vatican Concordat was not a show of solidarity. As Rabbi David Dalin has shown, it was a protective measure designed to protect German Catholics from persecution. In fact, at least 34 letters of protest were sent from the Vatican to the Nazis between 1933 and 1937, culminating in a 1937 encyclical that condemned Nazi violations of the Concordat and its racial ideology. It was smuggled out of Italy and distributed on Palm Sunday to Catholics in Germany. Nothing like this happened in Protestant churches in Germany.
3) It is not true that Hitler met resistance from Protestants alone. There are 800,000 trees planted in Israel that represent the 800,000 Jews saved by the Catholic Church. None have been planted as a tribute to Protestants. During the war, the New York Times twice said the Church was “a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent”; Albert Einstein also singled out the Church during the war. After the war, Golda Meir praised the work of the Church, as did the ADL, the World Jewish Congress, and scores of other Jewish organizations.
4) It is factually wrong to say the Vatican archives have “never been seen.” Many scholars have had access. As for Pope Pius XII being “Hitler’s Pope,” it should be noted that John Cornwell, the ex-seminarian who originated this term, retracted it years ago. So why does “The 700 Club” continue to cite it?
For their collective disunity in the face of evil, Martin Niemöller along with all other believers in lands occupied by the 3rd Reich were thrown into Satan's sieve to see who was wheat and who was chaff.
The German electorate in 1932 and 1933 was deeply divided. Practicing Catholics wouldn't vote for a Protestant candidate and Practicing Protestants wouldn't vote for a Catholic candidate. Because of their long history of mistreatment, Jews wouldn't vote for either. The end result was Hitler.
We got a glimpse of that here on FR in the runup to the 2012 presidential election with posters making "principled" stands to not vote for a Mormon.
I never said he wasn't. My understanding is the movement peaked sometime around 1905. Hitler would have been about 16. I don't doubt that anything offering potential to sever ties held by Austrian Catholics to Rome would have been unattractive to Hitler, the German nationalist.
Paul von Hindenburg, who defeated Hitler twice in the 1932 German Presidential election, was Lutheran. Perhaps it is fair to assume, since German Protestants outnumbered German Catholics by about two to one at that time, that your postulation is correct.
However, I'll need some convincing that religious differences among the German electorate led to Hindenburg appointing Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. As you know, Hitler never actually won a free election while standing personally as a candidate, and even at the time of his accession to power the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag but not an outright majority.
But yes, the Stuttgart declaration is an argument that Niemoller accepted personal spiritual responsibility for his past actions. Wheat and chaff separated but at a frightful cost.
I'm uncertain as to what evidence there is that Hindenburg was anything other than a cultural Lutheran. Never-the-less, the Catholic Center Party did support Hindenburg.
Perhaps it is fair to assume, since German Protestants outnumbered German Catholics by about two to one at that time, that your postulation is correct.
However, I'll need some convincing that religious differences among the German electorate led to Hindenburg appointing Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. As you know, Hitler never actually won a free election while standing personally as a candidate, and even at the time of his accession to power the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag but not an outright majority.
I can't cite any facts. I based my statement on an understanding of the Reformation era chasm that separates Catholics from Protestants. Some from either side will not have anything to do with the other side.
When we look at the German election of 1933, the neopagan Nazis got 43.9 percent of the vote and the atheist Communists got 12.3 percent. That means 56.2 percent of German voters either could not recognize, voted with eyes wide open, or did not care that they were voting an anti-Christian ticket. The German people officially de-Christianized in 1933.
Meanwhile, The Catholic Center Party got 11.25 percent, Social Democrats got 18.3 percent with the remainder scattered across another ten or so parties.
Still true today. The overriding point is that Catholic and Protestant alike left much to be desired in terms of Christian opposition to Hitler, while Catholic and Protestant alike can claim legitimate heroes in that selfsame opposition.
That argument simply makes it worse. As with liberal RCs today, it is how Rome acts that interprets her words, and treating them as members in life and in death, such as Teddy K., interprets canon law though that that is supposed to preclude such "notorious sinners" from being given ecclesiastical funerals, which even Chavez was given. And please spare the unsubstantiated excuse, "he must have repented."
If Hitler was to be considered excommunicated, it should have been manifestly done, and all Catholics forbidden to have fellowship with him, (1Cor. 5:11-13) like as Paul named names of those who were handed over to the devil due to their sins. (1Tim. 2:10)
It appears you're forgetting about fascist, almost entirely Catholic Italy, an Axis power, allied with Hitler.
No I'm not. Big difference between cultural Catholics and practicing Catholics just as there's a big difference between cultural Protestants and practicing Protestants. Furthermore, the Catholics are headquartered out of Vatican City which is sovereign territory.
I refer to almost entirely Catholic, fascist Italy, an Axis power, allied with Hitler.
Are you seriously claiming that every Catholic who supported the fascist regime of Mussolini, a Catholic, was somehow not really Catholic?
How many Jews were there in Italy at that time, and how were they treated? Protestants weren’t even treated especially well, what few there were. I know Waldensians didn’t get full religious rights in Italy until 1984.
Italy was fascist. Germany was National Socialist. Fascism is a political system. National Socialism is a political religion.
Are you seriously claiming that every Catholic who supported the fascist regime of Mussolini, a Catholic, was somehow not really Catholic?
No but the 1948 Italian election is illuminating in that the atheist Communists got over 30 percent of the popular vote at a time when the Red Terror was very real. A third of the population voted Communist.
How many Jews were there in Italy at that time, and how were they treated? Protestants weren’t even treated especially well, what few there were. I know Waldensians didn’t get full religious rights in Italy until 1984.
None of the groups were treated as badly by Italians than they were by Germans. By 1943 the Italians had enough, arrested Mussolini and signed an armistice with the allies.
Mussolini was an atheist.
Mussolini was married in the Catholic Church, had his children baptized in the Catholic Church. He made contraception and divorce illegal in Italy, and made Catholicism the State Church of Italy. He was close with numerous Cardinals and Bishops right up until the time of his death.
Truly odd behavior for an atheist, wouldn’t you say? He may have been atheist at some point in his life but it’s clear he didn’t remain one.
No. Not for a leader.
He may have been atheist at some point in his life but it’s clear he didn’t remain one.
Why do you say that? Who died alongside Mussolini in April 1945?
I do not know anything about the Pope but I was watching a show about WW 11 and they were talking about how Catholics allowed Nazi war criminals to escape after the war. I tried to research it but got side tracked. Do y’all know anything about that?
Hitler was born at Braunau. Braunau is in that part of upper Austria which went Protestant at the Reformation. After that it was forcibly Catholicized by the forces of the Counter-Reformation, the hapsburgs and the Jesuits. Since then there has been no religion in that part of the world.
It’s clear Mussolini did not remain atheist because of records indicating threat of excommunication following the Lateran Pact and the concordat that followed.
One cannot be excommunicated from a church to which one is not acknowledged to belong.
When was Mussolini threatened with excommunication?
One cannot be excommunicated from a church to which one is not acknowledged to belong.
Mussolini was presumably baptized as an infant and to my knowledge never formally renounced Catholicism. That in no way precludes his being an atheist, pagan or jedi.
If Hitler was to be considered excommunicated, it should have been manifestly done, and all Catholics forbidden to have fellowship with him, (1Cor. 5:11-13) like as Paul named names of those who were handed over to the devil due to their sins. (1Tim. 2:10)
I just want to gag every time I hear those pathetic excuses for for the wishy-washy inaction by the Catholic church in regards to following what it claims are its own guidelines.
All it is, is excuse making to avoid having to admit that the RCC can do or ever did anything wrong.
Non-Catholics are regularly and constantly castigated for their lack of moral stand on certain issues, but when it's the Catholic church, excuses abound.
While I have seen Evangelical churches actually remove people from their membership roles for unethical business practices and adultery, the Catholic church gives them Catholic funerals in violation of their own rules, and grant annulments to those who commit adultery and want to divorce their spouses, like said Teddy Kennedy.
Baloney. We've been told here that *Once a Catholic, always a Catholic* and that baptism into the Catholic church leaves an indelible mark on ones soul.
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