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 Churchs 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 Hitlers 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?
Good answer to all of the, Daniel.
Therin lies the problem, people assuming if a person is not Catholic they are Protestant, and if they are Protestant they interpret scriptures with their own mind.
Which is just a tool used quite often by Catholics on this forum which shows they are quite misinformed. Or purposely distracting from what God desires?
Not being a Protestant I can't answer for them, but I know that born again saved Christians with a personal relationship with Jesus use the tool given us by God for understanding scripture.
That would be The Holy Spirit of God.
NOT the traditions of Catholicism.
Wouldn't do me much good to quote Church teaching, would it?
I thought quoting Jesus might carry some weight with you.
Now, how do you interpret Jesus' words?
And why should I take your interpretation more seriously than Christ's Church?
I consider it a sin when someone rejects the Teachings of Christ or His Church, "the pillar and foundation of truth." Catholics call such a person a formal, or in your case, material heretic.
So what does the Bible instruct us to do in such a case?
I know, we should take our dispute to "the body of believers." Well, who would they be?
There are countless Protestant sects with important doctrinal differences. How can they possible resolve any doctrinal dispute?
And if Christ's Church is invisible, then His instructions would be moot, void, or nonsensical, which is an impossibility for Christ.
Well; ain't that special!
I consider it a sin when some 'church' adds a bunch of stuff that is UNPROVABLE and extraneous to it's rituals.
So countless that the 'differences' cannot be named?
It’s interesting that you’ll use the BIBLE to try to make a point; and yet ignore other stuff.
Trinity, transubstantiation, the necessity of baptism, homosexuality, abortion, birth control ordination of women, primacy of Peter, the necessity of Christ's Church, etc., ad infinitum.
Unprovable to what standard? The Church, "the pillar and foundation of truth"? Or Elsie's infallible standard?
Yet as said, when men like Teddy K are treated as members even in death, then it interprets canon law (see here on canon law and Kennedy) and teaches quite nominal RCs are still members, though Chavez (who also recvd. a RC funeral) was worse.
Not all works are the same. Works done to attempt to obtain Salvation without Jesus, such as circumcision and observing Kosher laws, are indeed ineffective. However, as St. James wrote, faith without the works of corporeal and divine mercy as characterized in the Beatitudes, is indeed dead.
Peace be with you,
But which does not negate the need and place of the magisterium, of leadership, and you will not get far in typical conservative evangelical churches denying such common core essentials as the apostles creed and Nicene creed (baptism as in obtaining the forgiveness of sins excepted) express.
The Pope has just denied common core by saying Jesus is only found inside of a Catholic Church
That means we should stop defending them, let them defend themselves since we aren’t real Christians anymore according to them
I was thinking about this last night. I wonder what the Apostle Paul would have thought had his instructions for the Corinthian church to oust the member, who was unrepentant in an incestuous relationship with his father's wife, had they informed Paul that this member had "excommunicated himself" but that was all they were required to do?
Imagine if they wrote back to Paul and said, "We still let the guy come to our worship services, we let him partake of the Lord's Supper, we invite him to our homes, pray with him, let him tell his neighbors that he is a member of the Church of Corinth. We hope, in time, he comes to his senses and stops carrying on with his step-mom, but what more CAN we do?". I kinda think Paul would have had some very sharp words for the pastor for his disobedience in following Paul's implicit instructions. Now, this was just a regular member of the church, imagine had he been THE pastor or an elder - someone with leadership responsibilities?
The Catholics at Luther's time had no problem excommunicating him yet they let slide the very Popes who were guilty of far worse sins than the ones they accused Luther of committing. The hypocrisy is astounding!
Hitler would invoked what ever he wanted for support, and evangelicals (not Rome) today are the strongest supporters of Israel, but in his latter years Luther sadly became bitter against the Jews, though i think they made themselves quite hard to love. Yet as with dissent on what would become Rome's "infallible" canon, his animosity was not novel.
The crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection.(Pope Innocent III, Epistle to the Hierarchy of France, July 15, 1205)
It would be licit, according to custom, to hold the Jews in perpetual servitude because of their crime. (St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Judaeorum)
In The Popes Against the Jews : The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, historian David Kertzer notes,
the legislation enacted in the 1930s by the Nazis in their Nuremberg Laws and by the Italian Fascists with their racial lawswhich stripped the Jews of their rights as citizenswas modeled on measures that the [Roman Catholic] Church itself had enforced for as long as it was in a position to do so (9).
In 1466,
in festivities sponsored by Pope Paul II, Jews were made to race naked through the streets of the city. A particularly evocative later account describes them: Races were run on each of the eight days of the Carnival by horses, asses and buffaloes, old men, lads, children, and Jews. Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them, and at the same time, more amusing for the spectators. They ran from the Arch of Domitian to the Church of St. Mark at the end of the Corso at full tilt, amid Romes taunting shrieks of encouragement and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily. Two centuries later, these practices, now deemed indecorous and unbefitting the dignity of the Holy City, were stopped by Clement IX. In their place the Pope assessed a heavy tax on the Jews to help pay the costs of the citys Carnival celebrations.
But various other Carnival rites continued. For many years the rabbis of the ghetto were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the streets to the jeers of the crow, pelted by a variety of missiles. Such rites were not peculiar to Rome. In Pisa in the eighteenth century, for example, it was customary each year, as part of Carnival, for students to chase after the fattest Jew in the city, capture him, weigh him, and then make him give them his weight in sugar-coated almonds.
In 1779, Pius VI resurrected some of the Carnival rites that had been neglected in recent years. Most prominent among them was the feudal rite of homage, in which ghetto officials, made to wear special clothes, stood before an unruly mob in a crowded piazza, making an offering to Romes governors.
It was this practice that occasioned the formal plea from the ghetto to Pope Gregory XVI in 1836. The Jews argued that such rites should be abandoned, and cited previous popes who had ordered them halted. They asked that, in his mercy, the Pope now do the same. On November 5, the Pope met with his secretary of state to discuss the plea. A note on the secretary of states copy of the petition, along with his signature, records the Popes decision: It is not opportune to make any innovation. The annual rites continued.
When all is said and done, the [Roman Catholic] Churchs claim of lack of responsibility for the kind of anti-Semitism that made the Holocaust possible comes down to this: The Roman Catholic Church never called for, or sanctioned, the mass murder of the Jews. Yes, the Jews should be stripped of their rights as equal citizens. Yes, they should be kept from contact with the rest of society. But Christian Charity and Christian theology forbade good Christians to round them up and murder them.
Anyway, BUT NOW, in the dispensation of the grace of God, the righteousness of GOd without the law has been MANIFESTED (Rom. 3:21). It was "testified in due time" through the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 2:6,7). Paul says it was given to him to "declare, I say, at THIS TIME, His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of Him which believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26). THUS, to bring works to God for salvation TODAY would be UNBELIEF.
Just a simple truth of logic from God's Word.
Please, do show proof of your claim that nazi/hitler were fans of Luther because Luther hated Jews....I seem to remember Jesus is a Jew, did Luther hate Him?
Just a few more for your understanding.
When God says this NOW, in this dispensation of the grace of God, what will faith do? Faith will say "This is the most wonderful offer ever made by God to man. I cannot refuse it. I will trust Christ as my Savior and accept salvation as the free gift of God's grace." We are the most fortunate people to have ever walked this earth. To be living during this period, this grace of GOd, His reconciling us to Himself by the finished work of Christ. And someone wants to impress HIM by bringing works along for his salvation today???
There is but one dispensation, one Gospel. Unless I begin with the presumption, I cannot, even by stretching the imagination, see where the belief that St. Paul was called exclusively to give a different Gospel to the Gentiles than was given to the Jews, or that he was given that job exclusively.
"There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all." - Ephesians 4:4-5
Peace be with you
If God distinguishes between these gospels they CANNOT be exactly the same. Otherwise, why distinguish? And why did God accept Abel's offering, yet deny Cain's? Why, when God told Noah to build an ark, did Noah not just bring an animal sacrifice, like Abel did? Why, when Abraham was told to sacrifice his son, did he not just say "I'd rather believe that Christ died for my sins, was buried, and rose again the third day..." ?? Ya' gotta' THINK about these things, Natural. Different dispensations, different gospels. Listed by the Holy Spirit, for your reading pleasure, and your learning.
Because the 'church' says so.
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