An interesting remark

[Serious]

MOST gestapo and SS were Christians?? Where did you pick up this little tidbit of info?

Obvious. Germany was a religious country. Hitler was religious, too.

Obviously? Really? You know where we all have lived and where we all grew up? I doubt it.

I know because no one who actually lived in those societies could be unaware of the actual happenings of fear and intimidation exerted by the secret police.

 

[Sair]

I read the following little rant, and started to wonder…

What is your opinion about it? Agree? Disagree?

Back in my youth, I was certainly quite familiar with the existence of nominal Catholics who a) only attended mass at Easter and Christmas (our parish church was always full to bursting at those times of year, and much, much less packed at regular Sunday or Saturday vigil masses) and b) really saw nothing wrong with contraception or sex before marriage.

Part of the reason I left the church was that I could not, in good conscience, profess myself to be a Catholic when I just could no longer believe or countenance many of the church’s teachings. But then, I always took such things quite seriously. I don’t think religion is a way of life for that many of the people who claim to belong to one. I would suggest that what a lot of people get from religion - and what a lot of people really want from religion - is something to make them feel comforted in their dark times, something that gives them a sense of community and ritual when they want it - like at the major festivals of the year - but not something that really demands deep thought and commitment to particular philosophical and ethical principles. Oh, and they generally expect that the church is there to provide for those in need, because, well, that’s what religious people do, isn’t it?

 

[Fone_Bone_2001]

All correct. Did I not say “It’s worded a bit uncharitably, but the gist of it is true.”?

You did, and I agree.

But charity is of supreme importance. The attitude the quote expresses is spiritually problematic and very harmful. I honestly don’t think that can be overstated.

Most Catholics, and humans in general, are living sinful lives. A majority of Catholics who engage in sexual intercourse (even inside valid marriages) use artificial birth control. A majority of Catholics don’t go to Confession.

See, I think this goes too far. Do we actually know that? Do we have an academically responsible, thorough survey that shows us this? Unless a married couple I know gives me reason to believe they contracept, doesn’t charity demand that I not assume bad things about them for merely statistical reasons?

And like I said, people in the two dioceses I’ve lived in definitely do go to Confession, many of them regularly. I fully acknowledge that this may not be the case elsewhere, and that it does not seem to be the case in certain parishes I’ve frequented as well. But in others I’ve belonged to, it is true.

Thus I don’t think I personally have enough information to assume, “Most Catholics don’t go to confession.” I haven’t looked this up, and Catholics have contradictory experiences concerning the proportion of those who do and those who don’t.

I’m not comparing myself favorably to them at all. I’ve done those things and far worse. It doesn’t change the fact that sin is sin.

Good.

“Nurturing feelings of discouragement”…in as much charity as I can muster, let me say that’s pretty emblematic of our culture of easily hurt feelings. I’m less disturbed by the possibility of hurting a few feelings than by the thought of the majority of souls falling into Hell.

Oh, I think I was unclear and was thus misunderstood; please let me clarify.

I didn’t mean the OP’s quote would nurture feelings of discouragement in the “bad Catholics” it was addressing. I meant that the kind of person who would say, “Most Catholics suck!” is nurturing discouragement in himself.

And he’s doing it by focusing his attention on how sinful those around him are. I am positive that that is a bad thing to do to oneself spiritually. There are so many things we could and should be focused on:

• the perfect goodness and love of God, including the earthly example given to us by our Lord
• the examples of the saints who are worthy of emulation
• our own sinfulness and unworthiness
• the suffering our Lord endured to save us
• and finally - if we’re given a concrete reason in a specific situation to do so - our obligation to fraternally correct the sinful actions and behaviors of our brothers and sisters in Christ

But even that last one is a far cry from focusing on generalities that both discourage us and may not even be true: “Grr… why do most of my fellow Catholics suck? Why do they think they can receive Communion all the time and never go to Confession, and contracept whenever they want!”

I mean, think about it: are the people who regularly contracept and are okay with it going to say such a thing? Are the people who avoid Confession because they just don’t care going to say such a thing?

No, of course not.

Only two kinds of Catholics, then, could be the kind of people who would speak the words the OP quoted:

(1) One who does not contracept or avoid Confession habitually. Such a person, if he speaks those words, is unquestionably being self-righteous: focusing on the sins of others as if he doesn’t have any, just because he doesn’t have those particular ones. This person is the pharisee from the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.

OR

(2) One who is trying his or her best to follow the Church’s teachings and go to Confession regularly, but often fails. This person isn’t being like the Pharisee, but to speak the words the OP quoted is still really spiritually unhealthy for this kind of Catholic, because it can lead to despair: “I’m trying so hard, and I don’t know if I can ever get better, because all the Catholics I know do these bad things too!” Focusing on how - supposedly - no one is escaping from the sins that trap me, is a surefire way to discouragement and potentially even despair. A person in this situation should be focusing on our Lord and the saints, not on the bad examples that surround them and reinforce their sense of hopelessness.

I pray all the time that I won’t be one of them…because every day of my life I’m in danger of exactly that same fate.

And I think you are wise to do so; I know that I too am in such danger.

My point here is that thinking like the quote in the OP can do nothing but lead you to discouragement and despair. General contempt for others who supposedly have certain faults we assume them to have is a far cry from healthy fraternal correction of individual brothers or sisters in Christ whom we witness sinning.

Of course the quote was verbatim. I did not include the name of the poster, because it is irrelevant. And no, it was not an atheist who wrote it. It was die-hard conservative catholic.

Oh, I believe you. I do see this attitude sometimes, so I never thought you were lying or trolling.

 

[Fone_Bone_2001]

The truth is that I am not particularly surprised to see the support for the view presented.

I am, because I don’t think it represents a spiritually productive attitude for a Christian.

I hope my above reply explains why sufficiently.

And 75% of Catholics don’t attend Mass. Most Catholics believed in the Arian heresy before St. Athanasius combated it and the Church condemned it. What’s the point in quantity?

You’re begging the question.

Missing Mass is not something a faithful, practicing Catholic does.
Being an Arian is not something a faithful, orthodox Catholic does.

The former are violating the Church’s requirements, and the latter were participating in heresy.

You don’t get to make these an analogy to Catholics who participate in the charismatic renewal (which I personally, by the way, am not even a participant in; my instincts are genuinely more traditional) ***without *first showing how their activities constitute comparable (a) disobedience or (b) dissent.

 

[JDaniel]

Obviously you have no idea what those societies were like. You have no idea how pervasive the secret police was. You have no idea how far the intimidation went. You blame the everyday Germans for the atricities of the Gestapo and the SS. You blame the everyday Russians for the atrocities of the KGB and the GRU. You blame the average Chinese for the deed of the Cultural Revolution. And the average Cambodian for the atrocities of Pol Pot. What do you know? Nothing, and looks like you are even proud of it.

Are you aware of the Stanford prison experiment? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment and several others similar to that? In the US (one of the most religious contries in the world) the same would happen under a theocracy. The same thing DID happen under the religion based systems in the middle ages.

Yes, the Gestapo and the SS were a bunch of monsters - but most of those were Christians and Catholics. (Gott mit uns - God is with us was the slogan.) But they did NOT do what they did because they were Christians and Catholics, they did it because they were monsters. The KGB and the GRU and the thugs in China were monsters and atheists. But they did not perform those atrocities because they were atheists, they did tem because they there monsters.

The inquisitors were a bunch of monsters and they were Catholics. And they did all those atrocities because they were Catholics. Yet, I would never blame Catholicism for the deeds of a few Catholics, even if those deeds were the direct, logical consequence of their Catholicism.

What you do is perform the trick of “guilt by association”. Shame on you.

Dumb little pun - which only works is English. (Maybe you are like that urban legend US Senators, who was said to utter: “If English was good enogh for Jesus Christ, it is good enough for me”.) And, of course there is no reason to love one’s neighbor as one loves one’s family.

Such blatant irrationaly. But at least you are honest about it. Yuck!

Serious:

I don’t know where you got your history education, but, I am obliged to tell you that your parents wasted their money. I feel myself dumbing down moment by moment by conversing with you. You’ll pardon me, but I must go look for intelligent conversation elsewhere. Good bye.

God bless,
jd

 

[Neildown]

Obvious. Germany was a religious country. Hitler was religious, too.

Germany was somewhat “Christian” but it was obviously more along the lines of Arianism. There were Catholics too but the majority of Germany in general was of Aryan belief and Hitler mixed that with other apparently cult-like ideas. I don’t know how many (if any) of Hitler’s inside men were Catholic but obviously they were not strong in their faith if they were Catholic. You may look just as far as the concentration camps that murdered six million Jews… Catholic communities and clergy were persecuted along with Jews too, though not nearly on the same scale. For Catholics it was generally more along the lines of sporadic vandalism and occasional roughing up (as I recall anyway).

 

[empther]

JDaniel, post 85, wrote:

Serious:

I don’t know where you got your history education, but, I am obliged to tell you that your parents wasted their money. I feel myself dumbing down moment by moment by conversing with you. You’ll pardon me, but I must go look for intelligent conversation elsewhere. Good bye.

:extrahappy:

That’s the best post I’ve ever seen on these forums.

Right on, JDaniel. Thanks for a classic post. :bowdown: :bowdown2:

 

[Calgar]

Obvious. Germany was a religious country. Hitler was religious, too.

Hold on, you said Christian. Don’t change it to religious all the sudden.

Do you have any answers on my other questions?

 

[sw85]

Oh, I think I was unclear and was thus misunderstood; please let me clarify.

I didn’t mean the OP’s quote would nurture feelings of discouragement in the “bad Catholics” it was addressing. I meant that the kind of person who would say, “Most Catholics suck!” is nurturing discouragement in himself.

And he’s doing it by focusing his attention on how sinful those around him are. I am positive that that is a bad thing to do to oneself spiritually. There are so many things we could and should be focused on:

• the perfect goodness and love of God, including the earthly example given to us by our Lord
• the examples of the saints who are worthy of emulation
• our own sinfulness and unworthiness
• the suffering our Lord endured to save us
• and finally - if we’re given a concrete reason in a specific situation to do so - our obligation to fraternally correct the sinful actions and behaviors of our brothers and sisters in Christ

But even that last one is a far cry from focusing on generalities that both discourage us and may not even be true: “Grr… why do most of my fellow Catholics suck? Why do they think they can receive Communion all the time and never go to Confession, and contracept whenever they want!”

I mean, think about it: are the people who regularly contracept and are okay with it going to say such a thing? Are the people who avoid Confession because they just don’t care going to say such a thing?

No, of course not.

Only two kinds of Catholics, then, could be the kind of people who would speak the words the OP quoted:

(1) One who does not contracept or avoid Confession habitually. Such a person, if he speaks those words, is unquestionably being self-righteous: focusing on the sins of others as if he doesn’t have any, just because he doesn’t have those particular ones. This person is the pharisee from the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.

OR

(2) One who is trying his or her best to follow the Church’s teachings and go to Confession regularly, but often fails. This person isn’t being like the Pharisee, but to speak the words the OP quoted is still really spiritually unhealthy for this kind of Catholic, because it can lead to despair: “I’m trying so hard, and I don’t know if I can ever get better, because all the Catholics I know do these bad things too!” Focusing on how - supposedly - no one is escaping from the sins that trap me, is a surefire way to discouragement and potentially even despair. A person in this situation should be focusing on our Lord and the saints, not on the bad examples that surround them and reinforce their sense of hopelessness.

Just to clarify, again, context is important, and the quote in the OP was removed from its original context. The discussion at the time bore directly on the behavior of Catholics. Specifically, someone remarked that we should not have a confessionally Catholic state because even the majority of Catholics would not want it. My reply was intended to point out that if we went by what the majority of Catholics wanted, we wouldn’t even have a Catholic Church. In other words, we should not be ordering society on the basis of Catholics’ desires (or anyone’s desires) but on the basis of what is objectively true, right, and good.

I don’t think recognizing the (probably unprecedently) lousy moral state of the laity and even much of the clergy warrants a comparison to Pharisaism. The problem with the Pharisees was that they were proto-Kantians: they treated the law as an end in itself, rather than a means to the promotion of salvific virtues. Not being a Pharisee doesn’t mean not caring about the law, it just means understanding it in its proper context, as an instrumental good rather than a final one. The trouble with most modern Catholics is that they aren’t even Pharisees; Pharisaism would be an improvement for them! They simply don’t care about these things, either out of malice or ignorance. Charity is important but it does not require us to affect ignorance about the obvious problems scourging the Church, among the greatest of which (besides the occasional incompetence and sometimes outright treachery of bishops and priests) is the scandalous indifference of the laity.

(I don’t blame Serious for taking the quote out of context; it was part of a much longer post and that was the meat of what he was interested in).

 

[JDaniel]

Obviously? Really? You know where we all have lived and where we all grew up? I doubt it.

Those societies were that way because that’s how atheists have to enforce their made up morals.

Calgar:

Actually, the Third Reich did little to intimidate their own. They didn’t need to. Hitler found willing accomplices and they helped project him to leadership. Here’s a timeline of Hitler and innocent Germany:

thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/hitlerchron.html

You can see how little effort it took (on the part of Hitler and his cronies) to gather consensus by studying the timeline carefully. Then, when placed against the background of what was happening to the Church in Europe at that time, with Mussolini, in Italy, and Francisco Franco, in Spain, etc., there was little to nothing the Catholic could do to restore the Christian love for one’s neighbor to Europe. The Gestapo and the German army were used primarily in the extermination effort, what was called, the “Final Solution of the Jewish people.” But, of course, Hitler ran around and personally intimidated all of the German people, and her soldiers, to make them participate in the annihilation.

The Gestapo came about in early 1934, if I remember correctly, or maybe the year before. The SS was Hitler’s private personal protection police, which were sometimes used to coerce other departments if they got out of line. But, Hitler came into his own much earlier than that and had a good following - without intimidation or threat. With the country divided between those who concurred with him and those who did not, he occasionally used the Gestapo to apply pressure. But, just look at the timeline. Does that look to be a one-sided affair? Does that look as though Hitler needed to coerce all of the German people?

Of course, these are simple chronologies, not in-depth historical accounts. But, most well-accepted historical accounts parallel this conception of the history.

By the way, millions of Catholics were persecuted by Hitler as well - the good theist that he was!

God bless,
jd

 

[Calgar]

Calgar:

Actually, the Third Reich did little to intimidate their own. They didn’t need to. Hitler found willing accomplices and they helped project him to leadership.
God bless,
jd

I never brought up Germany or Hitler. That was serious.

I stick to the more obvious atheists of history. Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.

 

[JDaniel]

I never brought up Germany or Hitler. That was serious.

I stick to the more obvious atheists of history. Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.

Calgar:

I know, but I was done talking with him. Thanks for giving me a small pedestal.

God bless,
jd

 

[empther]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious

forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif
*Obvious. Germany was a religious country. Hitler was religious, too. *

Hold on, you said Christian. Don’t change it to religious all the sudden.

I’ve read extensively about WWII history, including Albert Speer’s “Inside the Third Riech”, William Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, “Table Talk”, a diary Goebbels kept on Hitler’s endless ramblings after nightly dinners with his top generals ( which must have bored them to death), “Mein Kampf”, and other books.

Hitler was definitely not religious. From an early age his only religion was self-worship.
True, he may have been baptized in a Catholic church, although the records have been “lost” ( probably thanks to the Gestapo ), but Hitler had no interest in religion.

I visited the Dachau concentration camp a few miles from Munich. They show a film of Catholic priests attending mass. There were 2,000 priests there. You can tell from their faces they were under considerable pressure.
Films from the early days of Auswitz, when the war had just begun and before millions of Jews were sent there, show Catholic nuns in habits arriving at the camp.
Hitler was not religious.
That Serious could say that shows how out of touch with reality he is.