I just wanted to post a little tidbit of information. I believe when Pope Pius XI issued “Mit brennender Sorge” it was the first and only time a Papal encylical has been officially promulgated in a language other than Latin.
I can’t remember where I heard that, but if true it underscores the Catholic Church’s concern at the time for the growing threat Nazism and Fascism presented for Europe.
ChadS
That is true and priest were persucuted for reading it to thier congregations at Mass. The Church did more then any other group to speak out on what was going on in Germany and Europe at the time, but they where up against a diabolcal organized effort to silence the Church. The NAZIs were out to crush Judism and Christianity for it’s connection to Judism. Much like what is going on Western Society today.
. Ever masters of the euphemism and of political sleight-of-hand, they kept the general population confused about their true motives. When Hitler needed the support of the churches in the early days of the regime, for example, the SA attended Sunday services
en masse, creating “veritable SA church parades” (Grunberger:485). But just months later these same troops marched in the Nuremberg Party Rally alongside the Hitler Youth as they sang anti-Christian songs. “No evil priest can prevent us from feeling that we are the children of Hitler,” the children sang. “We follow not Christ, but Horst Wessel. Away with incense and holy water…The swastika brings salvation on earth” (ibid.:489). For their part, the SA sang, “Storm Trooper Comrades, hang the Jews and put the priests against the wall” as the refrain to one of their favorite tunes.
In Hitler and I, Strasser records a conversation he had with Hitler, in which Strasser criticized Nazi propagandist Alfred Rosenberg for his pagan ideals. “Hitler stopped and looked me in the eyes,” writes Strasser, “‘Christianity is, for the moment, one of the points in the programme I have laid down. But we must look ahead. Rosenberg is a forerunner, a prophet. His theories are the expression of the German soul’” (Strasser, 1940:96). Much later, as Hitler’s religion of hate appeared to have completely overwhelmed the German culture, Hitler proclaimed, “Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again? Nonsense, that tale is finished” (Newton:16).
From the early years, leading Nazis openly attacked Christianity. Joseph Goebbels declared that “Christianity has infused our erotic attitudes with dishonesty” (Taylor:20). Himmler is reported to have considered Christianity “the greatest plague delivered by history, and demanded that it be dealt with accordingly” (Ziegler:85).
We should not fool ourselves, thier
is evil in the world, anything that makes a mockery of the Church, such as NAZI Catholics, is just another effort to undermind the teachings of Christ. Pray for such misguided souls.
Pope Pius XII was not silent in the face of Nazism, either before he was elected pope in 1939 or during the war years. As Golda Meir, future Israeli Prime Minister and then Israeli representative to the United Nations, said on the floor of the General Assembly at the Pope’s death in 1958: “During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with the victims.”
But I saw it mentioning the Tridentine Mass, and someone “doubting” his catholic faith. Of course he had a stupid clay Hitler Nazi avatar - oh and the first person to reply apparently made reference to the Book of Job to help him keep his faith! This guy had a Nazi logo at the bottom of his posts!!!
).
) Catholic and his research is faulty to say the least, you should check out