Story of the German bishop who openly opposed the euthanasia program under Hitler

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see The Lion who mauled the Fuehrer | The Catholic Weekly

Driven by bizarre racial theories, the Nazis set out to ‘cleanse’ society of those deemed unworthy of life, beginning with the mentally ill and the disabled. Catholic Archbishop Augustus Clemens Von Galen of Munster openly denounced Hitler and the Nazis for such programs.

The arguments used in Germany sound familiar. Compassion: “Wouldn’t it be kinder to end this life with merciful death?” Despair: “This is life that is not life.” Or “life unworthy of life”. Terminal illness: “This is life without hope”.
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Since 1934, together with the compassionate line and racist eugenics, an economic argument was developed: so much money is wasted on feeding and caring for men, women and children with mental and physical disabilities.
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In 1941 the bishop exploded in open denunciation of Nazi oppression and murder. From the pulpit in Munster, he delivered three blazing attacks on Nazi ideology and its crimes. In August 1941, he denounced euthanasia as a violation of God’s Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill!”

The Nazis decided not to deal with him until after the war, World War II then going on, for fear of alienating Catholics during the war.
 
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Von Galen was one of a number of German bishops whose actions under Nazi tyranny were praiseworthy.

And apparently he is a Blessed. I didn’t realize that until now.
 
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www.catholic.com

Catholic Martyrs of the Holocaust

Many thousands of Catholic men, women, and children died in concentration camps, SS and Gestapo torture chambers, or in fields and villages across Europe for the “crime” of proclaiming the truth to one of the most evil regimes in human history.
www.catholic.com www.catholic.com

A quick google search yeilds photos of Priests being executed by the Nazis in Poland. 5 million non Jews were also killed.

May all their souls rest in peace.

The Bishop’s Cry of Protest

We must be prepared that in the near future such terrifying news will accumulate—that even here one religious house after another will be confiscated by the Gestapo and that its occupants, our brothers and sisters, children of our families, loyal German citizens, will be thrown on to the street like outlawed helots and hunted out of the country, like vermin.
—Bishop August von Galen, homily, 1941

Many times, and again quite recently, we have seen the Gestapo arresting blameless and highly respected German men and women without the judgment of any court or any opportunity for defense, depriving them of their freedom, taking them away from their homes interning them somewhere. In recent weeks even two members of my closest council, the chapter of our cathedral, have been suddenly seized from their homes by the Gestapo, removed from Münster and banished to distant places.
—Bishop August von Galen, homily, 1941

Between 1939 and 1945 over 3,000 members of the Polish clergy were killed; 1,992 of them died in concentration camps, 787 of them at Dachau (see “The Priests of Dachau,” page 22). Altogether, estimates place the number of Polish civilians killed in the war at between 5 and 5.5 million, including 3 million Polish Jews, not even counting over a half million Polish civilians and military personnel killed in the fighting.

The Priests of Dachau

The Dachau concentration camp was used by the Nazis for many of its most hated enemies. Among them were Catholic priests. Indeed, of the 2,720 clergy sent to Dachau, 2,579 were Catholic priests, along with uncertain numbers of seminarians and lay brothers. Most were Polish priests, 1,748 in all; there were also 411 German priests. Of the 1,034 priests who died in the camp, 868 were Polish. The priests were housed in a special “priest block” and were targeted for especially brutal treatment by the SS guards.

It is estimated that at least 3,000 other Polish priests were sent to other concentration camps, including Auschwitz, while priests from across Europe were condemned to death and labor camps: 300 priests died at Sachsenhausen, 780 at Mauthausen, and 5,000 at Buchenwald. These numbers do not include the priests who were murdered en route to the camps or who died from diseases and exhaustion in the inhuman cattle cars used to transport victims. Several thousand nuns were also sent to camps or killed on the way.
 
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Where did those not so “bizarre racial theories” come from?

From Margaret Sanger and her circle. Eugenic Scientists from Nazi Germany wrote articles for Sanger’s Birth Control Review , and members of Sanger’s American Birth Control League visited Nazi Germany, sat in on sessions of the Supreme Eugenics Court, and returned with glowing reports of how the Sterilization Law was “weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way.”

Source: https://www.chesterton.org/lecture-36/

I suggest the OP and others do a little homework before starting threads like this.
 
Ed what is this book about? And which bizarre theories are you challenging?

Its not that clear. Thanks
 
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