Was hitler a catholic?

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Charlemagne_II

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More to the point, if Hitler was a Catholic, was he a Catholic in good standing with the Church? Some like to point out that anyone baptized a Catholic is a Catholic until he dies, whether or not he renounces Catholicism. I don’t see the point of debating this. Clearly Hitler was baptized a Catholic. But the real question is whether as an adult he was a practicing Catholic in good standing with the Church.

Or if he was something else, what was he? Pagan? Atheist? Etc.:confused:
 
Charlemagne_II said:
More to the point, if Hitler was a Catholic, was he a Catholic in good standing with the Church? Some like to point out that anyone baptized a Catholic is a Catholic until he dies, whether or not he renounces Catholicism. I don’t see the point of debating this. Clearly Hitler was baptized a Catholic. But the real question is whether as an adult he was a practicing Catholic in good standing with the Church.

Or if he was something else, what was he? Pagan? Atheist? Etc.:confused:
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I am not a historian, but I have read a great deal about the man. Sure, if (as seems so) he was baptized Catholic, then he was Catholic forever. One cannot be “unbaptized”.

In his own heart though, and in his actions, he rejected the Church totally. Some say he was a pagan, but others say he only seemed so in order to bolster his appeal to the likes of Himmler, who really was one. Certainly, Albert Speer, who knew Hitler well, scoffed at the notion that Hitler was adherent to any religion other than the worship of himself.
 
He was baptized a Catholic, so yes.Was he a practicing Catholic? No.
 
*Was he a practicing Catholic? No. *

Is there a source you would give to verify this?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
More to the point, if Hitler was a Catholic, was he a Catholic in good standing with the Church? Some like to point out that anyone baptized a Catholic is a Catholic until he dies, whether or not he renounces Catholicism. I don’t see the point of debating this. Clearly Hitler was baptized a Catholic. But the real question is whether as an adult he was a practicing Catholic in good standing with the Church.

Or if he was something else, what was he? Pagan? Atheist? Etc.:confused:
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Hitler was by NO means Catholic, outside of baptism, or an admirer of any religion cognate with Catholicism, as far as I can tell.Gunnar Heinsohn, a Holocaust researcher has put forward an interesting argument that the Holocaust against the Jews was not directed at the Jews as a people, but against the Ten Commandments themselves, especially the Fifth Commandment, that Hitler believed was keeping his Germans from becoming the amoral Nietzscheian supermen that he had delusions of them being. (The same article linked above shows evidence that he also was not pleased with the presence of chaplains in the Wehrmacht due to this very reason.)

In essence, he wanted to destroy the Jews and the Catholic clergy to strike explicitly at the respect for life fostered by the Judeo-Christian faiths.

In “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and other works on the Nazi Regime, there’s some evidence that Hitler put a lukewarm imprimateur towards a hare-brained idea of Alfred Rosenberg’s to convert all churches into a National German Church, which would replace the Crucifix with a sword and the Holy Scripture with Mein Kampf. It never came to fruition, but it is telling that such a scheme would even be mooted about in the highest corridors of power.
 
Approximately 10% of the people who were killed in the Nazi concentration camps were Catholic, mostly religious (priests, nuns, and brothers).
 
Scoobyshme said:
Approximately 10% of the people who were killed in the Nazi concentration camps were Catholic, mostly religious (priests, nuns, and brothers).
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3,000,000 Polish Catholics were killed by the Nazi’s.
 
However he may have been baptized, he appears to have rejected the Christian religion and instead adopted an essentially occultic viewpoint. The influence of Theosophy (which still employs the swastika as a symbol) seems to have been prevalent. “Spiritual but not religious” seems to be a descriptor of the Hitlerian approach.

To cast his views in contemporary categories, probably the closest would be “New Age”. The Aquarian notions of contemporary New Agers owe to the Theosophical doctrines of the cataclysmic succession of races as a process of human spiritual evolution. Note the orientation of Nazi propaganda regarding the creation of a new society inhabited by new men, etc., as well as the Theosophical importations of Atlantean heritage of the Aryans, etc.
 
Didn’t recent DNA tests done on Hitler’s relatives suggest Jewish ancestry?
 
Adeodatus

*The Aquarian notions of contemporary New Agers owe to the Theosophical doctrines of the cataclysmic succession of races as a process of human spiritual evolution. Note the orientation of Nazi propaganda regarding the creation of a new society inhabited by new men, etc., as well as the Theosophical importations of Atlantean heritage of the Aryans, etc. *

And much of that seems rooted in Nietzsche’s notion of the Superman that appealed to Hitler. Nietzsche (“God is dead”) was an atheist, but that didn’t stop Hitler from honoring Nietzsche at the dedication of the Nietzsche Archives built by Nietzsche’s sister. In the photo below Hitler is seen present at the dedication, admiring a bust of Nietzsche … hardly an act one would expect of a Catholic in good standing with the Church.

google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/93.3/images/ratner_fig02b.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/93.3/rosenhagen.html&h=475&w=800&sz=36&tbnid=Y6WjuJ5ru8_kuM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dphoto%2Bhitler%2Bnietzsche&zoom=1&q=photo+hitler+nietzsche&hl=en&usg=__Sx3QGJkyVD58dzEika9sGaTO6xg=&sa=X&ei=DHrlTM6cKYT6lwelkfnNCw&sqi=2&ved=0CDMQ9QEwBA
 
Scoobyshme said:
Approximately 10% of the people who were killed in the Nazi concentration camps were Catholic, mostly religious (priests, nuns, and brothers).
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Continuing on the same theme: priests were one rung up from the Jews on the Nazis’ ‘ladder of hatred’.

Being you’re from Alabama, Scooby (mind if I call you that?), did you watch EWTN’s broadcast of the movie ‘Karol: The Man Who Became Pope’? I saw Part 1 yesterday on my computer at the library. It showed the future Pope’s life in Poland during World War II. Horror was the only reaction I had to the Nazis’ murderous occupation of Poland–so many of his university teachers and friends were killed! I had all I could do to keep from crying out (luckily I had my headphones on to watch it!).

Hitler was evil incarnate…he hated the Church as much as he hated the Slavs and the Jews.
 
I think trying to answer questions about Hiter’s spirituality can be difficult. From all the reading I’ve done about Hitler and Nazism Hitler strikes me as a supremely political being, meaning that his major efforts in life were directed towards gaining and keeping political power and using it to expand his influence.

If this meant occasionally dabbling with spiritual subjects then he wasn’t above that. In late 19th and early 20th century Germany oftentimes the occultic groups interested in Germany folklore and Aryan racial theories inter-mingled with nationalist and far right politics where Hitler seemed to do most of his political activism. So he would’ve been aware of how those two spheres crossed paths.

However when it came time to get into the nitty gritty theorizing on race he left that to Himmler and Rosenberg. I remember reading that Hitler exhibited some frustration at Himmler constantly talking about the glory of ancient German civilization. Hitler said the Germans should be trying to recapture the glory Aryan cultures of Greece and Rome because when they were out building empires and roads and the Coliseum the Germans were living in mud huts, wearing furs and hitting each other with sticks and rocks. It’s well known that when Rosenberg gave Hitler a copy of his “The Myth of the 20th Century” (by all accounts an 800 page dry and boring read that never would’ve been published if it was for the fact it was written by a top Nazi) it was returned sometime later unread with the note to the effect of “well done.”

In my opinion Hitler doesn’t stike me as a strict adherent to this sort of thinking, that was mostly left to his cronies to do that heavy lifting, but he could use that type of thinking and apply it when he needed.

ChadS
 
NE_Catholic said:
hey, what happens in that thread, stays in that thread. :doh2:
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What’s that emoticon supposed to mean, exactly?

I merely point out that some of your fellow Catholics are advancing a well articulated argument that exterminating enemies of the church, like communism, is a way of establishing Catholic credentials. So, given hitler’s campaign on the eastern front, he does seem to qualify under that theory.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
More to the point, if Hitler was a Catholic, was he a Catholic in good standing with the Church? Some like to point out that anyone baptized a Catholic is a Catholic until he dies, whether or not he renounces Catholicism. I don’t see the point of debating this. Clearly Hitler was baptized a Catholic. But the real question is whether as an adult he was a practicing Catholic in good standing with the Church.

Or if he was something else, what was he? Pagan? Atheist? Etc.:confused:
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isn’t it pretty obvious that hitler was a sinner given all that business with exterminating the jews and all? though he was baptized a catholic, he obviously wasn’t a very good one.

but as i understand it, the church is no museum for saints. it is a hospital for sinners. being a christian does not ensure that one will never sin.

(does anyone else sense a “no true scottsman” fallacy coming on?)
 
Reservoir_Dog said:
What’s that emoticon supposed to mean, exactly?

I merely point out that some of your fellow Catholics are advancing a well articulated argument that exterminating enemies of the church, like communism, is a way of establishing Catholic credentials. So, given hitler’s campaign on the eastern front, he does seem to qualify under that theory.
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that emotion pretty much sums up that thread.

You are taking a couple of Franco supporters as credible?
 
NE_Catholic said:
that emotion pretty much sums up that thread.

You are taking a couple of Franco supporters as credible?
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Then that emoticon sums up this thread too. But, not being Catholic, I’m trying to get a sense of the Catholic point of view, since this entire issue seems too preposterous to even bring up.
 
Reservoir_Dog said:
Then that emoticon sums up this thread too. But, not being Catholic, I’m trying to get a sense of the Catholic point of view, since this entire issue seems too preposterous to even bring up.
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quite true.
I’m surprised a residential atheist hasn’t popped in yet with his whole “philosophy” on the question.
 
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