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Estevao
Guest
The German bishops excommunicated all Nazi party members in 1931 IIRC, that included Hitler. He never tried to undo this so he died excommunicated (not that he ever practiced the religion in the first place).
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BackHand
Guest
Hitler was never officially excommunicated however he ceased practicing the sacraments and attending mass.
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vsedriver
Guest
the Lateran Treaty was not a collaboration between the Pope and Fascists. the Lateran Treaty was due to the King of Italy seizing the Papal States in the 19th century. The church disputed the right of the King to take territory that didn’t belong to him. The treaty settled the matter by the legal government of Italy, now led by Mussolini, agreeing to total independence of the Vatican City State and paid reparations for the property that the Italian government confiscated.
the negotiations had been going on for decades but with the world wide depression the Church decided it was best to settle things and take what they could get.
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Kaninchen
Guest
It should always be borne in mind that all this sort of thing went on over a couple of decades in Europe and that, during the first of them, the dominant fear was that of Bolshevism and communist parties/uprisings.
This meant that the Church and its members were between a rock and a hard place - many Catholics were, indeed, attracted to quite unpleasant right-wing (using a European definition) nationalist and aggressive organisations, seeing in them a dynamic way forward which also defended the traditions they loved. That this was to lead to disaster in the longer-term might seem inevitable now but these people were not born with 22/20 foresight - they saw themselves as part of a crusade.
This meant that the Church and its members were between a rock and a hard place - many Catholics were, indeed, attracted to quite unpleasant right-wing (using a European definition) nationalist and aggressive organisations, seeing in them a dynamic way forward which also defended the traditions they loved. That this was to lead to disaster in the longer-term might seem inevitable now but these people were not born with 22/20 foresight - they saw themselves as part of a crusade.
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vsedriver
Guest
the Vatican remained neutral because that was part of the Lateran Treaty. My mother lived during that time. It was well known that the Pope was urging people to work against the Nazis. you may probably dismiss the following but it does cite actual events and documents.
ewtn.com/library/answers/piusjews.htm
On Sunday, April 3, the Washington Post’s Parade magazine printed an interview with Pope John Paul II. Tad Szulc, the author, seemed to focus on Catholic-Jewish relations. While praising the popes since John XXIII, he seemed to accuse Pope Pius XII of remaining silent about the holocaust during World War II. What is your comment? --A reader from Alexandria
To begin to understand Pius XII’s actions during the World War II, we must remember the world in which he lived. Hitler had assumed control of Germany in 1933. In July of that same year, he began not only persecuting Jews but also Christians. He infiltrated the German Evangelical Federation (the Lutheran Church), removing leaders who were opposed to his agenda. Many of these ministers died in concentration camps or prisons, like the famous Deitrich Bonhoffer.
The persecution was even more intense for the Catholic Church. Gestapo agents attended Mass and listened to every homily preached, prepared to arrest any priest attacking or criticizing the regime. Chanceries were searched for any “incriminating” documents. Communication with Rome was limited. Nazi propaganda represented the Church as unpatriotic and hoarding wealth with clerics portrayed as idle and avaricious. By 1940, all Catholic schools had been closed, and religious instruction confined to the Church itself or at home. Meanwhile, anti-Christian teaching was imparted in the public schools.
Please note that the first concentration camp was established in 1933 at Dachau, outside of Munich; this camp was not .so much an “extermination camp” as one for the political prisoners, including priests. At Dachau alone, 2,700 priests were imprisoned (of which 1,000 died), and were subject to the most awful tortures, including the medical experiments of Dr. Rascher.
Such persecution was not confined to Germany. The Church in Poland also suffered severely. During the first four months of occupation following the September 1939 invasion, 700 priests were shot and 3,000 were sent to concentration camps (of which 2,600 died). By the end of the war, 3 million Polish Catholics had been killed in concentration camps. How many other Catholics–priests, religious, and laity—in other countries died for the faith during the Nazi era?
Pope Pius XI, who had condemned Nazism in his 1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, died in February 1939, and Pope Pius XII followed him as the successor of St. Peter on March 12. Think of the world—and the Church—Pope Pius XII had inherited.
To make matters worse, by 1940 Hitler controlled Europe and Northern Africa, and was planning the invasion of Britain. The Vatican, officially a neutral country, was isolated. Hitler had plans to depose Pius XII, appoint his own “puppet” pope, and move the Vatican administration to Germany, plans which would have been executed if the war would have gone in the Nazi’s favor. Who then was to come to the aid of the Vatican? Pius XII, who had to insure the survival of the Church, was very much alone.
Nevertheless, Pius XII spoke out. After the invasion of Poland in September l939, he denounced the aggression of the Nazis and proposed a peace plan. In 1940, he called for the triumph over hatred, mistrust, and the spirit of “cold egoism.” The following year, he pleaded for the rights of small nations and national minorities, and condemned total warfare and religious persecution.
In his Christmas message of 1942, he specifically denounced the extermination of the Jews: The New York Times praised this message, writing, “This Christmas more than ever Pope Pius XII is a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent. The pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock in which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war… When a leader hound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself; when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against ‘arbitrary attacks’ the ‘juridical safety of individual’; when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion; when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a ‘total peace’–the ‘impartial’ judgment is like a verdict in our high court of justice.”
Besides these worldwide pleas for peace, the Vatican persistently issued communications to protest to Hitler which were attested to by Von Ribbentrop at the Nuremburg war trials, who said, “I do not recollect [how many] at the moment, but I know we had a whole deskful of protests from the Vatican. There were very many we did not even read or reply to.”
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adrift
Guest
Those pictures are without context and undated. How do you know when they were taken. The Vatican wished Hitler a happy birthday and your proof is that picture? The source of this picture is from Hitler’s Pope. Here is an article about it. Exposing Hitler’s Pope and Its Author Hindsight is you now know how bad the Nazi were. The Pope was condemning the Nazi’s while trying to protect not only German Catholics but also Jewish member as well. It is easy for you to condemn without fully putting it into the times.
Mit brennender Sorge was an encyclical that condemned the Nazi’s. It was written in 1937. Archbishop of Utrecht was warned by the Nazis not to protest the deportation of Dutch Jews. He spoke out anyway and in retaliation the Catholic Jews of Holland were sent to their death. One of them was the Carmelite philosopher, Edith Stein. It was dangerous to speak out. The Catholic Church did. Where were the other Churches and why aren’t you condemning them?
meltzerboy
New member
How the Vatican acted toward Hitler and the Nazi regime in the open may have been very different from the activities it performed behind the scenes. The most recent research on Pope Pius XII confirms that he was responsible for saving hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. These books were written by more than one Jewish historian and contradict the previous depiction of Pope Pius XII as Hitler’s pope. This heroism of the Church is in addition to the risks to their own lives and those of their families taken by individual Catholic Germans and Poles by sheltering Jews in their homes. I always wonder how many Jewish families would have done the same for Catholics if the situation were reversed.
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Kaninchen
Guest
If I were being terribly cynical, I’d suggest that the attacks on Pius have been a gift to the Catholic Church - from then on any discussion of what went on throughout the continent over a couple of decades could be drowned by everybody leaping to the defence of the Pope. 
Want to talk about Croatia?
Here’s a thousand links about how good Pius was!
etc, etc, etc
Want to talk about Croatia?
Here’s a thousand links about how good Pius was!
etc, etc, etc
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Estevao
Guest
I always found it pretty funny how nobody blames the Catholic Church for “doing nothing” when it comes to the Nazis slaughter of the Poles. They killed millions of Poles, but nobody says “oh the Catholic Church did nothing!” And remember these were mostly Catholics we’re talking about here. A lot of people have said “the Church didn’t care about the Jews because of anti-Judaism” and yet millions of Catholic Poles were still killed by the Nazis Poland. Ever look up Generalplan Ost? It’s not really any different than the Holocaust, it’s just the war didn’t go good for the Nazis so they didn’t have time to implement it fully.
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Kaninchen
Guest
Oh, indeed, the end of the Slavs (apart from a slave residue) was to be part of the endgame in the creation of the Greater German Reich. The religion of particular Slavs was totally irrelevant and the vast majority of Poles were killed because they were ‘subhuman’ not because of their religion.
What matters, at this distance, is really a matter of ‘never again’, in other words what lessons can be learned from the behaviour of certain sections of the population when put in an extreme situation - the road that wound, from the end of the First World War to Berlin in 1945.
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weller2
Guest
Let’s try a small thought experiment. Assume that a candidate is running on a platform which includes outlawing abortion, euthanasia, contraception, gay marriage, and a couple of other good things. Can there be any good reason for a Catholic to NOT vote for such a great candidate? Well, there is this crazy street preacher who keeps pointing out that the candidate’s name is Lou Cypher, but everyone knows that the old man’s brain got fried from reading Revelation too much, and besides, Mr. Cypher is a great family man, a pro-life activist, and a persecuted Christian (he spent two years in jail after trying to set an abortion clinic on fire).
The fun part is that supporting Nazism back in 1930s (1940s are a different matter) wasn’t really against the teaching of the Church. It’s rather interesting that all facist regimes in Europe have originated in Catholic countries (Spain, Italy, Austria/Bavaria, Slovakia, Croatia). Heck, the Slovakian regime was headed by a Catholic priest, whom the Vatican never bothered to excommunicate. Fact is that the Catholic Church was so scared of atheistic communism, that they would support the devil himself if he promised to deliver them from the evil commies. Of course, once the devil has revealed that he is, well, the devil, the Church tried to backflip, but at this point it was the devil who held all the cards, not them.
The Pope’s action were akin to a ship’s captain who, ignoring the map, directs the ship full speed towards the rocks, and then, after the ship hits them, orders everyone into lifeboats. He goes to trial, and the prosecutor accuses him of causing the catastrophe, while his lawyer says “But he managed the evacuation correctly!”.
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weller2
Guest
You are saying that they wouldn’t be deported if he didn’t speak up? That’s a … rather interesting failure of logic.
Can you remind me why Catholic bishops wear red (amaranth)? It’s supposed to mean something, isn’t it? Like it or not, martyrdom is a part of job description.
incommunion.org/2009/06/23/a-bishop-who-stood-in-the-way/
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Peter_Plato
Guest
The devil, as they say, is in the details and your simplistic analogy leaves out crucial details.
The Pope’s actions were more akin to an admiral in charge of a fleet of ships maneuvering through a narrow straight. Each ship is piloted by its own captain, but “overseen” by the admiral (Pope.) The rocks along the shore were not mere rocks, (your analogy makes the Nazis out to be mere benign lumps just sitting harmlessly along the shoreline - rather than artillery batteries firing at the ships - so directing the ship(s) towards the rocks for protection from fire might have been a reasonable strategy. There is NO map for the admiral to refer to because there simply isn’t one for this particular location in space-time, so the admiral is forced to rely on his skill and the capabilities of each captain of the ships in his charge.
When the Pope goes to trial, some “prosecutors” prefer to leave out details and present only what appears to be the most damning evidence while calling for dismissal of evidence that provides for the complete account.
The “prosecutors” do, in fact, accuse the Pope of causing the catastrophe, when, in reality, the catastrophe was caused by the artillery batteries firing on the ships and the perilously narrow passage which all the ships in the Pope’s charge had to maneuver.
The problem with your entire “scenario” is that it fails to account for the attitudes and mindsets of those who have the benefit of sitting behind computer screens relying on incomplete information and with no comparable pressure on them to do “the right thing” in the face of heinous evil holding the lives and safety of millions in their hands. An air of moral superiority hangs heavy over your “thought experiment.”
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Duane1966
Guest
I posted this on an earlier thread about excommunication. It seems pertinent now.
This is from the alphahistory website. It is a site run by historians, and has nothing to do with Catholicism. As you can see, and if you have the slightest clue what excommunication is, then you would know that by joining the Nazi party, in parts of Germany, WHERE THE CHURCH HAD EXPRESSLY FORBID IT, then you were excommunicating yourself. Plenty of Nazi Catholics were excommunicated, as a little competent research shows.
The Catholic Church … consistently maintained an anti-Nazi attitude. In several parts of Germany Catholics were explicitly forbidden to become members of the Nazi Party, and Nazi members were forbidden to take part in church funerals and ceremonies. The bishop of Mainz even refused to admin NSDAP members to the holy sacraments.Jane Caplan, historian," Pacelli and his colleagues were not optimistic about the terms of theReichskonkordat. They knew Hitler would not protect the church’s rights – and would probably infringe them himself." It was, as put by historian Hubert Wolf, “a pact with the devil – no one had any illusions about that fact in Rome – but it [at least] guaranteed the continued existence of the Catholic Church during the Third Reich”. The Nazis began flouting the terms of the concordat while the ink on it was still drying. In December 1933, Berlin ordered that all editors and publishers must belong to a Nazi ‘literary society’; this decree gagged Catholic publications and prevented church leaders from protesting breaches of theReichskonkordat. Between 1934 and 1936 the Nazis ordered several Catholic and Lutheran youth groups to be absorbed by the Hitler Youth. Catholic schools were shut down and replaced with ‘community schools’, run by pro-Nazis. A year-long campaign against Catholic schools in Munich in 1935 saw enrolments drop by more than 30 per cent.In 1936 there were more direct attacks on the church and its members. Dozens of Catholic priests were arrested by the Gestapo and given show trials, where fabricated evidence was used to suggest they were involved in corruption, prostitution, homosexuality and pedophilia. Anti-Catholic propaganda appeared on street corners and in the pages of the notorious anti-Semitic newspaper,Der Sturmer. This campaign produced a defensive response from the church: a March 1937 encyclical (circular letter) entitledMit brennender Sorge*(‘With burning concern’). It was written by Michael von Faulhaber, archbishop of Munich, with an introduction by Cardinal Pacelli and an endorsement from Pope Pius XI.Mit brennender Sorgecriticised Nazi breaches of the*Reichskonkordat, condemned Nazi views on race and ridiculed the glorification of statehood and leaders:Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the state, or a particular form of state … above their standard value, and raises them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.More than a quarter-million copies of the encyclical were distributed to German churches, to be read to congregations from the pulpit. Hitler was infuriated and the Nazi response was swift and intense. Gestapo agents raided churches and printers, seizing and destroying copies of the encyclical wherever they could be found. The campaign of propaganda and show trials against Catholic clergy continued apace through 1938-39, and several priests ended up behind the barbed wire at Dachau and Oranienburg.- See more at: alphahistory.com/nazigermany/…1HAqCqsu.dpuf
As an aside, I wonder about someone who claims on his website to have taught at a seminary, but fails to mention the name of the seminary. I claim to be Howard Hughes only grandson, I just wish the government would accept me at my word…
This is from the alphahistory website. It is a site run by historians, and has nothing to do with Catholicism. As you can see, and if you have the slightest clue what excommunication is, then you would know that by joining the Nazi party, in parts of Germany, WHERE THE CHURCH HAD EXPRESSLY FORBID IT, then you were excommunicating yourself. Plenty of Nazi Catholics were excommunicated, as a little competent research shows.
The Catholic Church … consistently maintained an anti-Nazi attitude. In several parts of Germany Catholics were explicitly forbidden to become members of the Nazi Party, and Nazi members were forbidden to take part in church funerals and ceremonies. The bishop of Mainz even refused to admin NSDAP members to the holy sacraments.Jane Caplan, historian," Pacelli and his colleagues were not optimistic about the terms of theReichskonkordat. They knew Hitler would not protect the church’s rights – and would probably infringe them himself." It was, as put by historian Hubert Wolf, “a pact with the devil – no one had any illusions about that fact in Rome – but it [at least] guaranteed the continued existence of the Catholic Church during the Third Reich”. The Nazis began flouting the terms of the concordat while the ink on it was still drying. In December 1933, Berlin ordered that all editors and publishers must belong to a Nazi ‘literary society’; this decree gagged Catholic publications and prevented church leaders from protesting breaches of theReichskonkordat. Between 1934 and 1936 the Nazis ordered several Catholic and Lutheran youth groups to be absorbed by the Hitler Youth. Catholic schools were shut down and replaced with ‘community schools’, run by pro-Nazis. A year-long campaign against Catholic schools in Munich in 1935 saw enrolments drop by more than 30 per cent.In 1936 there were more direct attacks on the church and its members. Dozens of Catholic priests were arrested by the Gestapo and given show trials, where fabricated evidence was used to suggest they were involved in corruption, prostitution, homosexuality and pedophilia. Anti-Catholic propaganda appeared on street corners and in the pages of the notorious anti-Semitic newspaper,Der Sturmer. This campaign produced a defensive response from the church: a March 1937 encyclical (circular letter) entitledMit brennender Sorge*(‘With burning concern’). It was written by Michael von Faulhaber, archbishop of Munich, with an introduction by Cardinal Pacelli and an endorsement from Pope Pius XI.Mit brennender Sorgecriticised Nazi breaches of the*Reichskonkordat, condemned Nazi views on race and ridiculed the glorification of statehood and leaders:Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the state, or a particular form of state … above their standard value, and raises them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.More than a quarter-million copies of the encyclical were distributed to German churches, to be read to congregations from the pulpit. Hitler was infuriated and the Nazi response was swift and intense. Gestapo agents raided churches and printers, seizing and destroying copies of the encyclical wherever they could be found. The campaign of propaganda and show trials against Catholic clergy continued apace through 1938-39, and several priests ended up behind the barbed wire at Dachau and Oranienburg.- See more at: alphahistory.com/nazigermany/…1HAqCqsu.dpuf
As an aside, I wonder about someone who claims on his website to have taught at a seminary, but fails to mention the name of the seminary. I claim to be Howard Hughes only grandson, I just wish the government would accept me at my word…
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adrift
Guest
Do you often build straw men? That is btw a fallacy as you say a failure in logic
The Bishop is not the one who was martyred but he did cause others to be.
incommunion.org/2009/06/23/a-bishop-who-stood-in-the-way/
I had not heard this before and it was good but it is only one where are the Baptist, Lutherans, Episcopal, etc.
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rose_kelly
Guest
Atheist propaganda, they’re always posting stuff on the internet about Nazis being Catholics and supporting the fascist regime.
Some people supported the Nazis through ignorance of what they were up to, and a fear of atheistic Communist Russia.
Little realising,until it was too late, that they were being manipulated by a deceiving megalomaniac dictator.
Some people supported the Nazis through ignorance of what they were up to, and a fear of atheistic Communist Russia.
Little realising,until it was too late, that they were being manipulated by a deceiving megalomaniac dictator.
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weller2
Guest
Ah-ah. You are subscribing to a Hollywood version of history in which a gang of criminals with unknown origin suddenly emerges ca. 1930, seizes power, and is summarily executed in Nurnberg in 1945. Except that this is not at all what happened. The fascist movements were grassroot movements started by WW1 veterans facing social exclusion and economic pressures caused by Great Depression. And again, a rather interesting “coincidence” is that fascist movements arose independently in all Catholic countries in Europe except for Poland, while no protestant country developed a fascist regime. Clearly, there is something about Catholic theology which can be, and has been, exploited by right-wing groups.
Next, the relationship between Catholic Church and the regime in Germany was exception rather then the norm. Elsewhere (Spain, Croatia, Slovakia) the relations were cozy. In Spain the Catholic Church was doing censorship for the regime, Slovakian prime minister was an active duty Catholic priest, and Croatia had, among other things, a concentration camp commanded by a Catholic monk.
Further, it’s a post-war rewrite of German history casts Nazi government as illegitimate. There’s zero support for this view in contemporary documents. Hitler became a dictator by a democratic process, and the critical vote was swayed in his favor by a Church-controlled political party (Zentrum). Next, Vatican was signing treaties with both German and Italian governments. The fascist authorities were clearly being recognized as legitimate, and exercising their God-given right to rule. The case of Franz Jägerstätter is very instructive here:
A general theme which emerges Europe-wide is that fascist groups initially enjoyed at minimum a tacit support of both the Catholic hierarchy and Catholic populace, who changed their minds only after the atrocities of the new regime became apparent. The problem was of course that, at this point, the extermination machine they helped start was already rolling at full steam, so the regime could afford to either simply ignore the complaints, or throw the ones making them into the meat grinder; the latter option served as a great motivator to keep the potential detractors silent. A texbook case of this trap can be seen in the history of the bishop of Zagreb:
(continued in next post)
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weller2
Guest
Bp Stepinac needed 13 months to issue the first, cryptic, condemnation of the regime, and it’s exactly those 13 months that the regime needed to get the extermination machinery started. Had he acted like the Orthodox bishop of Plovdiv when it was time to do so, then the Balkan peninsula would be a much better place today.
Again, the evil would have never ruled the continent, if it wasn’t for the misguided attitude of Catholic clergy looking for short-term political gains.
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weller2
Guest
No he did not.
Extermination of all Jews was already the official policy at this point, so at worst he accelerated the schedule. More likely however, the deportation would have occured anyway at the same time if he kept silent. This is because German-style extermination was a massive logistical undertaking which had to be planned in detail and in advance. People were being sent to Auschwitz etc. by trains. But you cannot simply start sending trains, that’s not how it works; the rail network must be coordinated at national level. So someone must have calculated the number of needed trains, check for available rolling stock, and finally enter the new trains into the railway schedule, which probably required rescheduling some other trains. And it’s the easiest to do this during a planned schedule change, which occurs every 6 months.
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JerryZ
Guest
And of course you are totally aware of the political situation the Vatican was prior to the signing of the Lateran Treaty!
When we deal with politics unfortunately not every thing is black and white. The Church has to deal with the world and at every age there are new challenges.
Some people make bad decisions and some make the ultimate sacrifice. In the end however the Church will remain and will overcome as she has always done for 2000 years. You know why?
Because JESUS whom this Church belongs to so promised.
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