Did the Pope denounce the Nazis before or after signing this?Originally Posted by Kaiser Joseph von Habsburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat
Nazis and the Catholic Church
Did the Pope denounce the Nazis before or after signing this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat
Re: 700 immigrants drowned in mediterrenean
It's worthless trying to debate with you.
The treaty guarantees the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, but Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed, leading to protest from the Church, including in the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge encyclical of Pope Pius XI.
So now signing an agreement, to try and prevent conflict, is supporting Nazism?
Last edited by Aikanár; October 13, 2014 at 01:13 PM. Reason: off-topic (personal reference) removed
Et Slot i et slot
Re: 700 immigrants drowned in mediterrenean
You're not the only one:
Last edited by Garbarsardar; October 15, 2014 at 07:07 AM.
Re: 700 immigrants drowned in mediterrenean
If you knew the slightest about history of Germany in the pre-war period you'd know that the most catholic region, Bavaria, was the one that most resisted Nazi government, they had even official catholic resistance groups. And a great lot of priests and lay catholics did go to concentration camps, would be nice see you back then, see how long YOU would resist before doing the Führer's salute, and it's easy to point your finger nowadays and say "oh, they saluted", I want to see how long you'd live with your "I question authority" philosophy back in the Third Reich, and it's also ludicrous to imply anything other than "they saluted" because saluting doesn't mean the person agreed with it, it could be one amongst many things:
- They feared for their lives.
- They were moved by the same political manipulation that drove almost all of Germany.
- They were trying to ass-lick and gain prestige for their dioceses and parish with the high society of the Third Reich.
- They were truly favourable to Nazism.
And being the fourth, how does a priest represents the entirety of the Church? If a parliament member is caught stealing public money, it implies the whole nation is corrupted and condones with that?
Next time, try to not argue with fallacies, for someone who has even a board for debates named after, one would think you'd be at least more instructed in debate matters, and in that post alone we see:
- Appeal to emotion - Nazism was evil, thus, I intend to show how the catholic faith is evil by showing they were related, regardless of how many facts you proved to be opposite before.
- Composition fallacy - Because some clerics of the Church may have supported Nazism, then the Church itself supported Nazism.
- Black or white - You imply the priests shown in the photos were favourable to Nazism because either one opposes it or is favourable and not considers the multiple possibilities for their presence at those photos.
- Anecdotal fallacy - You also imply the Church supported it because of some isolated examples of clerics and time.
P.S.: The two on the middle photo are Lutheran pastors, not catholic priests.
Last edited by Kaiser Nonsense; October 15, 2014 at 12:01 PM.
Re: Nazis and the Catholic Church
Oh now since we have a whole new thread at hand, I shall mercilessly destroy this subject once and for all!
Plus, I could recommend a good read as well, The Pope's Jews, written by Gordon Thomas:
"Gordon Thomas, a Protestant, was given access to previously unpublished Vatican documents and tracked down victims, priests and others who had not told their stories before" and had uncovered "evidence on Pius XII's wartime efforts to save Jewish refugees".
And if the Church was so favourable to the Nazis, why would Hitler want to kidnap the Pope, whom according to your lot, was is "ally"?
Et Slot i et slot
Re: Nazis and the Catholic Church
Right. A quote by Einstein, an expert on Catholic Church and WW2.
Let's see what the Catholic church has to say:
"It should not be concealed that the Catholic Church was blind for too long to the fate and suffering of men, women and children from the whole of Europe who were carted off to Germany as forced laborers"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/wo...437.html?_r=1&
And guess, what, the Catholic Church, apologised, over nothing, I guess:
Nevertheless ... the spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ's followers. We cannot know how many Christians in countries occupied or ruled by the Nazi powers or their allies were horrified at the disappearance of their Jewish neighbours and yet were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest. For Christians, this heavy burden of conscience of their brothers and sisters during the Second World War must be a call to penitence
Or maybe over stuff like this:
There is general agreement that the Concordat increased substantially the prestige of Hitler's regime around the world. As Cardinal Faulhaber put it in a sermon delivered in 1937: "At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth, through the Concordat expressed its confidence in the new German government. This was a deed of immeasurable significance for the reputation of the new government abroad.
One is inclined to conclude that the Pope and his advisers--influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles--did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage. For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guenter_Lewy
See, being too busy with persecuting homosexuals and molesting children, leaves few time for "protecting the innocent". Maybe the Catholic church should re-evaluate priorities.
So, what next? Illustrated quotes by Mahatma Gandhi, probably won't cut it here.
Last edited by Garbarsardar; October 15, 2014 at 01:14 PM.
Re: Nazis and the Catholic Church
Except Einstein was heavily involved in WWII, not to mention the fact he was a German Jew and probably the most intelligent person to ever live, meanwhile Gandhi was nothing but a heathen with utopic dreams.
As for your claims, the Church was forced to take Jewish slaves as many other institutions across the country, apart from that, the article clearly states that the labourers were used "mainly in hospitals, homes and monastery gardens", and that my friend is easily one of the better fates you as slave worker can get, at least far better than working in some military factory or on regular farms, so basically the Church saved those people by taking them into hospitals and co. as workers, similar as how Schindler took jews into his factory for work to save them.
Not to mention these statistics utterly refute your claims:
The map of the results of the elections:
The darker it gets, more support the Nazis got.
And now the map of Germany according to religious stats:
Yellow is catholic. Purple is protestant. And blue is atheist. But that is a modern map, not much changed, except the east where DDR forced people to abandon their faith.
This map is pre-WWI:
The darker it is, the more catholic it is.
And that the Church issued some excuses for not being involved enough in the fight against fascism and national socialism? Well what were they supposed to do? The Vatican had it's seat in fascist Italia and was basically powerless against those regimes. So what could they have done in first place? They did what they could do. It's not like the Pope could declare war on Hitler and send his unit of halbardiers Swiss infantry to fight German Panzers. That they excuse nowadays for their helplessness is just... a formality. It's not like the church had the power to stop Nazism in first place. Apart from that it is always easy to point at others. But heck who else did actually anything to stop the nazis? Even Britain and France, two major powers of its time, were sitting twiddling their thumbs when Hitler took Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland. Appeasement, how the British called it so nicely. So if two of the winning powers of World War I, two of the powers standing behind the treaty of Versailles, don't lift a finger to stop Hitler when it was still easy to do, what could the catholic church do? The church did what was in its power. Sure it had little effect, but the church was no almighty institution in the 20th century anyways. They did whatever they could to warn of the dangers of Nazism. This was by far more than powers with actual political and military power did, France and the UK. They did not take actions against the Third Reich until they themselves came in danger. With other words, when the Wehrmacht crossed the French border. And by the way, it was not only Britain and France, but the entire League of Nations that failed to counter Fascism and National Socialism.
P.S.: "`Persecuting gays and molesting children", that is a fallacy, ad hominem and very bad at that, for just in the USA alone, it has more paedophile teachers than the whole of the Church in the world.
Last edited by Kaiser Nonsense; October 15, 2014 at 05:10 PM.
Re: Nazis and the Catholic Church
IIRC the Nazi party was founded in Bavaria. Its early members were mostly catholics and ex-catholics like Hitler. I think the Catholic church has a reputation going back to medieval jew-killing which makes people think they would favour the Nazis.
Wasn't the concordat negotiated principally with the Weimar regime? I think Pius XII forbad Catholics from being Nazis at some point too, and did what he could to oppose Hitler and his plans to murder all Jews.
It looks like Kaiser J's being trolled hard. However I can understand people have the impression that the Catholic hierarchy substantially tolerated the Nazis, so many other people in mid 20th century Europe did. I guess everyone was hoping Hitler would knock off Stalin, and die doing it.
Now I have a problem with this. How would we kjnow how many paedophiles there are in the Catholic church? There has been a policy of concealing their crimes and even keeping known offenders on as priests.
In Australia its emerging there have been hideous pockets of paedophilia in the Catholic church, and a history of silencing victims while allowing offenders to continue their crimes. The calculated and legalistic approach to covering these crimes from public view has been the opposite of Christian behaviour in my opinion. The scandal has cost the church its good name in my country, as it has in Ireland (so my Irish friends tell me).
In particular the men most associated with dealing with victims (and seeing they kept quiet) Cardinal Pell has been given a red hat, so it appears Rome approves of this. Pell was Bishop in Ballarat, a diocese which just before he took over have been plagued by multiple paedophile priests who apparently offended for decades. Apparently he didn't know anything about it.
Jatte lambastes Calico Rat
Praeses
Re: Nazis and the Catholic Church
ITT: People who are largely ignorant of the Church-State Relationship between 1870-post 1945.
Catholicism in Germany was largely confined into the South of the Rhineland and Rhine River valley. Historically, they were in the orbit of the Habsburg Empire until the Unification of Germany. Once the lesser German States were unified under Protestant Prussian Hegemony, Otto von Bismarck initiated the ill-fated Kulturkampf as an attempt to completely destroy the infrastructure of the Catholic Church and, hopefully, absorb the remnants into the German Lutheran Churches. Unfortunately, political considerations forced him to backtrack and later ally with Political Catholicism. However, until the end of the German Empire in 1919, and later, into the Weimar Republic, Catholics were treated fundamentally as Second Class Citizens. Catholicism was largely opposed by Northern German Protestants, who were generally Nationalists and Monarchists, but also by Liberals, who were generally in favor of secularism and strongly opposed to the Catholic Church on principle, and Socialists, who viewed religion as the Opium of the Masses. This created a difficult situation for Catholicism and it reoriented itself around a form of Political Catholicism that was tightly regimented around Social Conservativism, as well as a Third Way option between Laissez-Faire Economics and State Capitalism. Their economic philosophy, known as Devolved Corporatism, or also Distributism, was influential in the years following the Great Depression and the ensuing economic collapse of Europe and North America. This gave them two things: a distinct political position, and also, room for political maneuvering. Historically, Catholicism was skeptical of Democracy and Democratic Liberalism, having suffered at the hands of the French Republic; but moderated its opinion during the early Twentieth Century. It should be noted that after the collapse of the Papal States, the Pope attempted to remain politically neutral, particularly during the Great War. This was the policy that Pope Pius attempted to follow during the Second World War, hence his neutrality.
However, it is a caricature to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church supported, either implicitly, or explicitly, the Third Reich. The Church was particularly wary of even Mussolini, who had recognized Vatican City, as he was an Atheist, a Fascist, and a Militarist. Amongst fascists, the Catholic Church were closest to the Austrofascism in Austria and Spain, however, Engelbert Dollfuss, who was dictator of Austria, was absolutely negative of Adolf Hitler up until his assassination by Nazi Agents during the Anchluss. However, in Spain, Francisco Franco's regime fails to meet many of the basic criteria of Fascism, and Franco stayed essentially neutral during the Second World War. The reasons are complicated, but mostly, they were regimes that favored Catholicism, but opposed overt expansionism and secularism. In effect, they were viewed as Modern Monarchies with which the Church was most familiar.
During the 1930s, the situation in Germany was becoming increasingly turbulent, and by the 1933 Elections, no moderate party had any majority. Thus, Von Hindenburg's government was forced to form a government with, among others, the Nazi Party, under Adolf Hitler, and the Catholic Zentrumpartei, under Franz von Papen. It is important to note that when the Vatican signed the Reichkonkordant with Germany, it was still the coalition government of Paul Von Hindenburg, and it was negotiated by Franz von Papen, who was a Catholic. The Reichkonkordant was signed on July 20, 1933, and Hitler would not become Fuhrer until von Hindenburg's death in 1934. The basic outline was that in return for moderating the Catholic Zentrumpartei from a political bloc to a normal parliamentary entity (which was rendered moot and dissolved regardless by the Nazis), the German government would establish full freedom of religion to the Church. This of course did not happen, but they didn't know that.
Fast forward to 1938, Pope Pius had become infuriated with the Nazi Regime, particularly with its racism and with its continual breaching of the Reichskonkordant, as well as its militarism and annexation of Austria, that the Pope secretly published On the Church and the German Reich, where he blasted the Nazi regime, in plain German, on Palm Sunday, the most well-attended day of the year. The Gestapo were taken by surprise, and Hitler seriously considered liquidating the Catholic Church, but decided against it due to the instability in Austria. Instead, they initiated the Kirchenkampf, which was a broad program to interrupt and inhibit most Church Activity of both the Protestant, Reformed, as well as Catholic Churches. Because the Churches in Germany were established, this meant that the State had some say in their governance, and the Nazi regime unconstitutionally held early elections for bishops and church leaders that were then stacked with their own party loyalists. They attempted to create a new ideology, Positive Christianity, which threw out the Old Testament, most of the New Testament, the Divinity of Jesus, and reimagined Jesus as an Aryan revolutionary who opposed the Jews on a Racial Basis. It failed utterly to gain any traction and deeply alienated core Protestant Christian groups who viewed the Nazi Regime as an attempt to restore the traditional, privileged place of Lutheranism as it had been under the Monarchy. In response, many groups formed the Confessing Church, but due to the rigged nature of the elections, the Kirchenkampf was still partially a success, because they were able to usurp leadership in a majority of Protestant Churches.
During the War, the Nazi regime stepped up its persecution of Catholics, particularly the clergy, especially after the annexation of Poland. Roughly 3,000 Catholic Clergy were interned at Dachau Concentration Camp, with many more imprisoned elsewhere. There were very clear attempts to insert Nazi agents into all Churches, particularly the Catholic Church. There were a handful of bishops were were sympathetic to the Nazi Regime, but they were opposed by the Vatican. The Catholic Church retained its role as a neutral observer during the Second World War, and sought to provide humanitarian assistance and medical aid to both sides. However, Pope Pius also was active in protecting Jews from persecution.
In the post-war reconstruction of Germany, the political landscape was utterly devastated by apparent collusion with the Nazis. Virtually every conservative movement, from monarchists to Nationalists, with the exception of the Confessing Church and the Catholic Zentrumpartei, were indicted with collaboration. By contrast, the Confessing Church and the remnants of Political Catholicism fused together to form the Christian Democratic Union, which one of the two major parties in Germany. The CDU's policies of Ordoliberalism and Social Market Economy are also largely responsible for Rhenish Capitalism, the West German Economic Miracle, and the moderate Social Market Economy that defines Germany today. All of this was developed from Lutheran and Catholic Social Teachings on Economics and Political Economy.
Re: Nazis and the Catholic Church
By and large the Catholic Church and the Nazis were antagonistic. But there were a lot of pressures to avoid recognizing that, a lot of ambiguities, and a lot of other issues that had that played down. The fact that there were sizable Catholic populations (sometimes even with clerical support) that jumped on the bandwagon did nothing to help. Yes Ustasha, Yes Arrow Cross. I am looking at you.
To start with, let's get something clear. Both the Nazis and Italian Fascists were broadly Secular and/or Neo-Pagan, or at least their core leadership was. But they understood most of the population was not, and the important (and uses) of mainstream religions. That's most obvious with the sort of dikat the CC and the Fascisti made to settle the Roman Issue and normalize relations, but while the Nazis were far more militant they also could do the same. Hitler didn't go around breaking every cross and making people Heil Odin because it was obvious most of the population would have opposed him doing that so drastically. So he basically tried to subvert the German churches (and those in territory under his power) to regime control. Sort of like what the Holy Roman Empire tried to do.
That's the bedrock of Nazi-Catholic Church Government issues that everything else got built around, and it was a fundamentally competitive relationship even at the best and with issues they were coopreative on. However, even at its' most militant the Catholic Church didn't completely ignore nations or try to have their governments overthrown. If they did, the Soviets would've been first on the list. Instead, they generally tried to work with them or come to some sort of accord, even when that accord stinks to high hell today.
This wasn't helped by the fact that for most of the time, Hitler was allies with people the CC either wanted good relations with- like Franco- or *had to* have good relations with. Including Mussolini- the Fascist Italian totalitarian and "the guy whose country kinda surrounds the Papal Seat." So obviously, the Papacy couldn't badmouth Hitler too hard during 1941 or else Il Moose might decide the Pope is no longer needed and just march his thugs in. Even worse during the long Winter in '43 when German troops occupied Rome directly and were floating the idea of kidnapping the Papacy. Obviously, they didn't consider them that much of a friend in that case, and for Damn Good Reason. So even at its' very best, the CC always had to walk a tightrope to avoid the risk of reprisals by Hitler and Mussolini (even after Rome's liberation, there were sizable numbers of Catholics in the Axis countries, after all). But by and large, they were not fond of each other.
But the reason I mention "The Catholic Church Government" or "The Papacy" in particular is because not all Catholics felt like that. A lot were far warmer towards Hitler than the norm, and they were often pretty damn powerful. Their Croatian puppet government was broadly Catholic, and enjoyed the support of huge chunks of the Croatian Clergy even when it was engaging in mass murder under Hitler. The Spanish Nationalists (well, most of them) were also very fanatically Catholic and supporting of the Reich. And so on. Even if/when the Papacy disagreed with them (and it didn't always, I should add) it was basically powerless to prevent its' own staff from cavorting with the Nazis or their puppet governments.
That isn't a good sign, but it shouldn't be mistaken as there being "Hitler's Pope." Or anything like that.
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