The Scandal of Catholic Church's Role in the Nazi Holocaust Section 1 How "the one true Church" helped bring about the Jewish Holocaust : |
Section : Intro, [ 1 ], 2, 3, 4.( 5 = Roman Catholic victims ) |
[ http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/RC_scandal.html ] |
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Pope Gregory VII (1073-85) : "The pope cannot make a mistake."Pope Paschal II: (1099-1118) "Whoever does not agree with the Apostolic See is without doubt a heretic." Pope Innocent IV (1243-54): described himself as "the bodily presence of Christ." ( presumably by a kind of transubstantiation at his election) Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) : "Every human being must do as the pope tells him."Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903): "We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty."( Encyclical Letter, June 20, 1894 ) |
Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.
But you are not to be called 'Rabbi', for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your 'father' on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'instructors', for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. "
But you are not to be called 'Rabbi', for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your 'father' on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'instructors', for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. "
How can anyone who claims to take Jesus Christ seriously hear or read the words above and not be troubled by the behavior of today's "princes of the church"? Does it really matter that we now call our houses of worship "churches", instead of "synagogues", and "reserved pews in the synagogue" have been superseded by ornate cathedral thrones, and the pompous garments worn by today's hierarchy differ in superficial ways from those of the high priests of Jesus' day ?
How can anyone read Jesus' demands that his disciples shun titles of honor, and never suspect that, if Jesus considered the titles "Father" and "Teacher" objectionable, he would hardly approve of "Monsignor" (which is French for "My Lord"), "Your Excellency", "Your Eminence", "Your Holiness", "The Holy Father", "Supreme Pontiff", and perhaps most presumptuous of all, "Vicar of ( i.e. stand-in for ) Christ", the equivalent of "Vice-Messiah" !
How can anyone read Jesus' demands that his disciples shun titles of honor, and never suspect that, if Jesus considered the titles "Father" and "Teacher" objectionable, he would hardly approve of "Monsignor" (which is French for "My Lord"), "Your Excellency", "Your Eminence", "Your Holiness", "The Holy Father", "Supreme Pontiff", and perhaps most presumptuous of all, "Vicar of ( i.e. stand-in for ) Christ", the equivalent of "Vice-Messiah" !
How can a billion people be so uninformed?
The Roman Catholic Church boasts a billion members. That figure may well be over-blown, but in today's world, when there are so many opportunities for people to become educated and informed, how can so many people continue to believe this organizations outrageous claims, beginning with the one that it, and it alone, represents the teaching of Jesus Christ?
How can they not know that "The poor Son of Man possessed nothing he could lay his head on. And his disciples should pronounce the gospel without money in their belts. He would only allow them a walking staff and sandals, according to Mark.' According to Matthew and Luke, he even forbade these.' The biblical Jesus demands the renunciation of all possessions, and in the primitive Christian community, where his teachings and the style of his shared life with his disciples had to have the most continuing effect, there was also more than a hint of communism... The New Testament even observes: "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had . . . there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales... and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need."'
Early Fathers such as Cyprian and, in particular, the noble Basil praised the communism of original Christianity,' Doctor of the church John Chrysostom preached that "the community of property is more an adequate way of living for us than private property, and it is in accordance with nature.”
BEFORE the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine in the early 300's, "Christians" were followers of Jesus Christ who were persecuted and many suffered martyrdom rather than give up their faith in Jesus. AFTER the so called "conversion" of Constantine, "Christians" stopped following Jesus – as I will show below – and started following Constantine.
After 475 CE, the Church of Rome gave a quarter of the entire church income to the bishop. The clergy received a quarter; the lower clergy, however, also had to depend on outside earnings. A quarter was distributed among the poor and a quarter used for maintaining church buildings." But it seemed as if the pope was consuming all four parts for himself alone for years. Gradually the ownership of massive property developed, which was termed patrimonium ecclesiae or patrimonium St. Petri. The Roman Church not only had massive possessions in Italy but also in Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Dalmatia, Africa, and even in the Middle East. After the fifth century, the bishop of Rome, whose "predecessors" had to preach the gospel barefoot and without money, had become the biggest landowner in the Roman Empire.
Then, during the reign of Steven III in the eighth century, a religious war led to the creation of the Papal States, those grotesque monstrosities that would separate the north and the south of Italy for more than a millennium. By using the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell and presenting a letter from St. Peter himself, the pope drove the Frankish ruler Pepin, whose usurped royal dignity the church had recognized and whose predecessor it had put in the monastery, to two crusades against the Lombards, who were threatening Rome. In 756 Pepin gave the conquered territories to St. Peter and his alleged" successors, who thereby not only had massive estates but also had their own army at their disposal.
Now, however, the newly formed Papal States, which had arisen through two bloody wars, were given a more ideal origin. While Pepin still reigned, the so-called donatio Constantini, the Donation of Constantine, was fabricated, which was to tie in with the legend of Sylvester. According to this legend, the terrible persecutor of Christians, Constantine, was healed from leprosy, converted, and baptized by Pope Sylvester I, and, as a reward, Constantine richly thanked the pope by granting him imperial titles and rights not only with the Lateran, as was actually the case, but also with the city of Rome and even "all the provinces of Italy and the Western lands:"
This notorious document, which presented the Papal States as a gift from the first Christian emperor, dated and signed personally, played a crucial role in the popes' battles with the emperors as "classic evidence." And with a view to this document, anyone who misappropriated curial property or even favored any such action in any way whatsoever was condemned by the church.
Hadrian I, who, out of fifty-five letters he wrote to Charlemagne, wrote forty-five that almost exclusively concerned the papal territories, was the first pope to refer to the forgery. In the twelfth century, it went into the Decretum Gratiani, which received the first place in the Corpus Iuris Canonici, the valid law book of the church until 1918. After the followers of Arnold of Brescia had already recognized the fraud, it was finally uncovered in 1440 by the papal secretary and humanist Laurentius Valla in a document that was published by Ulrich von Hutten in 1519. Roman Catholic historiography, however, did not admit the forgery until the nineteenth century. The Papal States, which had been considerably expanded under Innocence III at around 1200, were lost to the popes during their sojourn in Avignon (for most of the 14h century). But by the beginning of the sixteenth century under Julius II, they had achieved their greatest expansion. The pope, who also took up arms to fight in the campaigns, went to war in almost every year of his reign.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Napoleon's soldiers occupied the territory, Pius VI was taken to Valence as a prisoner, and the Papal States were divided up between France and Italy.
While the history of the Papal States has important consequences for the whole of Christendom, it has the most relevance to the history of Italy, which is why I cover it in greater detail at my Moral Relativism Italian Style page, (from which most of the above was copied).
How can Jesus possibly smile on Popes wearing robes and crowns that even the most powerful leaders in the world would find embarrassing in their pompous arrogance? The papal "tiara" isn't just a crown, it's threecrowns in one! And is there a head of state anywhere in the twentieth century who had the arrogance to have eight mere mortals carrying them about in royal "sedias"?Where in Jesus' teaching did Pius XII get the idea that it should be the exclusive privilege to kiss the pope's hand, that mere archbishops should be allowed to kiss the pope's foot and knee; and abbots should only be allowed to kiss his foot? (p. 213 of Hitler's Pope)
According to Mark 10 : 17-18
As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before Jesus, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."
While Jesus set the example of refusing to accept the title of "good" for himself, how can "the faithful" not see how incongruous it is for clergy who can't dream up enough outlandish titles for themselves to claim that they represent this same Jesus?
Now, when people develop an exaggerated sense of their own importance, goodness, holiness and wisdom, they inevitably develop a corresponding contempt for the importance, goodness, holiness, wisdom of others. As we will show below, the Catholic Church, from the period of Constantine right up to and throughout the Holocaust, spent a tremendous amount of time and effort promoting contempt (if not always persecution as well) not only of the Jewish people, but of many other groups as well. See what cruelty - instead of love - has been inflicted on so many as a result of the contempt inspired by the Catholic Church for "heretics", "schismatics", "infidels", homosexuals and "witches" not just in the distant past, but in our day as well, at CatholicArrogance.Org.
Now, when people develop an exaggerated sense of their own importance, goodness, holiness and wisdom, they inevitably develop a corresponding contempt for the importance, goodness, holiness, wisdom of others. As we will show below, the Catholic Church, from the period of Constantine right up to and throughout the Holocaust, spent a tremendous amount of time and effort promoting contempt (if not always persecution as well) not only of the Jewish people, but of many other groups as well. See what cruelty - instead of love - has been inflicted on so many as a result of the contempt inspired by the Catholic Church for "heretics", "schismatics", "infidels", homosexuals and "witches" not just in the distant past, but in our day as well, at CatholicArrogance.Org.
A special case of papal arrogance and contempt for the Jews :
The Pope who made the claim official (in 1870) that popes are the infallible vicars of Christ, was Pius IX (whom Pope John Paul II beatified, along with Pope John XXIII ). His importance is such that we devote an entire page to him atCatholicArrogance.Org/Catholic/Pius_IX.html. The following well documented episode of this pope's life is an amazing illustration of what can happen when human beings accumulate too much power, with nothing to keep them in check :
"In 1858, a six-year-old Jewish child, Edgardo Montaro, was kidnapped by papal police in Bologna on the pretext that he had been baptized 'in extremis' (i.e. when near death) by a servant girl six years earlier. Placed in the reopened House of Catechumens, the child was forcibly instructed in the Catholic faith. Despite the pleas of Edgardo's parents, Pio Nonoadopted the child and liked to play with him, hiding him under his soutane and calling out, "where's the boy?" The world was outraged; no less than 20 editorials on the subject were published in the New York Times and both Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and Napoleon III of France begged the Pope to return the child to his rightful parents, all in vain. Pio Nono kept Edgardo cloistered in a monastery, where he was eventually ordained as a priest." . . . ( from Hitler's Pope, by John Cornwell, p.11)
"The notion of Jewish obstinacy was a crucial element in the case of Edgardo Montaro (also spelled "Mortaro). When the parents of the kidnapped Edgardo pleaded in person with the Pope for the return of their son, Pio Nono told them that they could have their son back at once if only they converted to Catholicism – which, of course, they would do instantly if they opened their hearts to Christian revelation. But they would not, and did not. The Montaros, in the view of Pio Nono, had brought all their suffering upon their own heads as a result of their obduracy." (from Hitler's Pope, p. 27)
or read a whole book on the subject: The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortaro, by David I. Kertzer
If only the Catholic Church had done the right thing and insisted that Pope Pius IXthrecognize the human dignity of this one Jewish individual and family, then the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII might have been better prepared seventy years later to recognize the human dignity of the many million Jews of Europe, most of whom lived in countries which were dominated by Roman Catholic populations and/or heads of state, i.e. Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Spain, France, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Hungary and Croatia.
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Period: | Events : |
c. 240 | Origen of Alexandria writes that the Jews "have committed the most abominable of crimes" in conspiring against Christ, and for that reason "the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election". |
248 | St. Cyprian writes that the Jews have fallen under the heavy wrath of God, because they have departed from the Lord, and have followed idols. |
306 | The Council of Elvira decrees that Christians and Jews cannot intermarry, have sexual intercourse, or even eat together. |
325 | Conversation and fellowship with Jews is forbidden to the clergy by the Council of Nicea. |
4thcentury | The emperors of "the Holy Roman Empire" decree that Christians converting to Judaism will incur the death penalty, as will Jews obstructing the conversion of other Jews to Christianity. And Jews and forbidden to marry Christians, hold public office, or to own slaves. |
c. 380 | St. Gregory of Nyssa refers to the Jews as "murderers of the Lord, assassins of the prophets, rebels and detestors of God,. . . companions of the devil, race of vipers, informers, calumniators, darkeners of the mind, pharisaic leaven, Sanhedrin of demons, accursed, detested,. . . enemies of all that is beautiful". |
388 | A mob of Christians, at the instigation of their bishop, looted and burned the synagogue in Callinicum, a town on the Euphrates. The Emperor Theodosius wants those responsible punished and the synagogue rebuilt at the expense of the bishop, but St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, pressures him to relent and condone the action. |
400 | St. Augustine writes: "the Church admits and avows the Jewish people to be cursed, because after killing Christ they continue . . . in impiety and unbelief". |
c. 400 | Calling the synagogue "brothel and theater" and "a cave of pirates and the lair of wild beasts," St. John Chrysostom writes that "the Jews behave no better than hogs and goats in their lewd grossness and the excesses of their gluttony". |
See more complete examples of the teaching of these very authoritative early "Fathers and Doctors of the Church", which influenced the attitudes not only of later Catholics, but Protestants as well. | |
413 | A group of monks sweep through Palestine, destroying synagogues and massacring Jews at the Western Wall. |
414 | St. Cyril of Alexandria expels Jews from his city. |
681 | The Synod of Toledo orders the burning of the Talmud and other books. |
c. 937 | Pope Leo VII encourages his newly appointed archbishop of Mainz to expel all Jews who refuse to be baptized. |
c. 1010-1020 | In Rouen, Orléans, Limoges, Mainz, and probably also in Rome, Jews are converted by force, massacred, or expelled. |
1081 | Pope Gregory VII writes to King Alphonso of Spain telling him that if he allows Jews to be lords over Christians, he is oppressing the Church and exalting "the Synagogue of Satan". |
1096 | Massacres of Jews takes place in the First Crusade, destroying entire Jewish communities in Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne and other cities. The Jewish chronicler reports: "The enemies stripped them naked and dragged them off, granting quarter to none, save those few who accepted baptism. The number of the slain was eight hundred in these two days." The chronicler Guibert de Nogent reports that the Rouen Crusaders said: "We desire to go and fight God's enemies in the East; but we have before our eyes certain Jews, a race more inimical to God than any other". |
1182 | Jews are expelled from France, all their property is confiscated, and Christians' debts to them are cancelled with the payment of one-fifth of their value to the treasury. |
1235 | Thirty-four Jews are burned to death in Fulda (Germany) on a blood-libel charge. |
1267 | The Synod of Breslau decrees compulsory ghettos for Jews. |
c. 1270 | St. Thomas Aquinas writes that the Jews sin more in their unbelief than do pagans because they have abandoned the way of justice "after knowing it in some way". |
1190 | The Third Crusade, led by Richard the Lion-Hearted, stirs anti-Jewish fervor and results in the mass suicide of the York Jews in Clifford's Tower on March 16. |
Pope Innocent IV writes a wonderful defence of the Jews: "they are wrongly accused of partaking of the heart of a murdered child at the Passover. . . Whenever a corpse is found somewhere, it is to the Jews that the murder is wickedly imputed. They are persecuted on the pretext of such fables. . . they are deprived of trial and of regular judgment; in mockery of all justice, they are stripped of their belongings, starved, imprisoned and tortured". But subsequent history shows what little impact his words had on the church. | |
In 1227, 1234, 1246, 1254, 1260, 1284, 1289, 1326, and 1368 | a series of Councils at Narbonne, Arles, Béziers, Albi , Arles, Nîmes, Vienna, Avignon, and Vabres all require the wearing of a round patch by Jews. |
In 1290 and 1294 | Jews are expelled from England and southern Italy, then from Bern, in Switzerland. |
1294 | Jews in France are restricted to special quarters of the cities. |
1298 | The Jews of Röttingen, charged with profaning the Host, are massacred and burned down to the last one. |
1347-1350 | During the Black Death, Jews are accused of poisoning wells in order to overthrow Christendom, and many thousands of Jews are killed. |
In 1350, 1367 and 1381 | Jews are expelled from many parts of Germany, Hungary and then Strasbourg. |
1394 | The expulsion of Jews from France, begun in 1306, is completed with an edict promulgated on the Jewish Day of Atonement. |
1420 - 1432 | Jews are expelled from Austria, Mainz, Fribourg, Zurich, Cologne and Saxony, |
1434 | The Council of Basel decrees that Jews cannot obtain academic degrees. |
1435 | King Alfonso orders the Jews of Sicily to attach a round patch to their clothing and display one over their shops. |
In 1439,1453 and then 1454 | Jews are expelled from Augsburg, Wurzburg, and Breslau. |
1456 | Pope Callistus III bans all social communication between Christians and Jews. |
1462 | Jews are expelled from Mainz following a conflict between two candidates for the arch-episcopal seat. |
In 1467 and 1471 | Jews are expelled from Tlemcen, Algeria, then from Mainz again (by the archbishop). |
1475 | The entire Jewish community in Trent, northern Italy, is put to death on the allegation that it had murdered a boy for religious purposes. |
1492 | After forcing many Jews to be baptized and then referring to them as "marranos" (i.e. swine), and after an Inquisition in which some 700 marranos were burnt at the stake for showing signs of "Jewish" taint, Spain expels all Jews from the country. |
1485, 1497 and 1519 | Jews are expelled from Warsaw and Cracow (Poland), then Portugal, then Regensburg (Germany). |
1555-1559 | Pope Paul IV restricts Jews to ghettos and decrees that they are to wear distinctive headgear. |
1566-1572 | Pope St. Pius V expels Jews from the Papal States, allowing some to remain in Rome's ghettos and in Ancona for commercial reasons. |
A nonlethal eliminationist epilogue to the murder of 2,900 Jews in Frankfurt: Copper–plate engraving, by Georg Keller of Jewish expulsion on August 23, 1614, published in 1633 : Johann Ludwig Gottfried, Historische Chroniken, Frankfurt. |
1592-1605 | Pope Clement VIII includes a ban on all Jewish books in the expanded Index of Forbidden Books. |
1826 | Pope Leo XII decrees that Jews are to be confined to ghettos and their property is to be confiscated. |
1806 | A French Jesuit Priest, Abbé Barruel, had written a treatise blaming the Masonic Order for the French Revolution. He later issued a letter alleging that it was the Jews, not the Masons who were the guilty party. This was the source of many of the beliefs in an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world, which continue to this day. |
1846 - 1878 | : Pope Pius IX restored all of the previous restrictions against the Jews within the Vatican state. All Jews under Papal control were confined to Rome's ghetto - the only one left in Europe by the 1930s, until the Nazis recreated brought them back again. Pius IX was beautified in the year 2000 – the last step before sainthood. |
1881 | The assassination of Alexander II of Russia was falsely blamed on Jews. About 200 individual pogroms against the Jews followed. ("Pogrom" is a Russian word meaning "devastation" or "riot.") |
1894 | French Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was framed by antisemitic officers, found guilty and was given a life sentence. The Church, government and army united to suppress the truth. Ten years later, he was declared totally innocent. The Dreyfus Affair became world-wide news for years. |
1903+ | Anti-Jewish pogroms continued in Russia, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths during the first two decades of the 20th century. |
1905 | It was the Russian secret police who created the spurious "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." A Russian Orthodox priest, Sergius Nilus, published them in 1905. It was promoted as the record of "secret rabbinical conferences whose aim was to subjugate and exterminate the Christians." The forgeries are still being circulated. They appear from time to time in Muslim media. Walmart stocked them in their online bookstore until 2004-SEP. |
1930s | Some American clergy used their their radio programs to attack Jews. Father Charles E Coughlin was one of the best known clergyman of his day. "In the 1930's, radio audiences heard him rail against the threat of Jews to America's economy and defend Hitler's treatment of Jews as justified in the fight against communism." |
This history is what the French Jewish scholar, Jules Isaac, was referring to when he wrote, "Without centuries of Christian catechism, preaching and vituperation, the Hitlerian teachings, propaganda and vituperation would not have been possible." ( Jésus et Israel - Paris 1948, page 508, ) "For almost twenty centuries . . . the (Roman Catholic) church was the archenemy of the Jews—our most powerful and relentless oppressor and the worlds’ greatest force for the dissemination of Anti-Semitic beliefs and the instigation of the acts of hatred. Many of the same people who operated the gas chambers worshiped in Christian churches on Sunday. . . . The question of the complicity of the church in the murder of the Jews is a living one. We must understand the truths of our history."
—Abraham Foxman, Anti-Defamation League. {Never Again: The Threat of Anti-Semitism(New York: Harper-Rowe, 2004) pp. 74-75. }
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1933 | In 1939 by Roberto Farinacci, a member of Mussolini's Fascist Grand Council, while speaking on "The Church and the Jews" says: "We fascist Catholics consider the Jewish problem from a strictly political point of view. . . But it comforts our souls to know that if, as Catholics, we became anti-Semites, we owe it to the teachings that the Church has promulgated over the past twenty centuries." |
1933 | The Catholic Chancellor of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler justifies his anti-semitic policies to the German Catholic hierarchy on the grounds that he is only treating the Jews the way their church has treated them for centuries. He reminds the prelates that their Church has regarded the Jews as dangerous parasites and pushed them into ghettos for 1500 years. (See more below on this page.) |
1936 | Cardinal Hlond of Poland urged Catholics to boycott Jewish businesses. |
1938 | Hitler brought back various century-old church laws, ordering all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David as identification. 1940: The Nazis confined Jews to inner-city ghettos. 1941 to 1945: The Nazi Holocaust resulted in the execution of over 6 million Jews, a similar number of non-Jews such as Soviet prisoners of war, Polish intellectuals, and about a half million Roma (Gypsies). Also killed were an unknown number of Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals. Of these victims, only the Jews were marked for total annihilation. |
For a similar survey of the 2000 year history of Christian anti-judaism, see this highly respected, non-partisan Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.org web site. |
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The crucial role of the Roman Catholicism in Germany's antisemitism : | ||
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Cardinal Bertram wanted it told to Hitler, and he wanted the principle set down in the concordat. On September 2,1933 Bertram wrote to Pacelli, "Will it be possible for the Holy See to put in a warm-hearted word for those who have been converted from Judaism to the Christian religion, since either they themselves, or their children or grandchildren, are now facing a wretched fate because of their lack of Aryan descent?" The cardinal's urgency in this plea indicates his firm grasp of the jeopardy the new situation of Gleichschaltung represented for Jews. Pacelli agreed with Bertram's concern and raised the issue with Berlin. His note in defense of "non-Aryan Catholics" was careful to acknowledge that the Vatican's concern was not with the fate of other "non-Aryans." The note began, "The Holy See [has] no intention of interfering in Germany's internal affairs." That is to say, the Holy See recognizes that the fate of non-Aryans is a matter outside the circle of Vatican concern, with one exception. "The Holy See takes this occasion," Pacelli wrote, "to add a word in behalf of those German Catholics who themselves have gone over from Judaism to the Christian religion, or who are descended in the first generation, or more remotely from Jews who adopted the Catholic faith, and who, for reasons known to the Reich government, are likewise suffering from social and economic difficulties.
Thus, right at the outset of the Nazi regime, and after its savage anti-Jewish intentions were indicated, the Catholic Church at its highest level sent a signal both to Hitler and to the German Catholic Church that the Jews "facing a wretched fate" ( i.e. who didn't renounce their faith and become Catholics) were on their own. The Church laid a tentative claim to authority regarding baptized Jews, which would be reflected in its occasional objections to Nazi "racism," as opposed to "antisemitism," but otherwise, it would have nothing to say. As, indeed, it did not. Obviously, Hitler was not waiting for this signal before resolving to eliminate the Jews one way or another, but it surely helped him realize that the way ahead of him in this campaign was clear (i.e. unobstructed). The Church, for its part, had come to a decision it would stick with, almost without exception – that the "wretched fate" of the Jews was unconnected to its own fate, or that of anyone else. This decision was the result of an inability and a refusal to see Jews except through the clouded lens of the religious hatred that is the subject of this book."
"Catholicism appeared, on the face of it, to have links with the very right-wing nationalism, corporatism, and Fascism that sustained anti-Semitism or complicity in anti-Semitism on racial grounds. There were isolated, but significant, examples of Catholic bishops expressing anti-Semitic views even as the persecution of Jews gathered pace in Germany in the mid-1930s. In 1936, for example, Cardinal Hlond, primate of Poland, opined: 'There will be the Jewish problem as long as the Jews remain." (which some people at least understood to mean "unless and until the Jews are eliminated".) Hitler's Pope, [p. 280]
F) 1933 : the year Germany was turned upside down :
The importance of the year 1933 cannot be over-emphasized, not just for Germany, but for the whole world.
- When the year began, Catholics were forbidden membership in the Nazi Party.
- That began with Adolf Hitler being made Chancellor in January.
- In February seven Catholic feast days are promulgated as legal holidays (the 27th).
- On that same day a huge fire destroyed the Reichstag, the German parliament.
- The very next day, the "Emergency Decree for the Protection of the People and the State," suspends the civil liberties that had been recognized by the previous liberal Weimar administration. Free speech, free press, sanctity of the home, security of mail and telephone, freedom to assemble or form organizations and the inviolability of private property are all abolished. It also allows the Nazis to put their political opponents in prison and establish concentration camps.
- In March, the first concentration camps were opened, Brandenburg near Berlin (on the 15th), and Dachau, nine miles north of Munich (on the 20th).
- In late March, in order to become law, the "Enabling Act" needed a 2/3 parliamentary vote. Before the vote, Hitler addressed the Reichstag (parliament) saying:"While the Government is determined to carry through the political and moral purging of our public life, it is creating and insuring prerequisites for a truly religious life. The Government sees in both [Catholic and Protestant] Christian confessions the most important factors for the maintenance of our folkdom. It will respect agreements concluded between them and the States. However, it respects that its work will meet with a similar appreciation. The Government will treat all other denominations with equal objective justice. It can never condone, though, that belonging to a certain denomination or to a certain race might be regarded as a license to commit or tolerate crimes. The Government will devote its care to the sincere living together of Church and State." –- http://tinyurl.com/g8gh3
"The more liberal Social Democrats fiercely opposed the Enabling act. Hitler needed a 2/3 majority, so the balance lay with Zentrum, the Catholic Center Party. Zentrum leader Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, a close friend and advisor to Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, addressed the Reichstag. Far from attacking the Enabling act, or disputing Hitler's claim that Nazism was based on Christianity, Kaas called for a 'yes' vote. The Zentrum faction did vote 'yes,' and the act became law. According to National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen, a liberal Catholic and student of Vatican history (he has written a biography of Joseph Ratzinger):" [Excerpt from John Allen's Telegraph article starts here]"Kaas acted in co-ordination with the German bishops. Four days later, on March 28, the German bishops rescinded their ban on Nazi party membership. On April 1, Cardinal Adolf Bertram of Breslau addressed German Catholics in a letter, warning them "to reject as a matter of principle all illegal or subversive activities". To most Catholics, it looked as if the church wanted a modus vivendi with Hitler.""The same impression was created a few weeks later when Hitler held a plebiscite to endorse his decision to pull Germany out of the League of Nations, which received the endorsement of the Catholic press and of several Catholic bishops. When Hitler and the Church came to terms for a concordat, it cemented the impression that Hitler was a man the Church "could do business with". http://tinyurl.com/jj2g4 [Excerpt from John Allen's Telegraph article ends here] - On April 1st, the Nazi Party promoted a vicious boycott by Aryan Germans of Jewish businesses throughout Germany. In April, the 400th anti-Jewish decree was passed, dismissing all "non-Aryan" medical doctors, pharmacists, dentists and dental technicians from German hospitals, clinics and public health centers. On April 26, 1933: Hermann Göring established the Gestapo (Secret State Police).
- "The [April 1st] boycott of Jewish businesses was the first major test on a national scale of the attitude of the Christian churches toward the situation of the Jews under the new government. In historian Klaus Scholder's words, during the decisive days around the first of April, no bishop, no church dignitaries, no synod made any open declaration against the persecution of the Jews in Germany."
. . . "In a letter addressed . . . to the Vatican's secretary of state, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, Faulhaber wrote: 'We bishops are being asked why the Catholic Church, as often in its history, does not intervene on behalf of the Jews. This is not possible at this time because the struggle against the Jews would then, at the same time, become a struggle against the Catholics, and because the Jews can help themselves, as the sudden end of the boycott shows.' "
(Friedlaender, S. "Consenting Elites, Threatened Elites", 1997 : Chapter 2 in Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol I - The Years of Persecution 1933-1939).
(It didn't long for the world to learn how untrue it was that the Jews could survive on their own.) - On April 26th, 1933 (6 days after his 50th birthday) Adolf Hitler had one of his very rare intimate meetings with the Catholic bishops of Germany who were represented by Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann. The participants in this meeting made some very historic statements."He (Hitler) welcomed the opportunity to explain himself to a Catholic bishop, for he had been reproached with being an enemy of Christianity and this reproach had hurt him deeply. He was convinced that without Christianity one could neither run a personal life nor a state, and Germany in particular needed the kind of religious and moral foundation only Christianity could provide. But Hitler also had come to realize that the Christian churches in the last centuries had not mustered enough strength to overcome the enemies of both state and Christianity unaided. They had falsely believed that liberalism, Socialism and Bolshevism could be defeated by way of intellectual arguments. Hence he (Hitler) had decided to come to the Church's help and he had undertaken to destroy godlessness (liberalism) and Bolshevism. Occasional harshness might accompany this fight but that could not be avoided. After relaying this last sentence, Bishop Berning commented, 'He spoke with warmth and equanimity, here and there temperamentally. Not a word against the Church, for the bishops nothing but appreciation.'Hitler then touched upon the Jewish question and, again stressing the fundamental agreement between National Socialism and Catholicism, pointed out that the Church always had regarded the Jews as parasites and had banished them into the ghetto. He was merely going to do what the Church had done for 1,500 years.. Hitler suggests that his anti-Jewish actions are "doing Christianity a great service."Altogether, Hitler affirmed, he was personally convinced of the great power and significance of Christianity and he therefore would not permit the founding of another religion. . . Being a Catholic himself, he would not tolerate another Kulturkampf and the rights of the Church would be left intact.Concerning the school question, Hitler declared that he would never accept an entirely secular school system. Character could be built only on the basis of religion. We must have believers, Bishop Berning reports him saying. "We need soldiers, devout soldiers. Devout soldiers are the most valuable, for they risk all. Therefore we shall keep the parochial schools in order to bring up believers," and in this task Church and State must co-operate closely. Hitler also promised to continue the Catholic organizations if they promoted Christian ideas and at the same time maintained a positive relationship to the state and were public-spirited. But all residues of liberalism and Marxism would have to be eliminated.. . Hitler ended the talk by stressing the great importance he attributed to working closely with the Catholic Church." [ Lewy p. 51-52 ]In June, Germany signed a "Four Powers Pact" with France, Great Britain and Italy. At a time when Catholic organizations which the Nazis are being harassed and/or shut down, an organization of Catholic intellectuals and leaders who want to "work with" the Nazis is founded. At the first public meeting of the Kreuz and Adler (Cross and Eagle) in Berlin, the Catholic leader and Vice Chancellor of Germany Von Papen, the official "protector" calls for the overcoming of liberalism and characterized the Third Reich as a "Christian counter–revolution to the French (liberal) revolution of 1789. (Lewy)
- On July 1, the German government stated that "Reich Chancellor Hitler still belongs to the Catholic Church and has no intention of leaving it." On the 5th the Catholic Church acceded to one of Hitler's most urgent concerns by disbanding its powerful "Center Party", the last obstacle to his assumption of dictatorial powers,
Three and a half months later, on 6 July 1933, the Catholic Church's Center Party, Zentrum, dissolved itself. Two weeks after that, the Vatican and the Nazi government signed the Concordat, confirming the alliance between the Catholic Church and the Nazi state. Article 16 of the Concordat, published below, required that Catholic bishops swear to honor the Nazi government, to make their subordinates honor it, and to shun acts that would endanger it. (Notice that the Church was not promising to avoid just illegal acts, but any acts that might endanger the Nazi state, even if such acts were not yet outlawed.)"Article 16"Before bishops take possession of their dioceses they are to take an oath of fealty either to the Reich Representative of the State concerned, or to the President of the Reich, according to the following formula: "Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the [regional - EC] State of . . . I swear and promise to honor the legally constituted Government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it. In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interests of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it." http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_ss33co.htm"Notice that the Vatican committed German bishops to "honor the legally constituted Government." The Vatican was publicly asserting that the Enabling act, which could not have passed absent Catholic Church-controlled votes, made the Nazi dictatorship "legally constituted." So first the Catholic hierarchy fights to get the Center party to vote for the Enabling act (because there was an internal fight over this that Monsignor Kaas, who was very close to the Vatican, won) thus giving the dictatorship a pseudo legality and then the Vatican orders the German Church from bishops on down to honor the Nazi Reich because... it was legally constituted!"- On July 7th, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, already recognized worldwide as a antisemitic forgery, becomes an official textbook in the Berlin school system.
On the 14th all political opposition to Nazism is outlawed and it becomes the one and only political party in Germany. Then the Vatican initialed the momentous "Reich Concordat" with Hitler (on the 20th). The ramifications of this pact are so tragic and the intrigues that led up to is so involved that we devote an entire web page to it at CatholicArrogance.Org/Catholic/1933Concordat.html.- In the summer of 1933 there was a plot by leading industrialists to seize the U.S. government and remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- On October 21, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations.
- On November 7, the German-Christian movement publicly announced its total acceptance of National Socialist totalitarian dogma at a large rally in the Berlin Sportspalast.
- On November 13th, the Storm Troopers for Jesus Christ led a Nazi-style mass demonstration in the Berlin Sportspalast.
On November 24th the German government passed a law designed to prevent cruelty and indifference towards animals and to awaken and develop sympathy and understanding for animals, as one of the highest moral values of a people. 'The soul of the German people should abhor the principle of mere utility without consideration of the moral aspects. . . National Socialism', the law says,' regards it as a sacred duty of German science to keep the number of painful animal experiments to a minimum.'- December 1, a legal decree issued by Hitler declared Germany and the Nazi Party one.
- On December 15th, Austrians were asked by their Catholic leaders to do their Christmas shopping in non-Jewish stores. On December 23 Pope Pius XI condemned the Nazi sterilization program. (Edelheit)
Of the 38 Germans who had won Nobel Prizes prior to 1933, even though
they represented no more than 1% of the population, eleven ( i.e. 35%) were Jews.
"Kristallnacht" - 1938
"On the night of 9 November 1938, the German government organised - a state-wide pogrom, known as Reichskristallnacht, against the Jews. Reinhard Heydrich ( a Catholic Nazi leader whom we feature prominently at NaziLeadership.html) was in charge. Police stations throughout the country were instructed to organise 'spontaneous' riots after the murder; of a German official by a Jewish refugee in Paris. Synagogues were to be burned, as many Jews as possible arrested and the police were not:' to interfere with the rioting. One hundred Jews were killed; thirty' thousand were arrested and taken to concentration camps; two hundred and sixty seven synagogues were set on fire; hundreds of Jewish homes and thousands of Jewish businesses were destroyed. Damage to Jewish '! property was calculated to reach twenty-five million marks. Adding insult to injury, the government 'fined' the Jews for the damage to their own property. German Jews were levied a collective fine of one billion marks for the damage caused by the government's agents. In addition, the government confiscated all the insurance payments made to Jews for the Kristallnacht damages. The Church remained silent, keeping true to her stance that 'the Jews can look after themselves'. Not one cardinal and not one bishop had anything to say about the dead Jews, about the Jews taken to concentration camps or about the burning synagogues. Only the provost of Berlin's St Hedwig Cathedral, Bernhard Lichtenberg stated that the 'burned synagogue is also a house of God' .41 Thousands of Germans who had participated in the pogrom were not instructed by the Church in the immorality of their acts, of the sinfulness of their deeds. So they continued." [from Double Cross, by David Ranan, P.200 ] "
H ) The Support Adolf Hitler received from his Christian countrymen
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Although Lutherans and Roman Catholics have been trying to distance themselves from Adolf Hitler ever since his demise and now claim that he was an atheist, neither Hitler, nor the Catholic Church, nor the Lutheran Church pushed for a divorce when Hitler was riding high in Europe and needed a vast army of partners willing to do the actual dirty work of rounding up, incarcerating, torturing, exterminating 10 million victims, and then disposing of their bodies. There's a book that reports on evidence that Hitler's army even included someJews! But Hitler didn't recruit many of his assistants from the communities of Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, liberals, communists or "atheists", not did he recruit them on some other planet, like Mars. He got the vast majority of what Daniel Goldhagen described as "Hitler's willing executioners" from a German population that was approximately 66% Protestant and 33% Catholic, and from other largely Christian countries.
This front page of The New York Times, on August 20th, 1934, shows how popular Hitler was in his overwhelmingly Christian country after he had been a Jew-hating Fascist dictator for over a year.
One of the subtitles of the article above was : Reich Bishop at Victory Celebration says Hitler's anti-Semitism Is "Fight for Christianity" (against some imaginary Jewish threat).
The matter of Adolf Hitler's relationship to his church's leadership and membership is so important that we devote a web page of its own to that question atJesusWouldBeFurious.Org/Hitlersfaith.html
Conclusion :
What we have tried to establish in this first section (of RC_scandal) is that the R. C. Church was responsible not just for allowing the Holocaust to happen, but for fueling contempt for the Jews for centuries and then providing a good many of the crucial leaders and many of the millions of "willing executioners" required to actually carry out the holocaust.
In the subsequent sections of this web page, we will cover the collaboration of the Catholic church with the Nazis, first during the holocaust and then after it supposedly ended.
I may be misreading the impression some Roman Catholics give me that they don't care about what happened to the Jews in this far away time and place. But even if there are such Catholics, I've designed a page to show them why they should care about what happened to millions of their fellow Roman Catholics – if not about the non-Catholic Jews – during the Nazi Holocaust, namely JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/RC_victims.html.
Section : Intro, [ 1 ], 2, 3, 4.( 5 = Roman Catholic victims ) |
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