2. And you do realise, do you not, that each and every soldier in the German army had a 'God on Our Side' motto on their belts? That Hitler was a Catholic? That he explicitly stated in 'Mein Kampf' that he felt a duty to the Lord to kill the Jews? That Hitler's first treaty was with Rome? That the Catholic churches in Germany celebrated Hitler's birthday each year. That the Roman Catholic church did not speak out against the holocaust? That the hatred of Jews has its origin in the shameful portrayal in the Christian Bible? National Socialism itself was steeped in old Nordic traditions and Norse Gods. But even if as you appear to suggest Hitler orchestrated genocide because he was a atheist (and he was never excommunicated by the Catholic Church so officially he was a Catholic if a non-practising one to the end) none of this excuses what was done in the name of God throughout the course of human history.
Using Hitler to slam religion, especially Catholicism, just doesn't work.
You wrote that religion poisons everything, is a con racket, da, da, da....enough to convince anyone reading this that you are anti-religion. Don't you know that Hitler's Table Talk, his own revealing collection of personal writings, shows him to be rabidly anti-religion? He called Christianity one of the great "scourges" of history, and wanted the German people to be "immunized against this disease". He promised that "through the peasantry we shall be able to destroy Christianity". He blamed the Jews for inventing Christianity and scorned Christian values. His leading advisors, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, and Bormann were Atheists who hated religion and sought to eradicate its influence from Germany.
Doesn't that seem to make you and Hitler "birds of a feather" at least when it comes to being anti-religion?
Yes, Hitler was a Catholic in his childhood years, but he apostatized from the Faith. Whether or not he was formally excommunicated is still under debate.
2. ... That Hitler's first treaty was with Rome? ....That the Roman Catholic church did not speak out against the holocaust?
I will answer these charges, but won't belabor the point beyond this as this is not my thread. All I ask is, instead of slinging out unjust charges please read both sides. Until you do, please stop blaming the CC and Catholicism for the wrong doing of secular regimes.
To get the facts on the Vatican-Nazi Concordat of 1933, one must read, THE PERSECUTION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE THIRD REICH: FACTS AND DOCUMENTS, published in 1941 at the height of Nazi tyranny. The appendix is the full text of the concordat. It proves with authentic and incontrovertible facts that beyond a shadow of doubt the Catholic Church condemned Hitler and his ideology, loudly, repeatedly, and from the very beginning of his rise to power. For this, he tormented, repressed and killed Catholics. Another good book on the CC under Hitler is THE NAZI PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCHES by JD Conway, 1968.
The following is a brief explanation of the signing of the Concordat. In 1920, Hitler laid the foundation for overthrowing the Versailles Treaty by converting the German Workers’ Party into the Nationalist Socialist’s German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). In 1923, while in prison for 8 months, he compiled notes for Mein Kampf. His aim was to supplant faith in Christianity by faith in national socialism. Once this goal was attained, he hoped to annihilate the Catholic Church as an institution. In the elections of 1932 and 33, German bishops warned Catholics against this movement, and urged them to vote for Catholic candidates and forbade them to vote for the Nazis. In Jan. 1933, Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich and affirmed Germany’s traditional foundations by asserting that his government regarded Catholicism and Protestantism as the most important factors for support of the German ethos and would devote itself to cooperation between church and state.
He seemed to be fulfilling these promises when he concluded a concordat with the Holy See on July 20, 1933 that permitted free, public exercise of religious freedom. He lied. Hitler’s violations of its provisions were so numerous that in 1937 Pius XI issued the encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, which made clear the fundamental irreconcilability of Catholicism and Nazism. It protested the closing and confiscation of Catholic schools, hospitals and seminaries, the seizure of property and goods belonging to the religious orders, the discrediting of religious by means of rigged trials, and the identifying of loyalty to Christianity with disloyalty to the fatherland. In pastoral letters and sermons, the German hierarchy forcefully opposed racism, totalitarianism, euthanasia laws, compulsory membership in Hitler’s youth organizations, and the desecration of churches.
For more info on "Hitler's first treaty" please Google: Sister Margherita Marchione, of the Religious Teachers Filippini, a historian and expert on the life of Pius XII. She and other notables have laid out unequivicaly that, yes, Cardinal Pacelli signed a Concordat with Germany that promised religious freedoms. It lasted 5 days before Hitler broke every promise, starting with abolishing the Catholic Youth Movement and forbidding Catholic newspapers and visible Church activity. For that, the Concordat was nullified and not worth the paper it was printed on, and Hitler who had long apostatized from the Faith used the state as a club against Catholicism.
2. And you do realise, do you not...That the Roman Catholic church did not speak out against the holocaust? .
I don’t know whether this is of ignorance, outright prejudice or you just blindly following the media which is so little interested in historical truth particularly when it involves the CC. In any case, your comments are completely unfounded, untrue and unjust.
Sister Margherita Marchione wrote, “Crusade of Charity: Pius XII and POW’s (PaulistPress). She says there are 20 million wartime letters in the Vatican Archives that express the faith and confidence of families with regard to their loved ones who were prisoners of war or missing in action. She said that he saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from the gas chambers. She also says there are thousands of available documents in the Archives that record the humanitarian work of the Holy See, including his rescue program that with diplomacy rather than confrontation saved hundreds of thousands of Jews and Christians from death in concentration camps. All members of the CC were ordered to protect all refugees and Jews.
Evidently do you don't know that for nearly 20 years after WW II, Eugenio Pacelli, (Pope Pius XII who reigned from 1939-1958), was respected worldwide for saving countless Jewish lives in the face of the Nazi Holocaust. Robert Lockwood of This Rock magazine said, “When he died on Oct. 9, 1958, Golda Meir, future Israeli prime minister and then Israeli representative to the UN, spoke on the floor of the General Assembly: “During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and to commiserate with the victims.” Among the organizations praising the Holy Father at the time of his death were the World Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, the Synagogue Council of America, the American Jewish Congress, the New York Board of Rabbis, the American Jewish Committee, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the National Council of Jewish Women.”
Evidently you don't know there is an enormous cross beneath Castelgandolfo that was given to Pope Pius XII at the end of WWII by Jewish refugees whom he had hidden in the rooms, cellars, and passages of his summer residence. It's estimated that 12,000 refugees were sheltered there and 36 babies were born in the Pope's private apartment. Through diplomacy, public statements, and underground activity, Pius saved 800,000 Jews alone.
Pope Pius XII is most often accused of being silent during the genocide. Yet, he had a duty to condemn evil and he fulfilled it in language that was readily understood around the world. His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, condemns racism and totalitarianism. It was released only 2 months after the outbreak of the war. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the equivalent of the APress, described it as "an unqualified condemnation of racism, totalitarianism and materialism". The Allies air dropped 88,000 copies of it over Germany, where the Nazis would not permit it to be printed.
Orthodox Rabbi David Dalin would disagree with you. According to Dalin, food, water, sewer, electricity and communications were all controlled by the Italian government, Hitler's ally. After Italy's surrender, Hitler actually gave orders to "occupy as soon as possible the Vatican and Vatican City" and "massacre Pius XII with the entire Vatican." On the other hand, Pius possessed political influence, a world-wide audience, and all the resources of the CC and he did not hesitate to make use of these to aid the victims of the war, especially "those hundreds of thousands who...sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or progressive extinction" as he stated in his 1942 Christmas Message. (Dalin, A Righteous Gentile).
The Vatican supplemented its efforts to hide the Jews by issuing thousands of false documents, baptismal documents and passports. There was no way Pope Pius XII could have halted the Nazi butchery, but he did all he could to alliaviate the suffering caused by the war. At his death, so many tributes were made that the NY Times could not list all of them. In the SE of Jerusalem, in the Negeb, there stands a forest that was planted in acknowledgment of the Jewish lives he saved. On tree for every life...and the forest has 800,000 trees.