Evidence for Christianity

[dqualk]

Hmm I suppose I do not intend to compare the Church with nations. More like it did more than any non Nation institution. Now the Church is not a nation, even though the Vatican is. Being a nation is not an essential character to the Church, it is merely an accidental one. So the Church as an institution did more than any other institution (not counting nations), I would argue. However, I do not really mean to claim that it is better than other institutions or stood up more resolutely I mean only to make the point that it was overall on the right side against Nazism.

[Rev. Rye]

Hmm I suppose I do not intend to compare the Church with nations. More like it did more than any non Nation institution. Now the Church is not a nation, even though the Vatican is. Being a nation is not an essential character to the Church, it is merely an accidental one. So the Church as an institution did more than any other institution (not counting nations), I would argue. However, I do not really mean to claim that it is better than other institutions or stood up more resolutely I mean only to make the point that it was overall on the right side against Nazism.

Fair enough. That said, good moral fiber is not exactly good evidence for the truth of any religion.

[Captain Scarlet]

Saying that the Vatican is not ready to release files from archives does not make them guilty. The U.S. is not going to release top secret files just because Iraqis ask them to to see if Americans killed Iraqis for the sake of killing them or something. The Vatican has released many documents demonstrating the Catholic Church's stalwart defense of Jews and its opposition to Nazism. If you do actual research you will find that the Church did more than any other institution to resist Nazism.

Again failed to engage and debate with the array of facts presented which demonstrate your assertions are invalid. If you want to engage let me know. For now your I'll take your silence on these issues as full agreement with my position.

[Zen Badger]

And if Adolf and his mob had won WW11 the catholic empire would have cuddled right up to them and made whatever accomodations were neccesary to ensure their pre-eminent place in the new order.

That's why they hated the coomunists so much, cos they recognised the catholic empire for the fraud that it is.

[Minimalist]

And if Adolf and his mob had won WW11 the catholic empire would have cuddled right up to them and made whatever accomodations were neccesary to ensure their pre-eminent place in the new order.

That's why they hated the coomunists so much, cos they recognised the catholic empire for the fraud that it is.

Precisely. Catholic fucks were what Jefferson had in mind when he said:

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

[dqualk]

Saying that the Vatican is not ready to release files from archives does not make them guilty. The U.S. is not going to release top secret files just because Iraqis ask them to to see if Americans killed Iraqis for the sake of killing them or something. The Vatican has released many documents demonstrating the Catholic Church's stalwart defense of Jews and its opposition to Nazism. If you do actual research you will find that the Church did more than any other institution to resist Nazism.

Again failed to engage and debate with the array of facts presented which demonstrate your assertions are invalid. If you want to engage let me know. For now your I'll take your silence on these issues as full agreement with my position.

Alright then I'll play along. I'm busy now but I'll try and pull some stuff together that demonstrates that overall the Church was one of the better institutions when it came to resisting Nazism. I'll start by confronting all of the facts you listed, than I'll attempt to release my own facts that support my view.

[dqualk]

1)The Concordat between the Vatican and the Nazis. Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) signs the Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican at a formal ceremony in Rome on 20 July 1933. Nazi Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Pacelli, and Rudolf Buttmann attended. The Concordat effectively legitimized Hitler and the Nazi government to the eyes of Catholicism, Christianity, and the world.

It was the continued anxiety not to expose themselves to the charge of being anti-German which led the Church to come to terms with Hitler and Nazism with the Concordat. This is before Nazism became extremely violent. Many people liked Nazism back then and thought it would do a lot of good for the world like Henry Ford, who once Nazism turned violent completely abandoned any support for the Nazis and instead worked to defeat them by supplying the U.S. with tanks etc. The Catholic Church was terrified of another Culture War like the one that took place under Otto Von Bismark culminating in the illiegalization of Catholicism. The Church ultimately won support from Bismark but it took a lot of work and it hurt the
Church terribly. They were trying to avoid another such culture war and did not forsee the great evil that Nazism would become.

2) Although informed of the massive Nazi attacks of synagogues and Jewish business in on Kristallnacht 1938-NOV, Pope Pius XII issued no public criticism.

Pope Pius XII feared that a response might escalate the problem rather than help it. So instead he silently helped Jews escape. Meanwhile Catholic Bishops in Germany rejected for example Cardinal Betram of Breslau called Nazi racism a "grave error" and described its nationalism as "a religious delusion which has to be fought with all possible vigour." that same year, an official statement by Dr. Mayer, Vicar -General of the Mainz archdiocese confirmed that Catholics were forbidden to vote Nazi because of the party's racial policy. The Bavarian Bishops also attacked Nazism, and a statement by the Cologne bishops drew attention to the parallel with Action Francaise, which the Pope lifted the ban from as soon as he became Pope in 1939. That is not to say that there were not bad bishops.

The Pope signed the Concordat which ultimately took Catholics out of the public square by coming to terms that Catholics would not form political clubs etc. that were against he government. This was a shame, but it was a difficult choice to make and the Pope had no way of knowing that great evil was on the immediate horizon. All the while the Nazi's were arresting priests, silencing Bishops, and silencing the voice of the Church in general, because they recognized her as their enemy, and NOT their friend. On the 28 of June 1933 over 200 Catholices and 100 of them were priests were arressted by Nazi police, for resisting Nazism. During the mass purge many Catholics were killed for resisting Nazism.
Pope Piux XI sent out a German encyclical entitled Mit Brennender Sorge. It attacked not merely violations of the concordat but Nazi state and racial doctrines, and was taken by Hitler to be a declaration of war. Hitler suppressed it. He also used the currency laws to to punish priests or nuns with contacts abroad and to silence them. Hitler also abolished all religious schools making it more difficult for the Church to organize any kind of resistance, considering the fact that the concordat had effectively stolen the teeth of the Church.
One of the reasons many bishops were willing to trust Hitler was that communism was worse than Nazism at least in their present situation.
With that said there are many stories of Catholics heroically resisting Nazism or dying because they sheltered Jews. Maximilian Kolbe is famous for dying on behalf of a Jewish man in Auschwitz, and he was in Auschwitz because of his resistance to Nazism. Both Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI actively resisted Nazism while being within the state.
And then there is the constant moral teachings of the Church which has always and everywhere taught that any kind racism or murder is always and everywhere evil. This means that the Church from the beginning passively condemned Nazism.
With all this said they were bad bishops and cowardly bishops. But their motives were bound in many ways. They feared the death of their own people if they resisted to much, and probably thought that it was better for everyone to silently hide Jews and save them in such a manner than it was to stand against the machine that was Nazism. The Fascist State was very similar to a 1984 kind of state. The Bishops believed that they would be silenced to quickly if they painted too big a target upon themselves.
The truth is many thousands of Catholic men, women, and children died in concentration camps, SS and Gestapo torture chambers, or in fields and villages across Europe for the "crime" of proclaiming the truth to one of the most evil regimes in human history. The historical reality of this oppression does not in any way reduce the culpability of some Catholics in the Holocaust.

3) Although informed during 1940 to 1943 of Nazi atrocities in at least Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, and the Ukraine, (including deportations to death camps) he made no public comments.

As stated above Catholicism public voice was effectively destroyed and many Catholics died speaking out against Nazism. Many Catholics remained quiet so as to help in a sort of underground effort to save lives and kind of weather out the storm.

4) Pope Pius XII "...never explicitly spoke out against Hitler." Actually, this is in error. He did condemn Hitler in a speech to the College of Cardinals, one month after the war ended.

Pope Pius XI did. And the Church passively condemned Nazism from the start in her very teachings. Also, the Pope was very much aware of the danger he was in. For this reason he had an order than stated should Hitler invade and destroy the Vatican a certain Cardinal in Portugal was to become Pope immediately upon his death. Also, Pope Pius XII worked tirelessly behind the scenes enacting programs that gave Jews fake baptismal certificated and smuggled them out of Italy. He worked so valiantly that the Rabbi of Rome Israel Zolli later converted to Catholicism and took Pope Piux XII’s name as his Christian name. Also Einstein and many others of the time who have not been blinded by secular propaganda and hate for the Church spoke of how the Church stood in defense when others did not. This does not mean all of the members of the Church were perfect, and some were downright evil. AND the thing is an appeal to authority does not PROVE that my argument is right but certainly strengthens it a lot. The fact is every argument you gave does not PROVE that Catholics overall supported Nazism. To do that you would have to turn to our Unchanging Traditions, and when you do this you will find that the Church whole heartedly resitend Nazism in this passive sense. The men and women of the time are evidence, and good evidence as to how the Church was behaving. Einstein and others saw with their own eyes that, although the Church secretly saved lives, they saved lives indeed.

5) "He refused to join a resolution of the Allies condemning the Nazi crimes."

In September 1942, Pius XII was approached by the Allies to join in a statement condemning the Nazi atrocities. This was to be an official statement of the Allied governments and, as such, it was impossible for Pius XII to join the effort. However, in his annual Christmas message of 1942, Pius XII would speak out once again forcefully. Pius condemned totalitarian regimes and mourned the victims of the war: the hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction. He called on Catholics to shelter any and all refugees. The statement was loudly praised in the Allied world. In Germany, it was seen as the final repudiation by Pius XII of the new order imposed by the Nazis. The Gestapo reported that Pope Pius XII is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminal

6) "He never excommunicated any Nazi," although he did excommunicate Goebbels (becuase of Magda)and some German Catholics who supported cremation as an alternative to burial.

The Pope does sit in the Vatican with a list of who is naughty and who is nice and began excommunicating the naughty ones. The Church only excommunicates members officially when it is in the best interest of the Church. The fact is Canon Law automatically excommunicates bad people for mortal sins. So all of these people were de facto excommunicated, the Pope did not need to dig up every name to excommunicate each person.

7) "He never declared it a sin for Catholics to participate in the slaughter."

He didn’t have to. The Church has always and everywhere condemned slaughter. And the Pope condemned slaughtering etc. in many messages he just never singled out the Nazis or the Jews. This was for his own protection and the protection of his faithful, and I would imagine the did not protect himself for himself, but rather because he realized that he could do a lot more good alive than dead.

8)In 1941 when asked about proposed anti-Jewish laws in Vichy France, Pius XII answered that the church condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews.

Pius XII was probably under the belief that Jewish organizations were acquiring power to overthrown the established order. I’m sure he was misguided but it was a VERY common belief. Hitler used this as an excuse to kill the Jews, and it was repeated everywhere by people like Henry Ford and its even repeated today that Jews control the world etc. However, the Pope is saying that certain laws can be used to restrict the Jews from owning all of the capital in the region or something like this, but that it cannot be done in the spirit of racism and that their rights must be protected. All he is saying is that its possible to conceive of some restrictions that might make sense. For example, our Nation pays you if you are a minority, this is in a way reverse racism. I understand that it is necessary for various reasons, and I do not stand completely against affirmative action, but this is the kind of thing the Pope is talking about. Certain rules can be made for the good for the good of the community, so long as they do not transgress the natural law.

There are a lot of scary pictures from the third reich with Muller and other cardinals given the open handed Nazi salute to ranks of German soldiers. They only suggest or hint at the level of collaboration however and do not indict anyone. The truth was that most in the church were probably fighting for the survival of catholicism and didn't want to speak out, and that where there was collaboration (which there was eg in Saxony) it was more regional than centrally organised. There would of course been heroic catholics who helped saved many thousands of lives (as there were protestants and the non-religious). We will of course never know the true extent of the collaboration/resistance given Catholic secrecy on such matters. The latest pope isn't exactly independent in this regard. Recent studies of the Vatican's role during World War II:

In late 1999, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews established an international panel, composed of three Jewish and three Christian scholars from the U.S., Canada and Israel. They were given the task of trying to evaluate role of Pope Pius XII and the rest of the Vatican during the Holocaust. The panel was able to search 11 published volumes of wartime Vatican documents. They found that the Vatican had received reports of Nazi atrocities as early as 1941-JAN. However, "the pope's responses to reports of atrocities were missing from the sources they examined."

In 2000-OCT, the panel issued a preliminary report, "The Vatican and the Holocaust," asking 47 questions which can only be answered by consulting the unpublished Vatican files from the World War II era. They unanimously asked for access to the records. In 2001-JUN, the Vatican refused. Cardinal Walter Kasper wrote "in a letter to the group that they would be welcome to speak with the scholar who is heading the campaign for the beatification of Pius, but that post-1923 Vatican archives were not available for 'technical reasons.' " It seems that the Vatican archives are only catalogued up to 1923. Only two staff members are actively involved in the activity. The panel has decided to temporarily abandon their work, without issuing a final report.

The Church releases her documents in time. The Church wants to avoid scandal whenever possible and so uses discretion.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said: "We're very disappointed ... but I can't say I'm surprised...There is no transparency in the Vatican and as a result we don't know the answers to a lot of serious questions. [Vatican knowledge about the Holocaust] was one of the most important outstanding questions that has not been clarified by historians."

Rev. Peter Gumpel, is a German Jesuit who is assembling documentation to support the expected beatification of Pope Pius XII. On 2001-AUG-7, he issued a statement accusing some of the Jewish historians on the Holocaust Commission of "clearly incorrect behavior," having helped mount a "slanderous campaign" against the Roman Catholic Church. 7 He said that he had met with the group and had answered some of their questions, and offered to answer the rest at a later time. He wrote that "some Jewish members in the group had systematically affirmed that they never received answers to their questions." He accused them of having "publicly spread the suspicion" that the Vatican was trying to hide documents "that in their judgment could be compromising." There may be a misunderstanding between Gumpel and the Commission. Expert historians require documentary support, not just the opinion of one individual. So, answers by Rev. Gumpel would be insufficient without hard evidence to back them up.

The Vatican has released many documents that prove that the Catholic Church helped to resist Nazism, she just hasn’t released all of the files to the public yet.

References Paul Johnson’s A History of Catholicism
http://www.catholiceducation.org/article...ch0229.htm

[Zen Badger]

And the escape routes that the catholic church organised for Nazis fleeing the Allies AFTER the war, when the vatican no longer had a reason to fear Hitler?

What about them D?

Or will you just ignore that inconvenient fact?

[Of_Tomato]

And the escape routes that the catholic church organised for Nazis fleeing the Allies AFTER the war, when the vatican no longer had a reason to fear Hitler?

What about them D?

Or will you just ignore that inconvenient fact?

Ahh the famous Ratline. You gotta love the Ratline. Alois Hudal-Krunoslav Draganovic-Juan Peron. Great troika!

[dqualk]

@zen I don't know a lot about what particular catholics bad choices but I'm sure you can find many Catholics who made bad decisions, just like you can find many atheists that make bad decisions. These do not necessarily bind on the whole Church, even though they do scandalize the Church.