How Catholic was Hitler?

[CatholicDefender]

Here is all Im saying.

I don't think Hitler's Catholicism was that important to him.

I think this mainly because he seemed disinterested in the faith itself and made little effort to try to convert people to the One true faith.

I concede that Pius XII and the German Hierarchy did little to oppose the Nuremberg laws and speak out on mistreatment of Jews.

Yet even at it's worst the Catholic Church has never approved of racial supremacy or any notion of making a mere mortal into a deity like figure.

While Pius XII wasn't exactly the Jews best friend, I don't think Hitler saw him as his own friend either.

I am uncertain exactly what Hitler's thoughts on the matter is (it is different things to different people) but many high ranking Nazis (Bormann, Goebbels,Rosenburg among others) saw the Church in much the same way as many see it. An archaic, backward institution that had somewhat retarded the growth and development of the Germanic race. All the Nazis were already suspicious of a powerful transnational entity that they could not control and which owed no allegiance to them.

Observe these horrid pics from Der Sturmer

1. http://research.calvin.edu/german-propag...er/ds4.jpg

This is a cartoon criticizing German women who felt God's call. "She belongs to Church, she belongs to the devil, both are lost to the German race!"

2. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9CwLw9kpS5E/SO...lismus.jpg

This one appears to state that Pacelli was offering support to the Jews (the large nosed, chubby Jewess appears to represent Jewry.)

3. https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ImqvJjFozjg/V...6010_n.jpg

This disgusting Nazi slander appears to lump in political Catholicism with the forces of Jewry and Bolshevism!

[Minimalist]

I don't think Hitler's Catholicism was that important to him.

I doubt he'd give a shit what you think.

[CatholicDefender]

^ Here's a question.

When did he say his rosary? Where was his bible study or eucharistic adoration?

Did he ever have a confessor? As I recall he had an old confessor of his killed in the night of the long knives

[Anomalocaris]

How Catholic was Hitler?

Catholic enough for German cardinals to give Nazi salutes and the Pope to see him as someone without enough objectionable qualities to openly challenge, much less excommunicate, as an earlier pope did to Napoleon.


But to pose the question properly so we are clear as who was trying to please and fit in with who, we should not ask how Catholic was Hitler.   The proper question is how Nazi was the Catholic Church.    

Certainly it was not as if Hitler the little man needed to fit in with a great and universal church.  It was the cowering little church that was desperately trying to make sure it did not fall out with the third Reich.  

Rosary, bible study, eucharistic adoration and confessor are for little fools who wants to fit in with the self important church.   But for great and infleuential lords like Der Fuhrer,  hardly would God's viceroy on earth and heir to St. Peter think of incurring the ire of Hitler by suggesting he was not catholic enough for the want of rosary, bible study, eucharistic adoration and confessor.

[Amarok]

It's a fact Hitler was a Christian

http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/10978

http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11792

http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/8290

And us not being in possession of some of Hitlers personnel effects does not alter this fact

But as I have said who cares ?

[Fireball]

Time for a little bit of intentional committing of the fallacy of equivocation on my part, for comic effect.

How catholic was Hitler?

catholic
[kath-uh-lik, kath-lik]
adjective
1.
broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal.
2.
universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.
3.
pertaining to the whole Christian body or church.

I wouldn't say he was exactly liberal or broad minded. So easy question, the answer is "No". Next (theists make a fallacy like this all the time, although they hide the evidence (slightly) better than I do by crossing out two of the dictionary definitions ).

This is worth another rep, if I could give more than one. Well done!

[Amarok]

"Hitler did well in monastery school. He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests. Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood." (and painted the madonna above at age 24)




I had an excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal."   Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 1

”Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise.”
  Hitler Mein Kampf, vol. 2, chapter I


"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."   Hitler Mein Kampf, p.174
of 123 :



the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party . . . was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study."
  Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3
of 123 :

"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine."
  Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12
of 123

[Fireball]

How Catholic was Hitler?

Catholic enough for German cardinals to give Nazi salutes and the Pope to see him as someone without enough objectionable qualities to openly challenge, much less excommunicate, as an earlier pope did to Napoleon.


But to pose the question properly so we are clear as who was trying to please and fit in with who, we should not ask how Catholic was Hitler.   The proper question is how Nazi was the Catholic Church.    

Certainly it was not as if Hitler the little man needed to fit in a great and universal church.  It was the cowering little church that was desperately trying to make sure it did fit in with the third Reich.   You would be very wrong to think God's viceroy on earth and heir to St. Peter would have dared to incur the ire of Hitler by saying Der Fuhrer was not catholic enough.

"Cowering Little Church"?!? FFS man, look at the damage that that institution has done to people over the millenia! The RCC is a monster that needs eradicating. Of course, if you were an advocate of population control, and had an idea of which population needed controlling... :raised brow:

[Amarok]

Hitler was a Roman Catholic, baptized into that religio-political institution as an infant in Austria.  He became a communicant and an altar boy in his youth and was confirmed as a "soldier of Christ" in at his mother's wish on Whit Sunday 1904 at the Cathedral at Linz.  Hitler still went to confession and communion in 1918

[Astonished]

As a devout Catholic, I have some real problems with people saying Hitler was "one of us"

It is extraordinarily shameful and embarrassing to hear that kind of shit coming from peoples lips, and quite frankly not even correct.

First of all, I don't think Hitler was an atheist. He said much to the effect of God being on his side, though I think he meant more destiny and the universe rather than Jehovah himself.

True he was baptized into the Catholic Church in his little town in Austria. But practically all gentile Austrians at that time were Roman Catholic. If Hitler were born in Denmark, he would have been Lutheran, and Anglican if he had been born in England.


What Im saying is one's degree of adherence and respect for one's faith surely matters instead of none at all. 

Hitler didn't even reference his love for the Catholic faith when on the campaign trail, more just his reverence for Jesus/Christinaity in general (I suppose it was must given how a slight majority of Germany was Protestant at the time .)

Kind of terrible that he basically won the Christian vote, but that is a topic for a different time.

Did he ever evidence Catholic devotion outside of the campaign trail/public events? Did he and Eva Braun, the woman he lived in sin with ever go to bible studies or say the rosary? Id love to see any evidence that they actually did.

There were plenty of Catholic shrines in occupied Europe at the time. Why didn't the Nazis ever organize pilgrimages to see them in stead to their drunk,degenerate icons such as Horst Wessel and others?

My main point is that Hitler's nominal Catholicism was incidental, as opposed to the driving force behind his anti-semitism and shiftiness in general.

Nazism was at its core a materialistic philosophy, concerned with the material only as opposed to the spiritual. What it wanted was just the supremacy of the Nordic (Northern European race), the enslavement of the Eastern Europeans to achieve that end, and the elimination of European Jewry( apparently a liberalizing, cosmopolitan force.)

I am fairly certain the source of Nazi anti-semitism was not the Traditionalist Christian variety, but the more modern version of the Zionist/Rothchild cabal of world finance  trying to undermine and destroy the "Goy"  .

I don't believe he viewed the Pope as a friend, and he and many high ranking Nazis were frustrated and suspicious of the Catholic Church, since it was an entity that they could never control (unlike those poor fragmented Protestant ones.)

I believe one has to somewhat adhere to Catholic doctrine in order to be a Catholic in a meanginful, serious way.

Is there any evidence Hitler's Catholicism was something he took seriously and loved, or was it just some sort of tribal identification which he never gave much of a thought (the latter is depressingly common in todays Catholic world.)

For being a devout Catholic he sure was mean and cruel to his fellow Catholics. How do you explain this scene and a devoutly Catholic Hitler? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV9H7aWgPv8

I sure hope those nuns weren't sent to Dachau!

I'm perfectly fine not saying Hitler was, specifically, Catholic. But he was a Xtian, the Nazi armies were Xtian if not largely specifically Catholic, and let's not forget the charitable treatment the Axis received from the Vatican. You don't get to erase that stain just because you don't like it. Your entire religion is made-up and can be interpreted however the fuck any of you want which is why it's so easy to turn it into THAT. Want to distance yourself from it? Abandon ship. Turn your back on that dumpster fire and be a secular humanist. None of that bullshit baggage, no inability to change your mind about even the most deeply held moral beliefs if new information that improves your perspective surfaces...it's a self-correcting mechanism that religion is literally incapable of offering.

If not...well, given what I've just described, how good are you going to look not taking that high road? Just don't expect any respect to come your way.