The Pope's Visit

[milquetoast1]

I've seen the cell where Father Kolbe was starved to death. Killed because he was a catholic priest.

 

Your starter for 10. Maximilian Kolbe was arrested by the Nazis because:

 

A. He was Catholic.

 

B. He provided shelter to Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanów. He was also active as a radio amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, condemning Nazi activities over the airways.

 

[artisan]

I knew you were a closet Cistercian, artisan

 

yes, my cistern is in the closet

[plekhanov]

So spindrift when are you going to deal with the fact that between 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 of Ratzinger's contemporaries chose not to join the Hitler youth?

 

Also when are you going to acknowledge and apologise for the fact that earlier in this thread you chose to steal other people's work and pass it off as your own?

[spindrift]

The nazis actions against the catholic church in Germany:

 

The ‘Immorality’ trials sought to destroy the reputation of Catholic religious, aimed in particular at those working in primary and secondary schools.

 

 

Priests, monks, lay-brothers and nuns were accused of “perverted and immoral” lifestyles — euphemisms for homosexuality and paedophilia.

 

The Gestapo set numerous traps in order to furnish bogus evidence. The New York Times carried a report in May 1936 describing priests who had been summoned to hotel rooms after desperate messages to administer the last sacraments were received. When the priest entered, the ‘caller’ would turn out to be a prostitute, planted by government agents.

 

Photos would be later produced in court as irrefutable evidence of corruption.

 

 

In the USA, protest meetings and marches were organised as news of the trials spread. In June 1936, a petition was signed by 48 clergymen. “We lodge a solemn protest against the almost unique brutality of the attacks launched by the German government charging Catholic clergy with gross immorality,” they wrote. “The good name of the Catholic priesthood is to be defamed, in the hope that the ultimate suppression of all Jewish and Christian beliefs by the totalitarian state can be effected.” This protest was signed by Rabbis Samuel Abrams of Boston, Philip Bernstein of Rochester and Philip Bookstaber of Harrisburg, along with 18 other Rabbis and 27 Protestant clergymen.

 

The New York Times reported that Christmas 1937 would see “more than a hundred Protestant pastors and several thousand Catholic clergymen in prison.”

 

In spite of the growing atmosphere of intimidation and fear, protests were made by senior clerics who challenged the Third Reich and its racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian policies.

 

These included Bishop Clemens Count von Galen of Munster, Archbishop von Preysing of Berlin, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, Cardinal Schulte of Cologne and possibly the most famous of all, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Munich. His series of Advent sermons, preached from the pulpit of St. Michael’s Church, aroused national and international interest. They proved so popular that thousands listened, with overflows into the streets outside. In the first of the sermons, preached on December 3 1933, Faulhaber defended Christianity by defending the people from whom it sprung: the Jews. He reminded the congregation that Christianity made no racial distinctions but asked only that its adherents should possess faith. In March 1934, the published edition of his sermons, Judaism, Christianity and ‘Germanism’ was banned for its so-called outrageous slanders on the State.

 

In spite of the growing atmosphere of intimidation and fear, protests were made by senior clerics who challenged the Third Reich and its racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian policies. These included Bishop Clemens Count von Galen of Munster, Archbishop von Preysing of Berlin, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, Cardinal Schulte of Cologne and possibly the most famous of all, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Munich. His series of Advent sermons, preached from the pulpit of St. Michael’s Church, aroused national and international interest. They proved so popular that thousands listened, with overflows into the streets outside. In the first of the sermons, preached on December 3 1933, Faulhaber defended Christianity by defending the people from whom it sprung: the Jews. He reminded the congregation that Christianity made no racial distinctions but asked only that its adherents should possess faith. In March 1934, the published edition of his sermons, Judaism, Christianity and ‘Germanism’ was banned for its so-called outrageous slanders on the State.

 

Faulhaber, undeterred, pressed on with denunciations of Nazi policy on Catholic schools, youth organisations, rigged elections, sterilisation laws, attacks on the Pope and attempts to replace Christianity with what he called ‘ersatz’ (fake) religious principles. He played a considerable role in the writing of the great anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (‘With Burning Anxiety’) issued in March 1937. It denounced repeated attacks on the Catholic faith, the breaking of almost every article of the 1933 Concordat, and assailed Nazi ideology and political practice. The encyclical was smuggled into Germany under the eyes of Gestapo agents who had received warnings from Berlin to expect an important anti-Nazi pamphlet. Copies were secretly printed in various parts of the country and the underground Catholic network was engaged in distributing it to parishes throughout Germany. Hundreds of helpers, in cars, on motorbikes or bicycles, handed copies personally to priests, sometimes in the dead of night. The encyclical made it plain that the Nazis were intent on a “war of extermination” against the Catholic Church, and that after numerous rebuffs to diplomatic approaches from Rome, the Pope had decided to make a final stand.

 

 

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0033.html

 

Though the scale of Christian persecution cannot be compared to the Jewish Holocaust of 1941-1945, except perhaps in Poland, the ultimate destruction of Christianity was one of the Nazis long-term aims.

[plekhanov]

<snip someone else's material that you have atleast now learnt not to steal and pass off as your own.

 

Material which actually contradicts your and Ratzinger's lie that Hitler or the Nazi's were atheists>

Between between 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 of Ratzinger's contemporaries chose not to join the Hitler youth, your pope chose to join when are you going to acknowledge and deal with this?

[spindrift]

So spindrift when are you going to deal with the fact that between 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 of Ratzinger's contemporaries chose not to join the Hitler youth?

 

Also when are you going to acknowledge and apologise for the fact that earlier in this thread you chose to steal other people's work and pass it off as your own?

 

My understanding is that Hitler Jugend conscription could be avoided by moving house and not telling the authorities.

 

I haven't seen a source that twenty per cent of people "avoided" conscription with no sanction..

 

And I think your continual harping on about the choice of a 14 year old boy who had already had his Downs Syndrome cousin murdered by the nazis is spiteful.

[flamingjimmy]

That science blog again, historians bickering among themselves:

 

I've presented a variety of independent pieces of evidence that, instead, Nazism is best seen as a secular movement, and Hitler's theism (or belief in destiny; he seems to have used "God" and "destiny" interchangeably) retained little if any specific Christian content by the time he'd taken power.

 

I've pointed out that the ongoing strife between the Nazis and the churches, though doubtless a power struggle, had elements of anti-clerical ideology about it (spelled out in a comment above, and a feature of secular, not religious, political parties):

 

that the other important component of Hitler's ideology, unlimited conquest, was justified first and foremost on secular rather than religious grounds: the seizing of necessary Lebensraum

 

that Hitler had no objection to Nazis being atheists, deists, or neo-pagans (e.g. a small number of Nazis listed their religious allegiance as "Gottglaubig--"deist"; they suffered no adverse consequences for doing so; also, the SS distributed anti-Xn propaganda without arousing Hitler's wrath);

 

that Hitler espoused doctrines, like euthanasia and Social Darwinism, that were condemned by the Catholic Church and by other Christian churches, and that his T-4 Program (mass murder of the physically and mentally disabled) was a natural next step in the Nazi ideology of euthanasia, but quite antithetical to the teaching of the Catholic and other churches (and kept secret because Hitler knew it would rouse a storm of outrage);

 

that although most historians DO NOT reject the Table Talk (which is chock-full of anti-Xn statements) in its entirety, you can ignore it and still find independent but congruent testimonies to Hitler uttering anti-Christian sentiments to his inner circle;

 

that Hitler's architectural fantasies of a future Linz and future had no place for religious structures.

 

If, considering these lines of evidence, you elect to give different weights to them, that's one thing.

 

 

But if you conclude that they're comparable to the evidence for Bigfoot, you're either not paying attention or you have an antecedent commitment that's getting in the way of your addressing the issue as a skeptic should.

Spindrift you are missing the point.

 

The first point is, that counter to your and the pope's claims, Hitler was not an atheist. He was a theist. He may or may not have been a Christian, but he definitely wasn't an atheist, you have found 0 quotes to back up that contention.

 

Secondly, Germany at the time was largely Christian, which means that the people who voted for Hitler were largely Christian, and the people who carried out the orders of Hitler were largely Christian.

 

I'm not pointing it out as a stick to bash Christians with, I'm pointing it out so that all pretenses of Christian 'moral authority' can be dismissed.

 

The pope claimed that a godless society led to naziism. He is completely wrong nazism flourished in a highly religious, specifically Christian society.

 

 

 

That Hitler, though the most vicious of antisemites, explicitly disavowed religious motivations for antisemitism in favor of alleged racial knowledge or racial science;

Where is the quote to back that one up?

[spindrift]

You exaggerated, thought so:

 

When membership became mandatory, parents were warned that the kids would be taken away and sent to other homes or orphanages. Parents, who were found guilty of keeping their children out of the HJ were sentenced to severe prison sentences.

 

Only about 10 to 20% were able to avoid joining. [10]

 

 

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Hitler_Youth

 

 

Why are you telling desperate lies in a hysterical attempt to smear the pope plekhanov?

[flamingjimmy]

You exaggerated, thought so:

 

When membership became mandatory, parents were warned that the kids would be taken away and sent to other homes or orphanages. Parents, who were found guilty of keeping their children out of the HJ were sentenced to severe prison sentences.

 

Only about 10 to 20% were able to avoid joining. [10]

 

 

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Hitler_Youth

 

 

Why are you telling desperate lies in a hysterical attempt to smear the pope plekhanov?

 

Did you go to school?

 

Do you have any understanding of maths at all?

 

between 1 in 5 and 1 in 10 is exactly the same as between 10% and 20%.

 

There were no lies, you just don't understand maths.

[plekhanov]

<snip disingenuous apologism for the Catholic Church's complicity with the Nazi's and other fascist regimes from that most impartial of sources Catholiceducation.org>

 

Though the scale of Christian persecution cannot be compared to the Jewish Holocaust of 1941-1945, except perhaps in Poland, the ultimate destruction of Christianity was one of the Nazis long-term aims.

This is a monstrous thing to say and millions of Polish Jews were systematically rounded up and murdered simply because they were Jewish the same simply did not happen to Catholics in Poland or indeed Catholics anywhere under Nazi control.

 

If the persecution of Jewish Poles was comparable to that of Catholics as your Catholic source so disgracefully pretends there would be several million more Polish Jews alive today. Your source is either denying the extent and nature of the holocaust of Polish Jews or lying about the treatment of Polish Catholics.