Quote:

r3x29yz4a said:
well, if you'd read what I wrote instead of just shitting your pants and running around in a circle shouting eggman, then you'd notice that the catholics NEVER spoke out against the Nazis and ended up apologising for it later.
FDR, Stalin, and Churchil actually fought this thing called a World War when they realized Hitler was going to bow to diplomacy.




Nice ad hominem tactics, personally attacking me with a set of misleading charicatures and insults, with nothing to back them up.

But they present nothing to support your argument that the Pope and the Catholics he reigned over weren't persecuted and non-supportive of the Nazis.

Catholics were persecuted by Hitler.

Catholics did voice opposition to Hitler.



And before FDR, Stalin and Churchill "fought a little thing called a World War", the United States sold military hardware to Nazi Germany to help it rebuild its military arsenal and prepare for war, Stalin signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler in 1939 (which Hitler later broke), and Churchill's predecessor Chamberlain pursued peaceful negotiation with Hitler right up to the point that World War II began.

And way after they saw that Hitler was a threat, they acquiesced to Hitler and gave him the Rhineland, all of Austria, the Sudetenland, and then all of Czechoslavokia, hoping these would be enough to appease him, before Hitler went on to take all of Poland in September 1939 (in partnership with Stalin, in the Pact of Non-Aggression that they both signed, by the way).

You might try checking your historical facts before you condescend to others with your innaccuracies.






Quote:

r3x29yz4a said:
Catholics NEVER spoke out against the Nazis...




Ohh, really...
If you'd read my previous post, you'd see that sweeping remark was disproven before you made it.

Since you didn't read it before (even though you quoted it, here it is again : )

Quote:

Wonder Boy said:
From INSIDE HITLER'S GERMANY: Life Under the Third Reich, by Matthew Hughes and Chris Mann, pages 80-84


    PEOPLE AND RELIGION

    Quote:

    The Nazis were forced to tolerate religion in Germany, but as Martin Bormann exclaimed:
    "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."

    Hitler supported this view, stating:
    "One day we want to be in a position where only complete idiots stand in the pulpit and preach to old women."


    The Nazis viewed Christianity as a faith tainted by Jews.

    In response, the Nazis offered the German people a new religion based on blood, soil, Germanic folklore and the Thousand-Year Reich.

    The Nazis were no different here [from] earleir revolutionaries who tried to offer the people a brave new secular world. It was no surprise that racial supremacy played a large part in this new "religion".

    Nazis who still wanted a spiritual home were offered a new faith called Gottglaubig ( God believing ) as an alternative to the established churches.
    The movement was heavily tainted with peculiar pagan practices. It was given official sanction by the Nazi authorities, and by 1939 the number of "God believers" exceeded three million.
    The Nazis stressed romantic notions of the pagan past, while simultaneously repressing the established churches.

    The Nazis were unwilling to tolerate (as with the family ) an alternative power center [existing] in the Christian religion. The rituals of life associated with the Church --birth, marriage and death-- were all criticized.
    As part of this attack, the Nazis also changed the calander to downplay Christian celebrations, and emphasize non-Christian Ceremonies. Thus in 1938, carols and the Nativity play were forbidden in schools; at the same time, Christmas was replaced with the new term "Yuletide".






    PROTESTANTISM AND GLEICHSCHALTUNG

    Quote:

    The more extreme Nazis looked to extend the Nazi policy of Gleichschaltung ( Coordination ) to the churches.
    This policy of coordination aimed to fuse all areas of German life together into a supreme Nazi machine. Anything or anyone that opposed this process was suspect, and a collection of Nazi organizations tried to bring together all aspects of German life under Nazi authority.

    A series of laws passed by the Nazis after 1933 were designed to destroy the traditions and priveleges of the old German states and create a centralized one-party state. From the mass of new legislation, new power groups developed: Labour Front, SS, SD and Gestapo.

    The churches were an obvious target, and in April 1933 hard-line Nazis demanded immediaate Gleichschaltung of all Evangelical churches.

    The response of the two major denominations in Germany ( Roman Catholic and Protestant) was mixed: some acquiesced Nazi demands, others met the new threat with determined opposition.

    Nazi Protestants ( often called "Positive Christians" ) believed that Jesus Christ had been sent to them in the form of Hitler, that God had sanctified the Aryan way of life and that racial mixing was wrong.
    With this in mind, "Positive Christians" attempterd to pass a motion that required Aryan origin as a basis for clerical office.

    Pastor Martin Neimoller took over leadership of the Confessional Church and formed a Pastors' Emergency League ( Pfarrbund ) to oppose the [pro-Nazi]hardliners.

    Neimoller was an ex-World War I submarine captain, awarded the Pour le Merite decoration, who subsequently studied theology and was ordained in 1924.
    Some 7000 pastors joined Neimoller's opposition, but Nazi persecution decimated their ranks.
    Meanwhile, "Positive Christians" attacked the Old Testament and those parts of the New Testament considered tainted by Judaism.
    The policies of the "Positive Christians" were heavily criticized by many in the Protestant Churches. And were attacked by those such as Neimoller.
    In the end, The Nazis' attempts at Gleichschaltung for Protestantism failed.
    But this did not stop the Nazis from persecuting religious opponents, including Neimoller, who was imprisoned in 1937, and subsequently sent to a concentration camp.

    When the Protestant Churches went on record in 1935 to say that the entire Nazi racial folk Weltanschaung was nonsense, 700 ministers were arrested, humiliated, and their civil liberties restricted.

    Ultimately, while the Nazis failed to absorb these churches, by the late 1930's the policies of repression had effectively stifled open opposition within the Protestant movement.






    THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

    Quote:

    The Catholic Church represented more formidable opposition for the Nazis.

    The Catholics had two advantages over the Protestants:
    1) theirs was a truly international faith, under the central leadership of the Vatican:
    2) Catholics had a political party in Germany, the Centre Party, to represent their interests.

    The Catholic Church hoped to use its political influence to deflect Nazi interference in Church matters.

    Therefore, the Centre Party supported the Enabling Law of 1933 ( a sweeping measure to enable the Nazi gobvernment to make laws without the approval of the [legislative] Reichstag ) that formed the constitutional basis of Nazi rule, in the hope that this support would paay dividends in the Nazi policy toward Catholics.

    Hitler was careful not to antagonize the Catholic Church, and his conciliatory phrases lulled them into a false sense of security.

    It was also the case that most German Catholics ( and Protestants) were indifferent to the all-embracing Nazi ideology that made complete claim on all Germans, and they failed to see its potential to threaten the established religions.

    By 1936, the Catholic Church was making official representations to Hitler about Nazi interference in its affairs.
    When Cardinal Faulhaber, the Church's representative, complained about new laws for sterilization of those with genetic diseases, Hitler lost his temper and told the Cardinal not to interfere.

    Five months after Faulhaber's encounter with the Fuhrer, Pope Pius XI issued an extraordinary encyclical entitled With Deep Anxiety that condemned Nazi attacks on the Church. The Pope reminded Hitler that man as a human being possessed rights that must be preserved against every attempt by the community to deny, suppress or hinder them.

    This encyclical was read from the pulpit in all of Germany's Catholic churches.

    The Nazis responded by making attacks on priests, monks, and nuns in the state-controlled press, and then arresting and charging a number of them on trumped-up accusations of financial and sexual impropriety.
    Gobbels, himself a former Catholic, orchestrated these attacks and sent hundreds of nuns and priests to the concentration camps.

    In the end, both Christian Churches [Protestant and Catholic] failed to understand the threat the Nazis represented. While many individual clergy acted heroically, the Churches as organized bodies did little to impede the Nazi takeover of Germany; their response was to issue feeble objections rather than organize mass protest.
    The Churches (and all Germans) would have done well to heed the famous comment by Paster Neimoller:

    First the Nazis went after the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not object. Then they went after the Catholics, but I wasn't a Catholic, so I did not object. Then they went for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade-unionist so I did not object. Then they came after me, and by then there was no one left to object."











  • from Do Racists have lower IQ's...

    Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.

    EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.