As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Catholic Church and Nazism
MentalExercise
IndefenestrableRegistered User regular
IndefenestrableRegistered User regular
I don't see how the Church doing bad things = every pope in history was bad.
Well, they are in charge of the church, so even in the cases where they weren't murderous/incestuous/warmongering/substance abusers, they often enabled other world leaders to be so. Hell, the catholic church backed the freakin' Nazi's in order to escape their religion being declared camp-internment-worthy.
Wow. That bullshit is dangerously close to bigotry. If only there was actually some sort of record of things that Popes had said, so I could dispute what you say... if only... oh! Wait! there is! So if I were to go to wikipedia and look up the subject I could find out that in 1937 Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical condemning the actions of the Nazis. I could then use google, and the Vatican website to find an actual copy of the encyclical... say here. I could also look up lots, and lots of more things to independently verify the people, names, and places mentioned in the wikipedia article (since it really is only good as a lead off point, not as a primary source... like the actual encyclical I linked to is), but I won't, because I think anyone that is really interested can do it just fine for themselves, and that should be enough to make my point.
The other part of your statement has whiffs of bigotry to it too, but we can discuss that after. This part is much more concrete, so we can get it out of the way before we move on to the messier issues.
I'm kind of sad now.
"More fish for Kunta!"
--LeVar Burton
--LeVar Burton
MentalExercise on
0
Posts
Soooo....
The Wiki article clearly states that the Catholic Church hardly did anything shocking, they were far too busy with pre-emptive ass-saving, than to tell Germany they were wrong.
Of course, I'm not sure what any of this matters now, though. We're talking about things that happened sixty-seventy years ago.
Edit: I realize that one feels the need to defend actions however old when an air of infalibility is at stake, but seriously, there are MASSIVE mistakes that were perpetrated by past Popes. I'm willing not to hold blood libel et al against you guys, but when you try to defend it, THAT'S when it starts to look in poor form.
Let's worry about the future, not the past. So, maybe you folks could have saved my great uncle, or cousin or something, and you didn't. Well, they're already dead, so the bygones are already gone. The church seems fairly progressive these days, and these days are what I care about.
You name wouldn't happen to be Bill Donahue, would it?
Anyway, lets just wind up my contribution to this thread by reminding the class that pretty much all religions have been massive bastards throughout history, catholicism doesn' get a free pass, I'm not obligated to append any statements I make about anything with a ten-page disclaimer just so that retards can't decide I'm a "bigot" for not covering my ass extensively enough, and that I don't have any particular favourite religions to pick on.
Well, maybe southern evangelicals. Those guys are total assholes.
Not just religions. Let's be fair that pretty much any movement, if it has gotten large enough, has tended to be dicks to outsiders.
--LeVar Burton
it's pretty much all based on things that you said.
I'm responding, not refuting
That's why I also take regular time out to diss Avon! But yes, this is true. Everybody sucks, and being an equal-opportunity hata' is, I've found, the only way to fly.
hey you know some nuns actively helped out in the Rwandan genocide? If I had to wear a full-length habit in the middle of Africa I'd be pissed off too, but that's pretty assy. However, lets be clear: despite the accusations I bring up (Mother Teresa was a hateful bitch, before I forget), I'm not actually condemning catholicism as a whole by doing so. Just bringing a little point-counterpoint balance to the discussion, because things tend to be one-sidedly positive in an effort to avoid attracting guys like the OP.
Besides, I have not yet decided you are a bigot. Lots of people say lots of things without actually being bigots. That's why I wanted to direct my comments towards the statement itself.
edit: see? like those above me there... true statements of the wrongs Catholics have done doesn't say 'bigotry'. It's the untrue ones that do.
editedit: Sorry Evander, I thought you were being sarcastic there. I've done it before, and I'll do it again I guess.
Aldo I didn't create this thread to claim the Catholic Church didn't do bad things during Hitler's reign. I made this thread because Cat said something bad and untrue about the Catholic Church in another thread, but she said not to talk about it there anymore. She said to make a new thread instead. So I did. and I'm done editing now... this thread is moving faster I thought it was so this post has gotten a little out of hand with the editing.
--LeVar Burton
Which statement is that then? The Catholic Church may have disapproved of Naziism, but that's pretty much all they did.
Argument about what the Church should have done differently will have to wait for Another new thread, because it is a much bigger subject that will just derail this one, and besides takes lots of knowledge about the specific events and politics of Europe before and during the second world war.
--LeVar Burton
What so Catholic morality is conditional based on personal best-interests now?
--LeVar Burton
If you would like to talk about that statement, that's just fine, but I'm not going to discuss the general behavior of the Catholic Church during WWII here. Like I said, it's too involved a topic for this thread.
--LeVar Burton
--LeVar Burton
So what you're saying is that you started a thread just to fight with The Cat because she said something that hurt your iddy-biddy feewings? Goddamn, man, why are you wasting our time with this?
And actually the diocese in Berlin was quite happy to tell everyone that they were all about the Reichstadt out of fear of getting put on "the list", so she's not nearly as wrong as you would like in the first place.
Yeah and you're welcome to request a sandwich, too. Just don't expect anyone to give a fuck.
edit: and my feelings believe it or not, are not hurt. It was nice of you to think of it, but I happen to have met, many people that legitimately hate me for many different reasons. I don't get upset about that. And you don't even hate me. You just disagree with me. Annoyance doesn't seem too out of line there.
--LeVar Burton
Still, the Catholic Church got off fairly lightly. Partly that was because Anglo-American administrators of Europe didnt want to upset a powerful bastion of anti-communism by accusations and recriminations in the early days of the cold war.
Its a belief system and considered to be the highest authority. Tacit approval from this ultimate authority could be argued to be very harmful. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the church may or may not have specifically acted to aid the Nazis - but due to their position, their inaction sent a huge message.
As far as what the Church actually did... well i guess we can talk about that now. I've made my other point enough I think. Before WWII the Church was trying to get as many countries as it could to sign concordats. That is treaties with the Church. They were contracts saying that each would not interfere with the other in certain ways, and they listed and agreed on those ways. So in 1933 when Germany asked for a concordat the Church agreed, and they wrote out their contract on how they wouldn't interfere with each other. It wasn't until 1937 that the Church denounced the Nazis publicly again. (Turns out Hitler wasn't that interested in keeping his treaties.) Personally I think that four years was too long to wait. I think that the Church still had hopes of Hitler losing power, and that the Fascist system could then be turned to the Church's advantage. As someone that is politically quite libertarian I hate that idea. But that's really just what the Pope did. There were indeed smaller parts of the Church that opposed the Nazis much, much more stridently.
And since I'm talking about the subject: Fencingsax, I'm not exactly sure what you expected the Catholic Church to do other than disaprove. The Church doesn't have an army to fight Hitler with, even if they weren't surrounded by one of his allies. And morality isn't based on self-interest, but it can be muddy. If you've signed a contract with someone not to publicly interfere with what they do, at what point do you break that contract because of their conduct? I think that point is much earlier than the Church did it, but it's still not a clear cut spot.
--LeVar Burton
Regarding your first point:
That statement is perfectly valid in most situations. Where THIS situation differs is that the Catholic Church set themselves up as the moral authority - beliefs that govern our very existance and how we must all conduct ourselves in our lives. Virtue and sin - black and white - right and wrong. And they continue to tell us which is which.
Given this unique role within the society - I was raising the idea that THEY are (perhaps uniquely) just as responsible for their inaction as they are their action. I'm not as comfortable debating what actions were taken or not - but I feel that there are certain situations where people are responsible for inaction.
So they were as evil as pre-1941 America?
Yeah, what DA just said.
But did pre-1941 America tell everyone what was right from wrong? I think that's the point trying to be made there..
Huh. I know attendance numbers have been falling lately, but still...I think in the 1930s there were probably a fair number of Catholics in Europe. And one of the fun things about Catholicism is that the Pope is basically a dictator - he's the voice of God. If he says contraception is evil, good Catholics stop using contraception. At what point does this power become impotent? At one point in the history of the Catholic church they very literally had an army doing their bidding. It might have been a tad harder in the more enlightened Europe of the 20th century, but I can't help but feel that their influence over German Catholics could certainly have contributed to a strong opposition to the Nazi party. Perhaps not an army in the conventional sense of armed troops but certainly a moral/intellectual army providing political and popular opposition to the party.
Of course, I'm not going to lay blame for WWII squarely on the shoulders of the Catholic Church. We all could've done a lot more. Even the countries who eventually defeated Germany could've done more, sooner. The United Kingdom under Chamberlain could just as easily be branded collaborators for attempting to secure deals with Hitler that protected the UKs best interests whilst largely ignoring the interests of any of the countries Germany had already invaded or Jews within any of those countries.
I think you're overstating the Pope's influence on individual's decisions, by the way (contraception use tracks far more closely with education and social class than religion, and the catholic rate of abortion is much higher than most other segments of the population). He probably couldn't have mobilized people the way you suggest (he's not a mullah*), and I think his words would have had far more impact on catholic populations outside germany than in. Clear action on the part of the church leadership and, you know, basic consistency with their beliefs would have gone a long way, though.
*ba-dum-tsshhh
I'm not really sure what Catholics were supposed to do to stop the Nazis. Notions like the Church would have been able to hamstring the party are totally facile, I'd like to see some sort of evidence for that. The older generations may have supported The Bavarian People's Party and other seperatist groups, but the younger generations and those who fought in the war had been won over to Pan-Germanism. The Himmler family seem like a good example. The father was a teacher with a nice middle class life-style, a healthy distrust of nationalism and a longing to create a South German Union. His sons had been won-over to nationalism. War, defeat and Reichspatriotismus (to borrow an older idea) had a shaped a new German identity based upon the nation rather than the states. I'm very skeptical of the notion that the Catholic Church could have done anything but win some moral brownie points.
Germany of the 1930-40's is a far cry from Germany of the 1870's and the Kulturkampf. I have a hard time believing that veterans and Germany's youth would have abandoned revanche movements for the Church. America, Austrailia, Europe and the A.U cluck their tounges over Darfur and do little else, do we hold them responible for genocide?
Capacity to change the situation is all we are talking about. The church had some capacity by its moral authority with the population. The United States had some capacity with its military, economic and diplomatic resources.
I keep making dog training analogies today.
Next time you want to talk about something that narrow, just take it to PMs.
I would appreciate if you could point it out, I can't find it. The main issue I have with your points is that the Church had the ability to ham-string the movement. Nationalism was at such fever pitch that I really doubt it. Could they have done more? Should they done more? Yes and yes. I can't see what the Church heirarchy could have done in a practical sense.