Hitler didn’t attend Mass again after he was confirmed as a boy. So yes, he was nominally Catholic as a childhood, but by all accounts repudiated such religious beliefs. His advocacy for a national Church was pretty unCatholic.
2. Hitler was never excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
No, he wasn’t. Excommunication is the Church form of a wake-up call that desires to bring the person back to their senses. It was aptly judged that this would have no bearing on someone who had already left the Faith by his adulthood.
In fact, NO Catholic Nazi war criminals were excommunicated, not even the SS death camp commanders.
Given Pius XII’s support for the Nuremburg trials, again, what was the point? Excommunication is not a punishment. Identifying the person’s in question during the war would have taken a robust intelligence capability that none of the Allied powers possessed, much less the Vatican.
Seems that mass murder was not sufficient cause for excommunication. There is ONE exception to my previous statement:
No, not when it is judged as not being useful in actually reforming the individual in question. Again, it is not a punishment.
3. Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was excommunicated, and for a crime MUCH WORSE than mass murder: He married a protestant! You see? The Catholic Church DOES have values, after all.
Given Goebbels had explicitly left the Faith by the time of World War II, I am very curious how you propose such events would have gone. We don’t excommunicate those who convert away from the Faith.
4. Hitler’s birthday was celebrated in Catholic mass every year, right up to the end.
Hitler’s 50th birthday was celebrated by having Catholic masses pray for the good of Germany. It’s a pretty common occurrence in countries where a national event/holiday (which is what his birthday was in the Third Reich) takes place. There were German bishops who supported Hitler, just as there were German bishops who opposed him.
5. Nazi SS troopers had “death’s head” skulls on their uniforms and “GOTT MITT UNS” (“God is With Us”) on their belt buckles.
I fail to see what this has to do with Catholicism. Muslims and Hindus believe in God too.
6. In the confusion and chaos after Germany’s surrender, many Nazi war criminals escaped detection by the Allies, made their way out of Germany, and avoided war crimes trials. Many were AIDED IN THEIR ESCAPE BY THE VATICAN.
No, they were aided by Tiso, Hudal, and certain people in Vichy France. You are, of course, welcome to find evidence of the Vatican having complicity in the ratlines, but you won’t find much.
They were sheltered by high ranking Vatican officials who provided them with new identities and false documents and made travel arrangements for them to escape, mainly to South America.
Joseph Mengele, Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death,” and Adolf Eichmann were among them.
Mengele got his passport and identity from the Red Cross, actually. Eichmann was sponsored by a Bishop named Hudal, who had been removed from all offices and responsibilities and pretty much imprisoned in the Vatican by Pius XII.
I can hear you Catholic excuse-makers saying, “But that was so long ago! Stop dwelling in the past!”
No, I hope was able to give you an adequate historical overview of the times.
I have heard that before, in objection to discussing the “Holy” Inquisition and its torture and murder of innocents in pursuit of imaginary crimes such as “witchcraft” and “heresy.”
Given that the Inquisition had no mechanism by which to murder people (they served as investigators, not executioners), all punishments were actually carried out by secular governments over and against the Inquisition. Furthermore, an Inquisition was usually called by a Pope to stop the local governments from indiscriminately murdering people.
I guess we just forget and ignore crimes of the church after so many years have passed. OK, so here is what the Catholic Church is doing TODAY:
Your rhetorical genius is as graceful as my artistic genius.
Mind you, I have trouble drawing stick figures.
Make of it what you will.
In African nations where the Catholic Church is dominant and AIDS is rampant, literally MILLIONS have died of the disease. Meanwhile, Catholic priests tell ignorant believers that while AIDS is indeed very, very bad, using a CONDOM IS MUCH WORSE! In the apt words of Sam Harris, this is GENOCIDAL STUPIDITY!
You will find that the Catholic Church is the greatest supplier of medical aid to those with the disease. Furthermore, the effectiveness of abstinence vs. condom distribution is rather murkily known, so to declare one way or another like you are doing is a bit premature.
And yes, I thought you might be reading the New Atheists
But that has always been the greatest strength of the church: The propagation of BLOODY, DANGEROUS STUPIDITY!
I would be far more impressed if your arguments didn’t come almost entirely from Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris.
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