ADOLF - The Vatican Puppet.

Did the Catholic Church help German Nazism? A look at the record.
The Vatican’s definitive statement, “We Remember: Reflections on the Holocaust,”  claims that Nazism was the antithesis of the Catholic church:

[Excerpt from “We Remember” starts here]

At the level of theological reflection we cannot ignore the fact that not a few in the Nazi Party not only showed aversion to the idea of divine Providence at work in human affairs, but gave proof of a definite hatred directed at God himself. Logically, such an attitude also led to a rejection of Christianity and a desire to see the Church destroyed or at least subjected to the interests of the Nazi state.

It was this extreme ideology which became the basis of the measures taken first to drive the Jews from their homes and then to exterminate them. The Shoah was the work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime. Its anti-semitism had its roots outside of Christianity and, in pursuing its aims, it did not hesitate to oppose the Church and persecute her members also.
[My emphasis – J.I.]

– Published online at http://tinyurl.com/bxszb

[Excerpt from “We Remember” ends here]

Just as, according to “We Remember,” the extermination of European Jews was an extreme manifestation of anti-Catholicism (!), so, according to the Vatican statement, leading German clerics fought Nazi antisemitism. Case in point: Bavarian Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber. (The Vatican statement’s praise for von Faulhaber is quoted and refuted later in this article.)
Not only does “We Remember” claim that the church fought Nazi antisemitism, but it quotes Pope John Paul II apparently absolving the Catholic hierarchy from responsibility for the belief (one of the foundations of Christianity) in Jewish culpability for the death of Jesus:

“In the Christian world – I do not say on the part of the Church as such – erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and their alleged culpability have circulated for too long, engendering feelings of hostility towards this people.” 
– Pope John Paul II, quoted in “We Remember: Reflections on the Holocaust” http://tinyurl.com/bxszb  

Reading this remarkable statement, one is compelled to ask: if Christians did not get their belief in Jewish culpability from the Christian church, pray tell where did they get it?
Many people, including some Jewish leaders, have praised Pope John Paul II and “We Remember” for facing up to ‘errors’ made during the Holocaust.
But if the Church never aided, and indeed opposed, the Nazis, and never accepted even non-racial, religion-based hatred of Jews, then to what errors would the Vatican need to face up?
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, answered this question when he was a top advisor to John Paul II:

“‘Even if the most recent, loathsome experience of the Shoah (Holocaust) was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology, which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.’”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– Joseph Ratzinger as quoted by Abe Foxman in an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) press release welcoming Ratzinger’s election as Pope.
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/VaticanJewish_96/44698_96.htm
Also quoted on boston.com http://tinyurl.com/hfpob

So Joseph Ratzinger claims that: a) Nazism was “anti-Christian”; b) Christianity erred only by “a certain insufficient resistance” (notice the modifier, “a certain,” which limits the insufficiency - i.e., it wasn’t so very insufficient!) to Nazism, not by complicity or active support; c) even this error resulted from individual Christian’s religious hostility to Judaism – “an inherited anti-Judaismpresent in the hearts of not a few Christians” –  which rather avoids the question: from whom did they inherit it, if not the church?

The evidence shows that:

 

A) The Catholic church hierarchy, acting under Vatican orders, played the decisive role in making Hitler the dictator of Germany.

 

B) Subsequently, the Catholic hierarchy was active in Nazi movements outside Germany, for example in the Balkans, where the church was the institutional base of the Nazi puppet State of Croatia.

 

C) Although at Yad Vashem, in the year 2000, Pope John Paul II described the Nazis as having “a Godless ideology,” in 1933, when it mattered, the Vatican ordered German Catholics to love, honor, obey and protect the Nazis.

 

During the 1920s, the church-controlled Centre party (Zentrum) did clash with the Nazis. As Hitler wrote (see quote below) their quarrel was over politics, not Catholic religious teachings. The Nazis themselves claimed they were fighting against atheism, specifically Bolshevist atheism, which they depicted as a Jewish-created movement.  In attacking the Jews, the Nazis routinely employed Christian symbolism and traditional Christian antisemitic arguments, with which Europeans were already indoctrinated, making it an easy sale.  

 

On March 23, 1933, the Nazi government put forward the Enabling act, giving Hitler the authority to create new laws without parliamentary approval, thus making him the dictator of Germany.  This was after the Nazi-staged Reichstag fire; after the banning of the huge Communist party and subsequent arrest and murder of thousands of communists and other anti-Nazis; and amidst a campaign of violent antisemitism. To become law, the Enabling act needed a 2/3 parliamentary vote. Before the vote, Hitler addressed the Reichstag (parliament) saying the Nazis were fighting for Christianity:

“While the Government is determined to carry through the political and moral purging of our public life, it is creating and insuring prerequisites for a truly religious life. The Government sees in both [Catholic and Protestant] Christian confessions the most important factors for the maintenance of our folkdom. It will respect agreements concluded between them and the States. However, it expects that its work will meet with a similar appreciation. The Government will treat all other denominations with equal objective justice. It can never condone, though, that belonging to a certain denomination or to a certain race might be regarded as a license to commit or tolerate crimes. The Government will devote its care to the sincere living together of Church and State.” 
[My emphasis - Jared Israel]
–- http://tinyurl.com/g8gh3

To their credit, the Social Democrats for once took a strong stand, opposing the Enabling act. Hitler needed a 2/3 majority, so the balance lay with Zentrum, the Catholic Centre party. If Zentrum voted no or even abstained, Hitler would have been defeated.

 

Zentrum leader Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, a close friend and advisor to Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, addressed the Reichstag. Far from attacking the Enabling act and disputing Hitler’s claim that Nazi measures were “prerequisites for a truly religious life,” Kaas endorsed the Enabling act. Zentrum and smaller allied parties voted ‘yes,’ and the act became law.

 

According to National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen, a liberal Catholic and student of Vatican history (he wrote a biography of Joseph Ratzinger), on March 28, 1933, four days after Zentrum voted to make Hitler the dictator of Germany:

[Excerpt from John Allen’s Telegraph article starts here]

 

“the German bishops rescinded their ban on Nazi party membership. On April 1, Cardinal Adolf Bertram of Breslau addressed German Catholics in a letter, warning them ”to reject as a matter of principle all illegal or subversive activities“. To most Catholics, it looked as if the church wanted a modus vivendi with Hitler. [Yes, I suppose when you vote to make a Nazi maniac dictator of your country it would appear that you want a modus vivendi with said maniac - J.I.]

The same impression [! - J.I.] was created a few weeks later when Hitler held a plebiscite to endorse his decision to pull Germany out of the League of Nations, which received the endorsement of the Catholic press and of several Catholic bishops.”
http://tinyurl.com/jj2g4

[Excerpt from John Allen’s Telegraph article ends here]

Three and a half months later, on July 6, 1933, the Catholic church’s Centre party, Zentrum, dissolved itself. 

Two weeks after that, the Vatican and the Nazi government signed their Concordat, putting the official Vatican stamp on the alliance of the German church and the Nazi state. Article 16, reproduced below, required that Catholic bishops swear to honor the Nazi government, to make their subordinates honor it, and to hunt for and prevent action that might endanger it. - Continue Reading.. PLS CLICK HERE.