The Catholic Vote

Tell me, sinky, would a German Catholic who voted for the Nazis in 1934, knowing full-well their rabidly anti-semitic platform, have committed a mortal sin?

Did the German bishops condemn Hitler in 1934? Did Pius XI?

Germans obviously supported Hitler, Catholics included, not because of his anti-semitism, but because he instilled some sort of strange Aryan pride in them.

I couldn't possibly judge whether a German Catholic in 1934 who voted for Hitler committed a mortal sin, and neither can anybody else.

Agreed

Bump.

Tell me, sinky, would a German Catholic who voted for the Nazis in 1934, knowing full-well their rabidly anti-semitic platform, have committed a mortal sin?
Did the German bishops condemn Hitler in 1934?

Pius XII was the nuncio in Germany as the Nazi’s emerged:

Any fair and thorough reading of the evidence demonstrates that Pius XII was a persistent critic of Nazism. Consider just a few highlights of his opposition before the war:

· Of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as papal nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology.
· In March 1935, he wrote an open letter to the bishop of Cologne calling the Nazis "false prophets with the pride of Lucifer."
· That same year, he assailed ideologies "possessed by the superstition of race and blood" to an enormous crowd of pilgrims at Lourdes. At Notre Dame in Paris two years later, he named Germany "that noble and powerful nation whom bad shepherds would lead astray into an ideology of race."
· The Nazis were "diabolical," he told friends privately. Hitler "is completely obsessed," he said to his long-time secretary, Sister Pascalina. "All that is not of use to him, he destroys; . . . this man is capable of trampling on corpses." Meeting in 1935 with the heroic anti-Nazi Dietrich von Hildebrand, he declared, "There can be no possible reconciliation" between Christianity and Nazi racism; they were like "fire and water."
· The year after Pacelli became secretary of state in 1930, Vatican Radio was established, essentially under his control. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano had an uneven record, though it would improve as Pacelli gradually took charge (extensively reporting Kristallnacht in 1938, for example). But the radio station was always good—making such controversial broadcasts as the request that listeners pray for the persecuted Jews in Germany after the 1935 Nuremberg Legislation.
· It was while Pacelli was his predecessor's chief adviser that Pius XI made the famous statement to a group of Belgian pilgrims in 1938 that "anti-Semitism is inadmissible; spiritually we are all Semites." And it was Pacelli who drafted Pius XI's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, "With Burning Concern," a condemnation of Germany among the harshest ever issued by the Holy See. Indeed, throughout the 1930s, Pacelli was widely lampooned in the Nazi press as Pius XI's "Jew-loving" cardinal, because of the more than fifty-five protests he sent the Germans as the Vatican secretary of state.

To these must be added highlights of Pius XII's actions during the war:

· His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, rushed out in 1939 to beg for peace, was in part a declaration that the proper role of the papacy was to plead to both warring sides rather than to blame one. But it very pointedly quoted St. Paul—“there is neither Gentile nor Jew”—using the word "Jew" specifically in the context of rejecting racial ideology. The New York Times greeted the encyclical with a front-page headline on October 28, 1939: "Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism." Allied airplanes dropped thousands of copies on Germany in an effort to raise anti-Nazi sentiment.
· In 1939 and 1940, Pius acted as a secret intermediary between the German plotters against Hitler and the British. He would similarly risk warning the Allies about the impending German invasions of Holland, Belgium, and France.
· In March 1940, Pius granted an audience to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister and the only high-ranking Nazi to bother visiting the Vatican. The Germans' understanding of Pius's position, at least, was clear: Ribbentrop chastised the pope for siding with the Allies. Whereupon Pius began reading from a long list of German atrocities. "In the burning words he spoke to Herr Ribbentrop," the New York Times reported on March 14, Pius "came to the defense of Jews in Germany and Poland."
· When French bishops issued pastoral letters in 1942 attacking deportations, Pius sent his nuncio to protest to the Vichy government against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews from the French-occupied zone to Silesia and parts of Russia." Vatican Radio commented on the bishops' letters six days in a row—at a time when listening to Vatican Radio was a crime in Germany and Poland for which some were put to death. ("Pope Is Said to Plead for Jews Listed for Removal from France," the New York Times headline read on August 6, 1942. "Vichy Seizes Jews; Pope Pius Ignored," the Times reported three weeks later.) In retaliation, in the fall of 1942, Goebbels's office distributed ten million copies of a pamphlet naming Pius XII as the "pro-Jewish pope" and explicitly citing his interventions in France.
. · In the summer of 1944, after the liberation of Rome but before the war's end, Pius told a group of Roman Jews who had come to thank him for his protection: "For centuries, Jews have been unjustly treated and despised. It is time they were treated with justice and humanity, God wills it and the Church wills it. St. Paul tells us that the Jews are our brothers. They should also be welcomed as friends."

Did Pius XI?

See above, Pius XI’s encyclical, at the very least. It would, however, have been very unusual for a Pope to directly criticize a German party, just as it would be very unusual for JPII to instruct Catholics to vote for Bush over Gore, etc.

Germans obviously supported Hitler, Catholics included, not because of his anti-semitism, but because he instilled some sort of strange Aryan pride in them.

Hitler did very poorly in the most heavily Catholic regions of Germany. I think you’ve been talking to a few too many anti-Catholic bigots. I have no idea, however, what is motivating you to say these things here.

Dominus Vobiscum

patent +AMDG

I have no idea, however, what is motivating you to say these things here.

Nothing sinister, patent, I assure you.

You get a little exercised yourself, sometimes.

The reparations mandated by Versailles were designed to and did causing stagflation and worse which, under the terms of the treaty would have lasted until 1986. The idea was to keep the Germans hungy, cold and impotent. Germany was split between Catholics, Protestants, Socialists, and Junkers who were so disparate as to no be able to agree on much of anything. Between 1918 and 1933 most members of the German middle class lost their savings, not once but twice.

Hitler was seen as the only candidate who, being none of the above, would be able to paper over those differences and cut that hated treaty-imposed tax.

I would suspect that the "statesmen" responsible for deliberately messing the country up so thoroughly had long lost their souls. Judgement, however, is not mine.

You get a little exercised yourself, sometimes.

I’m always exercised. Your usually calm.

God bless,

patent +AMDG

Judgement, however, is not mine.

Nor mine, we can thank God for small favors, no doubt.

God bless,

patent +AMDG

There just aren't many things one can do or not do which would result in such finality.

What about the use of abortifacient contraception in an effort to contravene the procreative nature of procreation so as to enjoy only the unitive nature of conjugal relations and decide for oneself when that act shall be open to God's will?