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To: Skooz
For what it's worth, Dr. Gene Scott has said many times that Hitler was a member of the Catholic Church and was never excommmunicated.
25 posted on 03/25/2002 7:40:54 AM PST by Biblebelter
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To: Biblebelter
For what it's worth, Hitler's on record as seeking to flatter the German Evangelical Church by claiming that he identified with them more than any other Christian sect. Of course, this was a lie too, as he had no use for anything other than "Positive" Christianity, defined by party ideologues as an ethical culture driven by will, building character in service to the state.
29 posted on 03/25/2002 7:58:23 AM PST by Romulus
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To: Biblebelter
Hitler never held a formal church membership. He was probably baptised as an infant according to the custom of his community, although no record exists of this event. During the time that his family lived in Linz, Austria, he served as a choirboy at the local Catholic cathedral, and even fantasised about becoming a priest, but he was never confirmed. By age 12, he had lost all interest in the church, except for a lifelong fascination with church architecture.
30 posted on 03/25/2002 8:03:18 AM PST by jboot
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To: Biblebelter
For what it's worth, Dr. Gene Scott has said many times that Hitler was a member of the Catholic Church and was never excommmunicated.

And "Dr. Gene Scott's" credentials to comment on German history are what ... ?

Hitler, by his own admission, stopped practicing Catholicism in his mid-teens, after his father's death. In Tischgespräche, he denies that he's a Christian, and calls himself "a pure heathen". According to Catholic canon law, that constitutes "defecting from the faith by a formal act," and means that he wasn't a Catholic, according to the Church.

As for excommunication, what does excommunicating someone who isn't a communicant accomplish? "Say, by the way, let me take away privileges you don't use anyway." Yeah, that would have made a big impression on Mr. Hitler.

Nevertheless, if he was a Catholic during his period of power, he was automatically excommunicated because of his crimes, specifically those involving violent attacks against priests and religious, and those involving abortion (which the Nazis heavily promoted among Jews and Slavs).

In short, "Dr. Gene Scott" doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

124 posted on 03/28/2002 8:22:38 AM PST by Campion
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To: Biblebelter
Hitler was baptized in the Catholic Church, but had taken himself out of communion with the church long before becoming a public figure. Excommunication is a measure used against notorious public sinners who want nonetheless to be considered Christians and receive Holy Communion. A notorious public sinner who does not claim to be a Christian and has no interest in receiving the sacrament has excommunicated himself already. You might as well say that the Lutherans should have excommunicated Karl Marx, or the Orthodox Church should have excommunicated Stalin. Or to take a political analogy, that the Republican Party should expel Jeffords.

By the way, I am not a Catholic. As a Protestant I have to say that if the Catholic Church was not always heroic in the Hitler period, it was more impressive than German Protestantism. Pius XI condemned Nazi racism in what must be nearly the only Papal encyclical written in German. Even the German Confessing Church, which resisted the takeover of the Protestant churches by Nazi sympathizers, never made any corporate statement on behalf of the Jews.

125 posted on 03/28/2002 8:31:59 AM PST by Southern Federalist
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