Here's something pertinent by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. which I'd like to address to all the ninnies who, on the previous thread, are trying to seperate Nazism from the Catholic universe in which it was born and in which it thrived.
You place the straw around the houses of one town, teach the people of the next town to hate and fear the inhabitants in the first town. An incendiary comes along to give your followers a match. Your followers together with others light the flames that torch one building, then another, then another, systematically but slowly destroying them all. You save a few, though only a few, from the buildings that the killers have not yet reached. You do not warn the other intended victims. You do not urge all those who work for you to save as many as they can. You do not tell all those who support the incendiary or even help him light his fires that they are committing crimes and consigning themselves to hell. Indeed, all the while you continue to teach your followers to hate and fear the victims. After the flames die down and the incendiary is dead, you say that you never told him or your followers explicitly to kill, and indeed had as little to do with him as possible.... Would you believe that, under such a scenario, others would hold you innocent of all blame, all guilt, all culpability?
The part that gets me every time is at the beginning: You place the straw around the houses of one town, teach the people of the next town to hate and fear the inhabitants in the first town.Can anyone deny the Church did this to the Jews?
Can anyone deny that for hundreds of years the Church's Good Friday liturgy contained a long list of "reproaches" that accused the whole Jewish people of killing Jesus? Can anyone deny that the church had, from the time of Pius 9, used its newspapers and clergy to spread the lowest and most vile forms of Antisemitism? Is it a coincidence that most of the top Nazis were born Catholics and that Nazism took root and rose to prominence in Bavaria where Roman Catholicism dominated? (even today the area is more than 70 percent Catholic.) Is it meaningless that the Seamless Robe of Jesus, kept in the Cathedral of Trier and one of Catholicism's potent symbols of joy, was exhibited in 1933 -- ts first public viewing in 42 years!! - in honor of Hitler's coming to power?
Is all of this (and much more ) irrelevant? Is it irrelevant that the Church excomunicated every single communist in the world, but never excommunicated Hitler? Does it mean nothing that the Church awarded Hitler a requiem at his death? All of this is not to be ignored.
I call Nazism a reactionary Catholic movement for this reasons: A reactionary is a person who holds political viewpoints that favor a return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society and Hitler wanted nothing more than to roll back the clock on the Jews. The Church kept them in ghettos, denied them the right to own property, preached they were nothing more than slaves, and forced them to wear yellow hats and yellow badges and to undergo other humiliations. The liberal anti-clerics did away with all that. They emancipated the Jews and weakened the Church. Hitler, a born and baptized Cathoic, wanted to restore the Jews to the low ring of the ladder. Hitler, who enjoyed friendly relations at first with the Vatican -- and never renounced his Catholicism and was never excommunicated -- wanted to undo all the progress the Jews had enjoyed and undo all the losses the Church had suffered. (Then, gradually, he went insane and mad with power.)
Can anyone deny that for hundreds of years the Church's Good Friday liturgy contained a long list of "reproaches" that accused the whole Jewish people of killing Jesus? Can anyone deny that the church had, from the time of Pius 9, used its newspapers and clergy to spread the lowest and most vile forms of Antisemitism? Is it a coincidence that most of the top Nazis were born Catholics and that Nazism took root and rose to prominence in Bavaria where Roman Catholicism dominated? (even today the area is more than 70 percent Catholic.) Is it meaningless that the Seamless Robe of Jesus, kept in the Cathedral of Trier and one of Catholicism's potent symbols of joy, was exhibited in 1933 -- ts first public viewing in 42 years!! - in honor of Hitler's coming to power?
Is all of this (and much more ) irrelevant? Is it irrelevant that the Church excomunicated every single communist in the world, but never excommunicated Hitler? Does it mean nothing that the Church awarded Hitler a requiem at his death? All of this is not to be ignored.
I call Nazism a reactionary Catholic movement for this reasons: A reactionary is a person who holds political viewpoints that favor a return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society and Hitler wanted nothing more than to roll back the clock on the Jews. The Church kept them in ghettos, denied them the right to own property, preached they were nothing more than slaves, and forced them to wear yellow hats and yellow badges and to undergo other humiliations. The liberal anti-clerics did away with all that. They emancipated the Jews and weakened the Church. Hitler, a born and baptized Cathoic, wanted to restore the Jews to the low ring of the ladder. Hitler, who enjoyed friendly relations at first with the Vatican -- and never renounced his Catholicism and was never excommunicated -- wanted to undo all the progress the Jews had enjoyed and undo all the losses the Church had suffered. (Then, gradually, he went insane and mad with power.)
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