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Question to Catholics: Is Adolf Hitler a Christian?

Saint Frankenstein

Saint Frankenstein

Here for the ride
Premium Member
exchemist said:
It seems to be a fairly standard route for authoritarian leaders to try to co-opt religions, if it is hard to stamp them out. This has happened in Russia and in China, for instance.
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Yeah, that basically what the Nazis were doing. It's the same as the CCP in China having its own version of the Catholic Church, but you don't see anyone accusing them of being Catholics. They do it to draw people away from the established churches and into the state-sanctioned ones that parrot what they want them to say.
 
U

URAVIP2ME

Veteran Member
thomas t said:
Recently I ran into a statement insinuating that Adolf Hitler was a Christian... quoted by my discussion partner.
As a Catholic, do you see him as a Christian?
Here on RF, one of your brothers once said, the Catholic Church was blameless.
Before you say it's obvious that he wasn't a Christian, consider that he was baptized into the Catholic Church and never was excummunicated. He never left the Catholic Church.
While the Catholic Church does excommunicate people, for instance for what they call false teaching, they did not excommunicate Hitler and his servants.
As blameless as the Catholic church portrays itself to be, they did not find a reason to regret not having kicked him out. Until today. This is at least to the best of my knowledge.
The pope knew what was going on, that there was a holocaust. https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/29/vatican-pope-pius-records-holocaust/ edited for clarity
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Not Catholic but this might be of some interest at http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
 
Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
metis said:
There are some bishops whom have done in terms of denying the Eucharist to some, but they almost always fall short of a formal "writ of excommunication".
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Which is a good thing. It makes the threat largely toothless. But that got me to thinking "Who has been excommunicated by the Catholic church and found that it was not all that rare:

List of people excommunicated by the Catholic Church - Wikipedia

I still don't see Hitler's name there.

EDIT: And some of the excommunications appear to have been political. Bob the Bruce (aka Robert) was excommunicated for a murder. It did happen in church, that was probably a mitigating factor.
 
stvdv

stvdv

Veteran Member
Cooky said:
I highly doubt it.
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IMO:

Seems right to me

Usually they try to get more sheep added to the flock, so they probably think twice excommunicating people AND Jesus forgives all sins anyway

They rather try to reform people, not giving up so easy, as Jesus always forgives all sins (He died for their sins they believe)
 
Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
exchemist said:
Wiki has this to say:
"In early 1931, the German bishops excommunicated the Nazi leadership and banned Catholics from the party. Although the ban was modified in the spring of 1933 due to a law requiring all civil servants and union members to be party members, the condemnation of core Nazi ideology continued.[7"

From: Catholic Church and Nazi Germany - Wikipedia

So it looks as if your assertion that Hitler was never excommunicated is wrong.
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I had to look at that and it looks similar to the excommunication of 9 year old girl that had an abortion. The excommunication did not take and was modified further down the road. It once again appears that there never was an official excommunication of Hitler by the Catholic church.
 
Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Saint Frankenstein said:
Yeah, that basically what the Nazis were doing. It's the same as the CCP in China having its own version of the Catholic Church, but you don't see anyone accusing them of being Catholics. They do it to draw people away from the established churches and into the state-sanctioned ones that parrot what they want them to say.
Click to expand...
Correct, but they are still considered to be Christians. The argument is not even whether Hitler was still a practicing Catholic or not it is one whether he was a Christian or not. The fact that his "Christianity" was not mainstream Christianity does not mean that he was not a Christian.
 
Dawnofhope

Dawnofhope

Non-Proselytizing Baha'i
Staff member
Premium Member
thomas t said:
Recently I ran into a statement insinuating that Adolf Hitler was a Christian... quoted by my discussion partner.

As a Catholic, do you see him as a Christian?

Here on RF, one of your brothers once said, the Catholic Church was blameless.

Before you say it's obvious that he wasn't a Christian, consider that he was baptized into the Catholic Church and never was excummunicated. He never left the Catholic Church.
---------------------
While the Catholic Church does excommunicate people, for instance for what they call false teaching, they did not excommunicate Hitler and his servants.

As blameless as the Catholic church portrays itself to be, they did not find a reason to regret not having kicked him out. Until today. This is at least to the best of my knowledge.

The pope knew what was going on, that there was a holocaust. https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/29/vatican-pope-pius-records-holocaust/

edited for clarity
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What is more relevant IMHO is the vast majority of Nazi Germany identified as being Christian and that Hitler was democratically elected.

A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era[1]and after the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria and mostly Catholic Czechoslovakia[2] into Germany, indicates[3] that 54% of the population considered themselves Protestant,[failed verification] 40% Catholic,[failed verification] 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig[4] (lit. "believing in God"),[5] and 1.5% as "atheist".

Religion in Nazi Germany - Wikipedia

The Christian Church whether Catholic or Protestant to some extent supported and colluded with the Nazi leadership though there were a small minority of Christians who resisted and criticised Hitler.

So while questions about the role of the Catholic Church are important, the same questions are relevant to Christendom as a whole.

All too often religion becomes enmeshed in politics where the two support each other in an unholy alliance. It happened then and it continues today.
 
blü 2

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
thomas t said:
Recently I ran into a statement insinuating that Adolf Hitler was a Christian... quoted by my discussion partner.

As a Catholic, do you see him as a Christian?

Here on RF, one of your brothers once said, the Catholic Church was blameless.

Before you say it's obvious that he wasn't a Christian, consider that he was baptized into the Catholic Church and never was excummunicated. He never left the Catholic Church.
---------------------
While the Catholic Church does excommunicate people, for instance for what they call false teaching, they did not excommunicate Hitler and his servants.

As blameless as the Catholic church portrays itself to be, they did not find a reason to regret not having kicked him out. Until today. This is at least to the best of my knowledge.

The pope knew what was going on, that there was a holocaust. https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/29/vatican-pope-pius-records-holocaust/

edited for clarity
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>Wikipedia< has a highly informative article on the subject.

Equally interesting is the story of Eugenio Pacelli / Pius XII, whom John Cornwell wrote of in his book Hitler's Pope (1999). He later amended parts of it, but even omitting those parts, enough remains to pose serious questions about Pacelli's conduct during the war. For example there is evidence that he was much more concerned about Communism's atheism than about Nazi death camps, and he never once openly condemned the latter. There is also a body of evidence that says many of the pro-Jewish actions of the Catholic Church in WW2 that are cited in his defense were done spontaneously by others, and not as part of any program he instigated.

It is also a matter of record that after the war the Vatican was active in providing senior Nazis with false identities to allow them to escape to Franco's Spain, to South America, not least Argentina, and elsewhere. The Allies referred to these avenues of escape as 'ratlines'.

Whether the employment that the US government gave Werner von Braun after the war should be regarded as a ratline is a question I leave to each of us. You may recall >Tom Lehrer's view<.
 
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exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
Subduction Zone said:
I had to look at that and it looks similar to the excommunication of 9 year old girl that had an abortion. The excommunication did not take and was modified further down the road. It once again appears that there never was an official excommunication of Hitler by the Catholic church.
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What do you mean by "it did not take"?
 
Sand Dancer

Sand Dancer

Currently catless
ecco said:
Care to quote some of those along with giving impeccable sources?

Why would someone who "obviously rejected Christianity" insist his officers' belt buckles be inscribed with "Gott Mitt Uns"?
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He mentioned that he, like Jesus, was a fighter, trying to make things better.
 
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