Vatican vanity
Hmmm.
Beatification for Polish family murdered for sheltering Jews
A beatification Mass service has been held in Poland for a Catholic family murdered by Nazis for hiding Jews during World War Two. Poland’s president and more than 30,000 pilgrims attended the outdoor service, led by Pope Francis’ envoy. This was the first time an entire family has been beatified, a great honour and a step towards sainthood.
They were executed in 1944 with the Jews they sheltered in south-eastern Poland, after they were betrayed.
That’s all very nice but the BBC fails to murmur so much as a word about the Catholic church’s relationship to Nazism and Anti-Semitism. The Catholic church was not a beacon of resistance to Nazism in 1944. The Catholic church is a reactionary institution with a deep affinity for fascists – the real kind, not the pretend kind. I don’t think I much like its laundering itself now via ceremonies for people who did resist back then when it was dangerous.
In late 1942, motivated by their Christian values, farmers Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma and their six young children – Stanislawa, Barbara, Maria, Wladyslaw, Franciszek and Antoni – hid eight Jews in their farmhouse in the village of Markowa.
How tf does the BBC know what they were motivated by? And which “Christian values” do they mean? Masses of Christians were on team-fascism back then. It was a “Christian value” to want to get rid of all those annoying godless lefties.
We were quite clearly taught in catechism classes that many nuns were murdered in concentration camps for their selfless efforts to hide and assist Jews and Romani who were trying to escape the Holocaust. No mention was made of how the Catholic Church, fresh on the heels of bringing down the Spanish Republic, enabled and encouraged the fascists and the Nazis in their efforts to Make Europe Great Again.
“Mike Haubrich:
September 10, 2023 at 1:35 pm
No mention was made of how the Catholic Church, fresh on the heels of bringing down the Spanish Republic, enabled and encouraged the fascists and the Nazis in their efforts to Make Europe Great Again.”
Clearly the Catholic Church is still working overtime to cover up the nature of Pius XII’ths pre-papal power mongering:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat
The Pope recently praised the “legacy” of the Russian Empire, describing current Russians “the heirs of the great, enlightened Russian empire.” Something Putin himself could have said.
The Pope then backtracked somewhat, saying he didn’t mean to glorify Russian imperialism, after numerous countries and peoples who suffered under the Russian Empire, called him to account.
I wonder if the Pope realised that one of the hundreds of justifications Putin gives for his invasion and occupation of Ukraine, is a desire to return the Russian Empire to its former, erm, glory?
Adolf Hitler was baptised a Catholic, and even after the end of WW2, it apparently never occurred to the Church’s hierarchy that according to its own doctrine he might have made it into Heaven, albeit after a bit of a stint in Purgatory maybe for shooting himself in his Fuehrerbunker in order to avoid capture and consequences. But thanks to Christ’s statement as recorded in Matt. 16: (“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven…”) that every pope in the historical succession has claimed (admittedly with the odd spot of bother amid the fanfare from time to time) every one of those popes since Hitler died has had the authority to excommunicate that said Hitler post mortem and via an appropriate and solemn ceremony just in case he made it in, chuck him out of Heaven and condemn him to spend the rest of eternity in Hell’s fire.
But for some reason, no pope has thought of doing this. Maybe they have all been too busy dealing with other scandals. I dunno, but there you go.
.
https://www.bible.com/bible/2020/MAT.16.RSV
It really is astonishing how this history has gotten whitewashed. I mean, the SS murderers wore actual belt buckles that read GOTT MIT UNS, a relic of the Prussian empire to be sure, but it just goes to show how baked in to the very fabric that the church was.
Of all the NAZIs who were also Catholic, just one was excommunicated, and that was for divorce.
Now, I agree that the RC Church committed many sins, before, during, and after that war, the Lutherans have conveniently hidden behind the Pope’s skirt.
Germany has far more Lutherans than Catholics, Martin Luther was a full-on anti-Semite, and his anti-semitic writings underpinned the Church he founded. So, when people ask me why the “ordinary Germans” never spoke out, there is the answer – they followed the conscience their Church gave them.
Similarly, when I ask Catholics about Pius not confronting Hitler they say “But he would have been killed”. Yeah, so what? So was Jesus for speaking out, and so were Ulmas.
Thank you Richard Glasson – I didn’t know that about the Pope’s recent doings!
Well, that would have been taking The Imitation of Christ a wee bit too far for convenience.
Pretty sure the suicide eternally damned Hitler by church doctrine; that’s one of those big no-nos as far as the papists are concerned…
But yes, the Catholic (universal my ass) Church was and continues to be a great force for evil in the world.
@#9:
But just to be sure on such an important issue, the Pope could have held a Pontifial Mass or whatever, just in case Hitler got past St Peter by way of some technicality. That Hitler had the gift of the gab, and told one helluva lot of Germans what they wanted to hear.
#6
Yes, the Lutherans are no less anti-Semitic than the Catholics. But the NSDAP flourished first in Bavaria and the Rhineland. I believe the Nazi leadership was disproportionately Catholic, if only for geographic reasons.