Richard Dawkins ("Catholicism is Worse than Child Abuse") - Cancelled by American Humanists and Trinity Students!

 

Richard Dawkins and Trinity College Students' Union

(A) Introduction

In 1996, the American Humanist Association gave Dawkins their Humanist of the Year Award. In 2021, they voted to withdraw it, stating he "demean[ed] marginalized groups", including transgender people, using "the guise of scientific discourse". In September 2020 The Hist - or the College Historical Society of Trinity College Dublin - rescinded their invitation to Dawkins to address the society in 2021 citing his stance on the religion of Islam and sexual assault as reasoning for their cancellation. Bríd O’Donnell, auditor of The Hist explained She added the society “will not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members comfort above all else”. 

I will write more about these two organisations. [The Hist was established in Trinity College in 1770, inspired by the club formed by Edmund Burke during his  time in Trinity in 1747. It is the oldest surviving undergraduate student society in the world.] For now, suffice it to say that neither of them saw anything immoral about Dawkins' grotesque attacks on the Catholic Church - even though some of his own followers are embarrassed by them! American Humanists and Trinity students are prepared to tolerate any vicious or lying attack on the Catholic Church because they themselves hate it. Their attitude is similar to that of some Weimar intellectuals in the 1920s and 30s who were so caught up in hatred of the Churches, Capitalists, Army etc that they failed to understand that the Nazis were the real danger! (See Notes [1] and [2] )

[The following is an edited version of the article on Richard Dawkins on my old website (not Blog)  www.IrishSalem.com ]

(B) Richard Dawkins: "Catholicism is Worse than Child Abuse"

In October 2002, there was an article in " The Dubliner" magazine entitled, "The God Shaped Hole" reporting on Richard Dawkins conversation with editor Emily Hourican. In the course of the conversation, Dawkins compares Catholicism to the sexual molestation of children, and argues that Catholicism is worse:

"Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place."

As is clear from the full article, the above is not taken out of context but is an accurate representation of Dawkins' attitude to Catholics.

Article in "The Dubliner" and Reply re "Catholicism is Worse than Child Abuse"

Dawkins stated that:

"....The Roman Catholic Church is one of the forces for evil in the world, mainly because of the powerful influence it has over the minds of children. The Catholic Church has developed, over the centuries, brilliant techniques in brain washing children; even intelligent people who have had a proper, full cradle-Catholic upbringing find it hard to shake it off when they reach adulthood. Obviously many of them do - and congratulations to them for it - but even some really quite intelligent people fail to shake it off, powerful evidence of the skill in brainwashing that the Catholic Church exercises. It's far more skilled than, for instance, the Anglican Church, mere amateurs in the game.

"The Catholic Church also has an extraordinarily retrogressive stance on everything to do with reproduction. Any sort of new technology which makes life easier for women without causing any suffering is likely to be opposed by the Catholic Church. Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place.

" I had a letter from a woman in America in her forties, who said that when she was a child of about seven, brought up a Catholic, two things happened to her: one was that she was sexually abused by her parish priest. The second thing was that a great friend of hers at school died, and she had nightmares because she thought her friend was going to hell because she wasn't Catholic. For her there was no question that the greatest child abuse of those two was the abuse of being taught about hell. Being fondled by the priest was negligible in comparison. And I think that's a fairly common experience.

 "I can't speak about the really grave sexual abuse that obviously happens sometimes, which actually causes violent physical pain to the altar boy or whoever it is, but I suspect that most of the sexual abuse priests are accused of is comparatively mild - a little bit of fondling perhaps, and a young child might scarcely notice that. The damage, if there is damage, is going to be mental damage anyway, not physical damage. Being taught about hell - being taught that if you sin you will go to everlasting damnation, and really believing that - is going to be a harder piece of child abuse than the comparatively mild sexual abuse. .......

 A critic of Dawkins,  Mike Gene replied:

I think it clear that this is raw anti-religious bigotry. We can ignore the letter from "a woman in America" as a) we have no idea whether her account is valid and b) even if valid, it is an anecdote. Since Dawkins is a drum-banger for science, surely he would recognize science would need much more than a vague anecdote to support this contention.

So let's think through on Dawkins' logic. First, where is the science? What scientific evidence does Dawkins offer to support the contention that believing in Hell is a worse form of abuse than being sexually molested? Where is the evidence of this "grievous mental harm" in bringing up the child Catholic? His biased opinion? His emotional approach? An anecdote?

Secondly, it is ironic that Dawkins has the science backwards. There are plenty of studies to show that sexual molestation of a child can have long term, negative effects. Dismissing it as "a bit of fondling" and being "mental damage anyway" is insulting to the many victims of child molestation. And there are plenty of studies that also show that religious belief and convictions, if held seriously, provide a net positive benefit in terms of psychological and physical health. In other words, contrary to the views of Dawkins, being raised a Catholic is not worse than being sexually abused.

But let's follow through with this example of Dawkins Think. As it stands, it is illegal to sexually molest a child. And, of course, it is not illegal to raise your child as a Catholic. But if it is really more harmful to raise your child as a Catholic than to sexually molest your child, as Dawkins believes, society needs to adjust its laws. According to Dawkins' logic, we should a) either make it illegal to raise your child as a Catholic, as it is worse than pedophilia, or b) legalize pedophilia, since it is not as bad as the legal activity of teaching a child about Hell and Catholicism. Which option would Dawkins choose? It's his logic, thus his choice to clarify.

Consider a simple analogy. The house next to your house goes up for sale. Two families are interested in buy it. The first family is a devout Catholic family. The father is hard working and has broken no laws. But he has taught his kids to believe in Catholic doctrine, including belief in Hell. The second family is not religious. The father is also hard working, but he also sexually molests his kids. In Dawkins World, you hope the child molester moves in next door, as he is not as bad as the Catholic man."

 (C) It Should be Illegal for Parents to Indoctrinate Their Children - Petition Signed by Dawkins

In December 2006, Dawkins signed a Petition that upset some of his most devoted followers - so much so that he quickly withdrew his signature and claimed he had "misunderstood" same. In contrast he has never withdrawn his claim that Catholicism is worse than child abuse. While the latter claim worries some of his followers, it is directly entirely at the Catholic Church and therefore a lot more palatable to anti-clerics).

Martin Wagner of "The Atheist Experience" Blog *** wrote in an article called "Has Dawkins Totally Jumped the Shark":

"The petition, authored by one Jamie Wallis using a service on the No 10 Downing Street website that allows users to write their own petitions and gather signatures right there for the PM's consideration, reads as follows:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make it illegal to indoctrinate or define children by religion before the age of 16. In order to encourage free thinking, children should not be subjected to any regular religious teaching or be allowed to be defined as belonging to a particular religious group based on the views of their parents or guardians. At the age of 16, as with other laws, they would then be considered old enough and educated enough to form their own opinion and follow any particular religion (or none at all) through free thought.

"Whoa.

"Let's run through this.

"The first and most obvious thing that comes to mind is that what the petition asks is something that in America is unequivocally unconstitutional: government intrusion in private religious practice. Ed Brayton, over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, has gone into outrage overload at this whole thing, declaring that "as far as I'm concerned, this pretty much removes Dawkins from any discussion among reasonable people." He goes on to a laundry list of entirely valid criticisms.

This proposal is every bit as noxious and totalitarian as a proposal from Christian reconstructionists that those who teach their children about witchcraft or atheism should be thrown in jail would be. Just imagine what you would have to do to actually enforce such a law. No one could take their children to church, which means you'd have to literally police the churches to make sure no children went in. Nor could they teach their children about religion at home, read the Bible with them, say prayers with them before they go to bed. The only way to enforce such a law would be to create a society that would make Orwell's 1984 seem optimistic by comparison.

"In case the "thrown in jail" part sounds a little hyperbolic to you, recall that the petition itself uses the word "illegal," and the general idea is that if someone does something illegal, then they've earned at the very least a citation and at worst imprisonment. Does Dawkins really want people to go to jail for taking their kids to Sunday School? Has he really gone that far over the top?" [End of Quotation from Martin Wagner]

*** The Blog motto seems to be "We feed on the blood of the ignorant!" - but they may not be referring to Dawkins!

My Comment: Dawkins withdrew his signature, claiming that he had misunderstood the Petition, believing it only referred to religious schools. The Petition does not mention schools at all and moreover is perfectly in line with Dawkins claim that raising your child as a Catholic is a form of child abuse.

(D) Hitler was not an Atheist; He was a Catholic - as per Richard Dawkins

On 22 September 2010 the UK Guardian reported that "Richard Dawkins has contacted the Guardian to strongly deny that he compared Roman Catholics to Nazis, rather he said that Hitler was a Roman Catholic." The Guardian then gave a detailed account of his speech that included the following:

"The unfortunate little fact that Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth has been the subject of a widely observed moratorium. I've respected it myself, hitherto. But after the pope's outrageous speech in Edinburgh, blaming atheism for Adolf Hitler, one can't help feeling the gloves are off ..

"Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Or at least he was as much a Roman Catholic as the 5 million so-called Roman Catholics in this country today. For Hitler never renounced his baptismal Catholicism, which was doubtless the criterion for counting the 5 million alleged British Catholics today. You cannot have it both ways. Either you have 5 million British Catholics, in which case you have to have Hitler, too. Or Hitler was not a Catholic, in which case you have to give us an honest figure for the number of genuine Catholics in Britain today – the number who really believe Jesus turns himself into a wafer, as the former Professor Ratzinger presumably does.

"In any case, Hitler certainly was not an atheist. In 1933 he claimed to have "stamped atheism out", having banned most of Germany's atheist organisations, including the German Freethinkers League whose building was then turned into an information bureau for church affairs. ...

"Even if Hitler had been an atheist – as Joseph Stalin more surely was – how dare Ratzinger suggest that atheism has any connection whatsoever with their horrific deeds? Any more than Hitler and Stalin's non-belief in leprechauns or unicorns. Any more than their sporting of a moustache – along with Francisco Franco and Saddam Hussein. There is no logical pathway from atheism to wickedness.

"Unless, that is, you are steeped in the vile obscenity at the heart of Catholic theology. I refer (and I am indebted to Paula Kirby for the point) to the doctrine of original sin. These people believe – and they teach this to tiny children, at the same time as they teach them the terrifying falsehood of hell – that every baby is "born in sin". That would be Adam's sin, by the way: Adam who, as they themselves now admit, never existed.

"Original sin means that, from the moment we are born, we are wicked, corrupt, damned. Unless we believe in their God. Or unless we fall for the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell. That, ladies and gentleman, is the disgusting theory that leads them to presume that it was godlessness that made Hitler and Stalin the monsters that they were. We are all monsters unless redeemed by Jesus. What a vile, depraved, inhuman theory to base your life on. 

"Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity. ..........."

 (E) Extracts from "Hitler's Secret Conversations" (aka "Hitler's Table Talk") regarding Christianity

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc. first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, "Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944", which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:
National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday:
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night:
The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

21st October, 1941, midday:
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

13th December, 1941, midnight:
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner:
There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday:
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

(F) MY CONCLUSION

Hitler was in fact, a Social Darwinist who believed in an impersonal Providence which gives victory to the strong by using a process of natural selection to ensure the survival of the fittest. (He objected to Christianity because he saw it as "a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature ..... the systematic cultivation of the human failure".) In addition Hitler - like Dawkins - did not believe in Original Sin - which the Catholic Church regards as a radical weakness in human nature by means of which we have a "natural" tendency to do evil rather than good.

NOTES:

[1] As per Wikipedia "The College Historical Society (CHS) – popularly referred to as The Hist – is one of the two debating societies at Trinity College Dublin. It was established within the college in 1770 and was inspired by the club formed by the philosopher Edmund Burke during his own time in Trinity in 1747. It is the oldest surviving undergraduate student society in the world. .... Prominent members have included many Irish men and women of note, from the republican revolutionary Theobald Wolfe Tone and the author Bram Stoker, to founding father of the Northern Irish state Edward Carson and first President of Ireland Douglas Hyde, and – in more recent times – Government Ministers Mary Harney (who was the first female auditor of the society) and Brian Lenihan."

Theobald Wolfe Tone, later leader of the United Irishmen rebellion in 1798, was elected auditor in 1785, and future rebel Thomas Addis Emmet was a member of the committee. The society was briefly expelled from the college in 1794, but readmitted on the condition that "No question of modern politics shall be debated". Eight members of The Hist were expelled in 1798 in the run-up to the Rebellion, and a motion was later carried condemning the rebellion, against their former auditor.

Tension between the society and the college flourished in the early nineteenth century, with the auditor being called before the provost in 1810. After a number of members were removed at the request of the college board, the society left the college in 1815. The society continued from 1815 as the Extern Historical Society until 1843, when it reformed within the college again on the condition that no subject of current politics was debated. As per Wikipedia "This provision remains in the Laws of the Hist as a nod to the past, but the college authorities have long since ceased to restrict the subjects of the society's debates." 

The decadence of the oldest surviving undergraduate student society in the world ("we value our members comfort above all else”) is therefore significant and illustrates the truth of the old saying that "A fish rots from the head down"!

[2] The Guardian has a very informative article dated 20 April 2021 on the issue "Richard Dawkins Loses ‘Humanist of the Year’ Title over Trans Comments" The subtitle is "American Humanist Association criticises academic for comments about identity using ‘the guise of scientific discourse’, and withdraws its 1996 honour" 

Like The Hist, the American Humanist Association had no problem with Dawkins' view that raising one's child  as a Catholic is worse than child sex abuse. So exactly WHAT did the AHA object to? 

 On Monday, it announced that it was withdrawing the award, referring to a tweet sent by Dawkins earlier this month, in which he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years.

“In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black,” wrote Dawkins on Twitter. “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”

The Guardian article goes on to give details of a statement from the AHA board:

The AHA said that Dawkins had “over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalised groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values”. The evolutionary biologist’s latest comment, the board said, “implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient”, while his “subsequent attempts at clarification are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity”.

“Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award.”

The claim that Dawkins had "accumulated a history of making statements that .. demean marginalised groups" presumably includes his 2015 remark that: “Is trans woman a woman? Purely semantic. If you define by chromosomes, no. If by self-identification, yes. I call her “she” out of courtesy.”

[3] The Hist and the American Humanist Association are not the ONLY secular organisations to take offence at Dawkins' tweet. The afore-mentioned Guardian article also quotes Alison Gill, vice president for legal and policy at American Atheists (founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair) and a trans woman. According to The Guardian "she said Dawkins’ comments reinforce dangerous and harmful narratives". She said: “Given the repercussions for the millions of trans people in this country, in this one life we have to live, as an atheist and as a trans woman, I hope that Professor Dawkins treats this issue with greater understanding and respect in the future.”

Concordat between Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 1933 and Attempted Concordat with Soviet Union (1920s)

According to the summary in Wikipedia - "The Reichskonkordat  ("Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich") is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State (and later Pope Pius XII) Eugenio Pacelli on behalf of Pope Pius XI and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of President Paul von Hindenburg and the German government. It was ratified September 10, 1933 and it has been in force from that date right up until the current day.  [My emphasis].The treaty guarantees the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. When bishops take office Article 16 states they're required to take an oath of loyalty to the Governor or President of the German Reich established according to the constitution. The treaty also requires all clergy to abstain from working in and for political parties. Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed and intensified afterwards leading to protest from the Church including in the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge encyclical of Pope Pius XI. The Nazis planned to eliminate the Church's influence by restricting its organizations to purely religious activities." [end of Wikipedia quote]

The 1933 Concordat has always been controversial among historians - for  obvious and perfectly respectable reasons - but has also been used by anti-clerics to suggest that the future Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli who signed in his capacity as  Secretary of State to Pius XI, was some kind of Nazi supporter (or "Hitler's Pope" as John Cornwell put it). What is almost invariably ignored in these discussions  is that Achille Ratti (who became Pius XI in 1922) and Eugenio Pacelli who would succeed him as Pius XII in 1939, had been heavily involved in trying to negotiate a Concordat with the Soviet Union in the 1920s! In fact it was Pius XI's predecessor Pope Benedict XV, who employed  Achille Ratti (then Papal Nuncio to Poland) to contact Lenin on behalf of persecuted Catholic and Orthodox clergy. ***

Like the Nazis in 1933, the newly created Soviet Union in the 1920s was trying to make itself respectable in the international community while at the same time, the Catholic Church was trying to protect the rights of Catholics in these newly minted totalitarian states. The Vatican's attempt to come to terms with the Soviet Union should be open to the same objections as its negotiations with the Nazi regime but in practice the former negotiations are almost invariably ignored. No doubt this is partly due to the failure of the negotiations with the Soviets, but is this really the main reason? Surely historians who express very negative views of the Reichskonkordat and impugn the motives of Pope Pius XI and his Secretary of State, should at least refer to their previous behaviour in relation to the Soviet Union; was THAT motivated by sympathy with Communist dictatorship.??

Again to quote Wikipedia (this time on the subject of Holy See - Soviet Union Relations )

"Worried by the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union, Pius XI mandated Berlin nuncio Eugenio Pacelli to work secretly on diplomatic arrangements between the Vatican and the Soviet Union. Pacelli negotiated food shipments for Russia, and met with Soviet representatives including Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin, who rejected any kind of religious education, the ordination of priests and bishops, but offered agreements without the points vital to the Vatican. Despite Vatican pessimism and a lack of visible progress, Pacelli continued the secret negotiations, until Pius XI ordered them to be discontinued in 1927, because they generated no results and were dangerous to the Church, if made public." ........

The article continues:
"Pius XI described the lack of reaction to the persecution of Christians in such countries as the Soviet Union, Mexico, Germany and Spain as a "conspiracy of silence". In, 1937 the Pope issued the encyclical Divini Redemptoris, which was a condemnation of Communism and the Soviet regime." He did name a French Jesuit to go to the USSR and consecrate in secret Roman Catholic bishops. It was a failure, as most of them ended up in gulags or were otherwise killed by the communist regime."

Note that 1937 was also the year in which Pius XI published his condemnation of Nazi ideology and practice in Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow.) [A five-member commission drafted the latter encyclical. According to Paul O'Shea the carefully worded denunciation of aspects of Nazism was formulated between January 16–21, 1937, by Pius XI, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and German cardinals Bertram, Faulhaber and Schulte, and Bishops von Preysing and von Galen.]

One of the few  who does deal with the attempted Concordat with the Soviet Union is the British historian Michael Burleigh in his 2006 book Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda. (see Chapter 3: "The Churches in the Age of Dictators.)  Again I quoted from Burleigh's book in a discussion on the Politics.ie website in January 2012 (see under). In contrast to some of the other points I made, there was little or no reaction to this one; presumably this is because most people have no idea that the Vatican engaged in these negotiations!

Rory Connor
Updated 11 August 2016

*** As per the Wikipedia article Pope Benedict XV and Russia   "During the winter of 1918–1919, some "twenty [Orthodox] bishops were murdered together with thousands of priests and religious". ... Several Orthodox bishops from Omsk and Simbirsk wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XV, as the Father of all Christianity, describing the murder of priests, the destruction of their churches and other persecutions in their areas."

Politics.ie History Forum "Nazis, The Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse"

8th January 2012, 03:47 PM#78

Kilbarry1 

Vatican Concordats

While I'm at it, the following quotation from Burleigh's book concerns the attempts of two future popes - Pius XI (Achille Ratti) and Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) to negotiate a Concordat with the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It throws an interesting light on the frequent denunciations of the Vatican concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933.

Vatican concordats with governments do not imply approval of the governments. Of course there is a danger that a vicious dictatorship will use the agreement in order to boost its international standing - and that is precisely what the Soviet government was trying to do in the early 1920s. Indeed negotiations with the Vatican broke down because several governments - including both Britain and fascist Italy(!) - recognised the Soviet Union in 1924 and the Soviets no longer needed an agreement with the Vatican. However the future Pope Pius XII continued to negotiate even "when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters" !!

.... Both nuncios, Ratti in Warsaw and the younger Pacelli in Munich (until 1925, when he moved to Berlin as nuncio to the German Reich), were closely involved in Rome's diplomatic initiatives with the Soviets. The Vatican initially welcomed the fall of the Romanovs, believing that this would herald a new era of freedom and opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church in the debris of the Tsarist Empire. Benedict XV employed Ratti to contact Lenin on behalf of persecuted Catholic and Orthodox clergy.

In late 1921, the Vatican offered the Soviet Union humanitarian assistance hurriedly incorporating a broader secret agreement which, capitalising on the disarray of the Orthodox Church would - they imagined - have enhanced Roman Catholic activities in Russia. The aid was provided but the wider agreement remained a dead letter. Assisted by the German Government which saw relations with Russia as a means of terminating Germany's pariah status, the archbishop of Genoa held talks with the Soviet foreign affairs commisar Chicherin on board an Italian cruiser with a view to negotiating a concordat. A further series of meetings took place at Rapallo, based on Vatican calls for freedom of conscience and Soviet demands for diplomatic recognition. Effortlessly overcoming the extreme distaste for German (Jewish) Bolsheviks that he is alleged to have expressed in 1919, Pacelli met Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Union's (Jewish) foreign minister, at the Berlin villa of the brother of the German ambassador to Moscow. 

When Mussolini recognised the Soviet Union on 8 February 1924, and was quickly followed by, among others, Britain, Norway, Austria, Greece and Sweden, the Soviets ceased to regard negotiations with the Vatican as important except for the question of aid. Pacelli continued to negotiate with the Soviets in Berlin until mid-August 1925 when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters. However he met Chicherin twice in 1925 and 1927, discovering that his Soviet interlocutors were prepared to concede less and less, and such talks abruptly stalled under Stalin, to whom the Vatican was an irrelevance.

From Sacred Causes by Michael Burleigh - Chapter 3 "The Churches in the Age of Dictators", section II - "The Vatican, Communism and Fascism" page 164

"Hitler's Table Talk", Christianity and the Catholic Church

Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944 
introduced by Hugh Trevor-Roper

Hitler's Table Talk is the title given to a series of World War II private monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler -at the dinner table - to his closest associates, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944. Hitler's remarks were recorded by Heinrich Heim, Henry Picker, and Martin Bormann, and later published by different editors in different languages the most well known version being that by the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper first published in 1953. The monologues clearly reveal Hitler's hatred and contempt for Christianity and the Catholic Church - not that this has prevented generations of anti-clerics from claiming that Adolf Hitler lived and died a faithful Catholic! 

The following are some extracts from "Hitler's Table Talk" as utilized by myself in a 2012 discussion with a rather typical Irish "liberal" who uses the pen-name LongLiberal. The discussion was on the Politics.ie website and my own pen-name is Kilbarry1. Basically I am quoting from Hitler's comments made privately to his closest associates while LongLiberal depends on his public observations in Mein Kamph and in his speeches. I point out that Hitler had a lot to say in public about his desire for peace and I wonder if LongLiberal takes THOSE comments seriously!

I summarise my own view as follows:

Hitler was in fact, a Social Darwinist who believed in an impersonal Providence which gives victory to the strong by using a process of natural selection to ensure the survival of the fittest. (He objected to Christianity because he saw it as "a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature ..... the systematic cultivation of the human failure".)

Rory Connor
updated 7 August 2016

Politics.ie History Forum "Nazis, The Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse"

8th January 2012, 06:24 PM

Kilbarry1 

 Originally Posted by LongLiberal 

Simply, no. 
There are no parallels in this country. One aspect is talking about 1930's Germany and the other is 21st century Ireland. You seem to be trying to push some sort of idea that the Catholic Church were in opposition to Hitlers Nazi regime, which is simply laughable. 
Firstly, the Vatican kept very very quiet during the Holocaust, why is that? 

Hitler himself was a Roman Catholic and often throughout Mein Kampf spoke about "doing god's work". He was baptised and never renounced his baptism. All soldiers in the SS would place three fingers in their belt to signify the Holy Trinity. 
Also, and most significantly the Cardinal Arch-Bishop of Munich, Adolf Bertram, held a special mass in 1939, when Hitler escaped assassination, to celebrate "the fortunate release of the Fuhrer". ........

.

I'm not sure why it is necessary to keep on refuting this nonsense. It has been done before - by myself and others - on the Politics.ie website and the book "Hitler's Table Talk" was first published in 1953. However here it is again.

Extracts from "Hitler's Secret Conversations" (aka "Hitler's Table Talk") regarding Christianity

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, "Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944", which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:
National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday:
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night:
The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

21st October, 1941, midday:
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

13th December, 1941, midnight:
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner:
There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday:
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

Hitler was in fact, a Social Darwinist who believed in an impersonal Providence which gives victory to the strong by using a process of natural selection to ensure the survival of the fittest. (He objected to Christianity because he saw it as "a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature ..... the systematic cultivation of the human failure".)

8th January 2012, 08:33 PM

LongLiberal 

 Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 

I'm not sure why it is necessary to keep on refuting this nonsense. It has been done before - by myself and others - on the Politics.ie website and the book "Hitler's Table Talk" was first published in 1953. However here it is again.

Extracts from "Hitler's Secret Conversations" (aka "Hitler's Table Talk") regarding Christianity

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, "Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944", which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:
National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday:
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night:
The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

21st October, 1941, midday:
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

13th December, 1941, midnight:
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner:
There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday:
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

Hitler was in fact, a Social Darwinist who believed in an impersonal Providence which gives victory to the strong by using a process of natural selection to ensure the survival of the fittest. (He objected to Christianity because he saw it as "a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature ..... the systematic cultivation of the human failure".)

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1



Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1


Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 5


What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 8



Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1



In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following: (a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11




In a public address in Munich - 

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice."



Stuttgart address February 15th 1933 - 

"Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity"

8th January 2012, 10:39 PM

Kilbarry1 

LongLiberal

Regarding your quotations from "Mein Kamph" and Hitler's public speeches, do you understand that the book "Hitler's Table Talk" consists of officially recorded notes of his private conversations with his confidantes at the dinner table during the years 1941 - 44. (Martin Bormann was one of the note-takers.) These represent proof of Hitler's REAL views. Regarding his PUBLIC statements - he made an awful lot about his desire for peace; do you believe those?

Child Abuse, the Nazis and the Catholic Church

Pope Pius XII and Adolf Hitler 

The following are extracts from a discussion on the Politics.ie website on the topic of Child Abuse, the Nazis and the Catholic Church. The name of the topic may appear to be strange but in fact Nazi Germany in the 1930s made allegations of child abuse a major theme of their propaganda against the Catholic Church in Germany.

Quotations are from Richard Evans, "The Third Reich in Power", Michael Burleigh, "Sacred Causes 
: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda" AND from the man himself "Hitler's Table Talk" as noted mainly by Martin Bormann.

John Gray

Saturday 28 October 2006 23.45 BST

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Among other things, I was debating with a contributor,  "LongLiberal" who described the Catholic Church as "this Nazi, pedophile infested, backward, evil and ridiculous organisation". I pointed out that apart from the word "Nazi", his description could have come straight out of Julius Streicher's  anti-Semitic rants in Der Sturmer. Streicher also accused the Jews of murdering children - allegations that were identical to those made by Irish journalists (and at least one politician) against Catholic priests, nuns and brothers. Anyway my discussion with this particular "liberal" concluded as follows:

Regarding your quotations from "Mein Kamph" and Hitler's public speeches, do you understand that the book "Hitler's Table Talk" consists of officially recorded notes of his private conversations with his confidantes at the dinner table during the years 1941 - 44. (Martin Bormann was one of the note-takers.) These represent proof of Hitler's REAL views. Regarding his PUBLIC statements - he made an awful lot about his desire for peace; do you believe those?

Rory Connor

2 August 2016

Politics.ie History Forum: "Nazis, The Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse"

5th January 2012, 11:22 AM

Seanie Lemass 

Nazis, the Catholic Church and sexual abuse.

Was reading Richard Evans The Third Reich in Power which has interesting material on how the Nazis treated the Catholic Church.

First of all it is clear that the Catholics (and the Catholic Centre Party) were regarded after the Communists and Socialists as the main opposition and the main targets of bringing the whole of German society under totalitarian control. One third of Catholic priests were imprisoned by the regime. 

What is also interesting is that the main propaganda instrument used against the Catholic Church was allegations of child abuse. As we know such things did take place in other jurisdictions and no doubt in Germany as well, but the allegations were grossly exaggerated in order to justify the repression.

Are there parallels in this country? Are the instances of child sexual abuse by Catholic clerics which appear to be no higher than among any other cohort of the population being used as the basis for removing its influence from education and other spheres of life? 

For comparative purposes, the Nazis themselves already had highly abusive institutions within their own apparatus. There were several rapes and murders of members of the Hitler Youth on camps during their campaign against the CC.

It was also shown that half of girls fostered in Sweden in the 1950s and 60s were abused and there are over half a million cases of children believed to be at risk reported in Britain every year. 

So is the concentration on the Catholic Church ideologically driven? And if so for what purpose?

6th January 2012, 07:19 PM

Kilbarry1 

Child Abuse, the Nazis and the Catholic Church

The following is from a previous post of mine on the History Forum
Nazis vs Catholic paedophiles

CHILD ABUSE, THE NAZIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The following is an extract from Michael Burleigh's book 'Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda'. Burleigh is a leading historian who has taught at Oxford, the London School of Economics etc. His book explores the attitude of the churches to totalitarian dictatorships and the attitude of such dictators as Hitler and Stalin to the Catholic Church in particular.

"[In Nazi Germany in the 1930s] the state used various forms of chicanery to close Catholic homes and institutions. These ranged from adversely changing their charitable tax status to using the Gestapo to suborn children to make accusations of sexual abuse against those in charge of them.

"Between September 1933 and March 1937 [the Vatican] secretary of State Pacelli signed over 70 notes and memoranda protesting against Nazi violations of the Concordat [1]. The Nazis almost immediately began chipping away at the autonomy of Catholic lay organisations which had apparently been secured by the Concordat..........

"In the mid-1930s these various measures were given a more vicious accent by Government sponsored campaigns involving those old standbys of money and sex. ......Well publicised investigations into these currency violations in turn triggered denunciation of the Catholic clergy for mostly homosexual but also paedophile offences. Between May 1936 and July 1937 there were 270 prosecutions of such men, of whom 170 monks and 64 priests were convicted. A major trial was held in Koblenz in May 1936 which resulted in the conviction of past and present members of a lay nursing order, most of the evidence coming from a former member of the order who had joined the SD [SS Security Service]. The intervening Olympic Games led Hitler to drop further trials, which were resumed with a vengeance after Pius XI's encyclical 'Mit Brennender Sorge' was released in early 1937. 

Hitler immediately the Ministry of Justice to give priority to these 'morality trials'. The Ministry of Propaganda urged the press to treat these trials as evidence of pervasive perversity within the Catholic Church. The press, and caricaturists in particular, had a field day with illicit intimacies in the confessionals or tubby monks whose capacious cassocks concealed several pairs of dainty feet. That summer Nazi publications also attacked secretary of state Pacelli, accusing him of using a visit to Liseux in France to organise the 'moral encirclement' of Germany with the aid of 'friends' in the French Communist Party who were shown holding his cloak. [2] ......

"Tendentious reporting [3] of a small number of sex crimes (involving mainly lay staff) in Catholic boarding schools or religious houses enabled members of the Government to claim that the Catholic Church was awash with sex fiends. There were few holds barred in gathering the evidence, which involved the SD and Gestapo interviewing disgruntled religious drop-outs, ex-pupils and orphans, with offers of sweets alternating with a head bashed into a wall or the threat of concentration camp to secure the appropriate testimony. On this basis minister for the Churches Kerrl could claim that 7,000 clergy had been convicted of sex crimes between 1933 and 1937, whereas the true figure seems to have been 170, of whom many had left the religious life prior to their convictions. The deliberate inflation of statistics was a favoured Nazi device for ramping up hysteria [3], as they would do in 1939 when they turned 5,000 ethnic German victims of the Poles whose country the Nazis had invaded into '50,000'. There was no reporting of similar sexual transgressions involving members of Nazi formations."

The above extract is from Chapter 3, sub-section 111 of Burleigh's book, the part entitled 'The Catholic Church and German National Socialism'.

Notes:
[1] This is Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII in 1939. According to John Cornwell (and other 'liberal' commentators) he was 'Hitler's Pope'. (Cornwell's book of that name was published in 2000).

[2] So the Nazis accused the future Pope Pius XII of being a friend of Communists whereas 'liberals' accuse him of being soft on Nazis! I recall that George Orwell once said that Nazis and Communists have more in common with each other than either has with a democrat!

[3] Regarding "tendentious reporting" and "ramping up hysteria" the following quotation from Hermann Kelly's book 'Kathy's Real Story' is relevant. The author is talking about the use of the term 'paedophile priest' by the media in Ireland.

"According to Michael J. Breen (Studies Autumn 2000) this phrase was used 332 times in The Irish Times between August 1993 and August 2000. The 'paedophile priest' term comes up 265 times in The Irish Times archive between January 1996 - August 2007, yet the terms 'paedophile farmer', 'paedophile lawyer', 'paedophile teacher' or 'paedophile journalist' never occurs." (page 148/149).

As per George Orwell, The Irish Times has more in common with Nazi propagandists than it has with the Catholic Church ......

  

6th January 2012, 07:52 PM

Kilbarry1 

Goebbels and the Pedophile Priests Operation

I'm heading out now but my comment above on the old thread was a response to the following comment by "Brenny"

QUOTE:
I thought this might be of interest to anyone curious about the history of child abuse in Catholic Europe. Many have wondered if and when did anyone ever try to tackle the problem in the past. Was any government ever virtuous enough to face down the power of the Catholic Church over this issue?

Well it seems there was, the good old National Socialists of 1930s Germany. [My emphasis]The author of the following article attacks the old master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, but the whole article itself is tinged with propaganda and spin and seeks to subtly equate opponents of the church with nazism. At the same time many members of the German clergy were strong opponents of the nazis and that is pointed out here and should be acknowledged, but many will feel that Pope Pius was not as opposed to Nazism as he could and should have been.
Goebbels and the pedophile priests operation, by Massimo Introvigne

In 1937 the Nazi propaganda minister organized a campaign to discredit the Catholic Church in response to the encyclical ‘Mit brennender Sorge.’ The head of the German military’s counter-espionage unit, Wilhelm Canaris, passed the documents to Pius XII.

“There are cases of sexual abuse that come to light every day against a large number of members of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately it’s not a matter of individual cases, but a collective moral crisis that perhaps the cultural history of humanity has never before known with such a frightening and disconcerting dimension. Numerous priests and religious have confessed. There’s no doubt that the thousands of cases which have come to the attention of the justice system represent only a small fraction of the true total, given that many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy.”

An editorial from a great secular newspaper in 2010? No: It’s a speech of May 28, 1937, by Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. This speech, which had a large international echo, was the apex of a campaign launched by the Nazi regime to discredit the Catholic Church by involving it in a scandal of pedophile priests.

Two hundred and seventy-six religious and forty-nine diocesan priests were arrested in 1937. The arrests took place in all the German dioceses, in order to keep the scandals on the front pages of the newspapers.
ENDOFQUOTE

6th January 2012, 08:39 PMbetween the bridges 

 Originally Posted by Seanie Lemass 

Was reading Richard Evans The Third Reich in Power which has interesting material on how the Nazis treated the Catholic Church.
First of all it is clear that the Catholics (and the Catholic Centre Party) were regarded after the Communists and Socialists as the main opposition and the main targets of bringing the whole of German society under totalitarian control. One third of Catholic priests were imprisoned by the regime. 

What is also interesting is that the main propaganda instrument used against the Catholic Church was allegations of child abuse. As we know such things did take place in other jurisdictions and no doubt in Germany as well, but the allegations were grossly exaggerated in order to justify the repression.

Are there parallels in this country? Are the instances of child sexual abuse by Catholic clerics which appear to be no higher than among any other cohort of the population being used as the basis for removing its influence from education and other spheres of life? 

For comparative purposes, the Nazis themselves already had highly abusive institutions within their own apparatus. There were several rapes and murders of members of the Hitler Youth on camps during their campaign against the CC.

It was also shown that half of girls fostered in Sweden in the 1950s and 60s were abused and there are over half a million cases of children believed to be at risk reported in Britain every year. 

So is the concentration on the Catholic Church ideologically driven? And if so for what purpose?

Godwin’s in the first post? Well to continue the theme been a member of the hilter youth didn’t effect a certain Roman Catholics cleric’s career…

o                                              

Nec Aspera Terrent..Is Tuaisceart-Éireannach mé. Má tá meas agat ar mo chultúr, beidh meas agam ar do chultúr.

6th January 2012, 09:10 PM

harshreality 

 Originally Posted by Seanie Lemass 

You are missing the point. It is in the history forum as there is a valid comparison in my opinion to be made between the manner in which the Nazis exagerrated the extent of Catholic clercial abuse and the manner in which a similar exagerration of recent abuse has been used as a stick with which to beat it. Both ideologically motivated.

That is not to excuse the abuse of children by Catholic clerics which like all such abuse by whoever is inexcusable. 

Liberator_Rev, I take it that is your own anti-Papist website you refer to! Himmler as a Catholic??? Eh. I don't think so. Perhaps you ought to read the biography someone references above. I also note that your section on the Inquisition relieson 19th century anti catholic historians rather than primary research based studies which undermine the myths about that episode in history.

Yes they treated the Catholic church so badly that the same Catholic church saw fit to assist wanted SS members to escape via a well established and and well used escape route.

o                                              

Liberator_Rev likes this.

6th January 2012, 09:20 PM

LongLiberal 

 Originally Posted by Seanie Lemass 

Was reading Richard Evans The Third Reich in Power which has interesting material on how the Nazis treated the Catholic Church.
First of all it is clear that the Catholics (and the Catholic Centre Party) were regarded after the Communists and Socialists as the main opposition and the main targets of bringing the whole of German society under totalitarian control. One third of Catholic priests were imprisoned by the regime. 

What is also interesting is that the main propaganda instrument used against the Catholic Church was allegations of child abuse. As we know such things did take place in other jurisdictions and no doubt in Germany as well, but the allegations were grossly exaggerated in order to justify the repression.

Are there parallels in this country? Are the instances of child sexual abuse by Catholic clerics which appear to be no higher than among any other cohort of the population being used as the basis for removing its influence from education and other spheres of life? 

For comparative purposes, the Nazis themselves already had highly abusive institutions within their own apparatus. There were several rapes and murders of members of the Hitler Youth on camps during their campaign against the CC.

It was also shown that half of girls fostered in Sweden in the 1950s and 60s were abused and there are over half a million cases of children believed to be at risk reported in Britain every year. 

So is the concentration on the Catholic Church ideologically driven? And if so for what purpose?

Are there parallels in this country?

Simply, no. 

There are no parallels in this country. One aspect is talking about 1930's Germany and the other is 21st century Ireland. You seem to be trying to push some sort of idea that the Catholic Church were in opposition to Hitlers Nazi regime, which is simply laughable. 

Firstly, the Vatican kept very very quiet during the Holocaust, why is that? 

Hitler himself was a Roman Catholic and often throughout Mein Kampf spoke about "doing god's work". He was baptised and never renounced his baptism. All soldiers in the SS would place three fingers in their belt to signify the Holy Trinity.

 
Also, and most significantly the Cardinal Arch-Bishop of Munich, Adolf Bertram, held a special mass in 1939, when Hitler escaped assassination, to celebrate "the fortunate release of the Fuhrer".

What is also interesting is that the main propaganda instrument used against the Catholic Church was allegations of child abuse. As we know such things did take place in other jurisdictions and no doubt in Germany as well, but the allegations were grossly exaggerated in order to justify the repression

It is this kind of sickening comment that do the Catholic Church no favors at all. In modern day Ireland for example all the religous hacks in the media do the Church more damage than good when they spout this nonsensical drivel. David Quinn, John Waters, Breda O'Brien and clearly yourself, just dont seem to get it.

You come with comments that the scale of abuse in the Church was no more widespread in than other aspect of Society, as if that some how minimizes the despair inflicted on its victims.

The reason why abuse in the Church is so controversial is because of its standing in Irish Society for so long and the trust that people placed in that organisation to protect their children and contribute to their upbringing.

The real controversy is not in the abuse itself but more of the covering up of that abuse all the way up to the Pope himself. Their total disregard for innocent children, the interest on the protection of their own majesty and outright refusal to this day to issue a straight apology from the top down.

Bishop Driarmuid Martin, gets it. He gets that what the Church is guilty of is simply inexcusable and has also completely rejected the claim made by yourself that there is anti-catholic, so-called propaganda in the media. You should take a leaf out of his book and accept the abuse in the Church for what it is, abhorrent. But if course you want to still play the victim and blame everybody else. Blame society, blame the media, blame satan, hell blame the victims but just dont blame yourself.

So is the concentration on the Catholic Church ideologically driven? And if so for what purpose?

That is a pathetic question to put to any rational thinking person. For reasons, see above.

Last edited by LongLiberal; 6th January 2012 at 09:28 PM.

6th January 2012, 09:39 PMLongLiberal 

 Originally Posted by Cato 

It wasn't David Quinn who claimed that. It came from a survey that the Iona Institute had carried out by Amarach Research. It found that the average estimate of the number of priests involved in child abuse was 28%, while the real figure, going from an American study, is around 4%. 

Is the figure of 4% greater or lesser than the rate for the general population?

David Quinn and the Iona Institute's assertion are more or less the same thing. 

I remember listening to Quinn and Patsy Mc Garry on the Pat Kenny show and, Quinn conceded that the survey was very deliberate in its timing i.e straight after the Cloyne Report and also that the survey itself asked "completely open ended questions".

I hope Quinn needs plenty of toilet paper, because thats about all that survey is good for his wiping ass.

o                                              

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6th January 2012, 11:50 PM

Liberator_Rev 

5

Catholic politiicians who had disagreements with the hierarchy - imagine that!

Seanie Lemass says:

"Liberator_Rev, I take it that is your own anti-Papist website you refer to! Himmler as a Catholic??? Eh. I don't think so. Perhaps you ought to read the biography someone references above."

I know that for unquestioning Catholics like yourself, Seanie, calling my site "anti-Papist" is enough to dismiss all the historical evidence I have assembled there to support my conclusions. The same goes for your "I don't think so" response. That IN YOUR MIND proves that anything said that you don't agree with is ipso facto WRONG. 

The way I found out that most of the leaders of the Nazi regime were Roman Catholics was by researching their individual histories on the web. I understand why their church can run far enough from these Roman Catholics NOW. But the time their church should have told the world that the Church repudiated everything these "Catholics" stood for was WHEN THEY WERE IN POWER, not AFTER THEY WERE LONG GONE!

As for Himmler, my site doesn't claim that he and the many other Nazi leaders were MODEL Catholics. All I claim is that they lived and died for the most part as Catholic politiicians who had disagreements with the hierarchy - imagine that! - The Catholic Church has had a tool for telling its members and the world about unfit members who should be shunned. It had reasons for not using excommunication on the Nazis, not EXCUSES, but shameful "reasons".

This blog won't allow me to post links, but here's an example of what you WON'T FIND on Catholic web sites about H H : 
"The Himmler family had always been devout and faithful Catholics, especially the young Heinrich whose participation in the mass was very much it seems a spiritual experience for him.

When he was nineteen years old he would confide in his diary: "Come what may. I shall always love God, shall pray to him and shall remain faithful to the Catholic Church and shall defend it even if I should be expelled from it." (He was never excommunicated.)

Later as a practicing national socialist he would order the murder of priests, nuns, monks and others and later advocate the public execution of the pope. He also instructed a senior SS officer to furnish plans to kidnap the pope (neither happened of course.)

Himmler certainly may have eventually displaced his religious devotion from Catholicism to National Socialism but he would certainly be influenced by the ritualism of that church."

o                                              

  

7th January 2012, 08:01 PM#68

Chiara 

Hallo everybody!

I've read all the posts in this thread and would like to express my opinion.
In 2009 the "Pave the Way Foundation" found out that German Catholic bishops had excommunicated the nazist party since 1930.

The first was the bishop Magonza following those of Munich, Colon and others.

No catholic was allowed to subscribe nazist party and no nazist was allowed to take part to Catholic funerals or get the communion.

Then Goering was sent to Rome to protest but the secretary of the Vatican, the future Pope Pacelli refused to meet him, so Goering was received by Pizzardo, but his requests were rejected.
When in 1932 Hitler got the power, German bishops protested, but in vain.

o                                              

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7th January 2012, 08:21 PM

parentheses 

 Originally Posted by Liberator_Rev 

As for Himmler, my site doesn't claim that he and the many other Nazi leaders were MODEL Catholics. All I claim is that they lived and died for the most part as Catholic politiicians who had disagreements with the hierarchy - imagine that! - The Catholic Church has had a tool for telling its members and the world about unfit members who should be shunned. It had reasons for not using excommunication on the Nazis, not EXCUSES, but shameful "reasons".
This blog won't allow me to post links, but here's an example of what you WON'T FIND on Catholic web sites about H H : 
"The Himmler family had always been devout and faithful Catholics, especially the young Heinrich whose participation in the mass was very much it seems a spiritual experience for him.

When he was nineteen years old he would confide in his diary: "Come what may. I shall always love God, shall pray to him and shall remain faithful to the Catholic Church and shall defend it even if I should be expelled from it." (He was never excommunicated.)

Later as a practicing national socialist he would order the murder of priests, nuns, monks and others and later advocate the public execution of the pope. He also instructed a senior SS officer to furnish plans to kidnap the pope (neither happened of course.)

Himmler certainly may have eventually displaced his religious devotion from Catholicism to National Socialism but he would certainly be influenced by the ritualism of that church."

You seem to be contradicting yourself wholesale.

You say Himmler advocated the public exection of the Pope and ordered the deaths of priests monks and nuns and yet you try to claim he was some kind of faithful Catholic.

Of course he may have been influenced by Catholicism as a young man but it seems clear he was an apostate in later life

7th January 2012, 10:26 PM#

Liberator_Rev 

Parentheses, you are a riot!
You accuse ME of 

 Originally Posted by parentheses 

You seem to be contradicting yourself wholesale. (i.e.) 
You say Himmler advocated the public exection of the Pope and ordered the deaths of priests monks and nuns (in his later life) and yet you try to claim he was some kind of faithful Catholic (in his early life).

First of all, I didn't say that the link was to MY OWN SITE, and those were not my own words. But even if they were, why do you charge the author of "contradicting yourself wholesale" and you then proceed to make the very same point made by that author? i.e. 

 Originally Posted by parentheses 

Of course he may have been influenced by Catholicism as a young man but it seems clear he was an apostate in later life.

Why is it a contradiction if OTHERS make that point, but not if YOU do it?

Last edited by Liberator_Rev; 7th January 2012 at 10:56 PM.

7th January 2012, 10:38 PM#71

Cruimh 

 Originally Posted by Chiara 

Hallo everybody!

I've read all the posts in this thread and would like to express my opinion.

In 2009 the "Pave the Way Foundation" found out that German Catholic bishops had excommunicated the nazist party since 1930.
The first was the bishop Magonza following those of Munich, Colon and others.

No catholic was allowed to subscribe nazist party and no nazist was allowed to take part to Catholic funerals or get the communion.
Then Goering was sent to Rome to protest but the secretary of the Vatican, the future Pope Pacelli refused to meet him, so Goering was received by Pizzardo, but his requests were rejected.

When in 1932 Hitler got the power, German bishops protested, but in vain.

Most odd then that the Vatican signed the Reichskonkordat in 1933

7th January 2012, 10:57 PM#72

Chiara 

Yes, maybe odd, it depends on the point of views. After the concordat, Pope Pacelli said to a British embassador that he had to chose between an agreement or the complete elimination of the German Catholic Church. The following are his own words: "I had to chose between being just hanged (concordat) or being hanged, disembowelled, quartered (no concordat).

7th January 2012, 11:03 PM#73

Cruimh 

 Originally Posted by Chiara 

Yes, maybe odd, it depends on the point of views. After the concordat, Pope Pacelli said to a British embassador that he had to chose between an agreement or the complete elimination of the German Catholic Church. The following are his own words: "I had to chose between being just hanged (concordat) or being hanged, disembowelled, quartered (no concordat).

On the other hand :

Link

It was a marriage of convenience between Hitler and the Vatican, one which disenfranchised the Catholic laymen. As Hitler cynically put it:

"We should trap the priests by their notorious greed and self indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a few years' reprieve. Why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantages. Matters will never come to a head. They will recognize a firm will, and we need only show them once or twice who is master. They will know which way the wind blows." [Quoted in Guenter Lewy,The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (2000), pp. 25-26]

7th January 2012, 11:12 PM#74

Liberator_Rev 

 Originally Posted by Chiara 

In 2009 the "Pave the Way Foundation" found out that German Catholic bishops had excommunicated the nazist party since 1930.

This "foundation" is nothing but one Jewish businessman and his wife posing as experts in the history of the Roman Cathoilic Church's role in the Jewish Holocaust, and the quote above is a great illustration of how incompetent they are.

Every scholar in this area knows that "the German Catholic bishops had excommunicated the nazist party" but they also know that it wasn't "since 1930". It was from 1930 only to 1933, when the Nazi ceased being a potentialthreat and became an actual threat. 

When the Nazis actually came to power in early 1933, the R.C. church's leaders made peace "with the Devil". They stopped forbiding the faithful from joining the Nazi Party, they gave in to Hitler's demands that they disband their "Centre Party" - one of the last obstacles in Hitler's path to absolute dictatorial power -, and they signed the Condordat of 1933, whose crown jewel for Hitler (in my estimation) was Article 16, which read:

Before bishops take possession of their dioceses they are to take an oath of fealty either to the Reich Representative of the State concerned, or to the President of the Reich, according to the following formula: "Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the State of . . . I swear and promise to honor the legally constituted Government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it. In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interests of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it."

From that point on, how could any R.C. bishop or priest in Nazi Germany resist the Nazi government, when they had vowed to God not to do so? 

P.S. Both Catholic clergy and the Nazi government also invoked "the Word of God" to require obedience to the government, in the form of "St. Paul" who directed "people of faith" as follows in his Epistle to the Romans 13:1-7:

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience.

For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them--taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. "

7th January 2012, 11:15 PM#75

Chiara 

Yes, in my opinion, Hitler wasn't completely wrong. Unfortuantely a lot of priests cared and still care more to keep self advantages. The question is if the greedy ones were (and are) more than the good ones, I hope not.
Regarding the Pope, nowadays, at last, public opinion recognizes that he was a much better person than he was thought to be.

P.S. Hope I made myself understood in the last sentence. Got some problems wuth my English. 

7th January 2012, 11:23 PM#76

Chiara 

 Originally Posted by Liberator_Rev 

This "foudnation" is nothing but one Jewish businessman and his wife posing as experts in the history of the Roman Cathoilic Church's role in the Jewish Holocaust, and the quote above is a great illustration of how incompetent they are. 
Every scholar in this area knows that "the German Catholic bishops had excommunicated the nazist party" but they also know that it wasn't "since 1930". It was from 1930 only to 1933 when the Nazi ceased being a potential threat and became an actual threat. When the Nazis actually came to power, the R.C. church's leaders made peace "with the Devil". They stopped forbiding the faithful from joining the Nazi Party, they gave in to Hitler's demands that they disband their "Centre Party" - one of the last obstacles in Hitler's path to absolute dictatorial power -, and they signed the Condordat of 1933, whose crown jewel for Hitler (in my estimation) was Article 16, which read:

From that point on, how could any R.C. bishop or priest in Nazi Germany resist the Nazi government, when they had vowed to God not to do so? 

P.S. Both Catholic clergy and the Nazi government also invoked "the Word of God" to require obedience to the government, in the form of "St. Paul" who directed "people of faith" as follows in Ch. 13 of his Epistle to the Romans 13:1-7:

Yes, you're right. But I meant that this organization found the written documents about excommunication..at least it's my information.

Regarding the other points, I've already expressed my opinion in the above post.
Catholic church was involved with nazism of course, but for the majority of them it was the lesser evil.

8th January 2012, 03:18 PM#77

Kilbarry1 

 Originally Posted by LongLiberal 

Simply, no. 

There are no parallels in this country. One aspect is talking about 1930's Germany and the other is 21st century Ireland. You seem to be trying to push some sort of idea that the Catholic Church were in opposition to Hitlers Nazi regime, which is simply laughable. 
Firstly, the Vatican kept very very quiet during the Holocaust, why is that? 

Hitler himself was a Roman Catholic and often throughout Mein Kampf spoke about "doing god's work". He was baptised and never renounced his baptism. All soldiers in the SS would place three fingers in their belt to signify the Holy Trinity. 

Also, and most significantly the Cardinal Arch-Bishop of Munich, Adolf Bertram, held a special mass in 1939, when Hitler escaped assassination, to celebrate "the fortunate release of the Fuhrer". ......

Do you even read previous posts. I quote from no 61

"Tendentious reporting [3] of a small number of sex crimes (involving mainly lay staff) in Catholic boarding schools or religious houses enabled members of the Government to claim that the Catholic Church was awash with sex fiends. There were few holds barred in gathering the evidence, which involved the SD and Gestapo interviewing disgruntled religious drop-outs, ex-pupils and orphans, with offers of sweets alternating with a head bashed into a wall or the threat of concentration camp to secure the appropriate testimony. On this basis minister for the Churches Kerrl could claim that 7,000 clergy had been convicted of sex crimes between 1933 and 1937, whereas the true figure seems to have been 170, of whom many had left the religious life prior to their convictions. The deliberate inflation of statistics was a favoured Nazi device for ramping up hysteria [3], as they would do in 1939 when they turned 5,000 ethnic German victims of the Poles whose country the Nazis had invaded into '50,000'. There was no reporting of similar sexual transgressions involving members of Nazi formations."

The above extract is from Chapter 3, sub-section 111 of Burleigh's book, the part entitled 'The Catholic Church and German National Socialism'.

Notes:
.......

[2] So the Nazis accused the future Pope Pius XII of being a friend of Communists whereas 'liberals' accuse him of being soft on Nazis! I recall that George Orwell once said that Nazis and Communists have more in common with each other than either has with a democrat!

[3] Regarding "tendentious reporting" and "ramping up hysteria" the following quotation from Hermann Kelly's book 'Kathy's Real Story' is relevant. The author is talking about the use of the term 'paedophile priest' by the media in Ireland.

"According to Michael J. Breen (Studies Autumn 2000) this phrase was used 332 times in The Irish Times between August 1993 and August 2000. The 'paedophile priest' term comes up 265 times in The Irish Times archive between January 1996 - August 2007, yet the terms 'paedophile farmer', 'paedophile lawyer', 'paedophile teacher' or 'paedophile journalist' never occurs." (page 148/149).

As per George Orwell, The Irish Times has more in common with Nazi propagandists than it has with the Catholic Church ......

You do understand that in Nazi Germany and in modern Ireland, people who hated the Catholic Church invented and/or grossly exaggerated allegations of child abuse in order to discredit the Church? If you care to investigate a bit further you will also find that these false allegations included allegations of child murder. For example try Googling the phrases "Murder of the Undead" or "Victimless Murders" for allegations that the Christian Brothers murdered boys in their care. (The Nazi pornographer Julius Streicher made comparable claims about the Jews murdering Christian children.)

8th January 2012, 03:47 PM#78

Kilbarry1 

Vatican Concordats

While I'm at it, the following quotation from Burleigh's book concerns the attempts of two future popes - Pius XI (Achille Ratti) and Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) to negotiate a Concordat with the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It throws an interesting light on the frequent denunciations of the Vatican concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933.

Vatican concordats with governments do not imply approval of the governments. Of course there is a danger that a vicious dictatorship will use the agreement in order to boost its international standing - and that is precisely what the Soviet government was trying to do in the early 1920s. Indeed negotiations with the Vatican broke down because several governments - including both Britain and fascist Italy(!) - recognised the Soviet Union in 1924 and the Soviets no longer needed an agreement with the Vatican. However the future Pope Pius XII continued to negotiate even "when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters" !!

.... Both nuncios, Ratti in Warsaw and the younger Pacelli in Munich (until 1925, when he moved to Berlin as nuncio to the German Reich), were closely involved in Rome's diplomatic initiatives with the Soviets. The Vatican initially welcomed the fall of the Romanovs, believing that this would herald a new era of freedom and opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church in the debris of the Tsarist Empire. Benedict XV employed Ratti to contact Lenin on behalf of persecuted Catholic and Orthodox clergy.

In late 1921, the Vatican offered the Soviet Union humanitarian assistance hurriedly incorporating a broader secret agreement which, capitalising on the disarray of the Orthodox Church would - they imagined - have enhanced Roman Catholic activities in Russia. The aid was provided but the wider agreement remained a dead letter. Assisted by the German Government which saw relations with Russia as a means of terminating Germany's pariah status, the archbishop of Genoa held talks with the Soviet foreign affairs commisar Chicherin on board an Italian cruiser with a view to negotiating a concordat. A further series of meetings took place at Rapallo, based on Vatican calls for freedom of conscience and Soviet demands for diplomatic recognition. Effortlessly overcoming the extreme distaste for German (Jewish) Bolsheviks that he is alleged to have expressed in 1919, Pacelli met Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Union's (Jewish) foreign minister, at the Berlin villa of the brother of the German ambassador to Moscow. 

When Mussolini recognised the Soviet Union on 8 February 1924, and was quickly followed by, among others, Britain, Norway, Austria, Greece and Sweden, the Soviets ceased to regard negotiations with the Vatican as important except for the question of aid. Pacelli continued to negotiate with the Soviets in Berlin until mid-August 1925 when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters. However he met Chicherin twice in 1925 and 1927, discovering that his Soviet interlocutors were prepared to concede less and less, and such talks abruptly stalled under Stalin, to whom the Vatican was an irrelevance.

From Sacred Causes by Michael Burleigh - Chapter 3 "The Churches in the Age of Dictators", section II - "The Vatican, Communism and Fascism" page 164

8th January 2012, 04:03 PM#79

Seanie Lemass 

 Originally Posted by between the bridges 

Godwin’s in the first post? Well to continue the theme been a member of the hilter youth didn’t effect a certain Roman Catholics cleric’s career…

There were 18.9 million people of the eligable age to join the HJ when the Pope did. 18.7 million of them did. Now, think about that. You reckon they were all enthusiasts? Do you understand anything about totalitarianism?

8th January 2012, 04:06 PM#80

Seanie Lemass 

 Originally Posted by Chiara 

Yes, in my opinion, Hitler wasn't completely wrong. Unfortuantely a lot of priests cared and still care more to keep self advantages. The question is if the greedy ones were (and are) more than the good ones, I hope not.
Regarding the Pope, nowadays, at last, public opinion recognizes that he was a much better person than he was thought to be.

P.S. Hope I made myself understood in the last sentence. Got some problems wuth my English. 

And they built the autobanhen!

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8th January 2012, 04:31 PM

between the bridges 

 Originally Posted by Seanie Lemass 

There were 18.9 million people of the eligable age to join the HJ when the Pope did. 18.7 million of them did. Now, think about that. You reckon they were all enthusiasts? Do you understand anything about totalitarianism?

so i shouldn't judge a whole orginasition on the basis of some/one bad apple/s? 

as for 'totalitarianism' i am unionist don't you know we wrote the book..

8th January 2012, 05:28 PM

LongLiberal 

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8th January 2012, 06:24 PM

Kilbarry1 

 Originally Posted by LongLiberal 

Simply, no. 
There are no parallels in this country. One aspect is talking about 1930's Germany and the other is 21st century Ireland. You seem to be trying to push some sort of idea that the Catholic Church were in opposition to Hitlers Nazi regime, which is simply laughable. 
Firstly, the Vatican kept very very quiet during the Holocaust, why is that? 

Hitler himself was a Roman Catholic and often throughout Mein Kampf spoke about "doing god's work". He was baptised and never renounced his baptism. All soldiers in the SS would place three fingers in their belt to signify the Holy Trinity. 
Also, and most significantly the Cardinal Arch-Bishop of Munich, Adolf Bertram, held a special mass in 1939, when Hitler escaped assassination, to celebrate "the fortunate release of the Fuhrer". ........

.

I'm not sure why it is necessary to keep on refuting this nonsense. It has been done before - by myself and others - on the Politics.ie website and the book "Hitler's Table Talk" was first published in 1953. However here it is again.

Extracts from "Hitler's Secret Conversations" (aka "Hitler's Table Talk") regarding Christianity

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, "Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944", which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:
National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday:
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night:
The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

21st October, 1941, midday:
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

13th December, 1941, midnight:
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner:
There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday:
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

Hitler was in fact, a Social Darwinist who believed in an impersonal Providence which gives victory to the strong by using a process of natural selection to ensure the survival of the fittest. (He objected to Christianity because he saw it as "a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature ..... the systematic cultivation of the human failure".)

8th January 2012, 06:49 PM

Kilbarry1 

Child Killing Allegations by Anti-Clerics: Nazis and "Lliberals"

HOWEVER the subject of this thread is "Nazis, the Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse"

It is a fact that the Nazis launched a campaign against the Catholic Church that involved invented or grossly exaggerated allegations of child sexual abuse. it is also a fact that the Nazis did the same in relation to the Jews - and in their case included allegations that Christian children were murdered by Jews.

In his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", William Shirer has this to say about Hitler's favourite anti-Semite Julius Streicher:
"A famous fornicator he made his fame and fortune as a blindly fanatical anti-Semite. His notorious weekly Der Stuermer thrived on lurid tales of Jewish sexual crimes and Jewish "ritual murders"; its obscenity was nauseating even to many Nazis".

You will note that not all Nazis were enthusiastic about Herr Streicher and his allegations.

The following is an extract from my own website:

This website is about false allegations of child abuse - mainly those directed at the Catholic Church in Ireland. I do not dispute that there are real cases of abuse of children by clerics but my contention is that these have been used as an excuse to launch a witch-hunt. This witch-hunt has now spread to every part of our society so that every teacher, doctor, nurse, social worker etc has to take specific precautions to guard against becoming the target of a false accusation. ........

"Letter to Sunday Tribune re Child-Killing Allegations"
Christian Brothers, Child Killing Allegations, Letter to Sunday Tribune
is a summary of several allegations that the Christian Brothers were responsible for killing children in their care. (We are not talking about negligence here.) The allegations were made in a 4 to 5 year period beginning in 1999 (i.e. just after the broadcast of Mary Raftery's "States of Fear" series by the national broadcast company RTE in April/May of that year). Prior to the broadcast of "States of Fear", there was just one allegation of that type and it was directed at the Sisters of Mercy. I have discussed this in the essay "Sister Xavieria and "Child Killing" in Goldenbridge". 
Sister Xavieria, Sisters of Mercy, 'Child Killing' in Goldenbridge
(This allegation followed RTE's broadcast of Louis Lentin's documentary "Dear Daughter" in February 1996 which made serious allegations against the Sisters of Mercy in Goldenbridge residential school.)

The above is more relevant to the subject of this thread than general claims that "Hitler was a Catholic" etc Also the people who made these false claims seem to have got away with it, whereas even some Nazis were nauseated by Julius Streicher.

8th January 2012, 07:29 PM

Kilbarry1 

Child Killing Allegations by Anti-Clerics: Nazis and "Lliberals"

 Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 

.........

The following is an extract from my own website:

This website is about false allegations of child abuse - mainly those directed at the Catholic Church in Ireland. I do not dispute that there are real cases of abuse of children by clerics but my contention is that these have been used as an excuse to launch a witch-hunt. This witch-hunt has now spread to every part of our society so that every teacher, doctor, nurse, social worker etc has to take specific precautions to guard against becoming the target of a false accusation. ........

"Letter to Sunday Tribune re Child-Killing Allegations"
Christian Brothers, Child Killing Allegations, Letter to Sunday Tribune
is a summary of several allegations that the Christian Brothers were responsible for killing children in their care. (We are not talking about negligence here.) The allegations were made in a 4 to 5 year period beginning in 1999 (i.e. just after the broadcast of Mary Raftery's "States of Fear" series by the national broadcast company RTE in April/May of that year). Prior to the broadcast of "States of Fear", there was just one allegation of that type and it was directed at the Sisters of Mercy. I have discussed this in the essay "Sister Xavieria and "Child Killing" in Goldenbridge". 
Sister Xavieria, Sisters of Mercy, 'Child Killing' in Goldenbridge
(This allegation followed RTE's broadcast of Louis Lentin's documentary "Dear Daughter" in February 1996 which made serious allegations against the Sisters of Mercy in Goldenbridge residential school.) ........

I'm heading off now BUT
Louis Lentin is Jewish. A better example of "biting off your nose to spite your face" would be almost impossible to find!
Louis Lentin, Christine Buckley, Gerry Kelly, False Allegations against Sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers

8th January 2012, 08:16 PM

TommyO'Brien 

 Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 

I'm heading off now

Don't rush back.

8th January 2012, 08:33 PM

LongLiberal 

 Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 

I'm not sure why it is necessary to keep on refuting this nonsense. It has been done before - by myself and others - on the Politics.ie website and the book "Hitler's Table Talk" was first published in 1953. However here it is again.

Extracts from "Hitler's Secret Conversations" (aka "Hitler's Table Talk") regarding Christianity

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, "Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944", which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:
National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday:
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night:
The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

21st October, 1941, midday:
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

13th December, 1941, midnight:
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner:
There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday:
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

Hitler was in fact, a Social Darwinist who believed in an impersonal Providence which gives victory to the strong by using a process of natural selection to ensure the survival of the fittest. (He objected to Christianity because he saw it as "a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature ..... the systematic cultivation of the human failure".)

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1



Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1


Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 5


What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 8



Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1



In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following: (a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged. 

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11




In a public address in Munich - 

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice."



Stuttgart address February 15th 1933 - 

"Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity"

8th January 2012, 08:41 PM

LongLiberal 

 Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 

HOWEVER the subject of this thread is "Nazis, the Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse"

It is a fact that the Nazis launched a campaign against the Catholic Church that involved invented or grossly exaggerated allegations of child sexual abuse. it is also a fact that the Nazis did the same in relation to the Jews - and in their case included allegations that Christian children were murdered by Jews.

In his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", William Shirer has this to say about Hitler's favourite anti-Semite Julius Streicher:
"A famous fornicator he made his fame and fortune as a blindly fanatical anti-Semite. His notorious weekly Der Stuermer thrived on lurid tales of Jewish sexual crimes and Jewish "ritual murders"; its obscenity was nauseating even to many Nazis".

You will note that not all Nazis were enthusiastic about Herr Streicher and his allegations.

The following is an extract from my own website:

This website is about false allegations of child abuse - mainly those directed at the Catholic Church in Ireland. I do not dispute that there are real cases of abuse of children by clerics but my contention is that these have been used as an excuse to launch a witch-hunt. This witch-hunt has now spread to every part of our society so that every teacher, doctor, nurse, social worker etc has to take specific precautions to guard against becoming the target of a false accusation. ........

"Letter to Sunday Tribune re Child-Killing Allegations"
Christian Brothers, Child Killing Allegations, Letter to Sunday Tribune
is a summary of several allegations that the Christian Brothers were responsible for killing children in their care. (We are not talking about negligence here.) The allegations were made in a 4 to 5 year period beginning in 1999 (i.e. just after the broadcast of Mary Raftery's "States of Fear" series by the national broadcast company RTE in April/May of that year). Prior to the broadcast of "States of Fear", there was just one allegation of that type and it was directed at the Sisters of Mercy. I have discussed this in the essay "Sister Xavieria and "Child Killing" in Goldenbridge". 
Sister Xavieria, Sisters of Mercy, 'Child Killing' in Goldenbridge
(This allegation followed RTE's broadcast of Louis Lentin's documentary "Dear Daughter" in February 1996 which made serious allegations against the Sisters of Mercy in Goldenbridge residential school.)

The above is more relevant to the subject of this thread than general claims that "Hitler was a Catholic" etc Also the people who made these false claims seem to have got away with it, whereas even some Nazis were nauseated by Julius Streicher.

HOWEVER the subject of this thread is "Nazis, the Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse"

waffle waffle waffle

You claimed "it is a fact that ..." - the opinion of an American Journalist is far from from fact. Quite the opposite.


Also I see your website there and its great that lunatics like are go to the lengths you do as it only contributes the impending annihilation of this Nazi, pedophile infested, backward, evil and ridiculous organisation.

8th January 2012, 10:19 PM#89

Kilbarry1 

Anti-Clericalism and Anti-Semitism

 Originally Posted by LongLiberal 

You claimed "it is a fact that ..." - the opinion of an American Journalist is far from from fact. Quite the opposite.


Also I see your website there and its great that lunatics like are go to the lengths you do as it only contributes the impending annihilation of this Nazi, pedophile infested, backward, evil and ridiculous organisation.

By "the opinion of an American journalist" I presume you mean William Shirer's depiction of Julius Streicher as a vicious pornographer who made false sexual allegations against Jews - up to and including the ritual murder of children? There is nothing at all controversial about Shirer's "opinion". The following is from the Wikipedia article on Julius Streicher and his newspaper Der Sturmer.
Julius Streicher - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...... Streicher’s opponents complained to authorities that Der Stürmer violated a statute against religious offense with his constant promulgation of the “blood libel” — the medieval accusation that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzoh. Streicher argued that his accusations were based on race, not religion, and that his communications were political speech, and therefore protected by the German constitution.[5]

Streicher orchestrated his early campaigns against Jews to make the most extreme possible claims, short of violating a law that might get the paper shut down. ........ He claimed that Jews were white-slavers and were responsible for over 90 percent of the prostitutes in the country. Real unsolved killings in Germany, especially of children or women, were often confidently explained in the pages of Der Stürmer as cases of “Jewish ritual murder.”

One of Streicher’s constant themes was the sexual violation of ethnically German women by Jews, a subject which served as an excuse to publish semi-pornographic tracts and images detailing degrading sexual acts. These “essays” proved an especially appealing feature of the paper for young men. With the help of his notorious cartoonist, Phillip "Fips" Rupprecht, Streicher published image after image of gruesome Jewish stereotypes and sexually-charged encounters. His portrayal of Jews as subhuman and evil is widely considered to have played a critical role in the dehumanization and marginalization of the Jewish minority in the eyes of common Germans .....

Streicher also combed the pages of the Talmud and the Old Testament in search of passages which could paint their ancient Jewish authors as harsh or cruel, a practice which continues to this day among anti-Semites. In 1929, this close study of Jewish scripture helped convict Streicher in a case known as “The Great Nuremberg Ritual Murder Trial.” His familiarity with Jewish text was proof to the court that his attacks were religious in nature; Streicher was found guilty and imprisoned for two months. .........

The allegations of child murder against the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy have now been discredited, and even those who made them, no longer try to repeat them. But perhaps LongLiberal believes them still?? It might explain his description of the Catholic Church as "this Nazi, pedophile infested, backward, evil and ridiculous organisation". Apart from the word "Nazi", this string of obscenities could be taken from the pages of Der Sturmer, as Streicher's depiction of the Jews!

8th January 2012, 10:39 PM

Kilbarry1 

LongLiberal

Regarding your quotations from "Mein Kamph" and Hitler's public speeches, do you understand that the book "Hitler's Table Talk" consists of officially recorded notes of his private conversations with his confidantes at the dinner table during the years 1941 - 44. (Martin Bormann was one of the note-takers.) These represent proof of Hitler's REAL views. Regarding his PUBLIC statements - he made an awful lot about his desire for peace; do you believe those?