As I mentioned in a previous post, the historian Derek Hastings has investigated the religious roots of Nazism, not in a broad civilizational sense, but specifically the Catholic groups in Munich from which the early Nazis came. Hastings is the only historian to have done this. I have just read his Catholicism and the Roots if Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (2010)
What he has found is extremely interesting. Although Germany had a Catholic Center party which was ultramontane (pro-papal), it also had a group of reform Catholics who saw Germany’s roles as opposing the papal version of Catholicism and spreading the German version of Catholicism (and there are many Catholicisms in the world).
The theologian Döllinger, who was excommunicated for his opposition to the Syllabus of Errors and the proclamation of papal infallibility, was the most famous. But inspired by him was a loose group of Reform Catholics who opposed ultramontane Catholicism, One was Gerhard Himmler, tutor to the royal Bavarian family, who was the father of the initially pious Heinrich Himmler.
Many of these Reform Catholics were anticapitalist and anti-Semitic and were also eugenicists.
Some drifted away from Nazism after the refoundation of the party in 1925; others became brown priests and were on the outs with the hierarchy which had to deal with an more andore anti-Catholic and antichristian Nazi party. One initial Catholic Nazi (pre-1923) was the Catholic editor and writer Franz Schrönghamer. He very early on, in 1918, wrote an anti-Semitic book about the affinity of Catholicism and Nazism. The Nazis ignored it after they came to power. When Schrönghamer was tried in denazification proceedings his defense was that he left the party in 1923 and in any case couldn’t possibly be associated with the destructive parts of Nazism, because he was so such an active Catholic and so honored by the church. The court believed him and he lived a peaceful life as a popular Catholic writer.
Hastings comments
Schrönghamer lived out the rest of his days as a local Catholic celebrity … until his death Catholic writer; he was never forced to confront his role in the early Nazi movement. Coincidentally, at the time of Schrönghamer’s death in September 1962, preparations were in full swing for the opening of the Second Vatican Council in Rome, which convened in October 1962 and was infused in many ways by the same reform impulses that had shaped the prewar Reform Catholic movement in Munich. While it would be inaccurate to draw any sort of direct relationship between the irenic theological openness of the 1960s and the religious Catholicism espoused by early Nazis – such an examination would in any case vastly exceed the boundaries of the present study – it is nonetheless interesting to note the extent to which the discarding of the Nazis’ early Catholic orientation allowed the trajectory of prewar reformist Catholicism to emerge almost miraculously unblemished after 1945, its exculpatory narrative having been largely written and disseminated by the (anti-Catholic) Nazi mythologizers themselves.
That is, as the Nazis became more antichristian, they attacked Catholicism in general, and did not want to discuss their roots in anti-Roman, anti-Semitic, racist, eugenicist Catholic circles. Therefore German Catholic reformers never had to confront the uncomfortable association with Nazism that some of their members had. It is the usual story of German history.
What does this mean for the modern Church? I am not sure; but it should at last be a cautionary tale. Simply because Catholic circles oppose the Vatican in the name of modern ideas does not mean that they are correct. Racism, eugenicism, and anti-capitalism/anti-Semiticism were all modern, ideas which a group of reform Catholics in German espoused. Reform is not a magic word; it needs to be scrutinized carefully. A deeper problem is who is to say what the correct form of Catholicism is? The Reform Catholics rejected Roman authority; they thought they were just as good, indeed better Catholics than Pio Nono. Ultramontane Catholics had their own share of anti-Semitism. Perhaps Catholics, like Protestants, are ultimately driven to rely of private judgment in the light of the Gospel and of prayer – the Church must always be judged by the Gospel, since the Church, or at least sections of it, is quite capable of deforming the Gospel. I have no easy answer to this conundrum.
“Who is to say what the correct form of Catholicism is?” For better or worse, there is only one genuinely Catholic answer to that question: Such matters are decided by the Magisterium, and no one else. From the time of Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch at the turn of the first/second centuries, until the reigns of JP2 and Benedict in our own time, the Church has been remarkably consistent on this point. The hierarchy rules; the people obey. For “faithful Catholics”, there simply is no other way.
Of course one might argue (and I think one ought to argue) that other approaches are more genuinely Christian. Jesus himself said that while the leaders of the pagans lord it over their charges, “it shall not be so among you.” But in fact it is so among Catholics, and always has been–and I see no indication that the hierarchy has any intention of ever allowing that to change.
I would certainly agree that the Church ought to be judged by the gospel–but it refuses to allow itself to be so judged by anyone except itself. For all practical purposes the gospel is, by definition, whatever the Church happens to be teaching at the moment; and God’s will for his people is, by definition, whatever the Church happens to be commanding its people to do. Hence any attempt, especially by the laity, to exercise “private judgment” as to whether the teaching and acts of the hierarchs are consistent with the gospel is tantamount to heresy and schism, which automatically put one out of the Church. As Pope Leo XIII once wrote:
“There are some who, far from satisfied with the condition of ‘subject’ which is theirs in the Church, think they are allowed to examine and judge, after their own fashion, the acts of authority. A misplaced opinion, certainly. If it were to prevail, it would do very grave harm to the Church of God, in which, by the manifest will of her Divine Founder, there are to be distinguished in the most absolute fashion two parties: the teaching and the taught, the Shepherd and the flock, among whom there is one who is the Head and Supreme Shepherd of all. To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teaching, of submitting with docility to their judgment, and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation. Thus, it is an absolute necessity for the simple faithful to submit in mind and heart to their own pastors, and for the latter to submit with them to the Head and Supreme Pastor.” [Leo XIII, “Epistola Tua”, 17 June 1885.]
Nor can this position be considered an extremist aberration of the nineteenth century, because it is the same position held by Pope Benedict today, as one can see by reading his pronouncements as head of the CDF, especially the “Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei” and the “Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian”. Benedict’s message, like Leo’s, is quite clear: If you want to be Catholic, then shut up and do as you are told; and if you can’t or won’t do that, then leave. My own bishop has explicitly and repeatedly told us exactly this over the course of several years, and claimed the Pope’s authority for doing so. Not surprisingly, it has turned our diocese into the spiritual equivalent of a smoking ruin–but at least now we know where we stand.
Excellent post, Lee. I’m sure that some people will stop their ears saying that “progressives” and “reformists” by definition would never advocate such mean, nasty things, but, of course, that only shows how (a) they are limited by their contemporary ideology, (b) do not have a clue how ideologies and slogans mutate over time and (c) hopelessly blinded to the ethical atrocities committed in progressivism’s name today. Otherwise, they might have second thoughts about mindlessly braying on about “social justice” if they reflected on just who were the people that promoted that concept the most. People like Juan Antonio Primo de Rivera and Father Coughlin come immediately to mind.
While I accept that the official teaching of the Church is indefectible, that it it cannot misrepresent the Gospel, the problem has been “creeping infallibility,” that is, we are bound by whatever the hierarchy says on something or might say on something. The history of anti-Semitism by members of the hierarchy and the refusal (until Vatican II) to accept religious freedom should give one pause. Both are deformed attitudes which were held by the hierarchy, and in fact were widely taught by the clergy, to the point that they seemed to be part of the ordinary magisterium. In retrospect we can see that these attitudes and teachings were wrong – but at the time they seemed to be the “official” attitudes and teachings of the Church, although not the subject of infallible pronouncements.
To say that true Catholicism is defined “by the Magisterium” is simply to beg the question. What is the Magisterium? It’s not an easy question to answer.
The Council of Constance (an ecumenical council) decreed that a council is above a pope. How can that be, you ask? Well, the pope approved some of the decrees but not others, including, of course, the one that said a council is above a pope.
So if a pope is above a council, then the pope was right. But if a council is above a pope, then the council was right.
In addition to this kind of logical problem, there is no official list of the allegedly infallible decrees of the Magisterium. If the pope comes out tomorrow and says that the teaching against women being priests was never infallible dogma and decides to reverse it, what standard will you use against him?
The typical conservative approach to this question is intellectually empty. The traditionalists and sede vacantists are at least trying to be honest about the data.
Mr Podles, the Church has always been what you and others incorrectly call “anti-semetic”. It’s actually called anti-Judaism. The Jewish community has always opposed Christianity since the time of Jesus. The opposition was both passive and active. The active opposition of the Jews forced the Popes , the clergy, and secular leaders to take stern measures within and with out the Church. One only needs to read books like “Jewish Influence On Christian Reform Movements”, “The Plot Against The Church”, “Reckless Rites” and others to see that the measures were justified. Jews, in their desire to inflict harm on the Church would attack Christians directly if it was possible. If it wasn’t possible to do direct harm, infilltrating the Church’s leadership from within or supporting heretical groups like the Cathars and the Protestants on the outside. So it wasn’t “anti-semeticism” hatred of Jews as a race that caused Catholics to fear and mistrust Jews, it was anti-Christianism on the part of the Jews that caused Catholics to take these measures against them
Leon et al, Christ *never* demanded that His disciples or their descendents be “subjects” to *any* authority, at least in the medieval, monarchistic sense that “subjects” have no rights before the crown. St. Peter wrote about “the priesthood of all believers.” That has nothing to do with laity confecting the Eucharist but with the essential dignity that *all* believers have, along with their fundamental spiritual responsibilities.
The whole concept of “the priesthood of all believers” runs counter to the Catholic argument for a kind of class system consisting of prelates, lower clergy and laity. The Church doesn’t mention such a system *specifically* but it’s obvious by the way the prelates govern the Church that they govern with such a view.
Besides, the whole idea that “the gospel is, by definition, whatever the Church happens to be teaching at the moment” smacks too much of Orwell’s 1984. It also explains why so many Catholics fail to criticize the Church’s revisionist stance on capital punishment…and why “apologists” like Mark Shea act they way they do when confronted.
Excellent post above from admin. I am wondering how Fr Angles of SSPX fits into the Nazi Catholic picture and how many sympathizers he has. He is quoted bragging about his parent’s purchase of Hitler’s mercedes at auction and family friendship with Hitler’s filmographer not to mention having certain sspx boys invited to listen to Hitler’s speeches in private with him in St Mary’s,Kansas
http://sspx.agenda.tripod.com/id9.html
Then there is the case of the Nazi Paul Touvier arrested in an sspx monastery in Nice ,France. The investigation uncovered Touvier was supported for forty years on a stipend from the Knights de Chevalier de Notre Dame of which Arch Bishop Lefebvre was the Grand Master.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Touvier
http://povcrystal.blogspot.com/2009/02/paul-touvier-and-sspx.html
http://www.catholicanswer.org/ordre/knights.htm
Joseph, you are exactly right: The magisterial scheme I described is indeed properly described as Orwellian. Unfortunately, it is also a scheme that has been at work in Catholicism for the past 1900 years, and it has tightened its grip century by century until in many people’s eyes–and certainly in the eyes of the Magisterium–it has become virtually synonymous with Catholicism itself.
Crowhill, you do an excellent job of pointing out the inconsistencies within that scheme and of drawing out its contradictions. But from the standpoint of “orthodox” Catholicism all this serves to do is to emphasize the need for still more centralization and still more authoritarian structures. Since the system cannot stand on its own by appeal to facts and logic, it can only hold itself together by an ever-increasing resort to naked authority–and that is what we see all around us: “I am in charge here, and you must do as I say or you are not really Catholic. Now shut up and do as you are told, or leave.”
I think it is instructive to observe what happened in the 19th century to Fr. George Tyrrell, a highly intelligent and deeply sincere convert to Catholicism whose only desire was to be of service to God and the Church. The more Tyrrell learned about the history and practice of Catholicism, the more he discovered that it was riddled with dishonesty at every level. He finally addressed a public appeal to the Magisterium, asking, “Isn’t it possible to be Catholic without all these lies?” The response of the Magisterium was, in essence, “No, it’s not.” Tyrrell was defrocked and excommunicated, and even denied burial in hallowed ground, all because he loved the truth too much to make his peace with the Church’s “necessary lies”.
We see the same sort of lies being utilized by the Magisterium today, and for the same reason: because the structure they have built cannot survive without a bodyguard of deception and duplicity. For me, at least, this raises a very serious question: If Christ is the Truth incarnate, but the Church cannot survive without incessant dishonesty at every level, then in what sense can the Church still be considered Christian?
Didn’t Chesterton once write something to the effect of “christianity hasn’t been tried and found wanting, Christianity has hardly ever been tried.”? Perhaps this idea is especially applicable to Church governance. The Lord was very clear in telling the Apostles they were to serve, to wash feet, to not “lord it over” others, etc. Had his words and example been heeded by more clergy the Church’s history and present state would look very different.
An excellent guide to the corruption of the early Church by pagan ideas of hierarchy and obedience is Allen Brent’s “A Political History of Early Christianity”. He shows how, step by step, the early Church incorporated the structures and values of the pagan Empire into itself, abandoning the values of the gospel in the process, until by the time of Constantine the Church and the Empire were mirror images of each other; as a result, the legalization of Christianity and its subsequent exaltation as the state religion were not so much a triumph for the Christian faith as a corporate merger of two competing but largely similar (and similarly corrupt) institutions.
Once that is understood, all the other horrors that follow become perfectly sensible, right up to our own day.
Dear Blog folks:
I have just discovered this thought-provoking blog and have been pouring through the posts. Many of them reflect my own struggles with the Church. Part of it that what I most value about the USA is the Bill of Rights in the Constitution and liberty. And yes I see the conflict of those ideas with the ideas of the Catholic Church about Church and State.
A rambling post – I guess I’m trying to say keep up with these discusssions. Is liberty and Catholicism possible?
“Is liberty and Catholicism possible?”
Of course. You can be Catholic and be just about anything you like.
The question is whether the Catholic Church will ever *officially* recognize liberty.
The early Church was a champion of liberty as long as it was being denied its own liberty by the pagan state; in fact some of the most ringing declarations ever made on behalf of religious freedom and liberty of conscience were penned by the Ante-Nicene Fathers as they suffered under the lash of Roman persecution.
But once the Church became respectable and made its alliance with the Roman state, its commitment to liberty quickly disappeared. One of the first acts of Constantine after the Council of Nicaea was to begin persecuting non-Catholic Christians for the crime of not being Catholics; and before long, Catholic emperors were exercising the full police power of the state–including expropriation, torture, mutilation, and capital punishment–against those whom the Church deemed to be heretics and schismatics. The catch-phrase was “error has no rights”–which meant that if the Church decides you are in error then you have no rights that either Church or state is bound to respect.
This approach continued beyond the collapse of the Roman Empire, through the Middle Ages, and on into the modern era. In the 19th century, the popes declared in the most strident terms the absolute unacceptability of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, liberty of conscience, separation of Church and state, democratic government, public education … the list is long.
Only with Vatican II was there any significant improvement–and that has turned out to be largely a mirage. Under JP2 and Benedict the Church has been steadily moving away from the position staked out by the Council; freedom of religion has been reinterpreted to mean the freedom of the Church to do as it pleases without interference from the state, and liberty of conscience to mean the right (and obligation) of Catholics to form their consciences in strict accord with the dictates of the Magisterium.
Furthermore, the Church has been increasingly stressing its role as “the authentic interpreter of the natural law”; and since the natural law, in Catholic thought, applies to everyone, this gives the Church a welcome excuse to use the power of the state to impose its own moral views on everyone, Catholic or otherwise, when the balance of political power allows it to do so.
Within the Church itself, Canon Law speaks in glowing (but entirely theoretical) terms about the rights of the lay faithful as members of the Body of Christ. But in practice the laity have only those rights which the hierarchy deigns to allow them; and in practice such rights can be safely ignored because there is no mechanism by which they can be vindicated. If one’s bishop chooses to run roughshod over the rights of the laity (as many bishops do), there is no recourse whatever except an appeal to Rome–which is routinely denied in almost every case.
Sardath:
I don’t know that I would put everything that way. I am concerned – that not only the hierarchy but many Catholic Laity have no problem with authoritarian governments as demonstrated by the discussions about Franco.
When I read scripture, God through his prophets is always telling Israel not to use military means and aliances with pagans but to rely on Him and his promises.
The church wants state tax dollars to its institutions and then finds itself tangled up in whatever immorality that particular set of rulers wants to promote – is not this relying on unholy alliances and not God?
Vickie: It’s all part of the same phenomenon. The Church has long promoted the idea that “obedience is the highest virtue”–not obedience to God, but to human authorities, both ecclesiastical and secular (in that order, of course). This authoritarian mindset creates a natural alliance between right-wing Catholics (both clergy and laity) and right-wing political regimes, whether it is royalists oppressing their subjects, plutocrats oppressing the poor, or fascists oppressing everybody. This was elegantly expressed by Pope Gregory XVI, who declared that “unchanging subjection to princes necessarily proceeds from the most holy precepts of the Christian religion” and celebrated “the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood” which “always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order” but “is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty.”
That’s why the Church instinctively sided with fascists like Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Dollfuss in Austria, Salazar in Portugal–and most likely would have sided with Hitler if he had had the sense to leave the Church alone. It is why Rome did nothing while Catholics were tortured and killed by fascist regimes during the “dirty war” in Latin America. It is why authoritarian cults within the Catholic Church have so much power in the Church today.
Yes, it is an unholy alliance. But the Church has been making unholy alliances ever since it cut a deal with the Emperor Constantine. It’s an integral part of the Church’s method of operating, and has been for a very long time.
It also explains why Catholic school boards, hospitals and archidioscese have sold out their identity and refuse to move against the globalists, eugenicists and enviromental fascists who populate our government.
Allen Brent’s ? another ‘ scholar’ Pleaseeeeee.
He can go to HELLL 4 all i care.
I am tired of this white aging liberals, as a latino i am had it with all of them!!
Thank you all so much for this wonderful dialogue. We live in exquisite times, when ideas can be expressed instantly and eloquently. I just now came across this discussion and am grateful for the education.
“To pluck away the mask from the face of the pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.” Charlotte Bronte
AW
Within the Church itself, Canon Law speaks in glowing (but entirely theoretical) terms about the rights of the lay faithful as members of the Body of Christ. But in practice the laity have only those rights which the hierarchy deigns to allow them; and in practice such rights can be safely ignored because there is no mechanism by which they can be vindicated.
Absolutely well put, Sardath. That’s why bishops were able to hide the truth about sexually abusive priests from pastors and laity. That’s also why the bishops — from Rome on down — have to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting accountability for their actions.
The Church has long promoted the idea that “obedience is the highest virtue”–not obedience to God, but to human authorities, both ecclesiastical and secular (in that order, of course)…. This was elegantly expressed by Pope Gregory XVI, who declared that “unchanging subjection to princes necessarily proceeds from the most holy precepts of the Christian religion”…
Gregory XVI was dead wrong. Sardath, the whole premise you cite contracts two Biblical ideas. One is that God confers on His redeemed through Christ the status of kings and priests. IOW, *all* believers have dignity and profound responsibility that comes from God. That’s what the idea of a “priesthood of all believers” means. The second is the idea that those who hold authority in God’s name aren’t to “lord it over the people” like secular rulers but to sacrifice their own positions to serve the faithful. In Catholicism, sadly, it’s the other way ’round.
There is a great deal in Catholicism, even in the official pronouncements of the highest Church authorities, which blatantly contradicts biblical principles. In my own diocese I have been told repeatedly by the bishop’s sycophants that it is a grave sin to criticize any member of the clergy for any reason, and that criticizing a bishop is tantamount to spitting in Christ’s face because “the bishop is Christ walking among us” and “the greater the dignity of the one offended, the greater the offense.” So it’s quite all right for a bishop to publicly denounce even his most careful and respectful critics as godless infidels and servants of the devil; but it’s a mortal sin for any member of the laity to criticize a bishop in public even if the bishop is publicly uttering baldfaced lies.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with genuine Christian principles as laid down in the scriptures–but it has a great deal to do with the protocols and procedures of the imperial court of pagan Rome.
As for the priesthood of all believers, Rome gave its official response to that idea when Dutch Catholics attempted to implement the ideas of Vatican II on their own territory. They were told: “All believers have the right and duty to take an active part in the mission given to the Church … but they do not have either the right or the duty to give advice to the hierarchy in their exercise of their pastoral task.”
In other words, “We are in charge, not you. Now shut up and do as you are told.”
Sardath, I am left speechless that after all that has happened and come to light, that officials in your diocese told you that it’s a grave sin to criticize any member of the clergy. Yikes! Given that Catholic doctrine itself teaches that members of the clergy (even the pope) are personally fallible, how could such a position even make sense? Have the read any headlines from the past ten years?! Incredible and very, very sad.
This is a wonderful on line study group. I had never heard of “brown priests” before.
All I can remember from my readings is that the pro papal Catholic Center Party was forced out of existence after the 1933 Concordat. If the Reformist Catholics were anti- Roman, anti-Semitic, racist and pro eugenics, then they were certainly not Roman Catholic in any sense. That Himmler’s father was a member of this group indicates why Himmler could have strayed so far.
It was certainly a time for strong condemnations from the German hierarchy and for the support of the Centre Party, not its elimination.
I have also read that the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolph Hoess, was a religious neurotic because as a child his priest broke the seal of Confession and informed his father of his misdeeds for which he was severely punished. This perhaps contributed to his being able to love his own family dearly while at the same time destroying other families.
There is also a question of how many Christian Clergy were conducting some kind of worship services for the Christians running the concentration camps and the death camps. A scary question it is. Research is being done on this topic.
Fr. Michael, our diocese is overrun with people from Opus Dei, the Legion of Christ, Regnum Christi, and other groups that derive their spirituality from Spanish Catholicism. In such groups the primary emphasis is on obedience and docility, and the clergy are considered “holy” by definition–i.e., because of the character imprinted at their ordination, not because of any actual sanctity or spirituality that they might possess. In this view a bishop is “Christ walking among us” just because he is a bishop, even if he causes scandal with almost every word and deed; and a priest is “one of our holy priests” just because he is a priest, even if he is also a sociopath or a serial sex offender.
Such an attitude almost inevitably leads to a dysfunctional church and large numbers of disaffected laity; but it also gives a certain kind of authoritarian personality the security they crave so desperately. If the highest virtue is obedience, and if it is a mortal sin to criticize or disobey those in authority even when they are demonstrably wrong, then all that is required to attain salvation is to keep one’s mouth shut and obey whatever directives one is given. That’s a lot easier than actually forming one’s conscience according to the gospel (which will inevitably put one out of step with those who have not done so) and exerting oneself to live accordingly (which will inevitably put one at odds with those who live otherwise).
And of course it creates a perfect environment for a corrupt hierarchy, who are able to do as they please with virtually no oversight or correction from anyone, and to shut down all discussion or dissent by shouting, “God put me in charge, so do as you are told or you’re going to hell.”
Janice, the Catholic Center Party was forced out of existence only after it committed the single most disgraceful act of its entire existence: giving Hitler the votes he needed in the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act that made him the undisputed dictator of Germany.
It should also be noted that the German bishops repeatedly and insistently expressed their joy at Hitler’s rise to power and their support for his program of “purifying” the German people, including his murderous wars of aggression against Germany’s neighbors.
And despite all the propaganda that was churned out after the war about the Church’s alleged opposition to Nazism, Catholic observers at the time knew better. For example, in 1937 Sheed & Ward, a prominent and highly respected Catholic publishing house, came out with a book called “Fascism and Providence”, which declared:
“The Pope has not pronounced against the Nazis–on the contrary he has a concordat with them, and upwards of a million of the four million Nazis are Catholics, and Catholic Bavaria is their particular stronghold and birthplace. Fascism, in fact, is of Catholic origin and no English Catholic has a scintilla of right to condemn the Nazis. Catholics who do … may be found to be fighting against God.”
Sardath, the church attitudes you are describing equals the behavior of a cult. It makes sense, therefore, that the Index lasted until 1966. Cults and totalitarian regimes try to isolate their followers from any possibly contradictory information.
Do you know who wrote “Fascism and Providence”? I don’t; I’m just asking.
Yikes! I did not know it was that bad, Sardath. I have always wondered how a devout Roman Catholic such as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg could have supported the invasion of Poland.
The main purpose of any religion IMO is for the clergy to challenge people’s consciences and help them to stop rationalizing their sins. These clerics were just sitting on the fence so that they could be acceptable to the winning side. Better read and well fed than dead?
Janice, also keep in mind that the German officer corps was trained to obey superiors perhaps more intently than any other military. Moreover, each German soldier had to take an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler himself (not to the German state or the German constitution). Breaking such an oath — let alone disobeying a direct order — would be considered anathema by the average German solider. Those who acted against Hitler had more courage than we can imagine — especially since most of the highest-ranking officers had resigned themselves to Hitler.
“Fascism and Providence” was written by Joseph Kentigern Heydon.
Sardath, Can you tell us more about Joseph Kentigern Heydon? I googled him and found two books and a mention of his marriage in THE DOWNSIDE REVIEW. Did he write books for a living?
He was probably the last gasp of an age when people were submissive to authorities. Did he ever see the evil in Nazism?
Janice, I can’t tell you anything more about the man because all the books and articles that might provide that information are blocked by Google Books; they are only available in either “snippet” mode (which tells almost nothing) or “no preview” mode (which tells nothing at all). But I think the more important fact is that he was published at all by such a prominent Catholic publisher as Sheed and Ward.
Unfortunately, he was far from the “last gasp” of such thinking. My own diocese in the U.S. is rife with authoritarianism at the moment, and it is making a comeback in many other places as well–including the Vatican. It is worth noting that one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century was Karl Adam, a Nazi sympathizer who once wrote that Hitler was “the liberator of the German genius” and that National Socialism and Catholicism go together “like nature and grace”. He seems to have had considerable influence on Pope Benedict’s ecclesiology; in fact some parts of Ratzinger’s “Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian” are so similar to the corresponding parts of Karl Adam’s “The Spirit of Catholicism” that it’s hard to keep track of which is which.
In Adam’s works we we find many of the same themes that have emerged in Ratzinger’s pontificate: disdain for democracy, disempowerment of the laity, strict hierarchy, a demand that Europe return to its Catholic roots, an easy entanglement with right-wing political leaders, and a “Jewish problem” that won’t go away. There’s a doctoral dissertation waiting to be written on this, if someone wants to take it up.