Hitler was a Catholic

[BurtWorm]

If you're going to cite the "atheist genocides" to counter the image of Christian inquisitions, pogroms and wars, at least be honest about Hitler. Please. Can we agree on that at least?

[JonQ]

1. I don't know if he was a catholic

he was in to a variety of strange beliefs. He sort of picked and chose belief systems as he saw fit. He certainly tolerated and worked with the catholics but calling him one is a stretch.

[BurtWorm]

2. Do you agree with me that he was not an atheist?

[JonQ]

3. Don't know

he certainly was in to the occult and spirtualism, so he must have had a belief in the supernatural.

Whether he thought there was some god that ruled over everything, I couldn't speculate. I imagine he was the type to believe there were none higher than his own ego.

[darkstar3]

5. Which equates to atheism in what way, exactly? n/t

[JonQ]

9. Elaborate

the word atheism has been used in many ways.

In particular there is one usage where it means the belief in no deities or anything spiritual/immaterial. So anything that could be classified as in any way supernatural would be out.

In another it is used only for the lack of belief in actual deities but spirtualism is allowed, so belief in karma for instance could be considered acceptable.

By the first definition, no he wasn't an atheist.

By the second, perhaps he was.

[darkstar3]

13. The word atheism is used in many ways

only by those who do not understand it or wish to attack it.

Atheism is no more and no less than its definition from the Greek: A lack of belief in any gods. Spiritualism, supernatural forces, and other such things don't factor in either way, but do tend to get left by the wayside when it becomes clear that there is no more evidence for those things than there is for a god-like creature. To be clear, however, atheism simply addresses the belief in gods. Everything else is just garnish.

What got me from your post was this:
'I imagine he was the type to believe there were none higher than his own ego.'
I was simply curious why you said this. Imaginings aside, how does ego have anything to do with atheism?

[JonQ]

21. . . .

at that point I was addressing the question whether or not he believed in some deity higher than himself (an essential part of theism).

From what I've read on the subject I very much doubt he did.

And your post pointed out exactly how the term is open to multiple interpretations. A lack of belief in god, fine, but how do you define god? Does a universe that rewards proper behavior but is not embodied by an elderly gentleman with a white beard count? What about supernatural beings that have some role in your life but are not all powerful, all seeing and did not create the universe?

You can't say the meaning is simple when the definition relies on a term that is vaguely defined.

[darkstar3]

26. How do you define God?

Well, if you really want to know, you get out the dictionary.

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=god

I really don't see how there is vagueness in that definition.

[JonQ]

31. You're right, anything with at least 8 different definitions

couldn't possibly be considered vague.

1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.
2. the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular attribute: the God of Islam.
3. (lowercase) one of several deities, esp. a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.
4. (often lowercase) a supreme being according to some particular conception: the god of mercy.
5. Christian Science. the Supreme Being, understood as Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle.
6. (lowercase) an image of a deity; an idol.
7. (lowercase) any deified person or object.
8. (often lowercase) Gods, Theater.
a. the upper balcony in a theater.
b. the spectators in this part of the balcony.

And in the scenario I offered, could you come up with a definition that absolutely precludes the typical concept of god from a karmic system that rules over all of us, or any number of similiar spiritual beliefs.

[darkstar3]

32. Would you mind linking to where you found all of those?

It seems to me that definition 8 is a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters in a philosophical/theological debate, and as for the rest, they didn't come from my link.

In my link, the common theme on God or gods in general is that they are personified. Karma, the universe, etc. do not equate to any type of God, since there is no actual personification being done in those cases.

[BurtWorm]

30. I suspect most people in the world don't believe in a deity.

But they believe they'll be damned to hell for that lack of theirs.

[Dorian Gray]

46. I don't think he was an atheist

though I also don't think he was a practicing Catholic by the time he led the Nazi party, either. He was baptized and never formally excommunicated. But most ex-Catholics are never formally excommunicated. I think that his religiosity was more bound in a neo-Occultism/Nationalisim, using threads of Lutheranism as a state religion in order to appeal to the majority Christian Germans.

[DeSwiss]

53. Hitler just hung-out with Catholics a lot......

....and it looks like they liked to hang-out with the Nazis too.







- Of course you don't have to believe your lying eyes. You can return you head to the sand now.....

[baldguy]

4. The state-mandated atheism of the USSR was one of the things Hitler was fighting to eliminate

If that indicates anything, it's that when govts go around imposing their dogma on a subjugated people it will end badly for the people.

[TexasProgresive]

6. Yeah, and I heard he was also a Jew

So what. I never saw where it was claimed that Hitler was an atheist. Now Mao was an atheist, Stalin who when to seminary was an atheist, I'm guessing Pol Pot was an atheist- Lenin certainly was.

Atheism is no panacea - will not guarantee peace and harmony. People are filled with all kinds of feelings that cause some to kill and maim others to be caring and helpful to others. Most of us no matter our religious belief or not are somewhere in the middle - thankfully.

People who kill in the name of God and people who kill to cleanse the state of believers are no different - they are killers and God or not has nothing to do with it.

This is an invalid argument and if I could remember my Logic 101 I would name it.

[BurtWorm]

8. I'm not equating Hitler's Catholicism with his genocide.

I'm merely stating a fact,that he was not an atheist.

For examples of this assertion, look at any discussion of religion, atheism and genocide. Hitler is almost invariably listed with Stalin and Mao as examples of atheistic murderers. For example:

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/10/atheists_as_religious_kooks.php#comment-299351

Yeah, the need to believe that absent God, there would be no violent fanatacism is simply not supported by history, or the basic principles of reason. People say it because they want to project how evolved they are. The fact of the matter is the most prolific mass murderers of the last century were Atheists. Mao? Stalin? Hitler (depending on who you ask)?

[struggle4progress]

12. From the NPR story at your link:

... Jesus Paints His Nails shows an effeminate Jesus after the crucifixion, applying polish to the nails that attach his hands to the cross.

"I wouldn't want this on my wall," says Stuart Jordan, an atheist who advises the evidence-based group Center for Inquiry on policy issues. The Center for Inquiry hosted the art show.

Jordan says the exhibit created a firestorm from offended believers, and he can understand why. But, he says, the controversy over this exhibit goes way beyond Blasphemy Day. It's about the future of the atheist movement — and whether to adopt the "new atheist" approach — a more aggressive, often belittling posture toward religious believers ...

"I consider them atheist fundamentalists," <Paul Kurtz who founded the Center for Inquiry three decades ago> says. "They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, they're very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good." ...

A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889251

[BurtWorm]

14. What does that have to do with the subject at hand?

Which is Hitler's religion.

[struggle4progress]

17. If it's irrelevant, why did you link to it?

[BurtWorm]

19. I linked to the comment, which was relvant.

What's your point, anyway?

[TexasProgresive]

35. That;s just rank ignorance of history- all to common today

To call Hitler an atheist is like denying the Holocaust also forgetting that another 6 million people died in Hitler's death camps besides the 6 million Jews.
'

[struggle4progress]

7. Let us see your argument, with supporting evidence, for your thesis

[baldguy]

10. Adolf Hitler's Catholicism is well documented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler#Religious_beliefs

http://nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." - Adolf Hitler, 1941

[struggle4progress]

15. ... for .. many .. historians it is beyond doubt that Hitler held a "fundamental antagonism" towards

.. Christian churches ...

<from your first link>

[BurtWorm]

18. Why did he call himself a Catholic then?

I don't doubt that he had ambiguous feelings toward his chuirch. Most people do.

[darkstar3]

33. Which is why he wrote that he was doing God's work?

:shrug:

[struggle4progress]

16. ... Hitler had a general plan .. to destroy Christianity within the Reich ...

<from your first link>

[struggle4progress]

23. See the account of his former roommate, August Kubizek, "The Young Hitler I Knew" at p 95

http://books.google.com/books?id=vV0BpSKYJ6QC&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=August+Kubizek.+The+Young+Hitler+I+Knew.+%22I+do+not+think+he+ever+attended+mass%22&source=bl&ots=fsz1nWe9_S&sig=mxyOntETYN_vcwKqOif-EncB788&hl=en&ei=aVjnSpSWLpDelAfY0NX-Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Kubizek says Hitler did not attend mass, even when his mother begged him to

[BurtWorm]

25. How many Hitlers are there among young Catholics, I wonder.

:o

[baldguy]

34. So he has that in common with half the Catholics in America.

It doesn't matter what his roommate says, it matters what he says. And Hitler claimed until the end of his life that he was a Catholic.

The fact is, at the time Hitler, his family, and the people close to him considered him to be a Catholic, well rooted in the religious & social traditions of Germany. And just because some latter-day historians & Catholic apologists insist that he wasn't, and instead he was some alien "other", doesn't change that fact.

[BurtWorm]

11. What religion was Hitler raised in? Roman Catholicism.

What religion did he identify as his own religion? According to Hitler: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_beliefs#cite_note-10>

Thus, if we take him at his word, he was a Catholic, regardless of what he may have actually believed, which we don't have access to.

Does this mean his acts of genocide were "Catholic" acts? I don't make that claim.

[struggle4progress]

28. See my #23.There's no evidence he practiced as a Catholic in adulthood,

though we do know his storm-troopers smashed up churches and his dictatorship sent hundredes of CAtholic priests to concentration camnps

[BurtWorm]

29. And yet the Pope blessed Hitler and looked the other way.

And Father Coughlin did Hitler's work in America. So many contradictions!

[struggle4progress]

36. Do you have a link for the Pope blessing Hitler?

[darkstar3]

37. See #22

Hitler wrote everything down with regard to what he believed and his motivation for his actions in Mein Kampf.

[TreasonousBastard]

20. WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?

Hitler started out as a nice catholic boy who grew up to accept some really wierd spiriualist beliefs, and was surrounded by some really bizarre whackos.

But, what does that possibly have to do with his actions? His war? His murders? His pogroms?

He was not driven by religion, he was driven by his personal demons and a perversion of German nationalism.

[BurtWorm]

24. My point exactly.

You can point to Catholic reaction to the rise of Protestantism as a major reason for the Inquisition, but Hitler's genocide is much more complex. Religion alone, though clearly an influence in the form of church doctrine citing Jewish guilt for the murder of Christ, could not account for the Holocaust. It's simply not powerful enough to account for the mass delusion that enabled educated Germans to implement it unquestioningly.

[TZ]

45. If that is so why did he so enjoy wrecking Synogogues?

Somebody that virulently hateful to one particular religion is usually because another religion has taught them to be so. Do you not think a religion that was teaching "Jews killed Christ" might have had an itty bitty reason for him wanting to blaspheme along with killing?

[IDFbunny]

47. He didn't spare Christian Jews.

and wouldn't have spared Jesus Himself. He truly hated ALL Jews. He "had no use for that Jewish religion". He reckoned Christianity would whither away on its own once the Jews were gone.

[TreasonousBastard]

49. Maybe, but there's little evidence that he was so affected...

and anti-semitism was peaking in Germany around around the time he took over.

Just as possible is the half-assed theory that the Jewish doctor who unsuccessfully, and very painfully, treated his mother for cancer set him off.

[darkstar3]

22. It's called having your cake and eating it too

Hitler wasn't a true Catholic, regardless of how he identified himself, because he didn't follow true Catholic beliefs.

But Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were true atheists, and all the things they did were because of their atheism.

Yeah, right...:eyes:

I find this quote from Mein Kampf especially telling about Hitler's beliefs, BTW:
'Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.'

You can learn more about what Hitler believed, and what he wrote in Mein Kampf, here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html

[kwassa]

38. Hitler was a politician

He wrote to sway the particular audience he was addressing.

If you would like compare his words against his actions you might be on firmer ground.

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[struggle4progress]

40. Hitler, as far as anyone knows, did not practice Catholicism from the time he left

his mother's house, and the link I provide upthread shows he was not much interested in it while living at home. The fact that his mother was Catholic does not shed much life on his beliefs

Political pronouncements, made for political effect, do not provide much evidence of anyone's personal beliefs -- and the Nazis were notorious liars, both in domestic politics and in international relations

[darkstar3]

42. .

'Political pronouncements, made for political effect, do not provide much evidence of anyone's personal beliefs'
Unless, of course, you're talking about Stalin. Then we apparently know all we need to know about his motivation and beliefs.

What's good for the goose...

[struggle4progress]

43. If you learn some of the history of Stalinist Russia, you'll find Stalin was

a notorious liar, too: his self-serving accounts regularly placed him as hero in the midst of events he had been nowhere near, for example

I would take the same attitude towards Stalinist Russia that I take towards Nazi Germany or the Spanish Inquisition: the best understanding will not come from slogans but from detailed specific analysis

[darkstar3]

44. Stalin WAS a notorious liar,

and he wasn't the only one.

And your point here is exactly the point that I made in #22. To boil it down:

If Stalin killed because he was an atheist, then Hitler killed because he was a Catholic, as he said in Mein Kampf. If we must carefully analyze Hitler's regime to find his true motivation, we must do the same for Stalin. To apply different approaches to the motivations of these different dictators is hypocritical.

I'm glad that you see that. I just wish that certain other people would see it as well.

[Meshuga]

52. I think this is the point the OP is trying to make

"If Stalin killed because he was an atheist, then Hitler killed because he was a Catholic, as he said in Mein Kampf. If we must carefully analyze Hitler's regime to find his true motivation, we must do the same for Stalin. To apply different approaches to the motivations of these different dictators is hypocritical."

An you provided a nice and clear summary. It is easier to dumb things down to support a generalized point of view. But it is more worthwhile when we seek to understand the true causes and motivations rather than nitpicking to make up a point.

[IDFbunny]

48. Where has he ever uttered "Jesus Christ"

there was a lot of tip toeing around using "God", "Lord", "Creator" etc. but never actually uttered Christ. It seems to me he was a true Pagan but didn't want to offend Christian sensibilities just yet.

[deutsey]

50. I don't have a dog in this fight, but Hitler seems to have had a positive (and distorted) view

of Jesus (if this Wikiquote page is to be trusted http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler).

He seems to see Jesus as a hero who fought the Jews. He sees Christianity, though, as some sort of Jewish plot to bring down the Roman Empire.

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded 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. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. ...Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. ...

- Adolf Hitler, speech on April 12, 1922

Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism the destroyer. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later was called the Christ, intended something quite different. He must be regarded as a popular leader who took up His position against Jewry. Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and items certain that Jesus was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son of a whore and a Roman soldier,which in christianity is not a belief. The decisive falsification of Jesus's doctrine was the work of St. Paul. He gave himself to this work with subtlety and for purposes of personal exploitation. For the Galilean's object was to liberate His country from Jewish oppression. He set Himself against Jewish capitalism, and that's why the Jews liquidated Him. Paul of Tarsus (his name was Saul, before the road to Damascus) was one of those who persecuted Jesus most savagely.When he learnt that Jesus's supporters let their throats be cut for His ideas, he realised that, by making intelligent use of the Galilean's teaching, it would be possible to overthrow this Roman State which the Jews hated. It's in this context that we must understand the famous "illumination". Think of it, the Romans were daring to confiscate the most sacred thing the Jews possessed, the gold piled up in their temples! At that time, as now, money was their god. On the road to Damascus, St. Paul discovered that he could succeed in ruining the Roman State by causing the principle to triumph of the equality of all men before a single God and by putting beyond the reach of the laws his private notions, which he alleged to be divinely inspired. If, into the bargain, one succeeded in imposing one man as the representative on earth of the only God, that man would possess boundless power.

21 October 1942

[TygrBright]

27. You can call a tail a leg...

...but it'll be damn' hard to walk on.

pithily,
Bright

[struggle4progress]

41. "I consider them atheist fundamentalists ... They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited"

<Secular Humanist Paul Kurtz, founder of the Center for Inquiry, quoted by the NPR story linked in #8 by Burtworm, who started the OP>

[moobu2]

51. I think it’s more important that the German population was over 95% Christian.

Hitler said he was Christian, he was raised Christian, so I guess he was. BUT, he couldn’t have accumulated the power to do what he did, without the overwhelming support of Christians in Germany and the support of other religious leaders elsewhere like the Pope etc...Some of them might have gotten cold feet later on after they realized their own power was threatened, but it was a little to late by then.

Hitler was a Christian but that by itself wasn’t the reason he was able to do what he did.

[Occam Bandage]

54. Calling Hitler a "Catholic" is as accurate as calling him a "socialist."

During his rise to power, he attempted to be all things to all people. To Christians, he promised he was a Christian. To socialists, he promised he was a socialist. To his comrades in the Nazi movement, he scorned both viewpoints. In truth, he cared little about religion and little about economics; he was interested only in nationalism, and economics and religion were only important to him insofar as they could be used to power a Third Reich. Just as National Socialist Germany was not socialist in the slightest, Hitler's "Positive Christian" Germany was not Christian in the slightest as well.