[karl262]

Originally Posted by Bs&Cs

The first part of this post is ahistorical gibberish and nearly every word of the entire thing is complete nonsense. Your priest in Germany during the Nazi era might wish Hitler a happy birthday. Or he might be in a concentration camp for denouncing the regime, as thousands of them did. The priests were so numerous at Dachau that they had their own barracks, and 80% of them were Catholic. Catholic clergy were on the official list for extermination in Occupied Poland, and Catholic priests and nuns of Poland are the most prolific group represented among the Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel. The Vatican itself chipped in pounds of gold to the Jews of Rome to pay a blood random the Nazi occupiers, and Jewish refugees from Nazi roundups were given sanctuary in the walls of the Vatican itself. Stories like this exist in nearly every corner of occupied Europe- in Ustase controlled Croatia, in Hungary, in Italian occupied Dalmatia, in the Netherlands and France... Pope Pius' actions during the 1930s certainly deserve criticism, but the Catholic Church was a thorn in the side of both the Nazi Regime and the Italian Fascists... Both Mussolini and the Nazi leadership made no secret of their desire to shatter the influence of the Catholic Church in Europe, and the idea of the population owing more allegiance to a figure that wasn't the head of state (whether it be the Pope, or Christ himself) was anathema to fascists. Pius, and by extent many under him (and they weren't the only ones, this was a common attitude at the time) saw Fascism at first as a bulwark against communism but that attitude had changed by the mid 30s. The Church, as it always does acted first out of self preservation but to paint them as active partners of the Nazi government isn't correct and is an insult to the many, many Catholic bishops, priests and nuns who gave their lives or livelihoods to protest fascism or protect the persecuted. The idea that the Nazis would hand over the reigns of the education system to the Church is laughable. Nazism is by definition an atheistic set of political beliefs. Hitler wasn't giving up control of his most effective brainwashing institution to an organization he was actively eyeing for eventual liquidation.



That said, I'm pretty done defending them these days... Their behaviour has been abominable. There is a "right way" for them here, and it's been that way for decades but they've consistently taken the most morally repugnant position they possibly can. The hypocrisy is astonishing. For a faith supposedly based on penance, forgiveness, truth and mercy, they have asked for none of it for what one can only assume are financial reasons. Despicable. Though it's worth noting that just because Church leadership has acted in such an obviously deplorable manner, labelling the entirety of the Christian faith as being mere superstition believed in by rubes is indeed the kind or edgelord nonsense you'd hear come from the mouths of high schoolers.

So the Catholic centrist party didn't sign a pact with Hitler to give him a clear path to victory in exchange for control of the education system?