"Good Christians" with non-working noses
By summerbreeze
There's a reason that I'm bringing up this unpleasant subject.
Over two decades ago, my husband was an Army Officer and we lived in Central Germany "off post" in a rented house among the German people.
While living there, we used to love to spend every week-end exploring German history from Castles to Concentration Camps. We're both History Buffs in a big way.
On a days' visit to Dachau, I was struck by the close proximity of the town of Dachau to the Concentration Camp. It is only three kilometers between the city's train station and the camp.
I clearly remember thinking as I looked over at the town... "Those people could see from their 3rd-story windows what was going on." Not only could they see, but they also surely could have smelled as well, and that thought was very unsettling.
As we went through the gates at the Concentration Camp, my oldest daughter said "Mommy I don't like this place." I'm sure that she picked up on our somber vibes.
Looking through the lens as an atheist now, I wonder about the mind-set of the average religious person living in Dachau at that time. Catholicism and Nazism had a complicated relationship, and nearly every person in the Nazi hierarchy had been or was a Catholic. Hitler himself was a Catholic (in spite of how Catholic's today denying it), although he also was anticlerical. I'm not saying that every single Catholic endorsed the Nazi Party, just that a large percentage ignored the atrocities.
I have a tremendous respect and awe for the courage that some average Germans had in WWII to save Jews by sheltering them or helping to secretly relocate them. Obviously these single acts of heroism show that a 'higher thinking' was able to transcend centuries of Antisemitism that had been spewed from every pulpit.
I had a German friend in my neighborhood there who was open-minded, and I guess I could describe her as an agnostic. She told me that her parents, grand-parents, etc., as far back as she could remember, sincerely believing that the Jews were "the Christ killers."
Had the Vatican spoken out so much more forcefully, and more often, would the result of the "final solution" been different? Me thinks that in their eyes, that would have meant acknowledging that just perhaps, they may have been wrong about the "Christ killers" package that they'd been delivering to Catholics for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Just how deep does the delusion, the self-brainwashing, and the hatred have to be when it takes precedence over the natural, in-born human compassion we all share ?
After our U.S. troops liberated Dachau, several of our soldiers were so horrified and repulsed by what they saw, the bodies piled high, the gas chambers and the walking corpses, that they opened fire on many of the guards there. Could you blame them ?
Our troops also went into the City of Dachau and rounded up the citizens and forced them to look at the horror inside the camp. I remember seeing pictures of the local men and women with wide-eyed "disbelief" on their faces.....then our troops forced the citizens to help clean up the camp---BRAVO !
At that point, I'm wondering just how many of them gave a sober, hard look at their belief and perhaps wondered just how one can believe such a doctrine of hate and at the same time be a loving human being.
Just as Christopher Hitchens says : "Religion Poisons Everything" ...............minds included.
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There's a reason that I'm bringing up this unpleasant subject.
Over two decades ago, my husband was an Army Officer and we lived in Central Germany "off post" in a rented house among the German people.
While living there, we used to love to spend every week-end exploring German history from Castles to Concentration Camps. We're both History Buffs in a big way.
On a days' visit to Dachau, I was struck by the close proximity of the town of Dachau to the Concentration Camp. It is only three kilometers between the city's train station and the camp.
I clearly remember thinking as I looked over at the town... "Those people could see from their 3rd-story windows what was going on." Not only could they see, but they also surely could have smelled as well, and that thought was very unsettling.
As we went through the gates at the Concentration Camp, my oldest daughter said "Mommy I don't like this place." I'm sure that she picked up on our somber vibes.
Looking through the lens as an atheist now, I wonder about the mind-set of the average religious person living in Dachau at that time. Catholicism and Nazism had a complicated relationship, and nearly every person in the Nazi hierarchy had been or was a Catholic. Hitler himself was a Catholic (in spite of how Catholic's today denying it), although he also was anticlerical. I'm not saying that every single Catholic endorsed the Nazi Party, just that a large percentage ignored the atrocities.
I have a tremendous respect and awe for the courage that some average Germans had in WWII to save Jews by sheltering them or helping to secretly relocate them. Obviously these single acts of heroism show that a 'higher thinking' was able to transcend centuries of Antisemitism that had been spewed from every pulpit.
I had a German friend in my neighborhood there who was open-minded, and I guess I could describe her as an agnostic. She told me that her parents, grand-parents, etc., as far back as she could remember, sincerely believing that the Jews were "the Christ killers."
Had the Vatican spoken out so much more forcefully, and more often, would the result of the "final solution" been different? Me thinks that in their eyes, that would have meant acknowledging that just perhaps, they may have been wrong about the "Christ killers" package that they'd been delivering to Catholics for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Just how deep does the delusion, the self-brainwashing, and the hatred have to be when it takes precedence over the natural, in-born human compassion we all share ?
After our U.S. troops liberated Dachau, several of our soldiers were so horrified and repulsed by what they saw, the bodies piled high, the gas chambers and the walking corpses, that they opened fire on many of the guards there. Could you blame them ?
Our troops also went into the City of Dachau and rounded up the citizens and forced them to look at the horror inside the camp. I remember seeing pictures of the local men and women with wide-eyed "disbelief" on their faces.....then our troops forced the citizens to help clean up the camp---BRAVO !
At that point, I'm wondering just how many of them gave a sober, hard look at their belief and perhaps wondered just how one can believe such a doctrine of hate and at the same time be a loving human being.
Just as Christopher Hitchens says : "Religion Poisons Everything" ...............minds included.
Comments
It really is amazing how the human mind can be conditioned to ignore things that are in plain sight. This is also a powerful example of some of the atrocities committed based on a faulty belief system.
Christianity worships a man (Christ) who was just fine with a plan which calls for torturing the majority of humans with fire for an eternity. It thus involves a twisted, perverted value system, and those who take it the most seriously appear to be the most twisted (Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, etc.). Of course, the believers will tell you that those to be burned must deserve it, never questioning how a finite “sin” can deserve infinite punishment. Sadly, it’s rotten at the core – not the people, who are themselves victims, but the religion, and it damages people just as Nazism damaged people.
My point is that not all Catholics were in support and that there was a much more complicated system of ignorance involved, including patriotism and the psychology that Hitler's cult of charisma was playing. I'm not a religious person at all and I wont stick up for the Vatican's silent approval or church higher ups looking the other way or the religious justifications made. There were average Catholics though that found the whole system to be repulsive. I just don't like painting the whole group with that brush when there were so many other factors playing into the mindset of nazi Germany.
I wonder too. Would they have just "swept it under the rug" and gone on attending Mass and having wine and crackers every week, or did some of them go through the Dark Night of The Soul and come out the other side no longer believing the Church knew Best?
I suppose one could try to see if there is/was a higher percentage of non-believers in these areas post-war, but that would probably be almost impossible to do.
I found out years later from a WW II vet, that, just as I suspected, they did not need the second bomb in Japan, but dropped it only to get rid of it. I was appalled! How could they, esp when they saw what the first one did. Did they really hate the Japanese that much?
Meanwhile, as George Tekei (Sulu on Star Trek: TOS) can attest to, Japanese-Americans were being placed in concentration camps here in the U.S.
What I am saying is, the U.S. was just as bad with it's hatred too, even in WW II. Of course, we didn't kill any Japanese-Americans, that I know of.
If people were more compassionate to others.
If people cared about others more.
If this and that...
Then again, I am a non-religious/humanist conscientious objector. I do not believe violence is necessary for anything, except maybe, when there is no other recourse to defend oneself- such a rape or other personal attack.
( 1 ) " I'm not saying that every single Catholic endorsed the Nazi Party, just that a large percentage ignored the atrocities....."
( 2 ) " I have a tremendous respect and awe for the courage that some average Germans had in WWl l to save Jews by sheltering them or helping to secretly relocate them...."
....and BTW, I have German blood in my veins also
I am slightly sensitive to this kind of topic, only because I have heard it in defense of why all Catholics are bad, bad people. I've heard it a whole lot, actually. So I guess I tend to knee jerk in that respect, only because my grandparents are all such respectable people. I may not agree with their religion, but I sure wish more religious people were like them. So I do apologize. I suppose I just wanted that all to be clear.
Actually, now that I've had my coffee and stopped to think about it, the argument that all Catholics are bad because of nazi Germany has mostly come from evangelical Christians. Hmm, I suppose that's another topic for another day though.
It is strange what crowds of people; institutions will do that individuals will not do. Mobs lynch people where any one individual would be hard pressed to do the murder on their own by themselves with their own two hands. By the time this corporate craziness moves to the level of a nation state the impersonal nature of the actions has become exponential.
Institutions and nations never even had, "the natural, in-born human compassion we all share ". They are not born naturally from a womb but coldly with a contract or a constitution. "Drop the damn second bomb on the Japs we have to dispose of it someway. " would certainly be something a nation could do to another nation as one political institution to another. Burn them in the ovens might be something the Nazi party institution would do but an individual German would not really try to stuff their neighbor into the kitchen gas oven and shut the door. To institutions (political and corporate) people are reduced to Human Resources and Human Liabilities. Take out the trash or put it to work. Cold as ICE.
The odd thing is that most of the people in the ranks of an army or in the mob doing a lynching have all kinds of conflicting emotions the entire time they go about their inhuman work. Visit any Veterans Hospital Psych ward too see how the difference between being the tool of an institution and at the same time natural born human being can cause a snap. The feelings are usually stuffed down and repressed in the interest of the welfare the "mission" and their own group. Tribalism is the bane of the world.
Yeah, there are some psychopathic individuals who are just as bad but it seems from time to time nations and other institutions go psychopathic and it is just called war as if that word could cover up the insanity of the action. In the case of the Nazi's and most other totalitarian dictatorships their war is with the entire world that is not already under their thumb. Bombs, ovens, guns and steel, sure...whatever will get the job done for the benefit institutional bottom line. Plato taught that the normal state of affairs is war and that all national governments are formed with policies that assume war as the backdrop of all their policies. National security is job one for every politician. Just why are those Swiss guards there at the Vatican gates? Oh, hired mercenaries will do best and that way the dirty jobs can get done without any of the home team taking a hit. I am surprised that no American politician has suggested that we American "hire" Haitians and put them on the frontline in Iraq and kill two birds and many people with one stone. Dachau is a great illustration of the horror machine that has first and second gears as well this fourth gear with the peddle to the metal.
I have read many accounts of the atrocities that took place while Hitler tried to cleanse the world of the undesirables. I think that while some took pleasure in the roundup and extermination of their neighbors, the vast majority was living in fear that their family could be next and acted only to keep their own families safe.
I still feel bad about a little girl who lived next door to us when we were first married. We lived in a crummy apartment building next to an even crummier house that was divided into apartments. We were on the third floor and used to grill dinner on the fire escape landing.
One day, a 3-year-old crawled up all those steps when she smelled our dinner cooking. I took her back down and went in search of her family. Another neighbor told me she lived next door, but no one was home. About a half hour later, her mother came walking home from the store with a bag of liquor and a bag of potato chips. I told her about the child crawling up all those steps, and she said, "She's prolly hungry," and threw the chips at her. The child ripped into the chips and started cramming them into her mouth.
The child coming up the stairs at dinner time became a regular occurrence, and I started making extra food. She could eat a whole chicken breast and baked potato by herself. I bought her some warmer clothes and shoes and talked to the mother about how dangerous it was to let her roam the neighborhood alone, and how she needed to feed her more than chips. She continued to leave her by herself. I called the authorities to report the situation, but they would not come out unless I gave my name. I wanted to talk to my husband first.
but then, the mother said something that stopped me from getting the child help. She said her boyfriend was about to get out of prison and he was coming home. He'd been in prison for manslaughter.
By this time, I was expecting our first child. I will always be ashamed that I did not report the way this child was living to the authorities because I was afraid for my own family. I did not want to be on the wrong side of a man who killed people.
We moved several months after the boyfriend came home, but not before we found out the mother was expecting another child.
I don't know what happened to those children, or any others they might have had.
I was so terrified of one man who might or might not do harm to me and mine that I let a little child continue to live like a stray cat. Can I blame those people in Europe in WWII, who were up against an entire government, who tried hard not to see what was going on around them?
George Tekei might even disagree with you about the U.S. Concentration camps though.
Maj Charles W. Sweeney, aircraft commander
Capt Charles Donald Albury, co-pilot (pilot of Crew C-15) [3]
2nd Lt Fred Olivi, regular co-pilot
Capt James Van Pelt, navigator
Capt Kermit Beahan, bombardier
Master Sergeant John D. Kuharek, flight engineer
SSgt Ray Gallagher, gunner, assistant flight engineer
SSgt Edward Buckley, radar operator
Sgt Abe Spitzer, radio operator
Sgt Albert Dehart, tail gunner
Also on board were the following additional mission personnel:
CDR Frederick L. Ashworth (USN), weaponeer
LT Philip Barnes (USN), assistant weaponeer
2nd Lt Jacob Beser, radar countermeasures
Thank you for a thoughtful post.
To be clear about a topic such as this, one must remember that fear is the tool of oppression. The NAZI movement relied upon that from day one. Loyal party members could, themselves, be killed or imprisoned simply by a libelous or slanderous statement. Their own were killed just out of convenience and real party politics. Take the case of the "Night of the long knives" as only one instance.
Remember too, that everyone in that regime lived under the shadow of the Gestapo. The other civilian NAZI organizations reported to the Gestapo any person who seemed even slightly suspicious or non-mainstream. Children of the Hitler-Jungen (Hitler youth) were taught to even report on their own parents and neighbors. This was sometimes done just to get brownie points from the Jungen leaders and Gestapo.
It was very risky business to even voice the slightest opinion of compassion towards jews, gypsies, political dissidents, homosexuals, etc. To do so would cast suspicion upon oneself and invite arrest by the authorities. Many of those vocal, compassionate citizens ended up in work camps themselves.
The Hitler regime is a prime example as to what goes terribly wrong when fanaticism, patriotism, religiosity and the like catch fire in the larger social context.
swabby
The bomb could have just as easily been dropped somewhere else rather than on a densely populated area. It was my understanding that it was done so that there would be no doubt that it was the USA who dropped the bomb and the Japanese couldn't make the excuse that the explosion was caused by an accident (was was a concern) and also to completely demoralize the country.
About the Catholic Church --for centuries they upheld the "blood liable"--the belief that Jews require the blood of Christian babies for their rituals. This was deeply embedded in the minds of Europeans at that time as it is still in the minds of Muslims today.
The Nazi leaders who escaped to Venezuela were smuggled out of Germany to safety through a network of Catholic monasteries which implicates the RCC as intimately connected with the Third Reich.
I am just glad, very glad that I didn't have to live in Europe at that time.
I wanted to post this because now-a-days there are idiots who are declaring that it all never happened.
I wanted to post that story because I'd been hearing a lot about how now there are so many people ( idiots ) who say it never happened !
And the really sad part about it is, that the majority of wars were fostered and nurtured under the "my god is the one true god, yours is not" concept. With THAT process, killing the godless comes very easy.
About the Catholic Church --for centuries they upheld the "blood liable"--the belief that Jews require the blood of Christian babies for their rituals. This was deeply embedded in the minds of Europeans at that time as it is still in the minds of Muslims today.
The Nazi leaders who escaped to Venezuela were smuggled out of Germany to safety through a network of Catholic monasteries which implicates the RCC as intimately connected with the Third Reich.
The bomb could have just as easily been dropped somewhere else rather than on a densely populated area. It was my understanding that it was done so that there would be no doubt that it was the USA who dropped the bomb and the Japanese couldn't make the excuse that the explosion was caused by an accident (was was a concern) and also to completely demoralize the country.
Thank you for a thoughtful post.
To be clear about a topic such as this, one must remember that fear is the tool of oppression. The NAZI movement relied upon that from day one. Loyal party members could, themselves, be killed or imprisoned simply by a libelous or slanderous statement. Their own were killed just out of convenience and real party politics. Take the case of the "Night of the long knives" as only one instance.
Remember too, that everyone in that regime lived under the shadow of the Gestapo. The other civilian NAZI organizations reported to the Gestapo any person who seemed even slightly suspicious or non-mainstream. Children of the Hitler-Jungen (Hitler youth) were taught to even report on their own parents and neighbors. This was sometimes done just to get brownie points from the Jungen leaders and Gestapo.
It was very risky business to even voice the slightest opinion of compassion towards jews, gypsies, political dissidents, homosexuals, etc. To do so would cast suspicion upon oneself and invite arrest by the authorities. Many of those vocal, compassionate citizens ended up in work camps themselves.
The Hitler regime is a prime example as to what goes terribly wrong when fanaticism, patriotism, religiosity and the like catch fire in the larger social context.
swabby
Maj Charles W. Sweeney, aircraft commander
Capt Charles Donald Albury, co-pilot (pilot of Crew C-15) [3]
2nd Lt Fred Olivi, regular co-pilot
Capt James Van Pelt, navigator
Capt Kermit Beahan, bombardier
Master Sergeant John D. Kuharek, flight engineer
SSgt Ray Gallagher, gunner, assistant flight engineer
SSgt Edward Buckley, radar operator
Sgt Abe Spitzer, radio operator
Sgt Albert Dehart, tail gunner
Also on board were the following additional mission personnel:
CDR Frederick L. Ashworth (USN), weaponeer
LT Philip Barnes (USN), assistant weaponeer
2nd Lt Jacob Beser, radar countermeasures
George Tekei might even disagree with you about the U.S. Concentration camps though.
I have read many accounts of the atrocities that took place while Hitler tried to cleanse the world of the undesirables. I think that while some took pleasure in the roundup and extermination of their neighbors, the vast majority was living in fear that their family could be next and acted only to keep their own families safe.
I still feel bad about a little girl who lived next door to us when we were first married. We lived in a crummy apartment building next to an even crummier house that was divided into apartments. We were on the third floor and used to grill dinner on the fire escape landing.
One day, a 3-year-old crawled up all those steps when she smelled our dinner cooking. I took her back down and went in search of her family. Another neighbor told me she lived next door, but no one was home. About a half hour later, her mother came walking home from the store with a bag of liquor and a bag of potato chips. I told her about the child crawling up all those steps, and she said, "She's prolly hungry," and threw the chips at her. The child ripped into the chips and started cramming them into her mouth.
The child coming up the stairs at dinner time became a regular occurrence, and I started making extra food. She could eat a whole chicken breast and baked potato by herself. I bought her some warmer clothes and shoes and talked to the mother about how dangerous it was to let her roam the neighborhood alone, and how she needed to feed her more than chips. She continued to leave her by herself. I called the authorities to report the situation, but they would not come out unless I gave my name. I wanted to talk to my husband first.
but then, the mother said something that stopped me from getting the child help. She said her boyfriend was about to get out of prison and he was coming home. He'd been in prison for manslaughter.
By this time, I was expecting our first child. I will always be ashamed that I did not report the way this child was living to the authorities because I was afraid for my own family. I did not want to be on the wrong side of a man who killed people.
We moved several months after the boyfriend came home, but not before we found out the mother was expecting another child.
I don't know what happened to those children, or any others they might have had.
I was so terrified of one man who might or might not do harm to me and mine that I let a little child continue to live like a stray cat. Can I blame those people in Europe in WWII, who were up against an entire government, who tried hard not to see what was going on around them?
That 'doctrine of hate' is one of the big reasons I am no longer catholic. I probably could have gone along with the fun feel-good myths, the non-literal interpretation of the bible, and some of the liberal (i.e. renegade and excommunicated) theologians I studied. But I never could get past the corruption and atrocities committed by the catholic church -- from its early beginnings all the way through history and into today's current events.
My disdain for Rome, the pope, church rules and laws, the greed, and the total hypocrisy of the church has steadily increased ever since I read The Diary of Anne Frank and researched Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust -- which led me to study the Inquisition -- 40 years ago!
I agree 100% with your comment "And it seems the more deluded & brainwashed one is, the easier it is to do such dastardly deeds. In fact, the screensaver on my computer says:
"When someone says they are willing to die for something, it frequently means that they are also willing to kill for it." *
BP
* Wish I knew the source of that quote. Maybe from one of the many wise people on this very website....?
.....Thanks for being here, summerbreeze
I come from a Catholic family as well, and my mother's pat answer toward Catholics/Christians individually or collectively doing evil was usually something like, "Well, sure, but that person would have been ever worse if they weren't Christian," as if that were some kind of self-evident fact. Really? Hitler, Torquemada, Fred Phelps, etc. would have been even more evil than they were if they hadn't been (rolls eyes) properly restrained by their religious beliefs? Some people can be so deluded and self-righteous. Even without the obvious historical atrocities that you can attribute to that whole "us vs. them" mentality, that arrogant presumption of moral (and often every other type of) superiority toward everyone not a part of one's particular group would have been enough to turn me off of organized religion.
I agree and the Shrub still isn't going to be tried for his war crimes. I wondering about all the other deluded and brainwashed people who commit crimes due to their religion, if they were be prosecuted. Even Islamic extremists get away with crap too.
I recall, as a young boy, looking up into the clear summer sky of Turkey Point, Ontario...seeing millions of stars, and realizing that we were such a small part of the big picture...And in the ensuing years, I came to think of organized religions and a supreme being as a load of hooey (scientifically speaking)...It was gradual...But I know, by the time i was in my teens I was an atheist...Many moons ago..
Hey..maybe this IS a testimony..hehe Anyhow...That's me..in a nutshell dragonfly
Thanks again.........summerbreeze
It is strange what crowds of people; institutions will do that individuals will not do. Mobs lynch people where any one individual would be hard pressed to do the murder on their own by themselves with their own two hands. By the time this corporate craziness moves to the level of a nation state the impersonal nature of the actions has become exponential.
Institutions and nations never even had, "the natural, in-born human compassion we all share ". They are not born naturally from a womb but coldly with a contract or a constitution. "Drop the damn second bomb on the Japs we have to dispose of it someway. " would certainly be something a nation could do to another nation as one political institution to another. Burn them in the ovens might be something the Nazi party institution would do but an individual German would not really try to stuff their neighbor into the kitchen gas oven and shut the door. To institutions (political and corporate) people are reduced to Human Resources and Human Liabilities. Take out the trash or put it to work. Cold as ICE.
The odd thing is that most of the people in the ranks of an army or in the mob doing a lynching have all kinds of conflicting emotions the entire time they go about their inhuman work. Visit any Veterans Hospital Psych ward too see how the difference between being the tool of an institution and at the same time natural born human being can cause a snap. The feelings are usually stuffed down and repressed in the interest of the welfare the "mission" and their own group. Tribalism is the bane of the world.
Yeah, there are some psychopathic individuals who are just as bad but it seems from time to time nations and other institutions go psychopathic and it is just called war as if that word could cover up the insanity of the action. In the case of the Nazi's and most other totalitarian dictatorships their war is with the entire world that is not already under their thumb. Bombs, ovens, guns and steel, sure...whatever will get the job done for the benefit institutional bottom line. Plato taught that the normal state of affairs is war and that all national governments are formed with policies that assume war as the backdrop of all their policies. National security is job one for every politician. Just why are those Swiss guards there at the Vatican gates? Oh, hired mercenaries will do best and that way the dirty jobs can get done without any of the home team taking a hit. I am surprised that no American politician has suggested that we American "hire" Haitians and put them on the frontline in Iraq and kill two birds and many people with one stone. Dachau is a great illustration of the horror machine that has first and second gears as well this fourth gear with the peddle to the metal.
I am slightly sensitive to this kind of topic, only because I have heard it in defense of why all Catholics are bad, bad people. I've heard it a whole lot, actually. So I guess I tend to knee jerk in that respect, only because my grandparents are all such respectable people. I may not agree with their religion, but I sure wish more religious people were like them. So I do apologize. I suppose I just wanted that all to be clear.
Actually, now that I've had my coffee and stopped to think about it, the argument that all Catholics are bad because of nazi Germany has mostly come from evangelical Christians. Hmm, I suppose that's another topic for another day though.
( 1 ) " I'm not saying that every single Catholic endorsed the Nazi Party, just that a large percentage ignored the atrocities....."
( 2 ) " I have a tremendous respect and awe for the courage that some average Germans had in WWl l to save Jews by sheltering them or helping to secretly relocate them...."
....and BTW, I have German blood in my veins also
If people were more compassionate to others.
If people cared about others more.
If this and that...
Then again, I am a non-religious/humanist conscientious objector. I do not believe violence is necessary for anything, except maybe, when there is no other recourse to defend oneself- such a rape or other personal attack.
I found out years later from a WW II vet, that, just as I suspected, they did not need the second bomb in Japan, but dropped it only to get rid of it. I was appalled! How could they, esp when they saw what the first one did. Did they really hate the Japanese that much?
Meanwhile, as George Tekei (Sulu on Star Trek: TOS) can attest to, Japanese-Americans were being placed in concentration camps here in the U.S.
What I am saying is, the U.S. was just as bad with it's hatred too, even in WW II. Of course, we didn't kill any Japanese-Americans, that I know of.
I wonder too. Would they have just "swept it under the rug" and gone on attending Mass and having wine and crackers every week, or did some of them go through the Dark Night of The Soul and come out the other side no longer believing the Church knew Best?
I suppose one could try to see if there is/was a higher percentage of non-believers in these areas post-war, but that would probably be almost impossible to do.
My point is that not all Catholics were in support and that there was a much more complicated system of ignorance involved, including patriotism and the psychology that Hitler's cult of charisma was playing. I'm not a religious person at all and I wont stick up for the Vatican's silent approval or church higher ups looking the other way or the religious justifications made. There were average Catholics though that found the whole system to be repulsive. I just don't like painting the whole group with that brush when there were so many other factors playing into the mindset of nazi Germany.
Christianity worships a man (Christ) who was just fine with a plan which calls for torturing the majority of humans with fire for an eternity. It thus involves a twisted, perverted value system, and those who take it the most seriously appear to be the most twisted (Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, etc.). Of course, the believers will tell you that those to be burned must deserve it, never questioning how a finite “sin” can deserve infinite punishment. Sadly, it’s rotten at the core – not the people, who are themselves victims, but the religion, and it damages people just as Nazism damaged people.
It really is amazing how the human mind can be conditioned to ignore things that are in plain sight. This is also a powerful example of some of the atrocities committed based on a faulty belief system.
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