What was the role of the Catholic church with regard to the Holocaust?
score:7
You can look at 'the Holocaust' and 'the Church' and a very complicated picture forms. So the first of your two questions is terribly broad. Hitchens account is not in contradiction with your other source, he just chooses to polemicise in leaving out some aspects and emphasizing the bad.
The Catholic Church formed Hitler's belief system to a large part, had rampant anti-judaism – until Nostra Aetate – to show in itself, but as a whole not so much more anti-semitism as was prevalent almost everywhere, formed a Reichskonkordat with the nazis and so was helping to stabilise the regime.
On the other hand some priests were very vocal in public in opposing the persecutions, also of the Jews, and many catholic organisations were actively hiding Jews. Do not misread "many" compared to the numbers killed but in relation to a widespread view that absolutely no German had compassion. "Many" in this regard remains still much too few.
The church itself was persecuted to a certain extent and the Pope played quite a bewildering part during the whole time. Not really silent in public, but also not saying much. Not really doing nothing, but doing much too little.
It seems that the majority of scholars say that the documented acts of successful resistance, and open resistance, of parts of the Catholic church is proof that the lack of much more widespread resistance has to be seen largely as an enabling factor in the holocaust. Only the fact that some did resist and risked quite a bit in the process was able to keep the church from completely loosing its face.
That protest and opposition was still possible, and that the church might play quite a significant role in such protests, actually ending a large scale killing programme can be seen in how they handled the "dress rehearsal" for the holocaust: the Aktion T4. The later term "T4" was codenamed Aktion Gnadentod (operation merciful killing) at the time and stood for killing "unworthy lives", that is a murderous eugenics programme for people with disabilities etc.
In 1943, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Mystici corporis Christi, in which he condemned the practice of killing the disabled. […] On 24 August 1941, Hitler ordered the suspension of the T4 killings. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June, many T4 personnel were transferred to the east to begin work on the final solution to the Jewish question.
(From: Wikipedia – Aktion T4 – Opposition)
Sources:
Michael Phayer: "The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965", Indiana University Press: Bloomington, Indianapolis, 2000.
Dan Stone: "The Historiography of the Holocaust", Palgrave Macmillan 2004
: Basingstoke, New York, 2004. (Ch. 13, Robert P. Ericksen & Susannah Heschel: "The German Churches and the Holocaust", p 296–318.
)
More post
- 📝 What is "quarter column"?
- 📝 What's the text in "Mystische Jagd" by Martin Schongauer?
- 📝 Did Abraham Lincoln have a duel with cannons?
- 📝 Why did the Austrofascists fight with the National Socialists and vice versa?
- 📝 How could the Roman sestertii/sesterces be converted into modern terms (say 2017 US$)?
- 📝 Where are (records of) historic wildfires?
- 📝 Why did Pakistan get involved in Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989?
- 📝 Was the house of representatives really as rowdy a place as it is portrayed in the 2012 film Lincoln?
- 📝 What is the secular historical reason for Christ to be put to trial?
- 📝 How many Britons lived in India during the British Raj (1858 - 1947)?
- 📝 Origin of left and right-hand road traffic rules, respectively
- 📝 Whose colors/coat-of-arms did men-of-arms wear in a feudal army, 14th century?
- 📝 What / When was the first use of concentration camps in history?
- 📝 When the Swiss Guard was formed, was the height requirement 174 cm (5' 8 1/2")?
- 📝 How (not why) did the Bolshevik party seize such complete control of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets?
- 📝 How slowly, if ever, were Thracians Hellenized?
- 📝 Were the greatest rulers from before the Classical Antiquity known by ancient historians?
- 📝 How many naval mines were cleared for D-Day?
- 📝 Is there a reason for a Queen's husband not to be referred to as King?
- 📝 How many times was Vaclav Havel under arrest and under what - presumably trumped up charges - was he indicted?
- 📝 Can anyone identify these uniforms?
- 📝 How did Saudi Arabia become and remain strongly Wahhabi?
- 📝 Did more Jews live in Poland than any other country, prior to the Holocaust, because of how Polish laws and people regarded Jews?
- 📝 Are there any examples of technologies have been lost over time?
- 📝 Historicity of Agamemnon
- 📝 According to game theory would Germany's post 1939 expansionism have provided the optimal economic benefits?
- 📝 Where to read the "Agreement between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on the Parameters of the Division of the Black Sea Fleet" of May 28, 1997?
- 📝 Do authoritative Jewish historical records record the expulsion
- 📝 What was the reasoning behind the Washington Committee's complaint to the Liquor Tax during the Whiskey Rebellion?
- 📝 What was Pizarro's route between Spain and Peru?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What was the role of the Catholic church with regard to the Holocaust?
- 📝 What was the role of the Russian Orthodox church in Soviet Russia?
- 📝 What was the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Carolingian emperors?
- 📝 What was the Catholic Church trying to do in Spain in the 1930s?
- 📝 What was the role of the Soviet Navy during WWII?
- 📝 What was the role of Indian princes and aristocratic landowners under British colonial rule?
- 📝 What was the Soviet role in Syria during the Cold-War?
- 📝 What was El Greco's relationship with the Spanish Inquisition?
- 📝 What happened to the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church accumulated over the ages?
- 📝 What was the Catholic Church's opinion of Diệm's South Vietnam?
- 📝 Which was the official position of the Catholic Church on the Atlantic Slave Trade?
- 📝 What did the Catholic Church do to promote human rights of non-christians from 1500s to mid 1900s?
- 📝 What was President Jimmy Carter's role in the Iranian Revolution?
- 📝 What corrections did the Catholic church make to the Copernicus work "De revolutionibus"?
- 📝 What was Finland's role in the siege of Leningrad?
- 📝 What was the role of a 'Tidy Man' and what might their duties have been?
- 📝 What was the social and cultural role of a "country squire" in Victorian/Edwardian England?
- 📝 Considering what was known about Hitler in 1933, why would German bishops declare that Catholics could cooperate with the new State?
- 📝 What was the role of Nikita Khrushchev during the battle of Stalingrad?
- 📝 What was Ghulam Ahmad's relationship with the British authorities in India?
- 📝 What was the Orthodox Church's role in Russian expansion?
- 📝 What was the motivation for the Church of England to begin recording births, marriages and deaths in 1538?
- 📝 How did the helmsman know what he was sailing towards with a big mast in his face?
- 📝 What was Asir's role in the Arab Revolt?
- 📝 What was the estimated population of the Mississippi Valley before contact with Europeans?
- 📝 What was the role of Konstantin Rokossovsky during WW1?
- 📝 When was the last time the Catholic Church excommunicated a government official for political reasons?
- 📝 What was the most recent Catholic coronation ceremony of a king?
- 📝 What was the typical error with dead reckoning navigation?
- 📝 What authority did the Catholic Church have over European monarchs from 900–1450?