What was the relationship between the Catholic Church and Nazis?

Question

I thought Nazis anti-Catholic, but then I read that many of the Nazis officers grew up Catholic, even Hitler. How is this?

Answer 1

The present pope was a member of Hitler youth organisation.

The then pope, Pius XII, allowed Italian fascists to persecute his (Jewish) fellowcountrymen.

I'd call these 2 examples an unhealthy alliance between the nazis and catholic church

Answer 2

Nothing.

Stalin was a seminarist. Fidel kastro studied in a Jesuit school.
All of them took their own path later.

During the III Reich the Nazis put the Jews in the first place of human garbage, and Catholic priests in the second.

The Vatican had to keep quiet during the war because protesting against the Nazis would have made things much worse for the Vatican and for the Jews.

In the series "The Scarlet and Black" it is presented the difficult situation of the Church.
The nazis were just waiting for an excuse to seize the Vatican. The Church had to move very carefully in the shadows.
There is another movie: "The Clandestines of Assisi" that presents the help given in the town of Assisi to the hidden soldiers

Answer 3

Hitler mouthed the words of religion when he needed to but he appeared to have disliked the Catholic Church, if only because that was a powerful institution out of his reach and he hated it when things were not totally under his thumb. 20 to 30% of the German population was catholic so there were bound to be Catholic officers, soldiers and whatsnot.

I read however that it was not a good thing to show too much religious zeal when you were a Catholic but cannot find the source again.

Answer 4

First of all the Vatican under Pope Pius XII. He followed a policy of appeasement towards Hitler's Germany and other fascist regimes to the extent he has gone down in history as 'Hitler's Pope' .His primary objective was the protection and preservation of the Catholic Church which took over-riding priority but his own mind-set of virulent anti-communism and anti -semitism and the necessity of a more centralised and authoritarian structure in the Church itself meant that he was able to accomodate the Nazi ideology however much he may have disapproved of its pagan trappings. He has been condemned for his failure to intervene over the massacre of Jews but on the credit side, the Vatican did work to alleviate the conditions of prisoners of war and refugees
There were many individual catholics who were passively and actively opposed to Hitler, including individual convents and monastries which hid and helped Jews and others fleeing from the Nazi persecution. Others supported the Nazi regime initially but found it increasingly hard to reconcile that support with the moral poverty and brutality of the regime.

Answer 5

Although Hitler was raised in a Catholic family, he turned away from Christianity at an early age.

Automatic excommunication happens when Catholics commit certain offensives. This happens as soon as the offense is committed.

Adolf Hitler committed the following offenses resulting in automatic excommunication:
- Apostasy - the formal renunciation of one's religion. Hitler specifically rejected the Catholic Church, as well as Christianity in general. He described himself as "a complete pagan.”
- Heresy - a doctrine in theology, religion, philosophy, or politics at variance with those of the Catholic Church. Nazism is definitely heretical to Christianity.

There was no reason for the Catholic Church to excommunicate Hitler. He did it all by himself.

For Hitler's own words against Christianity, see: http://www.geocities.com/chiniquy/Hitler.html

For more information about excommunication, see: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05678a.htm
And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunicate#Automatic_excommunication

With love in Christ.

Answer 6

Though Hitler felt a particular urgency — and hatred — when dealing with Jews and Communists, he viewed the Catholic Church as a pernicious opponent, a deeply-entrenched threat that must be controlled and eventually uprooted from German life in order to establish his promised Thousand-Year-Reich. To help eliminate Catholic influence, he turned to Alfred Rosenberg, arch-ideologue, anti-Semite, and despiser of Christianity.