[Note: McCabe was clearly naïve about Hitler. This piece, like all others by McCabe here, is unaltered - RW]

Hitler and the Papacy.

J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia

The frequent conflict of Hitler and the Catholic Church, the disintegration of that Church in Germany during the last ten years, and the fact that Hitler was an apostate from it and would have liked to see its prouder features destroyed by an amalgamation with Lutheranism in a Positive (unsectarian) Christianity, dispose many to listen to the Catholic claim that the Church is the inflexible opponent of Nazi brutality. The broad fact is that neither the Vatican nor the German prelates ever condemned the foul principles and practices of the Nazi Government, but only its interference with Church authority and organization and that both the late and the present Pope helped Hitler to attain power and made repeated and unceasing efforts to contract an alliance with him. In the article Germany, the facts about the Roman Church and Hitler's success at the election of March 1933 are given. Von Papen's mediation between Hitler and the Vatican after the preceding election, when his Party was in despair (Annual Register, 1932, p. 167), is told by himself in the published speech Der 12 November (1933). Hitler promised the Pope a favourable Concordat, and the Pope ordered German Catholics to desist from opposing him (Annual Register, 1933, p. 169, and a Catholic article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, January 15, 1935). No Catholic leader in Germany or at Rome denounced the treachery and the horrors that followed the Nazi success at the polls, the sermons of Cardinal Faulhaber on the Jews (Judaism, Christianity, and Germany, 1934) being doctrinal and not a condemnation of outrages. No thunder came from the Vatican even when the infamous Blood Purge, in which several Catholic leaders were murdered, occurred in June 1934. For, although Hitler had refused to pay the price he had offered for Papal support, as was his custom, the Vatican still hoped to persuade him to do so and refrained from denouncing his crimes. In 1936, when the appalling exposure of monastic vice [see Germany] began, the Pope made a desperate effort to get an alliance with Hitler. The Nazi organ, the Nazional Zeitung, [Note: probably an error for National Zeitung - RW] published on September 12th, as the London Press reported, a letter (read on the following day from all Catholic pulpits) signed by the German bishops and begging Hitler to accept their co-operation in crushing Bolshevism "in Spain, Russia, and Mexico." Mussolini was persuaded by the Vatican to support the appeal (Times, November 4th, 1936), and Hitler received Cardinal Faulhaber on the subject (Times, November 13, 1936), but refused to make any concession. The Pope wanted privileges for Catholic schools and organizations, and probably a cessation of the arrests of priests and monks for sodomy, in return for his full support. The present Pope - who, indeed, as Secretary of State under the late Pope had controlled the policy throughout - made a new approach in 1940 according to the London Press. Even the savage treatment of the Poles, who stormed Rome with entreaties and are the most Catholic folk in Europe, extracted only a tempered and restricted protest. The Vatican was not merely ready, but eager, for an alliance with Hitler at any time; which, in view of its alliance with Fascism and its acceptance of £19,000,000 from Mussolini [see Italy], should surprise no one. Hitler's views on religion have nothing to do with the situation. He had, it is true, abandoned the Catholic faith, so that on the Canon Law no Catholic ought to have negotiated with him, but he was a Theist - he repeatedly stated this in public speeches - and claimed to be a Christian.
     

 

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