Because it didn’t happen... a few priests were the exception

Posted on: April 14, 2018 at 12:47:21 CT

Hitler's ideologues Goebbels, Himmler, Rosenberg and Bormann hoped to de-Christianize Germany, or at least distort its theology to their point of view.[12][13] The government moved to close all Catholic institutions which were not strictly religious. Catholic schools were shut by 1939, the Catholic press by 1941.[14][15] Clergy, religious women and men, and lay leaders were targeted. During the course of Hitler's rule, thousands were arrested, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or "immorality".[16] Germany's senior cleric, Cardinal Bertram, developed an ineffectual protest system, leaving broader Catholic resistance to individual conscience. By 1937 the church hierarchy, which initially sought dètente, was highly disillusioned. Pius XI issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical. It condemned racism, accused the Nazis of violations of the Concordat and "fundamental hostility" to the church.[16] The state responded by renewing its crackdown and propaganda against Catholics.[17] Despite violence against Catholic Poland, some German priests offered prayers for the German cause at the outbreak of war. Nevertheless, security chief Reinhard Heydrich soon orchestrated an intensification of restrictions on church activities. Expropriation of monasteries, convents and church properties surged from 1941. Bishop August von Galen's ensuing 1941 denunciation of Nazi euthanasia and defence of human rights roused rare popular dissent. The German bishops denounced Nazi policy towards the church in pastoral letters, calling it "unjust oppression".[18][19]

Pius XII, former nuncio to Germany, became Pope on the eve of war. His legacy is contested. As Vatican Secretary of State, he advocated Détente via the Reich Concordat, hoping it would build trust and respect within Hitler's government, and assisted in drafting the anti-Nazi Mit brennender Sorge. His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, called the invasion of Poland an "hour of darkness". He affirmed the policy of Vatican neutrality, but maintained links to the German Resistance. Controversy surrounding his reluctance to speak publicly in explicit terms about Nazi crimes continues.[20] He used diplomacy to aid war victims, lobbied for peace, shared intelligence with the Allies, and employed Vatican Radio and other media to speak out against atrocities like race murders. In Mystici corporis Christi (1943) he denounced the murder of the handicapped. A denunciation from German bishops of the murder of the "innocent and defenceless", including "people of a foreign race or descent", followed.[21] While Nazi antisemitism embraced modern pseudo-scientific racial principles, ancient antipathies between Christianity and Judaism contributed to European antisemitism. Under Pius XII, the church rescued many thousands of Jews by issuing false documents, lobbying Axis officials, hiding them in monasteries, convents, schools and elsewhere; including the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo.

In regions of Poland, Slovenia and Austria annexed by Nazi Germany, Nazi persecution of the Church was at its harshest. In Germany and its conquests, Catholic responses to Nazism varied. The papal nuncio in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo, was timid in protesting Nazi crimes and had sympathies with Italian Fascism. German priests in general were closely watched and often denounced, imprisoned or executed, such as German priest-philosopher, Alfred Delp. From 1940, the Nazis gathered priest-dissidents in dedicated clergy barracks at Dachau, where 95 percent of its 2,720 inmates were Catholic (mostly Poles, and 411 Germans) and 1034 died there. In Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, the Nazis attempted to eradicate the church and over 1800 Polish Catholic clergy died in concentration camps; most notably, Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Influential members of the German Resistance included Jesuits of the Kreisau Circle and laymen such as July plotters Klaus von Stauffenberg, Jakob Kaiser and Bernhard Letterhaus, whose faith inspired resistance.[22] Elsewhere, vigorous resistance from bishops such as Johannes de Jong and Jules-Géraud Saliège, papal diplomats such as Angelo Rotta, and nuns such as Margit Slachta, can be contrasted with the apathy of others and the outright collaboration of Catholic politicians such as Slovakia's Msgr Jozef Tiso and fanatical Croat nationalists. From within the Vatican, Msgr Hugh O'Flaherty coordinated the rescue of thousands of Allied POWs, and civilians, including Jews. A rogue Austrian bishop, Alois Hudal, of the college for German priests in Rome, was an informant for Nazi intelligence. After the war, he and Msgr Krunoslav Draganovic of the Croatian College assisted the so-called "ratlines" facilitating fugitive Nazis to flee Europe.