Download or read book Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany written by Robert Krieg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-02-27 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catholic and Protestant bishops during the period of the Third Reich are often accused of being either sympathetic to the Nazi regime or at least generally tolerant of its anti-Jewish stance so long as the latter did not infringe on the functions of the church. With some notable exceptions that accusation is extended to many lesser figures, including seminary professors and pastors. Most notably the exceptions include such martyred heros as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Max Metzger, religious activists and writers still of great influence.Among Catholic theologians the record is no less cloudy. Theology and Politics, while discussing a range of religious scholars, focuses on five major theologians who were born during the Kulturkampf, came to maturity and international recognition during the Hitler era, and had an influence on Catholicism in the English-speaking world. Three were in varying degrees and for varying lengths of time sympathetic to the professed goals of the Third Reich: Karl Adam, Karl Eschweiler, and Joseph Lortz. The other two, Romano Guardini and Engelbert Krebs, were publicly critical of the new regime.Interestingly, the two theologians who have had the greatest influence in the English-speaking world, Guardini and Adam, were initially on opposite sides of the Nazi divide.The interplay of theology and politics to which the title refers is evident in the fact that while all the theologians differed from the classic theology of the church as a "perfect society," and were "progressive" in their rejection of neo-scholastic methodology, they differed among themselves in envisaging the church either as the enemy of modernity or as its reli-gious dialogue partner. The first group, initially approving the Reich agenda, were Adam, Eschweiler (the most ardent supporter), and Lortz; the second included Guardini and Krebs (the most ardent opponent).
Download or read book Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany written by Robert Krieg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-02-27 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses a range of religious scholars, but focuses on five major theologians who were born during the Kulturkampf, came to maturity and international recognition during the Hitler era, and had an influence on Catholicism in the English-speaking world. While three were sympathetic to the Third Reich in varying degrees and the other two were publicly critical of the new regime, the book takes a look of each of their stances regarding the Third Reich's anti-Jewish propaganda.
Download or read book The Catholic Church And Nazi Germany written by Guenter Lewy and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-09-09 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ”The subject matter of this book is controversial,” Guenter Lewy states plainly in his preface. To show the German Catholic Church’s congeniality with some of the goals of National Socialism and its gradual entrapment in Nazi policies and programs, Lewy describes the episcopate’s support of Hitler’s expansionist policies and its failures to speak out on the persecution of the Jews. To this tragic history Lewy brings new focus and research, illuminating one of the darkest corners of our century with scholarship and intellectual honesty in a riveting, and often painful, narrative.
Download or read book The Aryan Jesus written by Susannah Heschel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-03 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Jesus a Nazi? During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these theologians established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life. In The Aryan Jesus, Susannah Heschel shows that during the Third Reich, the Institute became the most important propaganda organ of German Protestantism, exerting a widespread influence and producing a nazified Christianity that placed anti-Semitism at its theological center. Based on years of archival research, The Aryan Jesus examines the membership and activities of this controversial theological organization. With headquarters in Eisenach, the Institute sponsored propaganda conferences throughout the Nazi Reich and published books defaming Judaism, including a dejudaized version of the New Testament and a catechism proclaiming Jesus as the savior of the Aryans. Institute members--professors of theology, bishops, and pastors--viewed their efforts as a vital support for Hitler's war against the Jews. Heschel looks in particular at Walter Grundmann, the Institute's director and a professor of the New Testament at the University of Jena. Grundmann and his colleagues formed a community of like-minded Nazi Christians who remained active and continued to support each other in Germany's postwar years. The Aryan Jesus raises vital questions about Christianity's recent past and the ambivalent place of Judaism in Christian thought.
Download or read book German Catholics and Hitler s Wars written by Gordon C. Zahn and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 1988-09-30 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the outbreak of World War II, nearly forty thousand German Catholics were involved in the German Catholic Peace League, a movement that caused many people in various countries to seriously reconsider the dimension of pacifism in their faith. During the course of the War, however, many of these same German Catholics raised no serious objection to serving in Germany's armies or swearing allegiance to Adolph Hitler. First published in 1962, German Catholics and Hitler's Wars created a furor, ultimately causing a serious reevaluation of church-state relationships and, in particular, of the morality of war. This work began as an attempt to understand the demise of the German Catholic Peace League. But because of various factors, including the destruction of vital records, Gordon C. Zahn began to consider the behavior of German Catholics in general and the evidence of their almost total conformity to the war demands of the Nazi regime. Using sociological analysis, he argues convincingly for the existence of a super-effective system of social controls, and of a selection between the competing values of Catholicism and nationalism. Although Zahn never speculates, conclusions are inescapable, chief among them that the traditional Catholic doctrine of the "just war" has ceased to be operative for Catholics in the modern world.
Download or read book Catholic Citizens in the Third Reich written by Donald J. Dietrich and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did some German Catholics support and others oppose the police state that was the Third Reich? In this insightful analysis, Donald Dietrich explores the social-psychological dynamics behind the religious reactions of German Catholics to political and moral issues during the late Weimar and Third Reich eras. Along with many other Germans, Catholics were enmeshed in a cruel dilemma. Assenting to Nazi ideals would mean a loss of moral credibility; opposing them would result in persecution. Dietrich shows how Catholics accommodated and sometimes resisted totalitarianism and the Final Solution. Three groups of Catholics are examined: the hierarchy, the theologians, and the laity. The literature on Nazi Germany is enormous. But this is the first analysis of the dynamics shaping individual motivations and group response to Nazi ideals. This comprehensive work fuses results derived from social science research with the massive amount of historical data available. It is an interdisciplinary study relating religious values to patterns of behavior, an issue that retains its significance today.
Download or read book Wehrmacht Priests written by Lauren Faulkner Rossi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lauren Faulkner Rossi plumbs the moral justifications of Catholic priests who served willingly and faithfully in the German army in World War II. She probes the Church’s accommodations with Hitler’s regime, its fierce but often futile attempts to preserve independence, and the shortcomings of Church doctrine in the face of total war and genocide.
Download or read book The Aryan Jesus written by Susannah Heschel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Jesus a Nazi? During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these theologians established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life. In The Aryan Jesus, Susannah Heschel shows that during the Third Reich, the Institute became the most important propaganda organ of German Protestantism, exerting a widespread influence and producing a nazified Christianity that placed anti-Semitism at its theological center. Based on years of archival research, The Aryan Jesus examines the membership and activities of this controversial theological organization. With headquarters in Eisenach, the Institute sponsored propaganda conferences throughout the Nazi Reich and published books defaming Judaism, including a dejudaized version of the New Testament and a catechism proclaiming Jesus as the savior of the Aryans. Institute members--professors of theology, bishops, and pastors--viewed their efforts as a vital support for Hitler's war against the Jews. Heschel looks in particular at Walter Grundmann, the Institute's director and a professor of the New Testament at the University of Jena. Grundmann and his colleagues formed a community of like-minded Nazi Christians who remained active and continued to support each other in Germany's postwar years. The Aryan Jesus raises vital questions about Christianity's recent past and the ambivalent place of Judaism in Christian thought.
Download or read book Human Rights and the Catholic Tradition written by Donald J. Dietrich and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the French Revolution to Vatican II, the institutional Catholic Church has opposed much that modernity has offered men and women constructing their societies. This book focuses on the experiences of German Catholics as they have worked to engage their faith with their culture in the midst of the two world wars, the barbarism of the Nazi era, and the uncertainties and conflicts of the post-World War II world. German Catholics have confronted and challenged their Church's anti-modernism, two lost wars, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich, the Cold War, German reunification and the impulses of globalization. Catholic theologians and those others nurtured by Catholicism, who resisted Nazism to create their own private spaces, developed a personal and existential theology that bore fruit after 1945. Such theologians as Karl Rahner, Johannes Metz, and Walter Kasper, were rooted in their political experiences and in the renewal movement built by those who attended Vatican II. These theologians were sensitive to the horrors of the Nazi brutalization, the positive contributions of democracy, and the need to create a Catholicism that could join the conversation on human rights following World War II. This dialogue meant accepting non-Catholic religious traditions as authentic expressions of faith, which in turn required that the sacred dignity of every man, woman, and child had to be respected. By the twenty-first century, Catholic theologians had made furthering a human rights agenda part of their tradition, and the German contribution to Catholic theology was crucial to that development. The current Catholic milieu has been forged through its defensive responses to the Enlightenment, through its resistance to ideologies that have supported sanctioned murder, and through an extensive dialogue with its own traditions. In focusing on the German Catholic experience, Dietrich offers a cultural approach to the study of the religious and ethical issues that ground the human rights paradigm that will be of particular interest to students of religion, historians, sociologists, and human rights specialists.
Download or read book The Holocaust the Church and the Law of Unintended Consequences written by Anthony J. Sciolino and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I admire greatly the way in which Deacon Sciolino has been able to absorb a vast amount of material and weave it into a coherent account of the R. C. Church vis--vis the Holocaust. Telling the story from the inside has an especial relevance and importance. Rev. Hubert G. Locke, cofounder of the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches The image of Jews as God-killers and their refusal to convert to Christianity has fueled a long tradition of Christian intolerance, hatred, and violence. It is no surprise, then, that when Adolf Hitler advocated the elimination of Jews, he found willing allies within the Catholic Church and Christianity itself. In this study, author Anthony J. Sciolino, himself a Catholic, cuts into the heart of why the Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole failed to stop the Holocaust. He demonstrates that Nazisms racial anti-Semitism was rooted in Christian anti-Judaism. While tens of thousands of Christians risked their lives to save Jews, many moreincluding some members of the hierarchyaided Hitlers campaign with their silence or their participation. Sciolinos solid research and comprehensive interpretation provide a cogent and powerful analysis of Christian doctrine and church history to help answer the question of what went wrong. He suggests that Christian tradition and teaching systematically excluded Jews from the circle of Christian concern and thus led to the tragedy of the Holocaust. From the origins of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism and the controversial position of Pope Pius XII to the Catholic Churchs current endeavors to hold itself accountable for their role, The Holocaust, the Church, and the Law of Unintended Consequences offers a vital examination of one of historys most disturbing issues. theholocaustandchurch.com
Download or read book The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany written by and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hitler s Theology written by Rainer Bucher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitler's Theology investigates the use of theological motifs in Adolf Hitler's public speeches and writings, and offers an answer to the question of why Hitler and his theo-political ideology were so attractive and successful presenting an alternative to the discontents of modernity. The book gives a systematic reconstruction of Hitler's use of theological concepts like providence, belief or the almighty God. Rainer Bucher argues that Hitler's (ab)use of theological ideas is one of the main reasons why and how Hitler gained so much acquiescence and support for his diabolic enterprise. This fascinating study concludes by contextualizing Hitler's theology in terms of a wider theory of modernity and in particular by analyzing the churches' struggle with modernity. Finally, the author evaluates the use of theology from a practical theological perspective. This book will be of interest to students of Religious Studies, Theology, Holocaust Studies, Jewish Studies, Religion and Politics, and German History.
Download or read book Complicity in the Holocaust written by Robert P. Ericksen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of the darker aspects of Nazi Germany, churches and universities - generally respected institutions - grew to accept and support Nazi ideology. Complicity in the Holocaust describes how the state's intellectual and spiritual leaders enthusiastically partnered with Hitler's regime, becoming active participants in the persecution of Jews, effectively giving Germans permission to participate in the Nazi regime. Ericksen also examines Germany's deeply flawed yet successful postwar policy of denazification in these institutions.
Download or read book Resisting the Third Reich written by Kevin P. Spicer and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spicer juxtaposes Catholicism and Nazism to provide a clear, balanced understanding of the challenges the clergy faced simply by celebrating the sacraments and teaching the faithful. By following individual priests in their day-to-day ministries, he documents how effectively they guarded their flock from a predatory ideology. Along the way, he highlights the leadership of Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Berlin, who enabled the diocesan clergy to speak out against Nazi violations of Catholic doctrine and practice, and Monsignor Bernhard Lichtenberg, who was sentenced to prison for publicly praying for Jews and other victims of Nazi oppression.
Download or read book German Catholicism at War 1939 1945 written by Thomas Brodie and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German Catholicism at War explores the mentalities and experiences of German Catholics during the Second World War. Taking the German Home Front, and most specifically, the Rhineland and Westphalia, as its core focus German Catholicism at War examines Catholics' responses to developments in the war, their complex relationships with the Nazi regime, and their religious practices. Drawing on a wide range of source materials stretching from personal letters and diaries to pastoral letters and Gestapo reports, Thomas Brodie breaks new ground in our understanding of the Catholic community in Germany during the Second World War.
Download or read book Hitler s Pope written by John Cornwell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on secret archives to present a record of the career of Pope Pius XII, showing his collaboration with the Nazis and his anti-Semitism, and discusses his continuing influence.
Download or read book Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity written by Abraham Joshua Heschel and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1997-05-16 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gathers essays by the Jewish scholar, activist, and theologian about Judaism, Jewish heritage, social justice, ecumenism, faith, and prayer.
