The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: A balanced, fair, detailed and scholarly book that could be of interest to all except those who are irrevocably, rigidly and unalterably pro- or anti-Catholic.

Rating:
Summary: Anti-Catholic bias
Review: Despite the trappings of scholarship, the book is unbalanced. It systematically ignores or downplays the evidence of the Catholic Church's opposition to Nazism. Mit Brennender Sorge, Pius XII's courageous encyclical against Nazism in 1937, is dismissed as a fluke. In fact, it was written with the full support of the German bishops and its publication triggered a bitter persecution of German Catholics. There is little here on the destruction of Catholic schools, the show trials of clergy, the destruction of the Catholic press, the persecution of the religious orders. On the other hand, every sign of Catholic sympathy for Hitler is magnified out of proportion.

The result is an anti-Catholic cartoon.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly Scholarly, Painfully Convincing
Review: Having read, "Hitler's Pope" I eagerly grabbed Lewy's book as it became available. To my mind, it is far more scholarly than the former, and thus more convincing. Many of the criticisms leveled at "Hitler's Pope" will be undone by the new year 2000 release of Gunter Lewy's work. He has done his homework and it is painfully clear that "evil triumphs when good men do nothing." One watches the gradual trend from outright condemnation of Nazism by the German Catholic bishops, such as forbidding mutual membership in both th Nazi party and the Catholic church; forbidding the sacraments to Nazi party members; forbidding the wearing of the Nazi uniform in church, etc., to first softening their views, then allowing their protests to be couched in such ambiguous language as to have little effect, then accomodating portions of the Nazi program, then outright concluding an agreement between the Church and Reich. Pressure of the reality of the growing power of the Nazi regime, the desire of the Catholic laity to be both Catholic and Nazi (after all the Nazi party controlled their jobs and all of the societal institutions, in time), and the timorous hope of the Church that by accomodating the Reich, it might favorably influence the Reich toward a more humane perspective, all combined to give Hitler the sanction of the most widely recognized moral authority in the world. Frightening, to be sure.

One sees similar arguments in the recent agreement between the United States and Communist China. We expect to reform them, by getting into bed with them, so to speak. If "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany" is any indication of how such accomodations work, they will do more to corrupt us than we do to reform them.

Worth reading. A bit difficult to read because of its very methodical scholarship, but compelling nevertheless.

Rating:
Summary: "Scholarship"? ...Ridiculous
Review: Many of the claims of this book have been proven false or misleading. Please don't this book. Please don't give this person any of your money. The new book by Peter Goodman is the actual truth. I would suggest that instead.

Rating:
Summary: Painfully Fair
Review: The Christian contribution and response to the actions of Nazi Germany, in particular the Holocaust, is perhaps the most apalling event in the history of Western civilization. One reads Mr. Lewy's contribution to Holocaust scholarship with an ever growing sense of rage. One's rage is not directed at the Catholic Church in particular, because there were no corporate heroes in this tragic episode. There were individual acts of heroism, to be sure, but at best the Church (and by Church, I mean Protestant as well as Catholic)is guilty of massive self-interest and moral cowardice. This book is a case study in the behavior of one group. A sense of fairness and dry scholarship pervades this book. One will not find diatribes here; neither will one find the selective omission of facts favorable to the church mentioned by one reviewer. One will find the facts laid out by someone who has bent over backward to give the benefit of the doubt but who has also laid out the case against the Church with the skill of a brilliant and experienced prosecutor. Only occasionally do his outrage and passion shine through, and then only in summary and conclusion paragraphs. Is the author fair? He is at pains to describe the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Nazis. He leaves no doubt that throughout the Nazi period, the very existence of the Church as a moral force was endangered by Nazi arrogance, contempt, deceit, and betrayal. The Church was, indeed, a wounded church, dealing from a position of weakness, not strength. And yet. In its zeal to protect the institution, the Church abandoned, perhaps forever, any claim it may have ever had to moral legitimacy (my claim, not Lewy's). Better for the German Catholic Church to have died a martyr's death than to live as Hitler's more or less willing pawn. People are more precious in God's sight than institutions.