[graemep]

> But also, there were plenty of Christian and Catholic Nazi.

The Catholic Church condemned Nazi ideology in the 1930s and said racism is incompatible with Christianity. The story of the papal encyclical is quite interesting. Lots of priests ended up in prisons of concentration camps.

The Nazis were determined to specifically get rid of Christian values. They invented two new religions to try and replace it: Nazi neo-paganism and Positive Christianity.

Hitler was not a historian and hugely misinterpreted history, but the Nazi view of Sparta was not just a myth. Sparta was literally a society based on a racial hierarchy, with the Spartans structuring their society around keeping control of the helots.

[watwut]

Jozef Tiso was catholic priest and president. He presided over deportation and ultimate killing of Slovak Jews. This was very much Catholic project, where hate toward jews was preached from the churches. And it was openly nazi, including Hitler salutes. Significant majority of government were Catholics, most priests (its catholic country) and high profile pushers for the deportations were Catholic priests. The arguments for the deportation were both national and religious.

The Catholic Church was instrumental rather then objecting.

Also German nazi had appeal to conservative Catholics in Germany, they were one of the constituencies voting for them. You had some nazi into neo-paganism, sure, but the cross with conservative Catholics was real.

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And like I said, recently excommunicated group of priest was founded by a famous French nazi. They were hiding him for years after the war.

Current pope is definitely not a nazi, just for the record. Absolutely not, he truly sees races as equal and poor as equal. Nor he is left wing as some say, he is conservative without crossing to far right side. But he also makes uglier undercurrent in catholic church fairly angry. Not counting Vance here btw, he seems to be in a very small weird mini group of his own.

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Sparta was fascists, but not really into race science. That was discovered only later. If they were racial, they would be better able to keep their numbers - but instead their system ensured the amount of citizens was smaller and smaller.

[constantius]

Examples of Christian (or any other religion's) priests taking the politically difficult view and living by their own precepts and stated values are few and far between.

From the very beginning. Look into how the churchmen happily destroyed pagan temples and killed pagan priests in the Roman Empire when they had the power to do so. Look at how they justified and clamoured for death (including of Christians) during the Crusades. Or at how long they've taken to take a position against slavery. Or how they've bent the knee to fascists in the XXth century when it was politically expedient to do so. The few who stood by their principles are very rare, even though they've been used to whitewash their institutions later.

And to avoid getting blamed of anti-Christianity: that's also true of Buddhists (look at how they killed Muslims in Myanmar), of Muslims (the Saudis especially), and the way most Jewish synagogues have reacted to the genocide is nothing but horror and shame.

Religion (as in the institution) has almost always lagged behind virtuous developments: it's virtuous people who have largely initiated these movements and sacrificed for their cause. You don't get to the level of wealth and power that the Church has by taking morally right stances.