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Facist dictators and their religion
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Message 1.
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Monday, 6th June 2011
ITs noted that Musolini, Franco and Hitler were all Catholics. Is it known whether they used their common religion to gain support? Did Hitler and Mussolini? Is there anything to read into the fact they were Catholic? Was it more about politics? or religion was secondary to them?
I understood that Musolini copied some facist ideology from cathocism: ie One supreme leader, universality/conquest. He also gave the vatican its independent state and adopted some of its teachings into italian law. They in turn gave him their blessngs especially his brutal Ethiopian campaign. Did Hitler or Franco also go out of their way to win support from the Vatican? Could this be a reason the church was condemned for its role during WW2 where they did not stand up to the excesses and atrocities.
Final point, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, is also Catholic and attended the new pope's inauguration in the vatican despite a banning order against him from travelling overseas. Is that another double standard? -
Message 2
Posted by Daniel-K (U2684833) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
There would seem, on the face of it, some connection between fascism and Catholicism. The first traces of what was to become fascism emerged in France with reactionary groups like Action Francaise that claimed to be defenders of Catholicism (though they would be condemned by the Church). Its history continued through Catholic parts of the world: first coming to power in Italy, its most terrible form incubated in Austria and southern Germany, enduring longest on the Iberian penisula, its most significant influence on politics outside Europe being in Latin America. The most extreme example of the link between fascism and Catholism is Jozef Tiso, the fascist dictator of Slovakia, who was an ordained priest.
But the link cannot be a simple one. There were many Protestant fasists, perhaps most notably Quisling. Nazi antisemitism owed a lot more to Luther than to any Catholic. Himmler embraced paganism and there remains today a strong pagan-fascist strain in Europe and North America.
I would suggest that it is not Catholism per se that gives rise to fasism but the decline of Catholism. As traditional religion came more and more to be questioned with the rise of industrialisation, science, secularism, the breakdown of traditional authorites and traditional social relationships, people who had been brought up to think there was only one truth in the world but could no longer accept that that truth was the one they had been taught began to look for a new one truth. Some of them turned to secular religions like communism and fascism, movemnets that said, as religion had once said, we know the sole truth of the world. In the Protestant areas of Europe, where industrialisation tended to happen earlier and slower, there was more time for people to drift away from traditional religion or to find new ways to accommodate traditional religion and the emerging society, so there was less of the radical break between old and new than in Catholic Europe. In Catholic Europe where the changes were more likely to occur n the space of a generation the ground was laid for the fascist reaction.
An alternative response to the challenge to religion of modernity has been fundamentalism and the retreat into religion. This is why some people claim to see similarities between Islamic or Christian fundamentalism and fascism, because they emrge out of the same social trauma of modernity. -
Message 3
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
Elkstone,
ITs noted that Musolini, Franco and Hitler were all Catholics.
So was JFK.
OTOH Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - most Communist dictators, in fact - weren't. Nor were Khomeini, Idi Amin and Oliver Cromwell.
What's yer point? -
Message 4
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
I think we ALL have double standards.
It's just that other people's always look much worse than our own . . . -
Message 5
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
And don't forget Henry VIII and Rupert Murdoch.
And Stalin trained for the (Orthodox) priesthood. -
Message 6
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
By definition, Protestantism is anti-orthodox, anti-statist, and just all round 'anti-whatever-the-current-paradigm-is', so is inherently individualist - it was designed to evade the central authority of the church, enshrined the principle of 'by faith alone' which enabled direct communication between worshipper and God without the intervention of a priest/church hierarchy, and is, therefore, to my mind, the key enabler for Europeans to have developed (slowly!) towards democratic liberalism.
No Reformation, No Revolution.
That leaves Roman Catholocism in the opposite corner, of centralised control and, much more insidiously, of totalitarian control of ideology. Very similar to secular totalitarianism that fascism embraces.
Similarly, the extreme form of Protestantism, ie, Puritanism, also denies debate and enforces a very strict, no-debate totalitarianism - just as extreme left wing politics does, viz statist communism. -
Message 7
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
Elkstone,
ITs noted that Musolini, Franco and Hitler were all Catholics.
So was JFK.
OTOH Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - most Communist dictators, in fact - weren't. Nor were Khomeini, Idi Amin and Oliver Cromwell.
What's yer point?
If you read the rest of my OP it may enlighten you on the issue i was trying to explore. know that. JFK did not forge close links with the vatican like musolini and deliberately avoided controversy or situations that would make him appear too close to his religion, as it would cost him support at home.
Another point that i heard is that popes, the said dictators saw themselves in the role of previous caesars of the Roman Empire who conquered. The Catholic Conquestadors of Latin America were notoriously brutal in their rule and conquest on that continent. That could be almost described as 'facist', all with blessings of the vatican. There was a time when people lived in fear of christianity with it came conquest brutality, enslavement All religions teach peace but history has shown the reverse tends to happen.
I believe Stalin made a salient point, when he responded to criticism from the Pope: "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Did Mosolini, Hitler, Franco Salazar were forced to make similar responses to the Vatican? Did it ever criticise the Facists the same way? Or did they single out Stalin because Communism was essentially Athiest, whereas the Facists were ostensibly religious, claiming god was on their side (I read that the German soldiers belts carried that slogan) and was fighting for western values which included christianity? -
Message 8
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
ITs noted that Musolini, Franco and Hitler were all Catholics. I think a bit of clarification is in order here. Mussolini and Franco were indeed fascists. Hitler was a nazi. Big difference. The regimes of the former two were much more benevolent than that of the latter, as well of that of Stalin, the latter being a commie, of course.
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Message 9
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
No one attempting to rule Italy or Spain - or, indeed, Ireland - could possibly do so in the thirties, or even now I suspect, without being 'pro-Catholic' simply and solely because of the vast, vast hegemony of the RC church in those countries. Napoleon did the same in France of course, getting rid of all the Revolutionary 'Rational' religion, and doing a real-politik deal with the Church in order to consolidate his worldly power.
The Fascist dictators did similarly.
On the difference between Fascism and Nazism - is it just that Musso and Franco were not actually nutters like Hitler, and simply wanted to rule their countries authoritarianly?
If so, it begs the question that, had Hitler been less consumed by all his Aryan-nation/anti-Semite nonsense he could well have lasted as long as Franco did.....
Oh yes, and if he just had refrained from invading other people's countries of course.....(!) -
Message 10
Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
Fascism preaches that the state is ABOVE all,
Nazis preaches that their SUPER-RACE is ABOVE all,
Bolsheviks preach that their PROLETARIAT ( 'class' ) us ABOVE all.
Suvorovetz is right - don't make a mess ! -
Message 11
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
By definition, Protestantism is anti-orthodox, anti-statist, and just all round 'anti-whatever-the-current-paradigm-is', so is inherently individualist - it was designed to evade the central authority of the church, enshrined the principle of 'by faith alone' which enabled direct communication between worshipper and God without the intervention of a priest/church hierarchy
So why hasn't the Anglican Church voluntarily disestablished itself? -
Message 12
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
Vizzer,
You wrote:
"why hasn't the Anglican Church voluntarily disestablished itself?"
Hesitating question...because the Anglican Church leaders weren't fully Protestant in the beginning? There seems to be "Protestants" and "Protestants"... but I have to confess that I am not that erudite in "Protestant" matters....
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 13
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
Or could it be that most people/organisations are only 'anti-ruler' until they themselves are the rulers! -
Message 14
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
raundsgirl, you are a philosopher...
Kind regards, Paul. -
Message 15
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
You have a point, Paul - the Anglican Church was not really a "Protestant' church at all, in the true 'Protest-ant' sense.
Our 'Enery tried to set up a Catholic Church in England, with himself at the head of it. It was only after he died that a few reformers tried to turn it into a truly 'Protestant' church, but the English were too civilised to be too radical, and sort of became a 'sort of' almost-catholic church, that couldn't be bothered protesting too much. -
Message 16
Posted by NormanRHood (U14656514) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
the catholic church of today isnt the same one before Vatican 2
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Message 17
Posted by NormanRHood (U14656514) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
tony Blair is catholic-he bombed Serbia or kosovo--can i say here what i think of him?
Catholics in USA seem to want all the illegal aliens that's fascism -
Message 18
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
tony Blair is catholic-he bombed Serbia or kosovo--can i say here what i think of him?"
Didn't Tony Blair only covert to Catholicism after he stepped down from office? Can't imagine that a Catholic would be elected as PM in Britain still to this day .
Catholics in USA seem to want all the illegal aliens that's fascism
I hope that, what is an otherwise interesting thread, is not going to turn into yet another Catholic bashing session. -
Message 19
Posted by Daniel-K (U2684833) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
tony Blair is catholic-he bombed Serbia or kosovo--can i say here what i think of him?"
Didn't Tony Blair only covert to Catholicism after he stepped down from office? Can't imagine that a Catholic would be elected as PM in Britain still to this day .
He was a crypto-Catholic during his time as PM. He only admitted his Catholicism after he left office. It was just one further example of his utter contempt for the British people that he kept the conversion in his heart secret, believing admitting his devotion to Catholicism would harm him politically. His Catholicism will do him no good, though. Even the blood of Christ cannot redeem his crimes. -
Message 20
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
"I hope that, what is an otherwise interesting thread, is not going to turn into yet another Catholic bashing session. "
Nope, I'm just as happy to lay into Protestant fundamentalists (the Creationist types) and Muslim fundamentalists (the terrorism types)!!!!
As for Catholic-bashing, well, I think they only deserved it in historical terms (inquisition etc) and perhaps for those current apologists who seek to argue that the Catholics were most unfairly persecuted in l6/17th C England. -
Message 21
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
Nope, I'm just as happy to lay into Protestant fundamentalists (the Creationist types) and Muslim fundamentalists (the terrorism types)!!!! Be ware of the Protestant fundamentalists ready to blow buses and the tube cars during the rush hour!
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Message 22
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
As for Catholic-bashing, well, I think they only deserved it in historical terms (inquisition etc)
Tell that to the thousands and thousands of still-living human beings who, as vulnerable children, were systematically raped and tortured within RC institutions while supposedly 'modern' nation states turned a blind eye...
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Message 23
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
Yes, Catigern, but as was said, let's avoid bashing Catholics or any particular religious affiliation.
Terrible crimes that we cannot number have been committed in the name of 'belief' by it's extreme adherents. Please note I use the word 'belief' rather than religion, as it has not been confined to religion. From this I infer that it is the extremism, not the idea that is at fault. -
Message 24
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
Oh blimey! I put an apostrophe where one should not be:
it's extreme adherents
Oh, the shame of it. -
Message 25
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 8th June 2011
Oh blimey! I put an apostrophe where one should not be:
it's extreme adherents
Oh, the shame of it.
Raundsgirl,
I have no time to lose because of my urgent replies to among others Mutatis Mutandis, but I couldn't resist and from one research came another.
Wanted to say I made sometimes the same fault (being Dutch speaking) to use the same "it's" as a Saxon genitive.
But did some research and of course it has to be "its".
Found in my "English index grammar" (short one of some 64 pages from J.J. Tavernier teacher at the "Christ's hospital" Horsham (Sussex) printed in the Fifties in Bruges Belgium) about the Saxon genitive only used for a living being, a personification, a time, a distance. So no "it's" but nevertheless (as from my consulting of "my" grammar) "one's".
Kind regard,
Paul.
PS. sorry to bore you with such details, but it was a reaction on your "Oh blimey!"
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Message 26
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Thursday, 9th June 2011
What does your short grammar say about "Oh blimey!"
then, Paul?
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Message 27
Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Friday, 10th June 2011
Very interesting but the aim of Bolshevik propaganda was to replace the worship of God with veneration of the STATE, to substitute revolutionary icons for religious ones. Communism was the new religion, Lenin and Trotsky its new arch-priests.The festivals, rituals and symbols of Communist state were consciously modelled on their Christian equivalents, which they sought to replace. So the soviet festivals were scheduled on the SAME DAYS as the old Orthodoxy religious holidays -there was a Komsomol Christmas and Easter. Electric Day fell on Elijah Day, Forest Day on Trinity Sunday.
Say the May Day and Revolution Day were heavily overladen with religious symbolism : the armed march past the Kremlin was clearly reminiscent of the old religious procession ..only with rifles instead of crosses.
The very symbol of the Communist state , the RED STAR , was stepped in religious and messianic meaning deeply rooted in Russian folklore.The Bolsheviks' leaflets of 1918 explained why the RS appeared on the Soviet flag and their uniforms.
They told that there was once a beautiful maiden named Pravda ( Truth ) who had a burning red star on her forehead which lit up the whole world and brought it truth, justice and happiness. But one day the RS was stolen by Krivda ( Falsehood ) who wanted to bring darkness and evil to the world .
Thus began the rule of Krivda . Meanwhile, Pravda called on the people to retrieve her star and 'return the light of truth to the world'. A good youth conquered Krivda and her forces and returned the red star to Pravda, whereupon the evil forces ran away from the light 'like owls and bats' , and 'once again the people lived by thruth'.
The leaflets made the parable clear :'So the Red Star of the Red Army is the star of Pravda. And the Red Army soldiers are the brave holy warriors who are fighting Devil's Forces ( Krivda ) and her evil supporters so that truth should rule the world and so that all those appressed and wronged by Krivda, all the poor peasants and workers, should live well and in freedom'. -
Message 28
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Friday, 10th June 2011
Interesting to note that after Barbarossa was launched Stalin called on the workers and peasants to defend, not the revolution, but 'Mother Russia' and ceased, at least temporarily, his persecution of the Orthodox Church.
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Message 29
Posted by Billygoatgruff (U14440809) on Friday, 10th June 2011
I don't recall Hitler being a catholic, the Nazi's seem to have been pretty irreligious.
Racist to a man, but not God fearing.
Now Franco and Musolini played the good catholic for all they we're worth but like all politicians they had a tendency to play to the crowd, which in Italy and Spain was in the main a deeply religious peasantry.
You could argue that the rise of the facists was a counter to modernity and an attempt to maintain the status-quo. But I'd say the historical picture suggest it had more to do with the rise of Communism in post war world struggling to get back on its feet.
As for the church well they weren't going to side with the communists, but there no evidence I can see to suggest that the ideology of the facists is based on anything significantly religious. -
Message 30
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
What does your short grammar say about "Oh blimey!"
then, Paul?
raundsgirl,
no it don't say anything. But with the "great" nowadays search robots it only took ten seconds....
shortening for "God blind me" or "blame me"...
Didn't use it yet, although I learned a lot of colloquial on these messageboards over the years...as lad, bloke, lassie...and all that...you seems also to have nicknames for Churchill and Napoleon...
More used to French and German verbal as I hadn't the opportunity during my life to speak that much English...
And while being on the search robot I learned in another ten seconds that "Raunds" is a place in East Northhampshire...
Hmm, will no longer divert the honourable contributors from their OP (I hope that I correctly interpreted the term "original post" from it). English language people seems to use also that many (incomprehensible for foreigners)abbreviations as the Dutch(wo)men....
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
I am not sure that it is clear that as adults and political leaders Hitler and Mussolini were Roman Catholic in any meaningful way. Franco it is true fought to maintain a RC Spain that was threatened by anti-religious Communism, but since the conversion of the Visigoths to Christianity the Church in Spain had been a crucial element in maintaining effective government: and both Spain and Portugal had been created by Christian crusades, maintained by the ongoing crusading mission of the Spanish Inquisition.
But taking the OP as stated two general points come to mind for someone of my generation.
(a) ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND ECONOMIC HISTORY
The trend towards those European dictatorships was heavily focussed on those regions of Europe least touched by the Protestant Reformation and then by the industrial revolution. Much has been made of the “dead hand” of the Italian and Spanish Inquisitions that prevented scientific research and freedom of speech and thought and the way that this disadvantaged Roman Catholic Europe at a time when the thrust of historical progress seemed to be in exploring the wider world and reaping the benefits.
Thus Hitler was a product of the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire at a time when the general decline of vitality within the Islamic world led to hopes that compensatory gains might be made in the lands that the Turks could no longer hold on to.
But the Mediterranean, a crucible of so much of the basic structure of “Civilized life” for thousands of years was, not unlike China, caught up in the great weight of thousands of years of spectacular success, leaving a huge heritage which to some degree had all been blended together in a Medieval Christendom that had eventually restored wealth and vitality to the Italian peninsular.
The Reformation and the Industrial and scientific revolutions in North Western Europe had been based in a very real way upon a rejection of the new found focus on Italy and especially Rome after the Babylonish Captivity, itself an indication of some kind of independence movement from an increasingly Italian centred and authoritarian Papacy.
Goethe found Italy itself at the end of the Eighteenth Century a place of light and dynamism. But as Eric Heller brought out in "The Disinherited Mind", in the more remote and backwater reaches of the Roman Catholic Europe there were strange products, sects and movements like those in Bavaria, where Hitler settled.
In fact what Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and "Stalin" all had in common was a sense of belonging to once great Empires with magnificent courts, conquests etc which were now the poor-relations of Europe and needed great leaps forward of one kind or another.
And interestingly modern history showed that before the fall of the “Old Regime” and the advent of the new Middle Class dominated world, what Russia, Austria-Hungary, Prussia, and Iberia all had in common was the important work achieved by the “enlightened monarchs”, who used often purely authoritarian powers and methods in order to force through much-needed modernisation in the face of the forces of conservatism and backwardness.
More recently these had all been countries ruined and weakened by the First World War and the peace treaties (including Brest Litovsk) without the benefit of Reparations in cash or kind ( the turn-coat Italians were very bitter- hence the March on Fiume and its occupation). Added to this in many cases their monarchies had disappeared, or had lost all credibility.
In the aftermath of the struggle against the Axis and the ongoing struggle against Communism, the Marshall Plan was predicated upon the conviction that the desperate situation of such countries amidst the World Chaos of the early Thirties made such undeveloped, traditional and unsophisticated countries very vulnerable to populist extremists and simplistic solutions.
And for much of the post-war world this idea of the economic under-development of Roman Catholic Southern Europe and the Orthodox Mediterranean, that had prompted the WASP policies of the USA in the Twenties, still persisted.
Consequently it was a deliberate policy of the Common Market, EEC and EU to use development grants in order to combat what appeared to be endemic poverty that was often connected to the idea that somehow people were just more content with much less material well-being because of age-old secrets of the modest good life and a priesthood that would "put you right with God". The low suicide rates in Southern Italy and in the Irish Republic was often mentioned: though presumably without counting the numbers of those who decided to end the life that they had by emigrating to an earthly “better place”.
A programme on French TV last week brought out that the place with the highest proportion of centenarians in Europe is a mountain region in Sardinia where the longevity seems to be related to working as a shepherd tending sheep and goats, eating the traditional produce of the valley cooked in an age-old way, and observing the tradition in which any extended family which did not take in its own old-folk in their old age would face public disgrace.
The brief economic prosperity of these regions associated with the rebuilding of "developed Europe", allowing these regions to build new economies based upon tourism and second homes for the "North-Western Europeans", has now produced the crisis of the PIGS and the occupation of the centre of Capital cities by the populous, in place of the Marches of the Twenties on Fiume, Rome, Munich and Berlin.
(b) THE ROMAN CATHOLIC POPULIST REVIVAL
The Age of Revolution 1776-1850 also produced by its final stages a Roman Catholic Revival as a counter weight to the increasingly secular and materialistic world that was developing. And to some extent there were probably certain common trends in this, that I wrote about this morning on the IRA thread.
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" Recently I got a new insight into the international context of the 1830's and 1840's through David Stannard's "The Puritan Way of Death" (1977), a study drawn from the death experience of those Puritans who founded plantations in North America, and the way that Puritan ideas of death impacted on life for individuals, families and communities as revealed by the extant literature and artefacts.
But by this time (1830’s-40’s) the Puritan colonies and communities were losing their identities as daily life became increasing that of a modernising USA. These changes, however, also went along with an increasingly romantic and sentimentalised view of the past and the "dear-departed", as a modern, more impersonal and mechanical way of life emerged.
In the new mechanisms few people were as irreplaceable as the great leaders of the Founding Fathers had been, the kind of men (usually) whose death had whole communities wondering how on earth they were to cope with the world now. As Stannard observed, when President Kennedy was assassinated it was only a matter of hours before the great majority of the American people were just back to watching TV and just getting on with normal life.
As this more impersonal "society" devoid of real community developed, "the burden of death fell much more heavily on a smaller , more intimate household, thus giving rise to ostentatious and occasionally hysterical scenes of bereavement".
This was associated with a whole new emphasis on making new sorts of cemeteries, which could be places where those grieving privately for years could go to feel close to those to whom they had the strongest emotional attachments. In this they were increasingly encouraged to see "the dear departed" as happily "in a better place" and not totally transfigured and changed by death and the revelation of their predestined fate in accordance with Calvinism, that taught that you could never be sure whether the members of your intimate family were good or evil, helping you to Heaven or Hell.
In earlier sections Stannard explained how it was normal to send young children away from their parents, to protect both adult and child from the sins of human affection and love.
In this age of progress where the "business of life" was being tackled with increasing efficiency by the industrial, governmental and institutional mechanisms of an industrial age, human affection and love also were subjected to specialization. If it was increasingly "a man's world" out there, “the "home is where the heart is". And this meant that caring and concern became the role of the women. Hence Barbara Welter could talk of the "feminization" of American religion.
In the 1830's Frances Trollope noted that American Churches were attended overwhelmingly by women, and observed the tremendous influence the clergy had upon them. Clergymen, she said, obviously enjoyed the feeling of importance that they received from so much female attention, and "it is from the clergy only that the women of America receive that sort of attention which is so dearly valued by every female heart throught the world."
But it seems likely that many of the same pressures of "modernisation" impacted upon what was then the United Kingdom, and especially upon Ireland, where the male female relationship- as in many parts of the British Isles- was increasingly shaped by a reality in which "men must work and women must weep, though the harbour bar be moaning.
The "feminization of the Church" in Ireland must have been promoted by the same forces of modernisation, accentuated in this case by the physical absence of fathers and husbands away working or looking for work, leaving the Catholic Priest as the only male company and companionship that many mothers had. Interestingly this seems to have been a period when the cult of the Virgin Mary and her special status as "The Mother of God" resulted in the idea of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven being formally adopted as Roman Catholic dogma. She was a obvious role-model for heroic womanhood whose son was born to die in for the greater good."
**
The Roman Catholic revival in Britain was very much associated with the emergence of new working class RC populations within the new industrial cities, RC Highlanders "cleared" from their modest ancestral lifestyles as well as Irish RC's. France saw heavy immgration from Italy. So the Roman Catholic Church found itself very much in the front line of the moral, social and economic struggles and problems of those regions, fighting a battle against the tide of secularism and selfishness that the laws of economics advocated.
And this pattern of cheap Labour migration from the Mediterranean south into the industrializing Europe created similar inner-city and/or industrial communities to many parts of Europe, where the Priest often found himself (as Cardinal Manning in the Dock Strike) taking a leading role in playing the “father-figure” for his congregation enduring all the disadvantages of cheap immigrant Labour.
Thus the Roman Catholic Church became once more a place of glorious escape from the uncertainties of the age, and offered the solace of an ever ready ear for the desperate- either that of the Saints or the Virgin Mary- now accepted to have ascended to Heaven as a real person- or the priest in the confessional who could take away sins.
And crucially c1870, as the Papacy looked at its position now that the secular power it had held in the Papal States for 1000 years had been assumed by the new unified Italy, the Vatican Decrees produced the new doctrine of Papal Infallibility. The “British” historian Lord Acton, as a Liberal Catholic with a very different idea of the way ahead, was horrified and was later to posit his famous law of history that "All power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely".
And it does seem that once individuals and populations have come to accept that any human being might be treated as infallible, it begs the question as to just how such infallible and superhuman individuals, to whom obedience and submission is automatically due, are to be identified and elevated. Should it by “due process” and through very fallible and imperfect mechanisms and institutions, both ancient and modern? When the Church upper hierarchy was so obviously "out of touch" with so much of ordinary life the populist politician could easily become seen as a kind of Messiah.
In fact - as so much was invented and developed in England- in many ways the prototype “Messiah” was Joseph Chamberlain, who led the Unitarian Congregation and wider Nonconformity into public good works in order to try to save the soul of Birmingham, and then the wider Great Britain.
Chamberlain almost created the modern British party system through the Liberal Association, and encouraged a total about turn from the “Big Society” politics of the great period of mid-Victorian prosperity to a new focus on the use of the powers State. His populist appeal is brought out by Beatrice Webb's descriptions of attending some of his early speeches in his Birmingham days. And one of his election brochures for the 1911 general elections was really quite proto-Nazi.
Like many women admirers of apparently strong and decisive men, uniquely equipped and capable of tackling the incredible challenges of the hour, Beatrice was prepared to give her heart. But even for a Victorian middle class mature woman, as she was by then, she was just too accustomed to an English right to not follow orders, and to think for herself for her to become Chamberlain's second wife.
She finally found “the other one”- a husband with whom she could work in partnership- and Sidney and Beatrice Webb became major architects of the Labour Party and the Welfare State as an attempt to reconcile the heart and caring with the laws of economics and the machinery of government.
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
Cass,
read your whole message to the end. So busy with the prehistoric Homo on the Ancient and Archaeology.
Certainly not agreeing to your Protestant version of the economic differences. We discussed it in" the great divergence" thread from "fascinating".
Buried under your waterfall, I don't see in the immediate future a coherent editing (I hope shorter than yours) of the counterarguments from my side. And that is not an escape, but just lack of time.
Perhaps when I get older and will have more time to spent on this messageboard...but in the meantime can the thread have disappeared or the whole 鶹Լ forum....
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 33
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Paul
As someone who is already "older" I was careful to refer to the understanding acquired as part of my generation, very much aware that the world that I am living in tries to see things very differently.
But this puts me in mind of some extracts from R.G. Collingwood on the Dark Ages thread yesterday especially:
"It may thus be said that historical inquiry reveals to the historian the powers of his own mind..Since all he can know historically is thoughts that he can re-think for himself... And conversely, whenever he finds certain historical matters unintelligible, he has discovered a limitation in his own mind: he has discovered that there are certain ways in which he is not, or no longer, or not yet, able to think. Certain periods of history, sometimes whole generations of historians, find in certain periods of history nothing intelligible, and call them dark ages; but such phrases tell us nothing about those ages themselves, though they tell us a great deal about the persons who use them, namely that they are unable to re-think the thoughts which were fundamental to their life... It is the historian himself who stands at the bar of judgement, and there reveals his own mind in its strengths and weaknesses, its virtues and vices."
Over the last half century it has become very fashionable in the West to try to explain everything in terms of science, technology, material reality, economics, mechanisms and systems. To such people the whole struggle for "Christian Civilization" as something worth dying for and for taking on a war that cost 55 million lives is really unintelligible except as perhaps the worst hour in human history rather than the reason for its Finest Hour.
In this context thinking of Stannard's study of the Puritan Way of Death in the Americas one could say that Western Civilization has moved from the Medieval legacy renewed and revived by Calvinism in which life before death was really just an inconsequential preparation for the much greater and infinite life after death. By the early Nineteenth Century life before Death and after Death had reached some kind of equipoise with Life After Death being lived by those lucky enough to go to a "better place" as a kind of ethereal timeless, weightless and eventless version of Life before Death. By the end of the twentieth century Christian Aid reflected the new Western belief systems in adopting "We believe in Life Before Death".
And yet watching Michelle Obama's speech to selected young women in South Africa one had to be powerfully reminded of those ideas that have empowered people to work to "make a difference" over most of the world over most of the human story.
And this severance from such empowerment was crucial to the emergence of the Fascist dictators for the First World War had gone a long way to shatter the belief systems that sent millions of young men into that struggle, backed by their extended families and communities on the 鶹Լ Front.
The previous half century had seen a period in which the White Protestant Anglo-Saxon world had come to believe itself the vanguard of the march of progress leading the rest of the world towards a new global Civilization. But 1914-18 created self-doubt and a crisis of belief, along with a drastic period of re-appraisal in the wider world that saw the Great Powers more clearly revealed as they were forced by the trauma of war to reveal their worst and their darkest aspects rather than the way that they had tried to "market" the superiority of their cultures around the world.
There was often very little noble in the savagery of the Western Front, and the after the war there was a renewed interest in the ability of "primitive" and "less developed" races, societies etc to deal with the realities of life when the hour of crisis- of Life and Death decisions and struggles were at hand. As I wrote a while ago the Diaghelev ballet based upon Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" had brought the world in crisis in the summer of 1914 in touch with those older wisdoms and ways by which humankind had learned to live with the thrust of Life, and the Primitivism of Picasso and the observations of people like D.H,Lawrence that returned to a "Noble Savage" theme also built on this idea that, in a world with no sense of direction , or coherent strategy for working with the grain of Life there were lessons to be learned from the superior aspects of the way of life within non-Western Societies.
Recently France mourned the death of Dr Levi- Straus whose seminal work as an anthropologist in the Thirties elaborated very much this thesis.
To this end perhaps the notes that I dug out on Hitler and the Church may help to tie all of this more clearly to the OP.
Regards
Cass
( I hope that things are going well with your wife) -
Message 34
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
HITLER AND THE CHURCH
HIS VIEWS AND INTENTIONS . In a private meeting in 1933 Hitler explained that Germany would eventually have to choose between “the Jewish Christ-creed with its effeminate pity ethos” and a “strong , heroic belief in God in Nature, God in our own people, in our destiny, in our blood”. He would not openly attack the Churches, just undermine what influence they had left. At the same time originally pagan festivals like Christmas , Easter and Harvest would be reclaimed as the folk celebrations with pageantry, which reflected their ancient Germanic roots.
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH had not had much influence in the Prussian dominated Germany before 1918, but the Weimar Constitution allowed it to gain influence through its “Centre Party” , which took part in most of the coalition governments of the twenties. By 1933 ,however, the Weimar Republic was discredited, and the Centre Party with it.
And :- [1] In 1929 the Pope had come to terms with Mussolini , the Fascist leader of Italy, and showed support for a political approach in which the rights of the individual came second to the interests of the “corporate state”.
[ 2] In 1933 the Pope officially condemned Communism and criticised Socialism. The Nazis , therefore , seemed to be heading in the “right direction “ in some respects , and the Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act.
In July 1933 the RC Church agreed to the scrapping of the Centre Party and the ending of all political activity. The guarantees which Hitler gave in return proved worthless. Churches were harassed ,as priests were spied on and prosecuted for misconduct. Members of Church Youth movements were pressured into joining the Nazi Youth instead . Catholic civil servants were dismissed and the Catholic press was heavily restricted. Parents were discouraged from sending their children to Church schools , many of which closed down.
In 1937 alone this pressure resulted in 100,000 Germans formally leaving the Church, and in March 1933 a message from the Pope was smuggled into Germany to be read from all the pulpits. It warned of a “war of destruction” against the Church and condemned idolatry of race, nation , state or ruler. This brought an intensification of the attacks on targeted individuals and congregations.
THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES .had been closely linked with the German monarchies since the time of Martin Luther , and had little sympathy with democracy and liberalism.
In 1932 a small group of Protestants had founded a Party called “German Christians” to set up pro-Nazi groups in the assemblies of the various Protestant Churches. In 1933 one of their leaders, Ludwig Mueller, was elected to a new position of Protestant Bishop of the Reich . He then tried unsuccessfully to force all the Protestants unite.
In 1935 Hitler opted for a more subtle approach and created a Ministry for Church Affairs to achieve unity through negotiation and compromise. This change prevented the consolidation of effective opposition . As with the RC’s the Gestapo and Nazi mobs were able to target individuals who were often lone voices. E.g. (a) Martin Niemoeller who was arrested in 1937 and then spent the years 1938-45 in concentration camp, (b) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leading theologian, who was executed for his part in a plot to kill Hitler.
THE NATIONAL REICH CHURCH was established for true Nazis who replaced the cross with the swastika and the Bible with “Mein Kamf” , and where God was worshipped by military marching and the Nazi salute.
Cass -
Message 35
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Re:message 33 and 34.
Cass,
you wrote:
"The previous half century had seen a period in which the White Protestant Anglo-Saxon world had come to believe itself the vanguard of the march of progress leading the rest of the world towards a new global Civilization."
I don't see that...
I read your two messages and I don't see immediately, where the difference of influence between the Roman-Catholic and Protestants are. Mussolini acted in a Roman-Catholic country and Hitler in a mixed Catholic-Protestant country?
As for your waterfall of words I have for the moment not the time, the same as for your previous messages, to answer them "in depth" point for point as it is necessarry to stop the flood. And as I said it is not an escape.
The wife is supporting the treatment well up to now, she is in the halve of the time of the treatment for the moment. And thank you very much for asking.
Kind regards,
Paul.
PS. I am not an ex-history teacher as you, only an apprentice history buff, but from my 9 years research for these messageboards and some six years for French history messageboards.... -
Message 36
Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Protestantism is anti-orthodox, anti-statist, and just all round 'anti-whatever-the-current-paradigm-is'
There are Ultra-Orthodox Pro Monarchist elements - historically the Reformed Church of Scotland was, and so is The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland - it's radicalism is a form of Covenanter Orthodoxy from the 17th Century based on the King James Bible, Westminster Confession of Faith, Directory of Family Worship and the teachings of St Augustine of Hippo and of Calvin and John Knox and the Synod of Dordt of 1618, positions down the centuries, in fact the doctrine of Salvation by coming to Faith through the Preaching of the Word by the Grace of God Alone and everyone else Predestined to Hell and of the Literal Infallibility of the Bible go back into the Middle Ages, their position that they are more strongly in favour of the establishment principle than the establishment, just that they think that they should be the establishment. Objections to the Roman Catholic Church being objections to adding things to the Bible, to Christmas and Easter on the grounds that both were pagan ceremonies adopted by the Roman Church, in fact a return to the biblical position and in worship, doctrine and morality to rejecting the validity of anything that is not in the Bible or of anyone being the Head of the Church under God because only God is the Head of the Church, rejection of civil interference in religious affairs, but acceptance of the importance of the Monarchy in the post 1688 settlement. They are fanatically trinitarian, emphasise the Lord's Day, reject transubstantiation while believing in a real presence in Communion. Believe in the earth having been created in 6 days in the year 4004BC, believe in the literal existence of Hell and the Devil. Many other denominations stemming from the Free Church of Scotland or of similar denominations around the world have similar positions on many things that are more similar to 16th & 17th century Evangelical positions and in fact the early missionaries at Iona and Pre Roman Christian Church in Scotland & Ireland shared many of those positions although in a less vigorous form. Primitive Methodism also was very much a Conservative force emphasising the Bible and Faith in God and the literal existence of Hell and the Devil, the Salvation Army and Brethren also emphasised returns to earlier principles that had been largely abandoned.
Fascism is not a Conservative or Orthodox force, in fact technically Mussolini and his lot were the only real fascists and it was a progressive ideology promoting technological advance and new artforms, Nazism was a distinctly German and Austrian nationalist reaction, Franco was a Catholic Nationalist with Falangist leanings. John Knox was a religious radical reformer facing an almost absolute monarchy, Oliver Cromwell was eager to restore order and deliberately took the title of Lord Protector when he could have been crowned King, King Charles I and his Archbishop in their failed attempts to force Episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer on the Reformed Church of Scotland caused the situation that Oliver Cromwell then had to sort out. In fact the Commonwealth was much more religiously tolerant than the Monarchy it replaced. Then King Charles II setabout expelling Presbyterian ministers from the Church of England and Reformed Church of Scotland and banning the Westminster Confession of Faith and reintroducing Patronage, and later the Stuarts even veered towards attempting to re-establish Roman Catholicism. -
Message 37
Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
The main opposition to the Highland Clearances came from the Free Church of Scotland and Evangelicals in the Reformed Church of Scotland, when most of the Evangelicals broke away to form the Free Church there were attempts to prevent it being created with them denied access to buildings, of course they were rebelling against another Protestant Church, the main reason for the formation of the Free Church was the objection to the Patronage Act and the insistence the Bible was the Infallible Word of God and reasserting the position of the Westminster Confession of Faith, of unaccompanied metrical psalm singing and the rejection of the use of musical instruments or Hymns that were not directly from the text of the Bible, a rejection of Arminian, Lutheran and Anti-Trinitarian elements among the Moderates in the Reformed Church of Scotland. It was a mixture of a return to Orthodoxy, but also with a socially progressive edge although a Bible based one, the main objection always being to civil authorities usurping the authority of God.
The breakaway of the element that became the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1893 and the more recent Free Church of Scotland Continuing were both more Conservative elements appealing to Ultra-Orthodoxy in religion. A stronger emphasis on the Bible and that it was dictated word of God rather than merely inspired word of God.
Of course Presbyterianism does use elections, Oliver Cromwell was a Congregationalist, Congregationalism is actually more decentralised than Presbyterianism without the highly centralised system of hierarchical courts, otherwise with similarities. The Presbyterian system uses the Jewish system instituted in the time of the Prophet Jeremiah and so arguably is the most Orthodox of all Christian systems whereas the Roman Catholic system was brought in by the Roman Church. The system used in Congregationalism only came in with the early Christian Church. -
Message 38
Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
General Franco had to deal with a coalition of disparate groups, notably balancing Falangist and Carlist demands, in the final years both groups ended up increasingly marginalised and eventually he appointed the son of the former King to become the new King.
-
Message 39
Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
the son
the grandson I mean't. -
Message 40
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Paul
Well really I can not understand why you can not see the emergence of the "White Man's Burden" concept before 1914..
There is the whole thrust of Marxist history which was heavily influenced by what was going on in Lancashire in the first decades of the Nineteenth Century where the Manchester School hailed the industrial revolution taking place under the "reign" of King Cotton was very much the "Way of the Future".
Before Marx and Engels had written the Communist Manifesto that futuristic dynamic had been exported to Belgium, and then it spread out from the Scheldt all across Northern Europe. It was evident from the Communist Manifesto that Marx saw this process as the path of human progress and continued to presume and predict that the inevitable Proletarian Revolution taking humankind forward into the better world that was now becoming possible through this process would come about in Great Britain, or then after the rapid rise of Germany- in those lands which were also lands of Teutonic Races of which the Anglo-Saxons were just one example.
The Scramble for Land in Africa sought its justification in the responsibility of these leaders of progress and power to emulate the Civilizing mission of the Greeks and Romans and replace savagery and barbarity with Civilization and progress, bringing forward momentum to regions that were seen as still stuck in Prehistoric or at best biblical times.
And the whole thrust was summed up by the great British Imperialist Cecil Rhodes in his final years when he had come to realise that the "White Man's Burden" of leadership and organisation of the global progress that was so obviously needed. He saw that only the coming together of the three great powers that drew their strength from their shared Anglo-Saxon background could accomplish the huge task. Those three powers were Great Britain, Germany and the United States, and as a step towards bringing them together he set up the Rhodes Scholarships which would bring the best young men from the British Empire (irrespective of race, creed or colour) along with those from Germany and the United States to study at Oxford University his own old university.
Together they would develop an Anglo-Saxon Civilization that would shape the Future of mankind: and after 1945 in many ways they did, and still do. My most recent "book" started off under the title "The "New Europe" an Anglo-Saxon Plantation".
Hence, for example, since Madame Lagarde received the backing of the UK, the USA and Germany most people regard the possibility of her elevation to the head of the IMF would only not come about smoothly out of some childish perversity and immature resentment from weaker countries just wishing that they had powerful enough voices to be taken seriously in the most crucial international affairs. [rather like Chirac's "Non" over the military intervention in Iraq.]
Cass
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