Two interesting maps of Germany. On the first, the black areas are those with the highest concentration of Catholics according to the 1934 census:
On the second map, the black areas show the highest concentration of Nazi votes in the 1932 election (white the lowest)
Well fancy that!
The post Catholic Church Conservation:Catholics fiercest anti-nazis in pre-war Germany has larger versions of the maps if you want to see more detail.
Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen
The first post on this blog gives an introduction to the concept of the hermeneutic of reform and continuity in the words of Pope Benedict XVI.
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12 comments:
This is paramount for us to know!
I have looking for this for months, it was printed in STAR a few years ago, I lent it to someone then forgot who.
It is so revealing isn't it.
I think we could have guessed that one, but to see it put so graphically is a delight.
Fr. Tim,
This is excellent information and thank you for publicizing it.
For too long, historians have got away with the erroneous theory that Nazism was a deviant Catholic phenomenon -- on the basis that the leading lights in the Nazi party came from the Catholic heartlands of the German-speaking area (Hitler, Goering and Himmler from the deep South, Goebbels from the Rhineland).
It's very good to have solid evidence to the contrary.
Fr. Tim,
A further point on those maps. The map showing religious affiliation in Germany is also a good illustration of why Benedict XVI is such a good pope in terms of his ability to understand the situation of Catholics in Northern Europe and North America where the dominant culture is agnosto-protestant, and Catholics are in the minority and vulnerable to becoming protestantized by osmosis.
The Holy Father brings insights and direct pastoral experience of this situation to bear which the long string of Italian Popes and the recent Polish incumbent - all coming from completely Catholic cultures - never could. Pope Benedict therefore has much better credentials as an ecumenist than any previous Pope because of the clarity of his insight into protestantism and his direct experience of it.
francis ~ one of the problems at Vatican II, as explained by Cardinal Heenan, was that nobody understood the situation of the Catholic Church in the "ICEL" countries i.e. the challenge of being a catholic in a predominantly WASP culture. A WASP culture that at the time (post-War) was confident and dominant.
That ICEL bishops allowed theologians from Germany to dominate the council is still not fully understood. In particular, the Americans failed to complain at the time when they had every right to do so. For the American Catholic church was by 1960 a highly sophisticated organisation (as was the Church in the UK and Australia), given its evolution within the WASP environment
American inertia at the council has had much to do with the capitulation of the Church throughout the ICEL World. In other words the American Catholic Church needed Vatican II like it needed a 'hole in the head' a point that European theologians failed to grasp.
Francis, this doesn't actually prove that His Holiness has the experience to give him a better insight into protestantism
(not that I'm saying he hasn't, just that this graph doesn't demonstrate it).
All the main places of his pre-Rome life (Marktl am Inn where he was born, Tubingen and Regensberg where he taught, Freiberg and Munich of which he was archbishop) are in southern Bavaria, firmly in the "black" part of the first graph to show that more than 85% of the population were Catholic.
Even Bonn and Munster, where he also taught, are (so far as I can see from the little picture) in the 85%+ Catholic part of the map, in the western Rhineland regions.
What's more, you have to understand how Bavarians feel. It's almost like Scotland, regarding themselves as separate and almost independent. Therefore he is unlikely to have been brought up to feel a part of protestant Germany, but rather a member of Catholic Bavaria.
Anyone who associates Catholicism with Nazism doesn't know their history very well. Jews and Slavs often received special protection in the Holy Roman Empire (according to Friedrich Heer), Goering, et al were almost a mix of neo-pagan and new age (Himmler believed he was the reincarnation of Widukind, the Saxon leader forcibly converted by Charlemagne and carried around a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita). The name Hitler is associated with the Hutlerites, a heretical Bohemian sect. Hitler's interest in Catholicism was mostly concerned keeping them happy because they formed such a major constituency and appropriating the Church's symbolism (the Blood Flag from the Beer Hall Putsch was used to anoint the standards of Wehrmacht and SS regiments). Note the Nazi interest in Nietzsche and Wagner, neither of them could be considered Christian, much less Catholic.
This is absolutely fascinating.
Fr. Tim,
Richard is correct in pointing out that Bavaria is an enclave within Germany with its own very distinct Catholic culture. However, Joseph Ratzinger’s religious outlook and experience have never been narrowly Bavarian. He was born in the nation which produced Martin Luther, the Thirty Years’ War and the Kulturkampf, and he has always lived at the sharp end of the Catholic-Protestant divide.
As a professor, Joseph Ratzinger taught at universities which had Catholic and Protestant theology faculties side by side, and many of his close friends were Protestant intellectuals. Later on, as member of the German Catholic bishops conference, he had a grandstand view of the pastoral issues – from mixed marriages to the “osmosis factor” – which arise when Catholics live in a majority Protestant country. So I think my thesis still stands that Benedict XVI has spent his life observing and debating with the whole phenomenon of Protestantism, and therefore has a far better understanding of it than any previous Pope – meaning that he can relate much more to the spiritual situation of North American and North European Catholics.
If you’re looking for analogies, a Bavarian is less like a Scot and more like a Yorkshireman – proud, tough-minded, outspoken, some would say awkward, contemptuous of the other end of the country, resolutely different, but fiercely English. The stereotypical Bavarian is all of the above, but fiercely German, even if he’s Bavarian first and German second. A Scot is never English by definition, and is only lukewarmly British! (I know – my wife was born in Yorkshire and my mother-in-law is Scottish).
"What's more, you have to understand how Bavarians feel. It's almost like Scotland, regarding themselves as separate and almost independent. Therefore he is unlikely to have been brought up to feel a part of protestant Germany, but rather a member of Catholic Bavaria."
Richard: that's absolutely correct.
"If you’re looking for analogies, a Bavarian is less like a Scot and more like a Yorkshireman – proud, tough-minded, outspoken, some would say awkward, contemptuous of the other end of the country, resolutely different, but fiercely English. The stereotypical Bavarian is all of the above, but fiercely German, even if he’s Bavarian first and German second. A Scot is never English by definition, and is only lukewarmly British! (I know – my wife was born in Yorkshire and my mother-in-law is Scottish)."
Sorry to contradict, Francis, but what you say about "the stereotypical Bavarian" is not right.
Pope Benedict, by the way, greeted John Paul in Munich by saying "Willkommen im katholischen Land". Some famous things he said about his Bavarianness are
"Mein Herz schlägt bayerisch. In meinem Amt gehöre ich der Welt."
"Ich bin natürlich ein Bayer geblieben, auch als Bischof von Rom."
"Wir waren von der Familie her sehr patriotische Bayern."
I also remember an old interview in which he said that Bavarianness is something that is deeply and forever rooted in people.
(As a Bavarian)I agree wholeheartely with Francis.
Germany is the country of the Reformation and this brings consequences not even Bavaria is exempt from.
Of course Bavaria would have been far more Catholic and probably anti-Protestant some 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean Ratzinger hadn't been aware of the changes that have taken place since then.
He knows Germany well. And he knows all about the "Ecumenical problem". And he knows it because as a Bavarian he is a German, too.
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