In reply to Roadrunner5:
> Maybe they could have done more but they weren't heavily supporting the nazis..
I suppose it depends on how you define support. If the leader of one of the largest religions ever to exist, a religion that spans continents and includes many political and miliray leaders as its members, turns a blind eye to the Holocaust, is that support? Or indifference? Or merely political acumen?
"Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.
In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.(5)
Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.(6)
In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.(7)
In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."(8)"
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http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html
For me, though, this is by the by. My main aim was to counter the oft-repeated "Hitler was an atheist". He wasn't and I think I've provided enough evidence to start anyone off in their own investigations in that direction.
On the subsidiary question of who is a Christian and who isn't, there is much more fun to be had. We've just heard a claim that Tony Blair is not a Christian. I think the Catholic church, who not too long ago welcomed him into its arms, would beg to differ. They might squirm if questioned about some of his behaviour, but they don't appear to be anywhere near excommunicating him. He says he's a Catholic, the Catholic church accepts him as a Catholic, he attends services.... he's a Catholic.
More generally, who gets to decide who is a '*true* Christian' (or Muslim, come that)? Surely the only authorities are the respective foundational texts, the holy books? The books that their believers have insisted again and again for thousands of years are the Word of God. Surely these these carry more weight than any puffed up modern prelate, or the agitated fleas on forums, such as you and I?
What do the texts say? They say that we should be calm and thoughtful, considerate and wise, cautious and compassionate, loving and charitable. They say we should be vengeful and violent, intolerant and murderous, inquisitorial and relentless, we should stone and beat and torture and burn our neighbor if he does not believe as we do, and our own family if they stray from the path we follow. So who is the 'true' follower and who is not?