Modern-Day 'Harlotry'

Through her meddling in politics, the great harlot has brought untold sorrow to mankind. Consider, for example, the facts behind Hitler's rise to power in Germany-ugly facts that some would like to expunge from the history books. In May 1924 the Nazi Party held 32 seats in the German Reichstag. By May 1928 these had dwindled to 12 seats. However, the Great Depression engulfed the world in 1930; riding in its wake, the Nazis made a remarkable recovery, gaining 230 out of 608 seats in the German elections of July 1932. Soon after, a former chancellor Franz von Papen, a Papal Knight, came to the Nazis' aid. According to historians, von Papen envisioned a new Holy Roman Empire. his own short tenure as chancellor had been a failure, so now he hoped to gain power through the Nazis. By January 1933, he had mustered support for Hitler from the industrial barons, and through wily intrigues he ensured that Hitler became Germany's chancellor on January 30, 1933. He himself was made chancellor and was used by Hitler to win the support of Catholic sections of Germany. Within two months of gaining power, Hitler dissolved parliament, dispatched thousands of opposition leaders to concentration camps, and began to open campaign of oppressing the Jews.

On July 20, 1933, the Vatican's interest in the rising power of Nazism was displayed when Cardinal Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) signed a concordat in Rome between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. Von Papen signed the document as Hitler's representative, and Pacelli there conferred on von Papen the high papal decoration of the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius. In his book Satan in Top Hat, Tibor Koeves writes of this, stating: "The Concordat was a great victory for Hitler. It gave him the first moral support he had received from the outer world, and this from the most exalted source." The concordat required the Vatican to withdraw its support fro German's Catholic Center Party, thus sanctioning Hitler's one-party "total state." Further, its article 14 stated: "The appointments for archbishops, bishops and the like will be issued only after the governor, installed by the Reich, has duly ascertained that no doubts exist with respect to gerneral political considerations." By the end of 1933 (proclaimed a "Holy Year" by Pope Pius XI). Vatican support had become a major factor in Hitler's push for world domination.

Though a handful of priests and nuns protested Hitler's atrocities-and suffered for it-the Vatican as well as the Catholic Church and its army of Clergy gave either active or tacit support to the Nazi tyranny, which they regarded as a bulwark against the advance of world communism. Sitting pretty in the Vatican, Pope Pius XII let the Holocaust on the Jews and the cruel persecutions of Jehovah's Witnesses and others to proceed uncriticized. It is ironical that Pope John Paul II, on visting Germany in May 1987, should glorify the anti-Nazi stand of one sincere priest. What were the other thousands of the German clergy doing during Hitler's reign of terror? A pastorial letter issued by the German Catholic bishops in September 1939 at the outbreak of World War II provides enlightenment on this point. It reads in part: "In this decisive hour we admonish our Catholic soldiers to do their duty in obedience to the Fuehrer and to be ready to sacrifice their whole individuality. We appeal to the Faithful to join in ardent prayers that Divine Providence may lead this war to blessed success.

Such Catholic diplomacy illustrates the kind of harlotry that religion has engaged in over the past 4,000 years in wooing the political State religio-political relationships have fostered warfare, persecutions, and human misery on a vast scale. How happy mankind can be that Jehovah's judgment upon the great harlot is at hand. May it soon be executed!

Next time: Sitting On Many Waters.