MICHAEL VON FAULHABER
(Michael Cardinal Ritter von Faulhaber)
The Nazis had started vicious persecution of Jews in Germany. In the early days of irrational anti-Semitism and Nazism he preached against the irrational Nazi propaganda – See {638920}. However, when it became clear that the Nazis had the upper hand, he publicly recognized the Nazi government as legitimate, required Catholic clergy to remain loyal to the Nazi government, and maintained bridges between fascism and the Church He then became silent on the terrible, inhuman, un-Christian treatment of the Jews concentrating his efforts on negotiating the best for the Catholics that he could get. See {639129}.
Hitler neither smoked tobacco or drank alcohol. They appear to have been his only virtues.
There was a German anti-Semitic movement then to expel the Old Testament and everything that related to the Jewish People out of Christianity. In the early days of irrational anti-Semitism and Nazism he was one of the few who preached against the hateful Nazi propaganda. – See {638919}. However, when it became clear that the Nazis had the upper hand, he publicly recognized the Nazi government as legitimate, required Catholic clergy to remain loyal to the Nazi government, and maintained bridges between fascism and the Church He then became intimidated and became silent on the terrible inhuman, un-Christian treatment of the Jews concentrating his efforts on negotiating the best for the Catholics that he could get. See {639129}.
Earlier in the Nazi movement he had criticized some of the more absurd anti-Semitic positions of Hitler and his henchmen. However, when it became clear that the Nazis had the upper hand he publicly recognized the Nazi government as legitimate, required Catholic clergy to remain loyal to the Nazi government, and maintained bridges between fascism and the Church while over 6 million Jews, Gypsies, and handicapped were murdered—many by his faithful.
Michael Cardinal Ritter von Faulhaber was a senior Catholic prelate and Archbishop of Munich for 35 years, from 1917 to his death in 1952. Created Cardinal in 1921, von Faulhaber criticized the Weimar Republic as rooted in treason in a speech at the 62nd German Catholics' Day of 1922. Cardinal von Faulhaber was a leading member and co-founder of the Amici Israel, a priestly association founded in Rome in 1926 with the goal of advocating Jewish-Christian reconciliation.