Hitler controlled the churches through government funding. I know it’s terribly unfashionable to write about Hitler and the NAZIs, but until I read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism I didn’t know that fact about the National Socialist German Workers Party.
On many occasions on these pages I’ve told you about how much federal funding ‘religious’ groups receive from the taxpayer to resettle refugees and for other ‘charitable’ purposes including things like Head Start. Indeed the following ‘church’ groups are deep into the federal dole: US Conference of Catholic Bishops, World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Church World Service, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and Episcopal Migration Ministries. Somehow it just seemed morally corrupt to me and now I see from Goldberg’s writing why it strikes me as so creepy and what it can lead to.
Like the engineers of that proverbial railway bridge, the Nazis worked relentlessly to replace the nuts and bolts [one piece at a time] of traditional Christianity with a new political religion…The German historian Gotz Aly explains how Hitler purchased popularity with lavish social programs and middle-class perks, often paid for with stolen Jewish wealth and high taxes on the rich. Hitler banned religious charity, crippling the churches’ role as a counterweight to the state. Clergy were put on government salary, hence subjected to state authority. “The parsons will be made to dig their own graves,” Hitler cackled. “They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.”
Now consider House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s admonition to the Catholic Bishops over the weekend in support of open borders.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is telling Catholic bishops who want her to pass immigration reform that they must speak out in favor of the reform in their churches.
“The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops come to me and say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’” Pelosi, who is Catholic herself, said Thursday at the Catholic Community Conference.
“And I say, ‘But I want you to speak about it from the pulpit.’”
Do you think they will tell her ‘no’ in light of the fact that a large part of the USCCB’s (US Conference of Catholic Bishops) budget is paid for by the federal treasury. Some readers may see her request as innocuous (if you are an open borders advocate), but what might government ask of them the next time in exchange for 30 pieces of silver?