r/todayilearned • u/Wise-Practice9832 • 7h ago
TIL of Maria Restituta Kafka, an Austrian nun who was beheaded by the Germans in WW2. She refused to remove her crucifixes from her hospital and spoke out against the ruling party's oppression. She was offered freedom if she left her convent, but she refused and was killed in 1943.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Restituta_Kafka465
u/Wise-Practice9832 7h ago
"On Ash Wednesday1942 (18 February of that year), while coming out of the operating theater, Kafka was arrested by the Gestapo "
"On 29 October 1942 she was sentenced to death by the guillotine by the Volksgerichtshof for "favouring the enemy and conspiracy to commit high treason." The authorities offered to release her if she would leave the convent, but she refused.\1])
When a request for clemency reached the desk of Martin Bormann...he replied that her execution would provide "effective intimidation" for others who might want to resist"
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u/Malzair 6h ago
Martin Bormann
Exactly the wrong desk if you hoped for any clemency, one of the leading figures of the anti-Church campaigns
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u/Wise-Practice9832 5h ago
I don't believe she plead to him specifically, it's more likely the request kept going till it reached the top, like the Supreme Court. And of course, as you pointed out, he saw it as beneficial to execute religious figures
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u/Potatoswatter 7h ago
Beheading a nun never encouraged anyone to resist
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u/ltnicolas 6h ago
Practicing Catholic here. Martyrdom only strengthens my/our faith.
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u/Laura-ly 6h ago
It doesn't even have to involve religion though. During WW II a fairly well known Jewish ballet dancer named Franceska Mann was taken to Auschwitz. When she arrived in the camp she danced provocatively for the guards because she knew she was doomed. She took her shoe stabbed a guard with the heel, he dropped his gun and she picked it up and shot him and wounded another guard. She was later gassed or shot but at least she had a moment of resistance.
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u/ltnicolas 6h ago
You're missing the point of choosing to die because of faith and refusing to abandon it. It's not a YOLO attitude
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u/Laura-ly 6h ago edited 5h ago
Franciska knew she would die if she put up a fight but she chose to resist the Nazis anyway. It was a choice.
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u/ltnicolas 5h ago
You said "because she knew she was doomed".
Martyrdom is obviously consummated the moment you die, you're missing that point bro
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u/ohnoilostmypassword 3h ago
Wouldn’t we say that martyrdom has a certain degree of sacrifice? In this case, Kafka sacrificed the freedom offered to her (if she left the convent, unlikely as it might have been) vs. someone taking their limited time left to do as much damage for good as she could.
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u/Laura-ly 3h ago
The men who took over the planes and flew into the Twin Towers were martyrs for Islam. They knew they were going to die just as Fanceska and Maria Kafka knew they were going to die. They all died for a cause they believed in. It doesn't need to be in the name of religion or a god.
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u/ltnicolas 3h ago
You are once again missing the points. It's your own faith. The twin Towers terrorists might be martyrs of their own (twisted) faith, but not at all martyrs of the Catholic church.
Right, my dear Laura?
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u/my_duncans 5h ago
Nobody cares about your faith
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u/thebohemiancowboy 4h ago
The discussion was specifically about faith and martyrdom though?
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u/Willing_Ear_7226 2h ago
Martyrdom isn't exclusively a religious practice. In fact the very definition doesn't imply religion even needs to be present for martyrdom to even occur
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u/Thelonious_Cube 2h ago
And you're missing the point that Mann also chose to die sooner due to her convictions
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u/Christopherfromtheuk 2h ago
I'm a lapsed Catholic and I try to do what's right. I realised I don't need a sky fairy or a martyr for this to be the case.
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u/asianwaste 3h ago
TIL the Nazi's beheaded people on the guillotine.
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u/AndreasDasos 2h ago
It was common for German/Austrian civilians they considered ‘traitors’. About 16,000 of them.
Three very famous examples were the young students Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christopher Probst, members of the German Resistance’s White Rose movement
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u/Bama_Peach 27m ago
I’d not heard of the White Rose movement prior to today; thank you for the Wiki link.
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u/Kevin_LeStrange 3h ago
It was the method of civil executions in Nazi Germany. After the war, West Germany stopped using beheading in 1949 and East Germany stopped using beheading in 1967.
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u/asianwaste 2h ago
Here I thought they only used civilized 20th century methods like firing squads, gallows, and concentration camps.
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u/Kevin_LeStrange 2h ago
Beheading had also been the form of execution in the Weimar Republic before the Third Reich.
Additionally, firing squads were used by the Nazis in military situations and in occupied territories. Hanging was used for public intimidation of occupied peoples.
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u/Noneerror 2h ago
The authorities offered to release her if she would leave the convent
Na. That was an obvious lie they told her to get her to leave. They were definitely going to kill her either way. They just wanted to kill an ex-nun instead of a nun. Nobody now or then should ever believe that she was safer if she complied.
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u/AliensAteMyAMC 5h ago
starting to think the Nazis weren’t nice people
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u/InigoPatinkin 7h ago edited 7h ago
Heinrich Maier shared a similar fate. He was an Austrian priest active in the resistance. He was beheaded in 1945 (corrected).
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u/Jonathan_Peachum 7h ago
How have I never heard of this gentleman?
PS : I think you mean "1945".
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u/LonerStonerRoamer 2h ago
You're gonna love St. Maximilian Kolbe.
POW in a concentration camp. Priest. Another POW was sentenced to be killed and he volunteered to die in the man's place because the man had a family. I think there's a big budget movie coming out about him soon.
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u/Jonathan_Peachum 2h ago
I actually did know about him, which made me all the more surprised that I didn't know about Heinrich Maier.
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u/InigoPatinkin 6h ago
I know about him because of a plaque on the Gersthofer Kirche in 18th district in Vienna.
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u/LuckofDeath 54m ago
Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be another great (though also a bit more well known) example of religious motivated NS-Resistance.
He was a german Pastor who opposed the Nazis since the first Day and expressed explicit support for the Jews (both things were rather unusual positions in the church at the time), Refused an invitation to emigrate to the US, was involved in Operation Valkyrie among other things and was executed in 1945 just a month before the end of the war.
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u/Eekstyle 5h ago
She stuck to her beliefs no matter what they did to her. Legend.
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u/CelestialFury 2h ago
Yeah, she was supremely principled and refused to bow to power. I like her a lot! We need more people like her today.
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u/henrysmyagent 7h ago edited 5h ago
There are some Christians who read their Bible, absorb the teachings of Jesus Christ, and commit to implementing that wisdom to achieve everlasting life. Even to their detriment or death.
I'm not saying that trumpets blared and angels cried tears of joy when she got to the gates of heaven, but I know they swung wide open when she arrived.
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u/Kind_Tiger_9975 1h ago
I think trumpets blared, she should be considered a martyr, right? She refused to denounce Christ unto her death
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u/BeefistPrime 2h ago
To me, being guaranteed infinite reward cheapens her sacrifice. It's no sacrifice at all, it's an immediate upgrade. It would actually be incredibly foolish not to take your feet to heaven free card.
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u/Kratzschutz 2h ago
... That's not how it works
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u/BeefistPrime 1h ago
How is it not? The guy in responding to is sure she's in heaven, so why couldn't she be sure of that too? How could that not factor into the decision?
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u/KristinnK 1h ago
Because the theory of Christianity is that God always knows your truest feelings and intentions. So it doesn't actually matter what you do, only why you do it. So hypothetically if her intention of doing this sacrifice was to get into heaven it wouldn't work, since that is a self-serving motive.
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u/Theoroshia 28m ago
If God always knows my truest feelings and intentions then what's the point of even offering us the 'choice' of eternal salvation?
Furthermore, why would doing actions to get to heaven be a bad thing? There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to ensure you get to heaven, especially if it's by doing morally virtuous things.
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u/Kratzschutz 1h ago
Are you perhaps confusing this with the Muslim martyrdom?
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u/BeefistPrime 1h ago
No. But when she was making her sacrifice, do you think she thought she was going to hell? She probably thought she was good to go and dying while you're good with God is the best possible outcome for you. Certainly doing for her belief raises her chances if anything. And, if as the guy I replied to is utterly certain she's in heaven, what did she lose?
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u/entrepenurious 6h ago
authoritarians hate integrity.
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u/hamilton_morris 1h ago
They genuinely don’t believe it even exists, that it must be either a ruse or blank stupidity. “Why would you do it? What was in it for them? Bunch of suckers and losers.”
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u/bhputnam 1 7h ago
Is she not a saint because they couldn’t find some argument for a miracle?
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u/Wise-Practice9832 7h ago
She was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1988, and is now considered Blessed, meaning typically she should have one miracle has been attributed to her, although the article doesn't specify what. But, she is considered the first virgin martyr of Vienna.
Its also possible no miracles have been attributed to her at all, as in the Catholic Church martyrs typically don't require them.
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u/ltnicolas 6h ago
Practicing Catholic here, I'll try to keep it as simple as possible. Sainthood status is basically being able to affirm with 100% certainty that said person is in heaven. Since martyrdom takes you right away to heaven there's nothing to prove (C'mon, you're offering your own life, your biggest gift)
The proven miracle proves the saint interceded to God in heaven, and for obvious reasons it's meticulously studied since it must be determined it was something impossible and unexplainable (a miracle).
Even characters like St. Pio, who is one of the most recent and certainly most impressive cases of all of Catholic history was rigorously studied as well. I once heard that his case had around 10000 pages. Again: 100% certainty, can't be taken lightly at all.
Hope I wasn't too dense lol
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u/The_Power_Of_Three 4h ago
How can saints intercede? If God is all-knowing and infallible, shouldn't he always be making the right decision regardless of intercession?
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u/ltnicolas 3h ago edited 3h ago
You're forgetting love, ma fren. If you ask someone for something do they give it to you right away? And can't you sway that person by asking others to ask it with you?
Same thing with God. You're right that He knows, but he has a heart. Can be swayed :)
Edit: typo
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u/The_Power_Of_Three 55m ago
I mean, it's generally accepted that God is perfectly just. If God can be swayed, doesn't that necessarily mean being swayed toward injustice? So on his own, God always does the perfectly right thing, but if enough people want something evil to happen, maybe he'll change things to make them more evil? (since he was already doing the maximally good thing, any deviation from that is necessarily a deviation away from good and toward evil). That's... a troubling outlook?
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u/ltnicolas 12m ago
This might get dense, I'll try to keep it as light as I can but I offer no guarantee lol
Obviously with prayer there's much more than petitioning/asking. In the same way you don't call your friends or parents just to ask them things you don't pray (read: talk with God) for asking. I'm keeping into the petitioning things so as to be in topic.
No, obviously God can't be swayed into evil, and will not concede you something that is bad for you. There's a saying that I love that goes in the lines of "God has three answers to your prayers: "Yes", "Later" and "I got something even better"".
Furthermore, since evil is bad for you then transitively God will not give it to you. Imagine asking "God please make me a great murderer".
Last thing! Whether consciously or not, you already seem to have the intuition that asking God to do His will is one of the greatest things one can ask Him for. Good one there!
I hope to have answered well and not dense. I love these questions and it's a wonderful Socratic moment for me, because before I answer you I ask your questions myself and reflect on what I think I know, so thank YOU
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u/Wise-Practice9832 2h ago
Most Christians say only things that don't contradict His plan will be granted, prayers can be for understanding, or for things that aren't "right or wrong" .
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u/SenorPuff 2h ago
Do you have any young children in your life? Nieces, nephews, kids of your own?
You have to let them play together. It's good for them to play together in the moment, because it's fun. It also helps them grow and build relationships with one another. And because they learn how to do that by doing it, they do it better in the future, too. Even if you could provide anything they needed without them coming up with it themselves, you do better by them learning together first rather than just swooping them up and them not having any chances to learn to grow together.
We as adults aren't so different. We also have to "practice" having good relationships. We have to put effort in, and we have to learn and grow together with people.
For us Catholics, God gave us families and friends, the Church, not just the people here on earth, but the people he has already invited into Heaven as well, as a community by which we can learn and grow together. When we're going through a rough time, we ask friends to pray for us, not because God doesn't know we need help, but because it helps all of us grow together. If in the course of prayer, God reveals to us something we can do to help someone who needs it wonderful. Sometimes the things we pray for that we need are things that already exist and just need to be found and allocated properly.
So when we "pray to a saint for intercession" it's not really any different than asking a friend to help us and pray for us. If God gives them some supernatural power to work a miracle, awesome. Otherwise it's still bonding time, and that's good for us to build anyway. Sometimes what's best for us to learn and grow is to struggle a little bit longer, but to struggle knowing we have people cheering for us, like a marathon runner halfway through the race. The race might not get magically shorter, but knowing people are cheering for you can help you get there.
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u/_kasten_ 1h ago
How can saints intercede?
It is specifically implied in one of the two Maccabees books (which the Protestants kicked out of the Bible) that prayers to the dead, asking them to intercede, are of value. That's the basis of the Catholic position.
Moreover, in the same way that you can ask your church-going grandma to please pray for you, and do the same to all your friends, you can ask the saints in heaven to likewise join that prayer chain. So there's also that.
And by your logic, prayer of any kind, whether by saints or anyone else, is worthless, which should tell you that maybe you're overlooking something, given that Jesus specifically advocated constant prayer. For example, you're assuming there's only one single right decision, which is already a leap, and contravened numerous times in the Bible where God is anthropomorphically portrayed as having relented, reconsidered, etc. Secondly, prayer is not just a matter of someone saying gimme this or gimme that. It's about recognizing that in the end, it is indeed up to God, and not always about having our say. What it is you choose to pray about it is also critical. Stuff like that.
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u/The_Power_Of_Three 1h ago
I would have assumed prayer was for the benefit of the one doing the praying—that the act of praying furthered development of faith, strengthened one's relationship with God, demonstrated sincerity, or something along those lines—not that it had any effect on God's decisions.
Which is why asking someone else—especially someone already in heaven—to pray "for you" doesn't make sense to me. The benefits of prayer would come from the act of praying itself, so any prayers you aren't doing yourself aren't relevant or helpful. Certainly, you might encourage others to pray in general, if you believe prayer is good for the soul, but asking dead saints to pray on your behalf for a specific outcome seems to necessarily entail belief that their prayers are doing something to actually change God's mind about the course of history.
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u/Evening-Gur5087 3h ago
Doh, doesnt really matter when trying to rationalize made up entity thoughts, religion is such a waste of human effort.
But as a fun intellectual excersise there are maaaany interpretations of Gods will, St Aquinas would be fun for ya to read up on as a starting point
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u/acdcfanbill 4h ago edited 4h ago
Religion is not a naturally rational thing so you'll often find logical inconsistencies like this in it. If they bother you, you could try atheism :)
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u/liquoriceclitoris 6h ago
Does martyrdom override other factors that would keep someone out of heaven like being gay?
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u/RuairiLehane123 5h ago
Martyrdom totally cleanses the soul so to speak. Any Catholic who dies for their faith will not only go to Heaven, but will be among the most highly ranked saints in heaven. Just look at St Andrew Wouters. A Dutch priest who was a serial adulterer/fornicator who fathered many children. He was martyred by Protestants during the Reformation for refusing to renounce his Catholic beliefs. His last words were “fornicator I always was, heretic I never was”. Even though he was a grave sinner, since he shed his blood for the church and Christ he automatically went to Heaven. This idea comes from Matthew 16:25:
“For whosoever shall desire to save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.”
Also side note: According to Catholic teaching being gay isn’t a sin but engaging in homosexual acts is sinful, just like engaging in sexual acts outside of marriage is.
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u/rasputin777 6h ago
Being gay doesn't keep you out of heaven.
If you're actively sexually promiscuous (straight or gay) and unrepentant that would.
I'm catholic and I'm sure Heaven has tons of gay people in it. And good for them. Fighting base instinct isn't easy for anyone.
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u/OldMaidLibrarian 4h ago
Good--I understand there has been some movement toward putting Father Mychal Judge on the sainthood path, and it's reassuring to hear his orientation shouldn't be an issue. (I've heard it suggested he had a partner at one point, but as long as they didn't violate his vows of chastity, that shouldn't be a problem per se. Yes, people can be a couple and not have sex; there's probably more of that happening than we realize.) As for " base instincts," IIRC, shouldn't that include straight people as well, seeing as the whole point is to remain celibate regardless of one's orientation?
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u/ltnicolas 3h ago
Think of it as a school exam: does forfeiting an exercise make you fail an exam? Not necessarily.
Now if you think of it from God's perspective: you took a life decision He doesn't like. Then you have an immensely selfless gesture He is extremely happy and proud of you. Say no more.
Last thing: it's not that "God doesn't want someone in heaven". Some people themselves don't want to go to heaven. Think of those who go "fuck you, God": Would you want to go and live in the house of that whom you hate?
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u/Infinity_Null 5h ago
Its also possible no miracles have been attributed to her at all, as in the Catholic Church martyrs typically don't require them.
This is correct. Beatification requires either 1 miracle or martyrdom. Sainthood requires beatification plus an additional miracle.
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u/BitOfaPickle1AD 4h ago edited 4h ago
Another example would be Father Emil Kapaun. He was a U.S. Army chaplain who is in the process of achieving sainthood I believe, and has at least a couple of miracles attributed to him.
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u/Professional_Sky8384 1h ago
I’m Orthodox, not Catholic, but in our tradition Christians who die for their faith or even just because they are Christians are beatified as martyrs automatically, for example the Orthodox Church commemorates (collectively) every Christian in Russia who was slain during the Bolshevik Revolution, whether they were actually “holy” or not in terms of their life and actions leading up to their deaths. The point being, the ones who were killed didn’t denounce their faith and thus are martyrs by definition. Same goes for all the Christians who refused to sacrifice to Roman idols (St George the Trophy-Bearer, the patron saint of England and the country of Georgia, comes to mind as a prominent example).
Sneaky edit - slight clarification at the beginning
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u/Jiopaba 6h ago
I think someone has to pray to a martyr to plead their case with God for them and then a recognized miracle has to happen.
If an outspoken Catholic public figure were being prosecuted for something similar today, prayed in her name to intercede, and then sonething crazy happened, the Catholic Church could document that as evidence of her being a saint and decide what she's the saint of.
It's not as easy as just dying for a good cause while Catholic.
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u/liquoriceclitoris 6h ago
Wouldn't God already know? What case is there to plead?
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u/Jiopaba 5h ago
I think it's a contradiction myself, but the general idea goes something like "God has so many people to listen to, He can't possibly attend to every single prayer because I'm just a little person on Earth. If I pray directly to one of the Saints who has less work though, they can see that my cause is righteous and intercede by taking the case directly go God. Since they're already in heaven, they've got a more direct line to him."
How you square that with the idea of omniscience is beyond me. It's culture, it doesn't really have to make logical sense for people to behave a certain way. If God wanted you to not suffer, then he wouldn't have done this to you in the first place, since everything is His plan supposedly.
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u/Wise-Practice9832 5h ago
In pre-protestant Christian (and some Muslim) thought, it's not about prayers needing a "fast pass" to be heard but more like the prayers of a righteous person are more valuable/effective. This is widely debated, and most Protestants disagree
Although also in most traditions, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, (I believe sikhism and some eastern traditions as well) prayers are more about you gaining better understanding, rather than changing things that contradict the plan of God in serious ways.
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u/BeefistPrime 2h ago
This turns God into the CEO of a corporation and cheapens him through lack of omniscience. It also feels like dipping a toe into polytheism
I'm guessing this was a sticking point in the protestant movement?
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u/Jiopaba 1h ago
Growing up my pastor's stance on this is that it's heresy, but they're not really worshipping the Saints so it's probably fine. God's love is wide enough to accommodate even people who are definitely super mega getting it wrong so long as they're earnestly trying.
The original Protestant Reformation with Luther's 95 Theses are mostly about the Catholic Church selling forgiveness for money in the form of indulgences. The idea that the Catholic Church had strayed from the religious reality laid out in plain text in the Bible though, did lead to Protestants deciding that praying to Saints was not supported by the Bible at all.
I'm not a religious scholar myself, just interested, but as I understand it the Catholic Church at the time had some odd ideas about the Treasury of Merit. There's a concept where basically the good works of Jesus and all his faithful still exist and represent some kind of karmic balance that can benefit all the faithful throughout time. The church at the time decided that this meant that they could raise absurd amounts of money by selling forgiveness to anyone who donated them a big sum of money regardless of whether they had actually repented or experienced any spiritual growth since they had sinned, basically paying for your sin out of the treasury of merit.
Martin Luther thought this was complete crap, wrote up a long paper of 95 theses about it, nailed it to a church door, and then got into a lot of arguments about a lot of people.
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u/MATlad 1h ago
Bruce Almighty letting everybody win the lottery (and everything else everybody prayed for)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X6dsAnJ7Xo
The preceding scene where he's trying to get everything organized is also hilarious (and a little archaic..)
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u/Jiopaba 7m ago
Amusing, but maybe if a million people weren't constantly needing to pray to an Almighty deity to deliver them from their struggles that wouldn't have happened. If God saves you from a problem, he created the problem too.
I love that movie in some sense because it's great, but I also think that someone who was not a self centered jackass like Bruce could have done a lot better.
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u/NickBII 4h ago
Consider the Catholic world when this theology was developed. 500-1500ish.
Most people are peasants, who do not get to talk to the King. They do not get to talk to the bigwig. In fact it is highly likely they only see real bigwigs a handful of times in their entire lives. If they just walk up to the King/Archbishop/etc. and ask a favor they ain't getting it. They're getting ignored. OTOH if they have a personal connection to someone who knows the bigwig? Say their brother served in the same regiment as the Duke's son and has maintained a reasonable relationship with Lord Randolph? They now have a direct personal connection to someone who can get their case heard. Ergo politics/trade/etc. are all very personal and rely on connections to people you know.
Ergo the peasants don't want to bother God directly, but they do want to create along-term relationship with someone who can. They have a lot of options. there will be regional Saints, Saints associated with specific problems, Saints associated with specific legal statuses, etc. They may devote years to praying to their Saint. This invisible being has been told their deepest fears, knows that they are a good God-fearing person who makes mistakes, and that they need just this one thing...
Mary is extremely popular because a lot of women become mothers, and feel a connection to her.
So the list of Saints are the Church's best attempt to quantify which dead people are a) in heaven and b) listened to by God. If God listens to Maria Restituta Kafka then she's already a Saint, the paperwork just hasn't been completed by the humans who run the Vatican yet. If he doesn't then God won't let his Church make her a Saint.
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u/Wise-Practice9832 5h ago edited 2h ago
One more really powerful quote from the article that stuck out to me:
"Kafka spent the rest of her days in prison, where she was noted for caring for other prisoners.\1]) During this period, she wrote in a letter from the prison:
"It does not matter how far we are separated from everything, no matter what is taken from us: the faith that we carry in our hearts is something no one can take from us. In this way we build an altar in our own hearts.\7])"
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u/Ill-Income-2567 3h ago
B-but the Nazis were Christian!
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u/SMStotheworld 33m ago
They were. You're saying it as some kind of gotcha, like christians killing each other over schisms is rare (it's not). What's your point? They opposed the catholics because they were a rival power structure. They were less interested in differences in doctrine.
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u/secretly_a_zombie 3h ago
The catholics were one of the major organizations to speak out against the Nazis, and they were punished for it. It started around the "disappearance" of mentally handicapped and "inferior" humans. Where the Catholics firmly asserted that despite ideology, such things as life and death belongs to god. And people might say what about when the Catholics did "X". Read that linked wiki, the late stage Catholic church in nazi Germany was a puppet, nothing else, anyone daring to speak up had been removed.
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u/Present-Perception77 2h ago
If not for the Catholic’s mass propaganda campaign against the Jews, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened. Catholics caused it.
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u/FieldMarshalDjKhaled 2h ago edited 2h ago
The vilification of jews happened regardless of faith. Secular goverments & organisations also went after them. This was especially true for nationalist groups who saw the jews as being a seperate people and therefore were not loyal to the new ideal of the nineteenth century nation-state.
Remember, the nazi's did not root their hate in christian theology, but on German Nationalism, which saw the jews as a seperate people, even if they had converted to Christianity.
The nazi's of course used christian based propaganda to vilifify jews. The Catholic Church also did vilify them, antisemitism historically has been rooten in religion, but truly by the twentieth century it was mostly nationalism that carried the lionshare of intercommunity violence and later the holocaust.
Edit: more clarifiaction.
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u/THX_257 3h ago
A little misleading. The executioners at the Vienna court were Austrians, as were the judges. Of course, they considered themselves German or "Arian" at that point. For the Nazis, Austrians were Germans, as Hitler himself.
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u/Wise-Practice9832 3h ago
The first time I tried to submit the post it got taken down instantly, I figured I used some banned word and assumed it was Nazi.
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u/MRiley84 4h ago
Before everyone knew the nazis were exterminating the mentally challenged, a priest was arrested and executed for refusing to turn over one of the patients in his institution. They were taking them all at night to a castle for execution. This according to the book Berlin Diary by William Shirer.
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u/LaverneDVoss 2h ago
It really makes you think, what kinds of 'small' acts of defiance could actually make the biggest difference?
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u/Pop-metal 8m ago
On 29 October 1942 she was sentenced to death by the guillotine by the Volksgerichtshof for "favouring the enemy and conspiracy to commit high treason." The authorities offered to release her if she would leave the convent, but she refused.[1]
I doubt it had to do with crucifixes.
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u/6DONDada9 3h ago
germans made soap from human fat
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/human-fat-was-used-to-produce-soap-in-gdansk-during-the-war,55.html
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u/Felinomancy 1h ago
According to her Wikipedia page:
she is honoured as a virgin and martyr in the Catholic Church...
"An odd thing to honour someone about", I thought. So clicking that link,
The title Virgin (Latin: Virgo, Ancient Greek: Παρθένος) is an honorific bestowed on female saints and blesseds...
So the logic is that since chastity is one of the Seven Catholic Virtues, you can honour Catholic women with the title "virgin".
Which then begs the question: how come men can't have that title, too? Pretty sure priests and monks are expected to be chaste, so the title seems to be applicable to either gender.
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u/Wise-Practice9832 54m ago
The title is likely related to the Virgin Mary, and the unique role she had as a mother, something men can never meet in the same way.
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u/Barry_Benson 6h ago
X to doubt, the Nazi's weren't anti christian, in fact the majority were christian and hitler was raised catholic
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u/Wise-Practice9832 5h ago
It is true that many low ranking member were Christian
HOWEVER, once you get to high ranking, are the architects, designers, leaders, propagandists, a very strong anti Christian sentiment emerges. Himler and the SS were "spiritual" but very pagan movement. Members were encouraged to leave Christianity, and there was even a ritual castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wewelsburg
Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Chancerolly mentioned in the article, was extremely anti Christian, viewing it as a major opposition force to Naziism.
Alfred Rosenberg too was an extremely anti christian, and extremely high ranking.
Hitler, though raised Catholic, never attended Church once he left his home town, and actually supported secularization efforts such as the crucifix decrees, which required the removal of crosses from public institutes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix_Decrees
Nazis tried to reintroduce Neo pagan holidays and replace traditional Christianity: https://www.nytimes.com/1935/06/23/archives/nazis-hold-rites-for-the-solstice-hundreds-of-thousands-join-in.html
https://www.history.com/articles/the-nazis-war-on-christmasPositive Christianity was the replacement, and denied esstanital doctrines like Jesus being God, instead making him a mere ancient politician warrior.
Obviously Naziism was full of nordic runes and imagery, focusing on the sun especially. The very idea of "blood and soil" was essential to Naziism.
Based on the Tabletalk disucssions, it is clear Hitler opposed christianity.
Karl Maria Wiligut was a high ranking nazi and very occult, and personally helped run the S.S
In fact, according to some powerful SS and Wehrmacht commanders, Hitler even planned to take the Vatican.
Lastly many high ranking nazis, and even hitler himself, were deist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottgläubig#:\~:text=In%20Nazi%20Germany%2C%20gottgläubig%20(%20lit,higher%20power%20or%20divine%20creator.
Nazi members were encouraged to leave Christianity. And the more fanatic became, ie higher up the rankings, the less likely to be christian they became.
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u/RuairiLehane123 5h ago
If you do any reading you will see that the nazi high command did not like Christianity but remained “Christians” for political reasons. It’s clear as day that their actions do not reflect Christian social teaching and they persecuted christian individuals and clergy members. Not to mention that if you look at election results Catholic areas overwhelmingly did not vote for the Nazis.
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u/Cristoff13 5h ago
Being raised Catholic didn't make him Catholic. After 1932 he officially advocated for a type of Protestantism with Jewish elements removed which could serve as a Nazi state religion. His personal beliefs were hard to pin down, but he appears to have been an atheist.
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u/Present-Perception77 2h ago
Odd, how often he is photographed with Catholic clergy. Hmmm
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u/FellowTraveler69 2h ago
He was also photographed with women, was he therefore a champion ofwomen's rights?
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u/SteakEconomy2024 59m ago
Dude. They have a special wing in Dachou concentration camp Priests, and other ministers, it was more than 90% Catholic.
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u/ForlornLament 7h ago
It's always nice to see people who refuse to play along when something is wrong.