Don’t you just love old photos? I know I do. They are sooo… what’s the word? Quaint? They just make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Do you want to look at some charming old photos with me? Let’s reach into the past here for some good old-fashioned fun.

First up:

Hm, who are these cute little fellows? All dressed in black with crosses around their necks. Oh look! They’re waving to us! Hello little guys! Hehe! What fun!

What else do we have…

Oh look, more of these guys with crosses and fancy sashes. They sure are friendly. Look at them waving with all their friends dressed in army gear. They all look like they’re having so much fun! I wonder who they were waving to… must have been the photographer!

Wow! People back in the old days sure did like to wave, huh? Oh and now they’re shaking hands with somebody. He looks like a nice guy, cause everybody’s smiling, right? Wait, what’s that thing on the guys arm on the right hand side?

What the…? Where do I know that irrepressible little mustache from? Who’s that wizard-looking dude he’s shaking hands with? Those symbols in the background, they match the one on the armband of the soldier in the previous photo. But… but, what does it all mean?!?

Good question. I’m glad you asked. Everybody’s been pretty riled up lately over this whole Nazi Pope debate, defending or attacking Ratzinger’s involvement in the Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht. But it turns out everybody’s forgetting a much bigger issue: the Catholic Church supported Hitler.

Yikes!

Turns out it’s actually a pretty complicated debate, though. Depending who you ask about this, you’re going to get different answers. And just like always, I don’t have all the answers - I just have what some would claim are my own misinformed biases. But in an effort to help you misinform some of your own biases, here are a variety of links on the topic, covering many different viewpoints.

1. Here’s where I got all those fun photos of Catholic Nazi priests, bishops and cardinals.
2. Catholic Encyclopedia has an online copy of the 1933 Concordat Between the Holy See and the German Reich
3. In defense of Pope Pius XII’s actions during WWII
4. Did the Church Support Adolf Hitler?
5. Was Hitler a Christian? From The Straight Dope
6. The Great Scandal: Christianity’s Role in the Rise of the Nazis from the Council for Secular Humanism
7. The Persecution of the Christian Churches by the Nazis
8. German Churches and the Nazi State
9. Wikipedia’s entry on Pope Pius XII (Pope during WWII)
10. Hitler plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII (Boston Globe)
11. Historian Refutes Claims of “Hitler’s Pope”
12. There are also a bunch of books on this topic, none of which I’ve had a chance to read.
13. The Rothschilds and the Nazi Pope by David Icke
14. Some also highly questionable and conspiratorial looks at John Paul II’s supposed links to the Nazis

If anybody knows any other good resources on this, please leave them in comments below.

UPDATE!

This just in from Yahoo News… I wonder why we didn’t hear this new story mentioned AT ALL during the day that Pope Benedict XVI was elected, and all the Jewish leaders told us all “not to worry”…

Just in time for the picking of a new pope, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Monday that Holocaust survivors can pursue the Vatican Bank for profiting from a Nazi puppet regime.

[…] Groups of Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian Holocaust victims — potentially hundreds of thousands, according to plaintiffs attorneys — had sued the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order, the Croatian Liberation Movement and various banks in 1999.

Well don’t that just beat all?

[Article found via 2thewall]