Voting For Hitler & Harris

The following article appeared here earlier this year. It  commented on  what the Austrian catholic bishops  and pastors did, and failed to do,  when Hitler and his Nazis – the 20th century version of a Party of Death – took over their country in  1938. Crowds in Vienna cheered Hitler’s speech about the union of Austria and Germany. The Nazis then engineered a vote that retroactively validated what had been done – and the catholic bishops of Austria did not oppose Hitler.  99% of the Austrians allowed to vote validated the evil of Hitler and the Nazis.

When the “two evils” are intrinsic evils – such as abortion, mercy murder, and murdering embryos in embryonic stem cell research – or the “two evils are different intrinsic evils advocated for by two different candidates, catholic teaching is NOT that you can vote for a person who advocates for and promotes the intrinsic evil less than some other candidate, or less evil (however defined) will result from such a vote if this candidate wins.

A catholic with a well formed conscience can never, never, never, never, never vote for such candidates. Even if on some imagined scale of evil one candidate is more evil than another, voting for any such candidate is  is still formal cooperation in their evil – and is a grievous, mortal sin.

If all candidates support an intrinsic evil, such as abortion, and one said her or his policy would spare the most children by placing some limits on abortion – whatever that might mean – a catholic with a well formed conscience still CANNOT vote for the “spare more children” candidate because to do so still will promote the intrinsic evil – the voter will still be formally cooperating in the intrinsic evil

To be clear: a catholic with a well formed conscience can never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never vote so as to promote, endorse,  or advocate for intrinsic evil, or put into office a candidate who will do so.

For argument’s sake, suppose the candidates were Stalin, Hillary Clinton, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un and Adolf Hitler – all of whom have advocated for numerous intrinsic evils and attempted to or succeeded in making promotion of them the law of a land, and, for sake of argument, assume Hitler would do the least evil.  A catholic with a well formed conscience cannot vote for Hitler on the basis that he is “the lesser of two evils” or that his policies  would “spare” more innocent persons.

Voting For Hitler

Dear Friends in Christ,  We encourage all faithful catholic believers to vote in the upcoming elections which are so important to the future of our cities and of our beloved country which was once a shining star in Christendom. 

You can in good conscience vote for Adolf Hitler, and other candidates of the National Socialist Party, but you cannot vote for him, or them, for the wrong reasons, which would be a mortal sin. 

We have been assured by Hitler himself during our meetings with him that the rights of members of other parties, those now saying “My Party, My Choice,” will be respected after the current elections are concluded, with, almost assuredly, Hitler and the National Socialists in control of all government offices and agencies.

You, as we all do, know that his government has killed thousands of people, and thousands of Jews, including thousands of Jewish babies, and that this will continue for the foreseeable future since he has told us this will be so and this is his Party’s publicly stated policy. If you vote for him and his government because you want them to kill Jews, that would be a mortal sin.  You cannot vote for Hitler so that more Jewish babies will be killed, that would be a mortal sin. If you vote for him and his Jew-killing baby-murdering government, it must be for good reasons, in moral terms, “proportionate” reasons. 

If you like the fact that the Nazis have made the trains run on time, and do not vote for him so Jews will be killed, or so that more infants will be slaughtered, that will be not only morally permissible, it will be an act of virtue. If you vote for him, not because more Jewish babies will die horrible deaths if he is elected (which, of course, is absolutely certain), knowing your own tax dollars are paying for the killing, but because he has increased employment here in the Fatherland and will continue to do so, and because our borders are now secured, such voting will be a civil good in accord with your moral duty as a good citizen. 

If you vote for Hitler because he has all but eradicated poverty and hunger (by his focus on preparing for the war that is now inevitable), in accord with the Savior’s Sermon on the Mount and the Gospel’s clarion call to social justice, and you believe this will continue,  you can proceed in good faith to vote for him and any Nazi Party candidate for any office, knowing you have followed your conscience and you will have no sin to confess. 

We all know that our tax money funds the Nazis killing programs, including the baby killing, provides the money to run the Death Camps, pays for the ovens that cook away much of the evidence of the dead bodies with minimal carbon emissions, and pays for the fuel for the trains that bring the people to the camps. You cannot pay your taxes with the intent that these things be done. If however you  pay your taxes, as all good citizens should, so that children (the children of good Germans) will be properly educated or, for example so that alien workers here are properly housed and fed, then you can in good conscience pay your taxes and win merit in heaven for doing so. 

Also, you can vote for any member of the Nazi party, some of whose soldiers wear the Death’s Head symbols, if those Nazis say they do not support the intrinsic evils of death, genocide, and of racism that the Party has espoused for years and has made a reality here. You will know who some of these candidates are if they say things like: “Yes, The Nazi Party, my beloved Party, has done and will continue to do these atrocities, but I am personally opposed to such atrocities;”  “I am personally opposed to gassing Jews so vote for me;” “It is their right to choose to kill Jewish babies, but this is against my personal conscience;” “I can keep my personal views on holocausts private, and vote for the common good of all citizens;” or “My religion, whose principles are explicitly contrary to those of the Nazi Party, will remain a private thing for me.” 

And of course, at Mass – which Hitler himself and his highest ranking generals have assured us will continue to be celebrated in our churches – you will see good Nazis receive Holy Communion with all the faithful. It would be an outrage against Christian charity to deny them the grace of the sacrament. Who are we to judge the state of their souls?

Pay attention: if a candidate says he is personally opposed to Hitler, is personally opposed to Jewish genocide, or personally opposed to the murder of the little Jewish babies, you can in good conscience vote for such a candidate and we encourage this; even if such a candidate takes part in the public rallies with their clear quasi-religious message in support of Hitler. If a candidate says he is personally opposed to your tax money funding killing, paying for gas chambers, and buying the furnaces at Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz and other locations, and you know what they are used for, you can still vote for such a candidate – again having in mind your proportionate reasons as you enter the voting booth.   

If a candidate says he is personally opposed to denying your religious liberty, even though you know his Party will continue through legislation to do this, it will be an act of virtue to vote for such a candidate.  

Yours in Christ,

German & Austrian Catholic Cardinals, Bishops, Pastors and Priests

PS: Be of good cheer, rejoice in all things!  Hitler has given us his personal assurance in our face-to-face meetings that our religious liberties will always be recognized and protected under his regime, that is so long as the practice of your religion does not require terrorist actions. He said this in his pubic speech at the University Catholica of Our Lady last month when he received the University’s honorary Doctorate in Humanities.