Professor, Alum, Priest, Examines "Hitler's Priests"
August 20, 2008
By LAUREN DALEY
Dr. Kevin P. Spicer was in Germany researching in the German Federal Archive for his first book on Catholic priests in Hitler's Berlin when something intriguing caught his eye…
Something no historian had ever researched before.
"I that found some (German) Catholic priests were antisemitic, very nationalistic, and aligned themselves with the Nazis. Then, I started uncovering more and more," said Dr. Spicer, who is himself a Catholic priest.
"Nobody else has ever done a collective study on this subject. There are a few case studies here and there, but no single book devoted to examing the lives of these "brown priests" (alluding to the brown shirts worn by Nazi Storm Troopers)," said Fr. Spicer, C.S.C., an associate professor of history and alumnus of Stonehill College '87.
The result of his nine years of research?
His second book, Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism, has just been published to positive acclaim.
Peter Hayes of Northwestern University called Spicer's research "impeccably thorough and unparalleled in the existing literature."
Beth A. Griech-Polelle of Bowling Green State University called his use of archival materials "almost superhuman."
While researching, Fr. Spicer visited over 40 state and church archives in Germany; he also utilized collections of personal papers housed in private archives.
The Stonehill history professor is the first historian to collectively expose the 138 brown priests who served as Nazi propagandists. A third of these 138 clergymen even joined the Nazi party.
"After 16 years as Catholic priest, I realize that there are very good things in the priesthood, but, because all priests are human, there is also sin," said the Fr. Spicer, who serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust.
"In certain cases, I was surprised at the extent the brown priests went to support National Socialism. In some cases this meant that the priests even supported an ecclesiastical solution to the 'Jewish Question' alongside the Nazis' final solution by advocating the removal of all reference to Jews in liturgical texts and theological writing."
Perhaps even more shocking than the discovery that these priests were Nazis, Spicer explores how the brown priests justified Nazi doctrine with Catholic beliefs, and looks at their reasons for siding with Hitler.
"Some hated Jews to begin with; Hitler's hated of Jews appealed to them," he said. "A significant group had been soldiers in World War I, and were angry over how the Allied powers treated Germany. Still others did not like democratic government and were attracted to the authoritarianism of National Socialism."
In the 2005-06 academic year, Spicer was a Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. This past and current year he is a visiting associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.
For the 2009-10 academic year, he'll return to Stonehill, where he chairs the College's Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Committee.
Spicer said he's not sure what courses he'll be teaching when he returns to Stonehill-but said he learned a lot in writing "Hitler's Priests."
"It allowed me to see the sin that does exist in humanity, and clearly we have sin in the Church itself," Spicer said.
"It makes me want to confront antisemitism present within Catholicism… and work to see that this hateful ideology never influences the Church again."
For more information contact Communications and Media Relations at 508-565-1321.
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