Tuesday, December 2, 2025

No, Goebbels wasn't excommunicated by the Catholic Church for marrying a Protestant



Joseph Goebbels, Bundesarchiv, via Wikimedia Commons

I think Christopher Hitchens was being unfair when he said that Joseph Goebbels was excommunicated by the Catholic Church for marrying a Protestant. He said this in his 2007 book God Is Not Great, and in other speeches and debates, including one where he mocks the church by saying "See, we do have our standards". Under the Canon law of that time, Goebbels would have been automatically excommunicated under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 2319. Goebbels put himself in a state of excommunication, not the Church. No formal excommunication action against Goebbels by the Church has been found but in 1930, The Bishop of Mainz did formally excommunicate Nazis in his diocese. 

Officials in the Catholic Church had an inconsistent relationship with the Nazis, sometimes collaborating, sometime opposing.

A Redditor named AlbatrossLanding wrote "Geobbels (sic) wrote in his diary that he was excommunicated for his marriage, at the time of his marriage." but I can't find it in the available online version of his diary in German, which does not have an entry for that date and a search of the text doesn't find the German word for excommunicate.

He also said in one video that 50% of the military wing of the SS were Catholic, but in this book he brings the figure down to 25%.

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