Mark Bellis

Thursday, December 4, 2025

The Great Cold Moon

December 4, 2025. This is called the Great Cold Moon in Mohawk

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 church's laws of that time, Goebbels would have been automatically excommunicated under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 2319 for marrying a non-Catholic, unless he had obtained a dispensation from his bishop.. Goebbels put himself in a state of excommunication, not the Church, and he had stopped attending Catholic church services years earlier, but, like, Hitler, he did not formally leave the church or stop paying the tax that Catholics and Lutherans paid to their respective churches that was collected by the German government (Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. p. XV). No records of any formal excommunication action against Goebbels by the Church have 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.

Hitchens also said in one video that 50% of the military wing of the SS (Waffen-SS) were Catholic, but in this book he brings the figure down to 25% of the SS, a percentage which was considerably lower than the percentage of Catholics in the German Reich (Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia) in 1939, which was 41%. Somewhat surprising, as the Nazi Party started in the predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria.

To correct another mistake Hitchens said about the Nazi and religion during a debate: "...on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side..." Gott Mit Uns was on German army belt buckles well before the Nazis, and most of the German military (Wehrmacht) were not Nazi Party members. The SS were Nazi Party members, and the Waffen-SS did operate as a parallel military, with infantry, anti-aircraft and armoured divisions but the SS had "Meine Ehre heißt Treue", "My honour is called loyalty" on their belt buckles, a paraphrase of a compliment that Hitler gave them after they had a fight with a rival Nazi faction, the SA, in Berlin.

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Bad dream about Krystal

I had a dream about driving Krystal's corpse - I think I was trying to get her to Boston. I guess I feel bad because I haven't gone to visit her grave because of the situation in the States over immigrants and tourists.

Monday, November 24, 2025

Turkeys gleaning field

Turkeys looking for corn grains

Filming for Cheese on Top

I joined the extras for filming an episode of Cheese on Top, a project by Stacey Case for Bell. Windsor, Ontario has an odd pizza with shredded pepperoni, something not found elsewhere except some places around Montreal, and the running gag is a protest against Windsor's pizza contrasted to Cornwall's cheese on top style.