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Venerable
Brethren, Greetings, and Apostolic Blessing.
It is with deep anxiety and growing surprise that We have long been
following the painful trials of the Church and the increasing vexations
which afflict those who have remained loyal in heart and action in the
midst of a people that once received from St. Boniface the bright
message and the Gospel of Christ and God's Kingdom.
2. And what the representatives of the venerable episcopate, who
visited Us in Our sick room, had to tell Us, in truth and duty bound,
has not modified Our feelings. To consoling and edifying information on
the stand the Faithful are making for their Faith, they considered
themselves bound, in spite of efforts to judge with moderation and in
spite of their own patriotic love, to add reports of things hard and
unpleasant. After hearing their account, We could, in grateful
acknowledgment to God, exclaim with the Apostle of love: "I have no
greater grace than this, to hear that my children walk in truth" (John
iii. 4). But the frankness indifferent in Our Apostolic charge and the
determination to place before the Christian world the truth in all its
reality, prompt Us to add: "Our pastoral heart knows no deeper pain, no
disappointment more bitter, than to learn that many are straying from
the path of truth."
3. When, in 1933, We consented, Venerable Brethren, to open
negotiations for a concordat, which the Reich Government proposed on
the basis of a scheme of several years' standing; and when, to your
unanimous satisfaction, We concluded the negotiations by a solemn
treaty, We were prompted by the desire, as it behooved Us, to secure
for Germany the freedom of the Church's beneficent mission and the
salvation of the souls in her care, as well as by the sincere wish to
render the German people a service essential for its peaceful
development and prosperity. Hence, despite many and grave misgivings,
We then decided not to withhold Our consent for We wished to spare the
Faithful of Germany, as far as it was humanly possible, the trials and
difficulties they would have had to face, given the circumstances, had
the negotiations fallen through. It was by acts that We wished to make
it plain, Christ's interests being Our sole object, that the pacific
and maternal hand of the Church would be extended to anyone who did not
actually refuse it.
4. If, then, the tree of peace, which we planted on German soil with
the purest intention, has not brought forth the fruit, which in the
interest of your people, We had fondly hoped, no one in the world who
has eyes to see and ears to hear will be able to lay the blame on the
Church and on her Head. The experiences of these last years have fixed
responsibilities and laid bare intrigues, which from the outset only
aimed at a war of extermination. In the furrows, where We tried to sow
the seed of a sincere peace, other men - the "enemy" of Holy Scripture
- oversowed the cockle of distrust, unrest, hatred, defamation, of a
determined hostility overt or veiled, fed from many sources and
wielding many tools, against Christ and His Church. They, and they
alone with their accomplices, silent or vociferous, are today
responsible, should the storm of religious war, instead of the rainbow
of peace, blacken the German skies.
5. We have never ceased, Venerable Brethren, to represent to the
responsible rulers of your country's destiny, the consequences which
would inevitably follow the protection and even the favor, extended to
such a policy. We have done everything in Our power to defend the
sacred pledge of the given word of honor against theories and
practices, which it officially endorsed, would wreck every faith in
treaties and make every signature worthless. Should the day ever come
to place before the world the account of Our efforts, every honest mind
will see on which side are to be found the promoters of peace, and on
which side its disturbers. Whoever had left in his soul an atom of love
for truth, and in his heart a shadow of a sense of justice, must admit
that, in the course of these anxious and trying years following upon
the conclusion of the concordat, every one of Our words, every one of
Our acts, has been inspired by the binding law of treaties. At the same
time, anyone must acknowledge, not without surprise and reprobation,
how the other contracting party emasculated the terms of the treaty,
distorted their meaning, and eventually considered its more or less
official violation as a normal policy. The moderation We showed in
spite of all this was not inspired by motives of worldly interest,
still less by unwarranted weakness, but merely by Our anxiety not to
draw out the wheat with the cockle; not to pronounce open judgment,
before the public was ready to see its force; not to impeach other
people's honesty, before the evidence of events should have torn the
mask off the systematic hostility leveled at the Church. Even now that
a campaign against the confessional schools, which are guaranteed by
the concordat, and the destruction of free election, where Catholics
have a right to their children's Catholic education, afford evidence,
in a matter so essential to the life of the Church, of the extreme
gravity of the situation and the anxiety of every Christian conscience;
even now Our responsibility for Christian souls induces Us not to
overlook the last possibilities, however slight, of a return to
fidelity to treaties, and to any arrangement that may be acceptable to
the episcopate. We shall continue without failing, to stand before the
rulers of your people as the defender of violated rights, and in
obedience to Our Conscience and Our pastoral mission, whether We be
successful or not, to oppose the policy which seeks, by open or secret
means, to strangle rights guaranteed by a treaty.
6. Different, however, Venerable Brethren, is the purpose of this
letter. As you affectionately visited Us in Our illness, so also We
turn to you, and through you, the German Catholics, who, like all
suffering and afflicted children, are nearer to their Father's heart.
At a time when your faith, like gold, is being tested in the fire of
tribulation and persecution, when your religious freedom is beset on
all sides, when the lack of religious teaching and of normal defense is
heavily weighing on you, you have every right to words of truth and
spiritual comfort from him whose first predecessor heard these words
from the Lord: "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and
thou being once converted, confirm thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32).
7. Take care, Venerable Brethren, that above all, faith in God, the
first and irreplaceable foundation of all religion, be preserved in
Germany pure and unstained. The believer in God is not he who utters
the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a
true and worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by
pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to
the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of
God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called
pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal
destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence
of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things
sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.
8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular
form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental
value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their
function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their
standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and
perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far
from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that
faith upholds.
9. Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in
writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to
be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human
speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to
yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural,
omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons,
tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all
existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the
world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.
10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose
value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun
shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor
exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor
are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators'
right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by
individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates
all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the
law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of
man into the immutable laws of God.
11. None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a
national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the
frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single
race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all
nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah
xI, 15).
12. The Bishops of the Church of Christ, "ordained in the things that
appertain to God (Heb. v, 1) must watch that pernicious errors of this
sort, and consequent practices more pernicious still, shall not gain a
footing among their flock. It is part of their sacred obligations to do
whatever is in their power to enforce respect for, and obedience to,
the commandments of God, as these are the necessary foundation of all
private life and public morality; to see that the rights of His Divine
Majesty, His name and His word be not profaned; to put a stop to the
blasphemies, which, in words and pictures, are multiplying like the
sands of the desert; to encounter the obstinacy and provocations of
those who deny, despise and hate God, by the never-failing reparatory
prayers of the Faithful, hourly rising like incense to the All-Highest
and staying His vengeance.
13. We thank you, Venerable Brethren, your priests and Faithful, who
have persisted in their Christian duty and in the defense of God's
rights in the teeth of an aggressive paganism. Our gratitude, warmer
still and admiring, goes out to those who, in fulfillment of their
duty, have been deemed worthy of sacrifice and suffering for the love
of God.
14. No faith in God can for long survive pure and unalloyed without the
support of faith in Christ. "No one knoweth who the Son is, but the
Father: and who the Father is, but the Son and to whom the Son will
reveal Him" (Luke x. 22). "Now this is eternal life: That they may know
thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent" (John
xvii. 3). Nobody, therefore, can say: "I believe in God, and that is
enough religion for me," for the Savior's words brook no evasion:
"Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that
confesseth the Son hath the Father also" (1 John ii. 23).
15. In Jesus Christ, Son of God made Man, there shone the plentitude of
divine revelation. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners,
spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets last of all, in
these days hath spoken to us by His Son" (Heb. i. 1). The sacred books
of the Old Testament are exclusively the word of God, and constitute a
substantial part of his revelation; they are penetrated by a subdued
light, harmonizing with the slow development of revelation, the dawn of
the bright day of the redemption. As should be expected in historical
and didactic books, they reflect in many particulars the imperfection,
the weakness and sinfulness of man. But side by side with innumerable
touches of greatness and nobleness, they also record the story of the
chosen people, bearers of the Revelation and the Promise, repeatedly
straying from God and turning to the world. Eyes not blinded by
prejudice or passion will see in this prevarication, as reported by the
Biblical history, the luminous splendor of the divine light revealing
the saving plan which finally triumphs over every fault and sin. It is
precisely in the twilight of this background that one perceives the
striking perspective of the divine tutorship of salvation, as it warms,
admonishes, strikes, raises and beautifies its elect. Nothing but
ignorance and pride could blind one to the treasures hoarded in the Old
Testament.
16. Whoever wishes to see banished from church and school the Biblical
history and the wise doctrines of the Old Testament, blasphemes the
name of God, blasphemes the Almighty's plan of salvation, and makes
limited and narrow human thought the judge of God's designs over the
history of the world: he denies his faith in the true Christ, such as
He appeared in the flesh, the Christ who took His human nature from a
people that was to crucify Him; and he understands nothing of that
universal tragedy of the Son of God who to His torturer's sacrilege
opposed the divine and priestly sacrifice of His redeeming death, and
made the new alliance the goal of the old alliance, its realization and
its crown.
17. The peak of the revelation as reached in the Gospel of Christ is
final and permanent. It knows no retouches by human hand; it admits no
substitutes or arbitrary alternatives such as certain leaders pretend
to draw from the so-called myth of race and blood. Since Christ, the
Lord's Anointed, finished the task of Redemption, and by breaking up
the reign of sin deserved for us the grace of being the children God,
since that day no other name under heaven has been given to men,
whereby we must be saved (Acts iv. 12). No man, were every science,
power and worldly strength incarnated in him, can lay any other
foundation but that which is laid: which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor. iii
11). Should any man dare, in sacrilegious disregard of the essential
differences between God and His creature, between the God-man and the
children of man, to place a mortal, were he the greatest of all times,
by the side of, or over, or against, Christ, he would deserve to be
called prophet of nothingness, to whom the terrifying words of
Scripture would be applicable: "He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh
at them" (Psalms ii. 3).
18. Faith in Christ cannot maintain itself pure and unalloyed without
the support of faith in the Church, "the pillar and ground of the
truth" (1 Tim. iii. 15); for Christ Himself, God eternally blessed,
raised this pillar of the Faith. His command to hear the Church (Matt.
xviii. 15), to welcome in the words and commands of the Church His own
words and His own commands (Luke x. 16), is addressed to all men, of
all times and of all countries. The Church founded by the Redeemer is
one, the same for all races and all nations. Beneath her dome, as
beneath the vault of heaven, there is but one country for all nations
and tongues; there is room for the development of every quality,
advantage, task and vocation which God the Creator and Savior has
allotted to individuals as well as to ethnical communities. The
Church's maternal heart is big enough to see in the God-appointed
development of individual characteristics and gifts, more than a mere
danger of divergency. She rejoices at the spiritual superiorities among
individuals and nations. In their successes she sees with maternal joy
and pride fruits of education and progress, which she can only bless
and encourage, whenever she can conscientiously do so. But she also
knows that to this freedom limits have been set by the majesty of the
divine command, which founded that Church one and indivisible. Whoever
tampers with that unity and that indivisibility wrenches from the
Spouse of Christ one of the diadems with which God Himself crowned her;
he subjects a divine structure, which stands on eternal foundations, to
criticism and transformation by architects whom the Father of Heaven
never authorized to interfere.
19. The Church, whose work lies among men and operates through men, may
see her divine mission obscured by human, too human, combination,
persistently growing and developing like the cockle among the wheat of
the Kingdom of God. Those who know the Savior's words on scandal and
the giver of scandals, know, too, the judgment which the Church and all
her sons must pronounce on what was and what is sin. But if, besides
these reprehensible discrepancies be between faith and life, acts and
words, exterior conduct and interior feelings, however numerous they
be, anyone overlooks the overwhelming sum of authentic virtues, of
spirit of sacrifice, fraternal love, heroic efforts of sanctity, he
gives evidence of deplorable blindness and injustice. If later he
forgets to apply the standard of severity, by which he measures the
Church he hates, to other organizations in which he happens to be
interested, then his appeal to an offended sense of purity identifies
him with those who, for seeing the mote in their brother's eye,
according to the Savior's incisive words, cannot see the beam in their
own. But however suspicious the intention of those who make it their
task, nay their vile profession, to scrutinize what is human in the
Church, and although the priestly powers conferred by God are
independent of the priest's human value, it yet remains true that at no
moment of history, no individual, in no organization can dispense
himself from the duty of loyally examining his conscience, of
mercilessly purifying himself, and energetically renewing himself in
spirit and in action. In Our Encyclical on the priesthood We have urged
attention to the sacred duty of all those who belong to the Church,
chiefly the members of the priestly and religious profession and of the
lay apostolate, to square their faith and their conduct with the claims
of the law of God and of the Church. And today we again repeat with all
the insistency We can command: it is not enough to be a member of the
Church of Christ, one needs to be a living member, in spirit and in
truth, i.e., living in the state of grace and in the presence of God,
either in innocence or in sincere repentance. If the Apostle of the
nations, the vase of election, chastised his body and brought it into
subjection: lest perhaps, when he had preached to others, he himself
should become a castaway (1 Cor. ix. 27), could anybody responsible for
the extension of the Kingdom of God claim any other method but personal
sanctification? Only thus can we show to the present generation, and to
the critics of the Church that "the salt of the earth," the leaven of
Christianity has not decayed, but is ready to give the men of today -
prisoners of doubt and error, victims of indifference, tired of their
Faith and straying from God - the spiritual renewal they so much need.
A Christianity which keeps a grip on itself, refuses every compromise
with the world, takes the commands of God and the Church seriously,
preserves its love of God and of men in all its freshness, such a
Christianity can be, and will be, a model and a guide to a world which
is sick to death and clamors for directions, unless it be condemned to
a catastrophe that would baffle the imagination.
20. Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the
sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men.
Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet
confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew
to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any
reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity,
flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light,
destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils
worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth
where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to
prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the
instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men.
But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at
Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is
moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and
inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from
the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on
Pentecost day to an erratic world.
21. In your country, Venerable Brethren, voices are swelling into a
chorus urging people to leave the Church, and among the leaders there
is more than one whose official position is intended to create the
impression that this infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a signal
and meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State. Secret and open
measures of intimidation, the threat of economic and civic
disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain classes of Catholic
functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right and dignity.
Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay so
dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the
highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss,
there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor
offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of
every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: "Begone, Satan! For it
is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou
serve" (Matt. iv. 10). And turning to the Church, he shall say: "Thou,
my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my
death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly
promises or threats, I betray the vows of my baptism." As to those who
imagine that they can reconcile exterior infidelity to one and the same
Church, let them hear Our Lord's warning: - "He that shall deny me
before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke xii. 9).
22. Faith in the Church cannot stand pure and true without the support
of faith in the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. The same moment when
Peter, in the presence of all the Apostles and disciples, confesses his
faith in Christ, Son of the Living God, the answer he received in
reward for his faith and his confession was the word that built the
Church, the only Church of Christ, on the rock of Peter (Matt. xvi.
18). Thus was sealed the connection between the faith in Christ, the
Church and the Primacy. True and lawful authority is invariably a bond
of unity, a source of strength, a guarantee against division and ruin,
a pledge for the future: and this is verified in the deepest and
sublimest sense, when that authority, as in the case of the Church, and
the Church alone, is sealed by the promise and the guidance of the Holy
Ghost and His irresistible support. Should men, who are not even united
by faith in Christ, come and offer you the seduction of a national
German Church, be convinced that it is nothing but a denial of the one
Church of Christ and the evident betrayal of that universal evangelical
mission, for which a world Church alone is qualified and competent. The
live history of other national churches with their paralysis, their
domestication and subjection to worldly powers, is sufficient evidence
of the sterility to which is condemned every branch that is severed
from the trunk of the living Church. Whoever counters these erroneous
developments with an uncompromising No from the very outset, not only
serves the purity of his faith in Christ, but also the welfare and the
vitality of his own people.
23. You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, that
religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and
distorted to profane use. "Revelation" in its Christian sense, means
the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the
"suggestions" of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people's
history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve
Christian currency. "Faith" consists in holding as true what God has
revealed and proposes through His Church to man's acceptance. It is
"the evidence of things that appear not" (Heb. ii. 1). The joyful and
proud confidence in the future of one's people, instinct in every
heart, is quite a different thing from faith in a religious sense. To
substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this,
to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless
play on words, if it does not conceal a confusion of concepts, or
worse.
24. "Immortality" in a Christian sense means the survival of man after
his terrestrial death, for the purpose of eternal reward or punishment.
Whoever only means by the term, the collective survival here on earth
of his people for an indefinite length of time, distorts one of the
fundamental notions of the Christian Faith and tampers with the very
foundations of the religious concept of the universe, which requires a
moral order.
25. "Original sin" is the hereditary but impersonal fault of Adam's
descendants, who have sinned in him (Rom. v. 12). It is the loss of
grace, and therefore of eternal life, together with a propensity to
evil, which everybody must, with the assistance of grace, penance,
resistance and moral effort, repress and conquer. The passion and death
of the Son of God has redeemed the world from the hereditary curse of
sin and death. Faith in these truths, which in your country are today
the butt of the cheap derision of Christ's enemies, belongs to the
inalienable treasury of Christian revelation.
26. The cross of Christ, though it has become to many a stumbling block
and foolishness (1 Cor. i. 23) remains for the believer the holy sign
of his redemption, the emblem of moral strength and greatness. We live
in its shadow and die in its embrace. It will stand on our grave as a
pledge of our faith and our hope in the eternal light.
27. Humility in the spirit of the Gospel and prayer for the assistance
of grace are perfectly compatible with self-confidence and heroism. The
Church of Christ, which throughout the ages and to the present day
numbers more confessors and voluntary martyrs than any other moral
collectivity, needs lessons from no one in heroism of feeling and
action. The odious pride of reformers only covers itself with ridicule
when it rails at Christian humility as though it were but a cowardly
pose of self-degradation.
28. "Grace," in a wide sense, may stand for any of the Creator's gifts
to His creature; but in its Christian designation, it means all the
supernatural tokens of God's love; God's intervention which raises man
to that intimate communion of life with Himself, called by the Gospel
"adoption of the children of God." "Behold what manner of charity the
Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called and should be the
sons of God" (1 John iii. 1). To discard this gratuitous and free
elevation in the name of a so-called German type amounts to repudiating
openly a fundamental truth of Christianity. It would be an abuse of our
religious vocabulary to place on the same level supernatural grace and
natural gifts. Pastors and guardians of the people of God will do well
to resist this plunder of sacred things and this confusion of ideas.
29. It is on faith in God, preserved pure and stainless, that man's
morality is based. All efforts to remove from under morality and the
moral order the granite foundation of faith and to substitute for it
the shifting sands of human regulations, sooner or later lead these
individuals or societies to moral degradation. The fool who has said in
his heart "there is no God" goes straight to moral corruption (Psalms
xiii. 1), and the number of these fools who today are out to sever
morality from religion, is legion. They either do not see or refuse to
see that the banishment of confessional Christianity, i.e., the clear
and precise notion of Christianity, from teaching and education, from
the organization of social and political life, spells spiritual
spoliation and degradation. No coercive power of the State, no purely
human ideal, however noble and lofty it be, will ever be able to make
shift of the supreme and decisive impulses generated by faith in God
and Christ. If the man, who is called to the hard sacrifice of his own
ego to the common good, loses the support of the eternal and the
divine, that comforting and consoling faith in a God who rewards all
good and punishes all evil, then the result of the majority will be,
not the acceptance, but the refusal of their duty. The conscientious
observation of the ten commandments of God and the precepts of the
Church (which are nothing but practical specifications of rules of the
Gospels) is for every one an unrivaled school of personal discipline,
moral education and formation of character, a school that is exacting,
but not to excess. A merciful God, who as Legislator, says - Thou must!
- also gives by His grace the power to will and to do. To let forces of
moral formation of such efficacy lie fallow, or to exclude them
positively from public education, would spell religious under-feeding
of a nation. To hand over the moral law to man's subjective opinion,
which changes with the times, instead of anchoring it in the holy will
of the eternal God and His commandments, is to open wide every door to
the forces of destruction. The resulting dereliction of the eternal
principles of an objective morality, which educates conscience and
ennobles every department and organization of life, is a sin against
the destiny of a nation, a sin whose bitter fruit will poison future
generations.
30. Such is the rush of present-day life that it severs from the divine
foundation of Revelation, not only morality, but also the theoretical
and practical rights. We are especially referring to what is called the
natural law, written by the Creator's hand on the tablet of the heart
(Rom. ii. 14) and which reason, not blinded by sin or passion, can
easily read. It is in the light of the commands of this natural law,
that all positive law, whoever be the lawgiver, can be gauged in its
moral content, and hence, in the authority it wields over conscience.
Human laws in flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated
with a taint which no force, no power can mend. In the light of this
principle one must judge the axiom, that "right is common utility," a
proposition which may be given a correct significance, it means that
what is morally indefensible, can never contribute to the good of the
people. But ancient paganism acknowledged that the axiom, to be
entirely true, must be reversed and be made to say: "Nothing can be
useful, if it is not at the same time morally good" (Cicero, De Off.
ii. 30). Emancipated from this oral rule, the principle would in
international law carry a perpetual state of war between nations; for
it ignores in national life, by confusion of right and utility, the
basic fact that man as a person possesses rights he holds from God, and
which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or
neglect. To overlook this truth is to forget that the real common good
ultimately takes its measure from man's nature, which balances personal
rights and social obligations, and from the purpose of society,
established for the benefit of human nature. Society, was intended by
the Creator for the full development of individual possibilities, and
for the social benefits, which by a give and take process, every one
can claim for his own sake and that of others. Higher and more general
values, which collectivity alone can provide, also derive from the
Creator for the good of man, and for the full development, natural and
supernatural, and the realization of his perfection. To neglect this
order is to shake the pillars on which society rests, and to compromise
social tranquillity, security and existence.
31. The believer has an absolute right to profess his Faith and live
according to its dictates. Laws which impede this profession and
practice of Faith are against natural law. Parents who are earnest and
conscious of their educative duties, have a primary right to the
education of the children God has given them in the spirit of their
Faith, and according to its prescriptions. Laws and measures which in
school questions fail to respect this freedom of the parents go against
natural law, and are immoral. The Church, whose mission it is to
preserve and explain the natural law, as it is divine in its origin,
cannot but declare that the recent enrollment into schools organized
without a semblance of freedom, is the result of unjust pressure, and
is a violation of every common right.
32. As the Vicar of Him who said to the young man of the Gospel: "If
thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt. xix. 17), We
address a few paternal words to the young.
33. Thousands of voices ring into your ears a Gospel which has not been
revealed by the Father of Heaven. Thousands of pens are wielded in the
service of a Christianity, which is not of Christ. Press and wireless
daily force on you productions hostile to the Faith and to the Church,
impudently aggressive against whatever you should hold venerable and
sacred. Many of you, clinging to your Faith and to your Church, as a
result of your affiliation with religious associations guaranteed by
the concordat, have often to face the tragic trial of seeing your
loyalty to your country misunderstood, suspected, or even denied, and
of being hurt in your professional and social life. We are well aware
that there is many a humble soldier of Christ in your ranks, who with
torn feelings, but a determined heart, accepts his fate, finding his
one consolation in the thought of suffering insults for the name of
Jesus (Acts v. 41). Today, as We see you threatened with new dangers
and new molestations, We say to you: If any one should preach to you a
Gospel other than the one you received on the knees of a pious mother,
from the lips of a believing father, or through teaching faithful to
God and His Church, "let him be anathema" (Gal. i. 9). If the State
organizes a national youth, and makes this organization obligatory to
all, then, without prejudice to rights of religious associations, it is
the absolute right of youths as well as of parents to see to it that
this organization is purged of all manifestations hostile to the Church
and Christianity. These manifestations are even today placing Christian
parents in a painful alternative, as they cannot give to the State what
they owe to God alone.
34. No one would think of preventing young Germans establishing a true
ethnical community in a noble love of freedom and loyalty to their
country. What We object to is the voluntary and systematic antagonism
raised between national education and religious duty. That is why we
tell the young: Sing your hymns to freedom, but do not forget the
freedom of the children of God. Do not drag the nobility of that
freedom in the mud of sin and sensuality. He who sings hymns of loyalty
to this terrestrial country should not, for that reason, become
unfaithful to God and His Church, or a deserter and traitor to His
heavenly country. You are often told about heroic greatness, in lying
opposition to evangelical humility and patience. Why conceal the fact
that there are heroisms in moral life? That the preservation of
baptismal innocence is an act of heroism which deserves credit? You are
often told about the human deficiencies which mar the history of the
Church: why ignore the exploits which fill her history, the saints she
begot, the blessing that came upon Western civilization from the union
between that Church and your people? You are told about sports.
Indulged in with moderation and within limits, physical education is a
boon for youth. But so much time is now devoted to sporting activities,
that the harmonious development of body and mind is disregarded, that
duties to one's family, and the observation of the Lord's Day are
neglected. With an indifference bordering on contempt the day of the
Lord is divested of its sacred character, against the best of German
traditions. But We expect the Catholic youth, in the more favorable
organizations of the State, to uphold its right to a Christian
sanctification of the Sunday, not to exercise the body at the expense
of the immortal soul, not to be overcome by evil, but to aim at the
triumph of good over evil (Rom. xii. 21) as its highest achievement
will be the gaining of the crown in the stadium of eternal life (1 Cor.
ix. 24).
35. We address a special word of congratulation, encouragement and
exhortation to the priests of Germany, who, in difficult times and
delicate situations, have, under the direction of their Bishops, to
guide the flocks of Christ along the straight road, by word and
example, by their daily devotion and apostolic patience. Beloved sons,
who participate with Us in the sacred mysteries, never tire of
exercising, after the Sovereign and eternal Priest, Jesus Christ, the
charity and solicitude of the Good Samaritan. Let your daily conduct
remain stainless before God and the incessant pursuit of your
perfection and sanctification, in merciful charity towards all those
who are confided to your care, especially those who are more exposed,
who are weak and stumbling. Be the guides of the faithful, the support
of those who fail, the doctors of the doubting, the consolers of the
afflicted, the disinterested counselors and assistants of all. The
trials and sufferings which your people have undergone in post-War days
have not passed over its soul without leaving painful marks. They have
left bitterness and anxiety which are slow to cure, except by charity.
This charity is the apostle's indispensable weapon, in a world torn by
hatred. It will make you forget, or at least forgive, many an
undeserved insult now more frequent than ever.
36. This charity, intelligent and sympathetic towards those even who
offend you, does by no means imply a renunciation of the right of
proclaiming, vindicating and defending the truth and its implications.
The priest's first loving gift to his neighbors is to serve truth and
refute error in any of its forms. Failure on this score would be not
only a betrayal of God and your vocation, but also an offense against
the real welfare of your people and country. To all those who have kept
their promised fidelity to their Bishops on the day of their
ordination; to all those who in the exercise of their priestly function
are called upon to suffer persecution; to all those imprisoned in jail
and concentration camps, the Father of the Christian world sends his
words of gratitude and commendation.
37. Our paternal gratitude also goes out to Religious and nuns, as well
as Our sympathy for so many who, as a result of administrative measures
hostile to Religious Orders, have been wrenched from the work of their
vocation. If some have fallen and shown themselves unworthy of their
vocation, their fault, which the Church punishes, in no way detracts
from the merit of the immense majority, who, in voluntary abnegation
and poverty, have tried to serve their God and their country. By their
zeal, their fidelity, their virtue, their active charity, their
devotion, the Orders devoted to the care of souls, the service of the
sick and education, are greatly contributing to private and public
welfare. No doubt better days will come to do them better justice than
the present troublous times have done. We trust that the heads of
religious communities will profit by their trials and difficulties tO
renew their zeal, their spirit of prayer, the austerity of their lives
and their perfect discipline, in order to draw down God's blessing upon
their difficult work.
38. We visualize the immense multitudes of Our faithful children, Our
sons and daughters, for whom the sufferings of the Church in Germany
and their own have left intact their devotion to the cause of God,
their tender love for the Father of Christendom, their obedience to
their pastors, their joyous resolution to remain ever faithful, happen
what may, to the sacred inheritance of their ancestors. To all of them
We send Our paternal greetings. And first to the members of those
religious associations which, bravely and at the cost of untold
sacrifices, have remained faithful to Christ, and have stood by the
rights which a solemn treaty had guaranteed to the Church and to
themselves according to the rules of loyalty and good faith.
39. We address Our special greetings to the Catholic parents. Their
rights and duties as educators, conferred on them by God, are at
present the stake of a campaign pregnant with consequences. The Church
cannot wait to deplore the devastation of its altars, the destruction
of its temples, if an education, hostile to Christ, is to profane the
temple of the child's soul consecrated by baptism, and extinguish the
eternal light of the faith in Christ for the sake of counterfeit light
alien to the Cross. Then the violation of temples is nigh, and it will
be every one's duty to sever his responsibility from the opposite camp,
and free his conscience from guilty cooperation with such corruption.
The more the enemies attempt to disguise their designs, the more a
distrustful vigilance will be needed, in the light of bitter
experience. Religious lessons maintained for the sake of appearances,
controlled by unauthorized men, within the frame of an educational
system which systematically works against religion, do not justify a
vote in favor of non-confessional schools. We know, dear Catholic
parents, that your vote was not free, for a free and secret vote would
have meant the triumph of the Catholic schools. Therefore, we shall
never cease frankly to represent to the responsible authorities the
iniquity of the pressure brought to bear on you and the duty of
respecting the freedom of education. Yet do not forget this: none can
free you from the responsibility God has placed on you over your
children. None of your oppressors, who pretend to relieve you of your
duties can answer for you to the eternal Judge, when he will ask:
"Where are those I confided to you?" May every one of you be able to
answer: "Of them whom thou hast given me, I have not lost any one"
(John xviii. 9).
40. Venerable Brethren, We are convinced that the words which in this
solemn moment We address to you, and to the Catholics of the German
Empire, will find in the hearts and in the acts of Our Faithful, the
echo responding to the solicitude of the common Father. If there is one
thing We implore the Lord to grant, it is this, that Our words may
reach the ears and the hearts of those who have begun to yield to the
threats and enticements of the enemies of Christ and His Church.
41. We have weighed every word of this letter in the balance of truth
and love. We wished neither to be an accomplice to equivocation by an
untimely silence, nor by excessive severity to harden the hearts of
those who live under Our pastoral responsibility; for Our pastoral love
pursues them none the less for all their infidelity. Should those who
are trying to adapt their mentality to their new surroundings, have for
the paternal home they have left and for the Father Himself, nothing
but words of distrust, in gratitude or insult, should they even forget
whatever they forsook, the day will come when their anguish will fall
on the children they have lost, when nostalgia will bring them back to
"God who was the joy of their youth," to the Church whose paternal hand
has directed them on the road that leads to the Father of Heaven.
42. Like other periods of the history of the Church, the present has
ushered in a new ascension of interior purification, on the sole
condition that the faithful show themselves proud enough in the
confession of their faith in Christ, generous enough in suffering to
face the oppressors of the Church with the strength of their faith and
charity. May the holy time of Lent and Easter, which preaches interior
renovation and penance, turn Christian eyes towards the Cross and the
risen Christ; be for all of you the joyful occasion that will fill your
souls with heroism, patience and victory. Then We are sure, the enemies
of the Church, who think that their time has come, will see that their
joy was premature, and that they may close the grave they had dug. The
day will come when the Te Deum of liberation will succeed to the
premature hymns of the enemies of Christ: Te Deum of triumph and joy
and gratitude, as the German people return to religion, bend the knee
before Christ, and arming themselves against the enemies of God, again
resume the task God has laid upon them.
43. He who searches the hearts and reins (Psalm vii. 10) is Our witness
that We have no greater desire than to see in Germany the restoration
of a true peace between Church and State. But if, without any fault of
Ours, this peace is not to come, then the Church of God will defend her
rights and her freedom in the name of the Almighty whose arm has not
shortened. Trusting in Him, "We cease not to pray and to beg" (Col. i.
9) for you, children of the Church, that the days of tribulation may
end and that you may be found faithful in the day of judgment; for the
persecutors and oppressors, that the Father of light and mercy may
enlighten them as He enlightened Saul on the road of Damascus. With
this prayer in Our heart and on Our lips We grant to you, as a pledge
of Divine help, as a support in your difficult resolutions, as a
comfort in the struggle, as a consolation in all trials, to You,
Bishops and Pastors of the Faithful, priests, Religious, lay apostles
of Catholic Action, to all your diocesans, and specially to the sick
and the prisoners, in paternal love, Our Apostolic Benediction.
Given at the Vatican on Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937.
PIUS XI
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