Catholic resistance to the Nazis both inside Germany and at the Vatican waxed outspoken last week.
First the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano published the vigorously anti-Nazi Lenten pastoral of the Most Rev. Conrad Gröber, Archbishop of Freiburg, which German authorities had suppressed. “The schism of the German people is undeniable,” the prelate declared, adding that instead of bringing unity the war has made the exclusion of confirmed Catholics more evident. And then he bade his flock reject passive resignation as against “conscience and … the example of Christ” and urged them to resist Nazi efforts to teach their children anti-Christian doctrines.
Next Osservatore published a homily by militant, anti-Nazi Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, which assured German Catholics that only the Pope’s desire to appear neutral had restrained him from more vigorous expression of his “profound unhappiness” over the situation in Germany. Simultaneously the Vatican let it be known that the Pope had lately made several spirited protests through his Berlin Nuncio over Germany’s renewal of Catholic persecution.
Then the Vatican radio swung into action, declaring that Nazis were set to establish a new church in Germany entirely independent of Rome and recalling Nazi Mystagogue Alfred Rosenberg’s denunciation of Roman Catholicism as a “Mediterranean Jewish myth.” Later the Vatican broadcast that all Germans expressing a desire to become priests are liable to internment, that convents and monasteries have been closed all over Germany, that priests have trouble in ministering to soldiers and are liable to expulsion from their parishes at the slightest pretext.
In a seeming effort to undercut the effect of these charges, the Nazis countered with the proud assertion that a new Catholic prayer book for the first time includes special war prayers, including one for “victory in the German struggle for liberty.” But Dr. Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry slipped up, missed the obvious inference—that for the 19 months of World War II Germany’s Catholics have been praying for peace, not for victory.
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