"Mit Brennender Sorge" (70th anniversary)

Vatican ^ | March 14, 1937 | Pope Pius XI and Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli

[Campion]

Since Pope Pius XII is being relentlessly and viciously slandered on this site, slanders which originate in a Soviet KGB disinformation campaign, I thought it would be instructive to reflect on this stinging condemnation of Nazism, written by then-Cardinal Pacelli and published by the authority of his predecessor, Pope Pius XI. This past March is the 70th anniversary of the publication of this encyclical.

This encyclical was printed in secret and read from the pulpit of every Catholic Church in Germany. Despite its historical context, it has a message that is still true and applicable today.

[Campion]

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.

Would you still care to question the courage and conviction of the man who wrote that?

[Campion]

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.

Would you still care to question the courage and conviction of the man who wrote that?

Are those the words of an appeaser?

[Campion]

Do you think that Cornwell is right to call the man who wrote the words above “Hitler’s Pope”?

[Campion]

From this site:

The [German] government reaction to the encyclical [Mit Brennender Sorge] was immediate. A formal protest was sent from Berlin to Rome, and equally swiftly rejected by Cardinal Pacelli. An enraged Hitler and Goebbels cranked up the propaganda machine and once more dozens of clerics found themselves arraigned on the hoary old charges of immorality and ‘slandering’ the Nazi state. Gestapo units were mobilised to find which presses had produced the encyclical: 12 were confiscated and the editors arrested. In one parish, Essen in the diocese of Oldenburg, seven girls were arrested inside the church as they handed out copies of Mit brennender Sorge after the Palm Sunday service.

[Titanites]

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.

This was addressed to the bishops of Germany, who unanimously agreed with the concordat.

[Titanites]

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.

Reasons for the concordat:

1. to spare the Faithful of Germany

2. 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.

[Petronski]

Pearls before swine.

[Campion]

It’s the neutral observers I’m after.

[Uncle Chip]

Would you still care to question the courage and conviction of the man who wrote that?

How much courage does it take to write something that is published under someone else's name?

[Petronski]

It’s the neutral observers I’m after.

I understand.

[Campion]

How much courage does it take to write something that is published under someone else's name?

Now that's a truly silly question/quibble. Putting it in the Pope's name gives it his authority. The Pope himself is on record saying Pacelli wrote it.

[Petronski]

How much courage does it take to write something that is published under someone else's name?

Ooh, deflection. Shocker there.

[Petronski]

Crickets . . . tumbleweeds.

[Campion]

Don’t forget the howling wind. Gotta be wind. :-)

[Uncle Chip]

Putting it in the Pope's name gives it his authority. The Pope himself is on record saying Pacelli wrote it.

Is this the best that you have? Don't you have anything later than 1937, when Pacelli was the Pope, and his name was on it?

[Petronski]

Is that the sound of you deflecting again?

Yes, yes it is.

[Campion]

Summi Pontificatus

But nothing will satisfy you, we both know that.

[Campion]

Pacelli was the Pope, and his name was on it

You think he suddenly discovered cowardice when the Papal tiara was put on his head? Leopards don't change their spots, except when it's convenient for you, hmm?

[Petronski]