CHAPTER IX. HITLER’S FIGHT AGAINST THE CHURCHES

THE FULL STORY of the rise of Nazi-Fascism has still to be written. When it appears it will surprise most Americans to discover the part played in it by the Christian Churches— Protestant as well as Catholic. For Nazi-Fascism was as much a product of the Churches as of the State, and a movement towards religious as well as political and social authoritarianism. European Catholic historians immediately recognized it as the final act in the Jesuit plan of counter-Reformation instituted exactly four hundred years before—in 1940.

Americans will never fully understand the real aims and activities of the Church of Rome so long as they continue to look at Catholicism from our American point of view. On this side of the Atlantic attention has been focussed mainly on attempts of a few “liberal” Catholic spokesmen to integrate their Church with the American way of life. These are sincere in thinking that Catholic authoritarianism can be reconciled with the liberal, tolerant principles of American democracy.¹ But the Church of Rome has its roots in Europe; there its metaphysic was first established. It is therefore to its background and activities in Europe we must look if we want to judge what its real nature is. It is the policy determined upon “beyond the Alps” in Europe that directs and guides the Catholic Church even in America. Well-meaning Catholic spokesmen in the democracies are permitted to voice their liberal views, but their wishful thinking has never had any effect in really bringing the Catholic Church into line with our American democratic way of life.

¹ Cf. for example, the article of Rev. John F. Cronin, S. S., Rome—Ally of Democracy! in the magazine Common Sense for October, 1940.

This issue has been bitterly fought out in Europe between Nazi- Fascism and the Christian churches. As far as Europe is concerned the fight is ended—with victory on the side of Nazi-Fascism and Catholic ultramontanism. In Italy, Spain, Austria, Poland, Portugal, France and Belgium, Catholicism alone was involved. In Germany, however, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have played their respective parts. There the struggles were as bitter, and purges as bloody, within the Churches as within the State. They were more severe and bloody within Protestantism than Catholicism; many more liberal Protestant leaders than Catholic were liquidated or put out of the way in concentration camps. By refusing to make any concessions to Nazism, the Evangelical Protestant Churches are said to have actually paved the way for the success of the “German Christian” movement. These “German Christians”—Protestant Fascists—professed to consider it necessary to submit to a spiritual leader in order to free Protestantism of liberalism and rationalism. They thus became one with the Catholic Fascists who, in keeping with the Catholic Action crusade of Pope Pius XI, were purging every taint of liberalism and democracy out of the Catholic clergy and were bringing the Catholic Church in Germany into line with pure Vatican absolutism. Gonzague de Reynold, ardent Jesuit Catholic reformer, in his book L’Europe Tragique,2 states:

“A real fight has been waged within Protestantism. The Evangelical Protestants refused to make any concessions and established a confessional church in opposition to that set up by the state . . . We are on the threshold of a religious schism. These are the final repercussions of the Reformation. We are witnessing a phase of dissolution [of Protestantism]. Many German Protestants believe that to reject a purely religious authority like the Papacy, would constitute a danger to the church and to Christianity.”

In order to understand what happened to the Catholic Church in Germany, it is necessary to go back to the time of Pope Leo XIII, well known for his unrelenting antagonism to the liberal constitutions of states.3 In order to counteract the increasing influence of 19th century liberalism on Catholic countries, Pope Leo XIII urged on Catholic leaders throughout the world the formation of Catholic political parties. He thought that if such Catholic parties took an active part in parliamentary politics they would, by securing the balance of power, succeed in obtaining victory for the Church. He even hoped that these Catholic political parties would eventually obtain a large enough majority, by democratic means, to enable them to seize complete control of governments. What actually happened, however, was the very opposite. The Catholic parties gradually came under the influence of their liberal opponents and copied many of their ideas. Thus in Italy the Catholic party became the “popular” liberal party headed by the now-exiled priest Don Sturzo; in Germany it became the liberal “Center” party.

2 P. 329.
3 Cf. Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII—also The Converted Catholic for October, 1940, p. 19.

This liberal influence of Catholic parties became so great that the Holy See began to regard Catholic political trends as a grave danger which actually threatened the juridical and political unity of the Church itself. These Catholic parties became infiltrated with the liberal spirit of the French Revolution of 1789. The ideas of the rights of man, of religious tolerance, of freedom of conscience, of speech and press, were adopted by a great number of Catholic politicians and by many of the lower clergy.

So pronounced had this trend of popular Catholic politics become in the United States, for instance, that when Alfred E. Smith was nominated for the Presidency in 1928, the Vatican and Catholic bishops in Europe were shocked to hear that Mr. Smith had been prompted by priests to proclaim these principles to be, not a mere matter of “favor” (as he first stated) but also a matter of “innate right.”4 This was rank heresy, and, after Mr. Smith’s defeat at the polls in 1928, the Vatican rebuked those who had advised the former Governor of New York to proclaim doctrines so contrary to official Catholic teachings.

By the end of the First World War, the Catholic political parties had begun to lose the importance which they had, in the eyes of the Vatican when it first brought them into being. They became so integrated with democratic States, founded as they were on political compromise, on tolerance and the idea of equality, that it was confusing to note the alliances made by some Catholic parties with bourgeois groups and by others with socialist groups. It had become apparent that the control of Catholic politics was being lost by the Holy See in Rome. Pope Leo XIII’s plan had miscarried, and had proved a boomerang against the real aims of the Church as he had proclaimed them. Catholic political action had acquired an independence that made it a menace to. rather than a docile instrument of, the Vatican. Liberal Catholicism, in fact, which, to all appearance, had received its death-blow by the decree of papal infallibility towards the end of the 19th century, had taken on a new lease of life by means of the very Catholic political parties which had been established and sustained by Pope Leo XIII to oppose the hated liberal constitutions of democratic States.

4 Cf. Alfred E. Smith’s reply to the Open Letter of the late Charles C. Marshall in Forum Magazine, March, 1928; also Mr. Marshall’s able work The Roman Catholic Church in the Modern State.

This is how the Vatican saw it after the First World War, and the conclusions which it drew from its observations in the matter were the first steps towards the rise of what we now call Fascism.

Many of the non-Jesuit religious orders in Germany, notably the Franciscans and the Benedictines, started movements which displeased the Vatican. The “Liturgical Movement” of the Benedictines; their attempt to establish contact with the Oecumenical Evangelical Movement, and their effort towards a reunion of all Christian Churches; the attitude of the Patres Unionis (“Fathers of Unity”) who were even prepared to modify the dogmas of papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception in order to help their work of reunion; their open and secret negotiations with groups in the Anglican Church under the guidance of the late Cardinal Mercier—all these liberal reform movements were regarded as tainting the lower clergy and the intelligent laity with the heresy of liberalism and Protestantism. The Vatican regarded its authority as gravely menaced by it all, and determined to wage relentless war against this growing liberalism in political and spiritual matters.

It should not be surprising that Rome became disturbed at the prospect of a revival of the Lutheran Reformation. It was particularly marked in Germany. Friedrich Heiler5 has the following to say on this point:

“These recent tendencies of Catholicism have spread to a great extent in Germany. German Catholicism is in fact a particular kind of Catholicism, due to the fact that it has been subject, continually if not visibly, to the influence of the reformed churches of Christendom, and has constantly absorbed certain features belonging to Evangelical Christianity.”

5 Professor at the University of Marburg, in his work, Im Ringen um die Kirche, p. 175 et seq.

But the democratic States were the most powerful in the world at that time. The Catholic political parties had become too strong to be stopped by mild protests or even by encyclical letters from Rome. Repressive action, carried out by the help of authoritarian secular regimes, was necessary. Thus the two great opposing factions within the Catholic Church became locked again in a gigantic struggle: one possessing the Evangelical Catholic idea, deep-seated as of old in the hearts of true Christian believers; the other, the coldly imperial, sectarian and intransigent Roman Party, represented by the Holy See under the domination of the Society of Jesuits.

It is in the light of these facts that Hitler’s “campaign against the churches” must be viewed. Neither Hitler nor the Jesuits could forgive priests and bishops in Germany who sided with the cause of liberalism and democracy during the Weimar Republic. It was against them that the acts of Catholic repression were directed. Hitler and Pope Pius XI acted in concert to destroy every vestige of liberalism in Germany: the one in social and political life, the other in the sphere of religion. By dissolving the Catholic Center Party, the Pope removed the last obstacle to Hitler’s rise to power, and also deprived the Catholic people and clergy in Germany of any say-so in political matters. He had done the same for Mussolini in Italy by the dissolution of the Partito Popolare and the exiling of its priest-leader Don Sturzo. By his Catholic Action he concentrated all Catholic political power in the Holy See. Thenceforth, the Vatican was free to make arbitrary concordats with the Fascist dictatorships.

The lower clergy in Germany did not yield without a struggle. Many defied both Hitler and the Pope. Some priests were imprisoned. Even when the pristine ardor of Cardinal Innitzer for Hitler and Nazi Socialism showed signs of cooling, hostility was engineered against him. Catholic schools, mostly under the care of liberal, non-Jesuit religious orders, were closed; some heads of these anti-Jesuit religious orders were punished for attempting to save their funds by smuggling them out of the country. In the press of America this was called “Hitler’s persecution of the Catholic Church,” and served to conceal the common purpose of Nazi Socialism and ultramontane Catholicism. There were some mild protests from Rome but no adverse action. Even the closing of Catholic schools in Austria went almost unprotested. These were regarded by the Vatican as but a small loss compared to what was gained by the elimination of disobedient priests and their liberal views. The Nazi-Vatican concordat continues to hold and function.

With the extinction of liberal Catholicism and the imprisonment of liberal Protestant leaders, Vatican absolutism was triumphant. Of supreme satisfaction to the Jesuit Catholic faction was the knowledge of the apparent dissolution of Protestantism in Germany, and the fact that the pro-Nazi Protestant “German Christians” were forced to realize, as Gonzague de Reynolds points out, that “to reject a purely religious authority like the papacy would constitute a danger to the Church and Christianity.”

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