The Treason of Christianity

Michael, Cardinal von Faulhaber, 73, Archbishop of Munich, still has a tongue in his head. The fact that he is not silenced says a lot about Cardinal von Faulhaber; it also tells something about Nazi Germany.

In 1934, a Nazi bullet narrowly missed the Cardinal. In 1938, a Nazi mob smashed the windows of his palace. Yet Germany's Catholic leader still talks back.

Out to the world last week (from the Vatican State to Italy to Switzerland) leaked a report which Cardinal von Faulhaber recently sent Pope Pius XII. The Nazis' systematic war against Christianity, said the Cardinal, has contributed to Germany's present "spiritual unrest," to "manifestations against the regime" which the authorities call "machinations of Foreign Judeo-Communistic elements."

"AntiChristian espionage" is widespread, the Cardinal charged, and priests are prevented from reading "certain episcopal documents" by the simple expedient of arrest. Churchgoers are being morally blackmailed by instructions that "less faithful attendance . . . means keeping your job." Party functionaries are quoted as asking Catholics to quit the church or quit the future of Greater Germany. Though Nazi Party meetings go on to small hours, young people are forbidden to attend evening church festivals, because "they last too long and prevent their getting sufficient sleep."

Persecution of Catholics is nothing new in Germany. But Cardinal von Faulhaber's report hinted that Germans are getting tired of persecution.

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