Germany v. Vatican

In a decade of implacable struggle to foist its Weltanschauung on Roman Cathoolics, Nazi Germany has assaulted the Church with lurid charges. It has smeared the priesthood as a venal, immoral, politically intriguing, traitorous "black international." Last week came the most vicious charge of all: that the Church started World War II.

Over the puppet Paris radio the ingratiating voice of a "Dr. Friedrich"* gave a warped resume of Vatican-German relations since the Concordat of 1933 was negotiated by Cardinal Pacelli (now Pius XII) and Franz von Papen:

"A careful . . . study . . . has enabled me now to realize clearly the crushing responsibility of the Church in unleashing the present war. . . . The Vatican let loose its hostility as soon as Hitler assumed power in 1933. . . . With the support and encouragement of Rome, many German Catholics took up an open fight against the National Socialist State. . . .

"The Catholic press . . . put Communist atheism and Hitler's positive Christianity on the same level. . . . The encyclical of Pope Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge, [issued in March 1937] . . . not only condemned the totalitarian conception of the state but also the principles of National Socialism, particularly on blood and race. . . . The attitude of the Papacy . . . contributed very sensibly to the development of the war psychosis. . . . Numerous militant Catholics in France joined the warmonger's clique. This barking chorus of sulky dogs was made complete when Cardinal Verdier [in December 1937] declared that Christian doctrine and democratic principles were fundamentally identical."

"Dr. Friedrich" spoke in French. Like other Goebbels men--who broadcast from Rome--he sought to stir latent anticlericalism among Latin peoples. The Nazis, fearful of the alignment of Vatican diplomacy on the United Nations side, were countering in their customarily heavy-handed way.

The Vatican radio replied:

"All the world knows the facts about the fate of the Catholic Church in Germany. . . . The allegations of Radio Paris, therefore, need no further refutation. We can only guess that they were made for purposes of propaganda. . . .

"One thing is certain: it is not the Vatican which has declared this war and it is not the Catholic Church in Germany which has brought this, her fate, upon herself."

* Identified as Dr, Friedrich Sieburg, one-time Paris correpondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung and one of Paul Joseph Goebbel's crack propagandists.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.