This Passion Sunday was the 70th anniversary of Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge which was smuggled into Germany, secretly printed, and read from all Catholic pulpits throughout Germany in March, 1937, it brought joy to the Jews and deepened the Nazi onslaught against the Church.
Pius wrote:
“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.” (par. 8).
“None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are ‘as a drop of a bucket (Isaiah, 40, 15)” (par. 11)
“You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, [Catholic Hierarchy of Germany]
that religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and distorted to profane use. ‘Revelation’ in its Christian sense, means the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the ‘suggestions’ of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people’s history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency. ‘Faith’ consists in holding as true what God has revealed and proposes through His Church to man’s acceptance. It is ‘the evidence of things that appear not’ (Heb. 2. 1). The joyful and proud confidence in the future of one’s people, instinctive in every heart, is quite a different thing from faith in a religious sense. To substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this, to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless play on words, if it does not conceal a confusion of concepts, or worse.” (par. 23)
“Such is the rush of present-day life that it severs from the divine foundation of Revelation, not only morality, but also the theoretical and practical rights. We are especially referring to what is called the natural law, written by the Creator’s hand on the tablet of the heart (Rom. 2, 14) and which reason, not blinded by sin or passion, can easily read. It is in the light of the commands of this natural law, that all positive law, whoever be the lawgiver, can be gauged in its moral content, and hence, in the authority it wields over conscience. Human laws in flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated with a taint which no force, no power can mend. In the light of this principle one must judge the axiom, that ‘right is common utility,’ a proposition which may be given a correct significance, means that what is morally indefensible, can never contribute to the good of the people. But ancient paganism acknowledged that the axiom, to be entirely true, must be reversed and be made to say: ‘Nothing can be useful, if it is not at the same time morally good’ (Cicero, De Off. 2, 30). Emancipated from this moral rule, the principle would in international law carry a perpetual state of war between nations; for it ignores in national life, by confusion of right and utility, the basic fact that man as a person possesses the rights he holds from God, and which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or neglect. To overlook this truth is to forget that the real common good ultimately takes its measure from man’s nature, which balances personal rights and social obligations, and from the purpose of society, which by a give and take process, every one can claim for his own sake and that of others. Higher and more general values, which collectivity alone can provide, also derive from the Creator for the good of man, and for the full development, natural and supernatural, and the realization of his perfection. To neglect this order is to shake the pillars on which society rests, and to compromise social tranquility, security and existence.” (par. 30)
“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.” (par. 8).
“None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are ‘as a drop of a bucket (Isaiah, 40, 15)” (par. 11)
“You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, [Catholic Hierarchy of Germany]
that religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and distorted to profane use. ‘Revelation’ in its Christian sense, means the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the ‘suggestions’ of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people’s history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency. ‘Faith’ consists in holding as true what God has revealed and proposes through His Church to man’s acceptance. It is ‘the evidence of things that appear not’ (Heb. 2. 1). The joyful and proud confidence in the future of one’s people, instinctive in every heart, is quite a different thing from faith in a religious sense. To substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this, to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless play on words, if it does not conceal a confusion of concepts, or worse.” (par. 23)
“Such is the rush of present-day life that it severs from the divine foundation of Revelation, not only morality, but also the theoretical and practical rights. We are especially referring to what is called the natural law, written by the Creator’s hand on the tablet of the heart (Rom. 2, 14) and which reason, not blinded by sin or passion, can easily read. It is in the light of the commands of this natural law, that all positive law, whoever be the lawgiver, can be gauged in its moral content, and hence, in the authority it wields over conscience. Human laws in flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated with a taint which no force, no power can mend. In the light of this principle one must judge the axiom, that ‘right is common utility,’ a proposition which may be given a correct significance, means that what is morally indefensible, can never contribute to the good of the people. But ancient paganism acknowledged that the axiom, to be entirely true, must be reversed and be made to say: ‘Nothing can be useful, if it is not at the same time morally good’ (Cicero, De Off. 2, 30). Emancipated from this moral rule, the principle would in international law carry a perpetual state of war between nations; for it ignores in national life, by confusion of right and utility, the basic fact that man as a person possesses the rights he holds from God, and which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or neglect. To overlook this truth is to forget that the real common good ultimately takes its measure from man’s nature, which balances personal rights and social obligations, and from the purpose of society, which by a give and take process, every one can claim for his own sake and that of others. Higher and more general values, which collectivity alone can provide, also derive from the Creator for the good of man, and for the full development, natural and supernatural, and the realization of his perfection. To neglect this order is to shake the pillars on which society rests, and to compromise social tranquility, security and existence.” (par. 30)
During the last years of his life, Pius XI condemned Nazi and Fascist notions of race, blood, soil, and nation. He referred to the Nazi swastika as “the cross which was not the Cross of Christ” (N.Y. Times, February 12, 1939, IV, p. 3, 7).
2 comments:
“None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion;"
That is the statement of a real man, in Christ, telling it like it is. And that's some paragraph, that paragraph 11! Very topical, considering the contemporary penchant for exalting local custom at the expense of every concept of universality in the Church's liturgy!
Papa Pio XI, Requiescat in Pace
Those were the days when Popes said it like it really was...
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