The Church And Germany

We make no apology for returning once again to the Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" which has been somewhat overshadowed by its coincidence in time with Divini Redemptoris.
Indeed this timing was in order to deprive the Nazis of any excuse for saying that by attacking them the Pope is indirectly favouring Communism.
This great Encyclical in fact contains a summary of what most needs preserving as the basis for a Christian civilisation and a compendium of the most dangerous elements in Nazi doctrine and practice.
Each head of the Christian doctrine has been stated with special reference to the Nazi ideas which travesty it or deny it. The doctrine of the personal and transcendant God is set against pantheistic " Germanic " notions of an impersonal destiny, a national god, and a deified State or hero. Faith in Christ and His redeeming death is set side by side with the myth of race and blood. The conception of the one Church which includes all nations and tongues is contrasted with " the impression that infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State," and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome is set against " the seduction of a German national Church." ,A whole series of Christian phrases.. areshown to have had their meaning distorted by Nazi propagandists. The authority of “oonseience illuminated by faith is contrasted with the coercive power of the State -and, finally, the natural law is shown to be the criterion by which all appeals to " the common utility " must be judged. Youth, priests and parents are each in turn told of the special duties imposed upon them by these truths.
Nothing could be more timely that this simultaneous presentation of the essential ingredients of a Christian civilisation and the points at which Nazis and others of a kindred spirit are prone to offend against them. For.the Reich government has constituted itself the chief champion of Europe and European civilisation against what it calls Asiatic Bolshevism, and has done more than almost any government outside Russia to menace its foundations within its own territory. The Encyclical is a warning to those Catholics who looked over-confidently to Germany because she, for quite different motives, was opposing the same enemy as they. It is also a manual for those who would build up a more solid resistance to Communism in Europe generally and in Germany herself. For the Pope does not despair of Catholic Germany.
We cannot take too deeply to heart this truth that opposition to Communism must have a positive character and include the building up of something better. What is being defended must be made worth defending. But if this is true for those who would fight Communism there is a corresponding truth for those who would remain neutral. In the speech which Mr. Eden delivered on Monday he continued to harp on his theme of neutrality in an ideological conflict and to represent this formula as a guide to British foreign policy and the proper basis for European cooperation in the enforcement of peace. But the peace and unity of Europe should be more than a negative thing. The very idea of Europe could not have come into existence had it not been for the creative act that built up a common Christian culture over its geographical area. What remains of that culture is the one thing that gives it more than a geographical unity today. If the absence of war between the nations of Europe is to depend on licensing " ideological " anarchy and cooperating with those whose principal object is the destruction of Christianity, we shall not be preserving European unity. The Pope has pointed out its only possible basis. Hitler has attacked it when he professed to be defending it. Eden does not even know of its existence.