Bishops Speak Their Minds About War

The "Catholic Herald " gives this week the Church's Views on the War Through Three Weighty Pronouncements, Covering the two main Belligerent Countries and the Most Important Neutral Country, the U.S.A.
The full text of the famous Fulda Pastoral, issued last summer by the German Hierarchy, has at length become available. It will be recalled that there was much controversy at the time as to its precise import.
The bishops of the United States in a recent pronouncement have condemned Nazism and Communism, expressed their support of the Pope, and sympathised with countries under the invader's heels.
In Great Britain, the Advent Pastorals do not for the most part touch very directly on the 'war, the chief exception being that of Cardinal Hinsley which lays down the conditions for a real and lasting peace.
The most important parts of these three episcopal pronouncements are given on this page.
GERMAN BISHOPS' FULDA PASTORAL
"If we, the Bishops of Germany, send you to-day a general pastoral letter it is because we remember the great duty imposed upon us by our sacred mission and because we wish to respond to the urgent desire and expectation of our Catholk people.
" In these difficult times for our country in which a war on an unbelievable scale is being waged on a vast front, we counsel you to remain faithful to your duties and to maintain a spirit of heroism and self sacrifice in the labours and struggles undertaken for our country. We send our blessing and a message of affectionate gratitude to our soldiers, our men, our sons and our brothers on active service, who are fulfilling with heroic courage tasks unparalleled in history and who are undergoing great hardship.
" The war imposes on us all great efforts and great sacrifices. In the fulfilment of these hard duties and in the midst of the trials which the war has brought you may be comforted by the knowledge that you are not only serving your country but that you are fulfilling the Will of God.
" You must know that in these troubled times your bishops remain at their posts. defending by all possible and legitimate means and in perfect unity, the faith that has been entrusted to them. Your bishops have always made known their claims and their complaints. You can be assured that they speak openly because they feel it to be their sacred duty as dispensers of the Faith and defenders of the rights of the Church.
"We, your bishops. wish to help you by this pastoral letter to realise the true situation of OK Church in the light of faith. We wish to warn you against a wicked conflict of conscience which may endanger the joyful fulfilment of your duty. We wish to help you to maintain that quiet and resolute spirit that conies from the strength of our faith and our confidence in God.
" The events of which we are thinking (Continued in next column.)
have been familiar to you for a long time and they fill our minds and yours with anxiety.
" Serious obstacles have been placed in the Church's way during these last years and particularly during the last months. When the exigencies of war have demanded great sacrifices from us we have made them joyfully for the general good for the duration of the war. Monasteries and church institutions have been willingly offered for the use , of the army. for thc, housing of the evacuated or the reception of children. Our nuns have been themselves ready to nurse the wounded and the sick, our priests and our many theological students and novices who are serving their country in the army are the equal of anybody in their efficiency and spirit of willingness: they share the dangers and privations of their fellow countrymen.
(Continued on back page)
" WE PROTEST INDIGNANTLY Bishops of Germany
"And so we do not understand—we say it with profound sorrow—when measures have been taken attacking the life of the Church, measures which are not justified by the necessities of war.
" We need only recall the restrictions on religious education, religious publications, pastoral visits to official hospitals. religious services and feasts. We are thinking with sorrow of the great number of convents and religious institutions that have been closed during these last months and turned over to secular use. We are profoundly distressed about the religious who have been expelled from their monasteries .
" Neither we nor you can understand how such measures have been taken in time of war when it is so necessary to safeguard the unity of the people and not to disturb or endanger it by offending the religious feelings of a great nurol-tet of our citizens " We cannot deny the fact—whether as
the result of war necessity or not—the practice of our holy religion is now being very seriously impeded . . .
" You no longer hare your Catholic congresses nor your diocesan journals which help to strengthen Christian faith and practice in the family. So long as you are deprived of these, you. parents, must try to take their place for your children by attending regularly at religious itestruclions and conferences. It is more than ever the duty of parents to see what kind of books their children read and to make sure that there are at least a few good books in your family library which can be read in comonon.
" With great distress we have heard that our Catholic private schools, which were organised with such devotion by Catholics to supplement religious education at home, have been suppressed in spite of the protests of the bishops in all puts of the Reich, " Our Catholic schools have already been taken from us and religious instruction in the schools have been more and more curtailed or excluded altogether . . .
" Your bishops gathered round the tomb of 5t. Boniface who consecrated his life to lead the German people to Our Lord Jesus Christ, and who died a glorious martyr's death in the fulfilment of this task, have one more anxiety even more serious than what they have already brought to your notice; many forces are at work to break the sacred union between Christ and the German people.
" We protest indignantly against this summons to make the choice between our country and our God. We love our German people and are ready to serve them even with our lives, but we are equally resolved to live and die for Jesus Christ to whom we wish to belong now and for ever. "We are convinced that by preserving Christianity and its doctrine for Germany, we are rendering to the German people the
greatest possible service. If our German people abandon their Christian ,principles which, for more than a thousand years, have been the basis of their intellectual and moral culture, they would be terribly impoverished.
" There are, no doubt, according to Christian doctrine, commandments which are not binding when their observation demands too serious sacrifices, but there are sacred duties from which no one can release us and which we must fulfil even at the cost of our lives.
" Never, and under no pretext, may a man blaspheme ; he may never hate his fellowmen ; except in the case of war and legitimate defence he may never kill an innocent person ; he may never break a legal marriage; he may never lie. He may never deny his faith to he drawn by threats or bribes to leave the Church. . . ."