Russia without God
Faulhaber, Michael Cardinal von
RUSSIA WITHOUT GOD WE ARE the witnesses of an indescribable tragedy, having its source in the endeavor of Russian Bolshevism to rule a nation without reliance upon God, to establish a social order...
...Thousands of bells have been melted down, thousands of sacred images, assembled from churches and private homes, have been burned in the open squares...
...Children clamor for nourishment and the sun, but there is no one to hear them...
...and whenever a family was found with one in its possession the father was punished...
...It is simply a matter of the Gospel-of the parable of the weeds in the field of grain...
...It is true enough that the Soviets have improved the economic condition of the industrial worker in Russia...
...He then pointed to companions and declared that these likewise prayed...
...One hundred and forty million acres of arable land were taken from the former landowners and distributed among the peasants...
...abortion is, by a decree issued during 1920, no longer a punishable offense, and any married person can, even without the consent of his (or her) helpmeet, dissolve a marriage and contract twenty further alliances, provided he takes the trouble to register the partnerships he has dissolved...
...Then on April 2, 1929-that is, about eleven months ago-there was issued a new religious law, which abrogated all previous declarations concerning freedom of conscience and inaugurated a carefully planned crusade against everything that smacked of belief in God...
...Thereupon adults came forward, too, and asked for the same instruction...
...Or have we ourselves already succumbed to the influence of this subversive culture...
...But we shall not content ourselves with this demand...
...No question which confronts present-day Germany is so important as the question of the defense of the realm against Soviet invasion...
...A boy sprang to his feet and said, "I say mine...
...That improvement had been imperatively necessary...
...Nostalgia for God is native to the human breast...
...The Russian Church, separated from Rome since the eleventh century and too intimately allied with the state under the czar, must today drink the chalice of suffering to the dregs...
...This proclaimed separation between church and state, but promised freedom of worship in such charming sentences as the following: "The church enjoys perfect liberty, and every citizen may profess the religion he prefers...
...If voices are raised in far-away England against persecution in Bolshevik Russia, shall we in Germany, closer to the scene, dare to keep silent...
...Yet none of these children had ever received religious training, none had even attended Divine worship...
...We shall kneel to ask the virtue of the Most High...
...RUSSIA WITHOUT GOD WE ARE the witnesses of an indescribable tragedy, having its source in the endeavor of Russian Bolshevism to rule a nation without reliance upon God, to establish a social order without the ten commandments, to foster a culture without faith in the soul or the hereafter, and to create a political economy through the abolition of private property...
...Do not haggle over the fruit of the tree while the ax is laid to the root...
...Adolescent youth is without even a semblance of moral discipline, is victimized by the drugs of debauch, and, trained as it is for banditry, has now been partly organized into shock battalions ordered to stamp out the last vestiges of religion in public-and so far as possible-private life...
...It was long, they said, since they had listened to the word of God...
...More than fifteen hundred priests and thousands of religious have been murdered, and nobody knows how many are now preparing for death in Russian prisons, or perishing slowly in Siberia...
...it must also be loud in the deeps, and before the abysses of Bolshevism...
...From the economic point of view, Russian doctrine is state Communism...
...A book which Professor Berg has recently published gathers the testimony of the Bolshevists themselves, and among the documents is this statement by the widow of Lenin: "We have between seven and eight million children who are without shelter, and only 80,000 of them are housed in places of refuge...
...Here is a people without the Sunday, for the government hopes to imitate the French Revolution by destroying the Christian character of the week...
...Here is childhood without Christmas...
...Not even the tubercular children have been separated from the others...
...When the language of the nations shall have grown chaotic as the jargon of Babylon, the hour of the Church's rising will have struck...
...The moral order in Russia, land from which God is driven, has made way for ghastly moral chaos...
...While the agents of Moscow traverse our country and paint the delights of the "Russian paradise," shall those of us who are sworn to defend the moral order keep silent...
...The grain-fields of Russia constitute one-third of the world's total grain area...
...Let no one aver that this is a political matter...
...It goes without saying that here as well as there the rights of the worker must be defended...
...The dying are left without priests or the consolations of religion...
...Churchmen were forbidden to give any kind of religious instruction or to perform any public work of charity...
...Their souls were starving...
...Marriage and family relations have been degraded below the level of any known African tribe...
...We have thought it well, therefore, to print an English version of the remarkable address on the subject delivered by His Eminence, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber...
...Or have our tongues been tied by industrial or diplomatic relationships...
...What is the attitude of the other peoples of Europe to this tragedy of Bolshevist emancipation...
...The so-called League of the Godless asserts that it will not stop until every church has been locked up and secularized...
...The Russian question is a question of destiny for the whole of Europe and the whole of the world...
...Legitimate and illegitimate motherhood are of the same status...
...for good, and I saw blood...
...the cinema and the radio were utilized in a grandiose effort to make propaganda for atheism...
...I say to religious confessions, political parties, international conferences : Do not waste your time quarreling over matters which are not nearly so important as this question...
...A land, also, which groans under a reign of terror comparable to bloodiest periods of history...
...No distinction was made between the Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran creeds...
...Conditions in these institutions baffle description...
...Here is surely a document which bears the stamp of historical importance.-The Editors...
...Spiritual bread had been unattainable for them, even with bread cards...
...No power on earth can destroy this boon, to which man's title is eternal...
...And meanwhile we shall not forget that the Catholic Church, which sponsored the baptism of European culture and saved Europe from Mohammed, is today able to supply the spiritual weapons required for the conflict...
...Verily the lamentations of Jeremiah the prophet ring out also over this vast wasteland...
...They promised us paradise on earth, and we have been in hell...
...For a cause which is a world cause, we need the peace and the benediction of God.ediction of God...
...I say to the German people: Do not sell your soul and your honor for a copper mine...
...We raise our voices against the imprisonment of conscience and demand religious freedom for all...
...A traveler reports that he asked Russian school children if they said their night prayers...
...The following translation omits only a few passages thought to be of specific German interest...
...German and Swedish farmers in number, finding the weight of oppression intolerable, have left Russia...
...Shall they turn aside and ask, "Am I my brother's keeper...
...All who still hold that religious freedom is truly a sovereign human privilege must unite their voices in protest and join hands in a movement of defense...
...The Mass and the sacrament of baptism were satirized in public places and in the midst of satanic orgies...
...Recently religious instruction was being given to children in the camp at Hammerstein, where German fugitives from Russia had been assembled...
...But the rights of man also must not be trampled underfoot, and among these are the inalienable rights to believe in God, to worship Him in the company of one's fellows, to pray to Him, and to participate generally in still other manifestations of religious conviction...
...During the past four months, 200 synagogues and mosques, as well as 980 Christian churches were closed and diverted to profane uses-became club rooms, warehouses and motion-picture theatres...
...There are 146,000,000 people in Russia, and eighty-three out of every 100 of them live in the country...
...But by 1922 the government's hostile attitude toward religion and its system of despoiling ecclesiastical property had become quite evident...
...Seven million Catholics were affected by this sentence of spiritual death...
...On the last December 25, even the innocent Christmas tree was forbidden...
...Can one sit tranquilly beside one's fire while a neighbor's house is burning...
...Five thousand seven hundred and forty Germans have abandoned their farms and possessions, and will reveal to their countrymen what are the blessings of Bolshevism: They told us our wheat would ripen, but we saw only weeds...
...Shortly after the Bolshevik accession to power there appeared, in January, 1918, their first law concerning religion...
...The "revolution without God" seeks to march from Russia through a Europe without God and a world without God...
...A land without God-a land without a blessing...
...Who does not recall the sentence of Isaiah upon a social order forgetful of Divine justice: "I looked for equity, and behold there is iniquity...
...Excerpts from it have appeared in the daily press...
...texts hostile to the church were made to accompany traditional hymn melodies...
...This, then, is the meaning of the phrase, "religion is a private matter," when its proponents have power to make clear its significance...
...They talked constantly of freedom, but Lenin decreed that the dictatorship of the proletariat would never grant freedom of speech...
...Are they too deeply immersed in industrial difficulties, or in the delights of prosperity, to be impressed by this drama...
...And yet this country, blessed with incomparable agricultural opportunities, has been dependent on bread cards since March, 1929, and now has meat cards as well...
...By MICHAEL CARDINAL VON FAULHABER The importance of Russia's attitude toward religion, brought to light as a result of protests from authoritative spokesmen for all churches, is admitted by public opinion everywhere...
...Only a few days ago, hundreds of former officers of the old army were shot in their jails...
...Prayer is not merely to be spoken on the heights...
...And it is not a coincidence that signs of unrest have multiplied even in distant lands...
...Indeed, the misery of these little ones cries to heaven...
...Belief in God and in the authority of the law, the will to moral cleanliness-these must be conserved...
...Nevertheless the earnings of a laboring man in Russia today are much lower than those which prevail in European countries...
Vol. 11 • April 1930 • No. 22
