The Church and the State

...While the Hitler regime was willing to grant a degree of tolerance—because it needed Church support to regain the Saar territories, or, after 1940, to obtain full participation in the war effort—the fate which would befall the Church once victory was won became an open secret...

...Irving Gilman, president of the Institute of Analytical Research, launches his thesis by asking 'When is a political candidate like an automobile?' 'Without implied irony or dismay, Mr...

...But to date all discussion has had to base itself on piecemeal evidence...

...Lewy reminds us that even when the Church was most severely persecuted under the Third Reich, the upkeep of Church officials was still paid in full by the regime...

...Lewy tries to account for Church policy by relating it to the concerns and emotions of the German Catholic public...

...The German Church recoils from such disorder and risk...

...If the Church made only limited appeals to Catholic loyalty, it was—as Lewy partly suggests—for other reasons...

...On the other hand Lewy points to a mild anti-semitism as a conditioning factor in the popular Catholic acceptance of Nazi racial policies and thus an explanation of the hierarchy's failure to oppose "the final solution of the Jewish question...

...In return for buttressing the prestige of the new regime, the Church received guarantees for 93 the continued functioning of ancillary Church organizations under attack by Nazi fanatics...

...Yet the more brutally the state demanded total submission, the more desperately the Church insisted that it was loyal to it...

...If ever there was any doubt as to the wisdom of separation of church and state, the story of the German Catholic Church under Hitler, as unfolded by Guenter Lewy, should finally clinch the case...

...OTTO KIRCHHEIMER...

...We must then ask why the German and Italian hierarchies conceived of the possibilities so narrowly, especially in comparison to their French brethren...

...Such statements serve to remind us that all Popes in recent history have ascended to high office after a long diplomatic career...

...And when the Church successfully achieved its denominational schools, it must have felt, if only fleetingly, as did the German tycoons at the smashing of the labor unions...

...After the defeat of 1945 things were different...

...To be sure, the American Catholic, Gordon Zahn, made a courageous beginning in German Catholics and Hitler's War (1962), analyzing the German bishops' support of the Nazi military effort...

...Even if Hitler did not fulfill the terms of the Concordat, a more civilized suc94 cessor could be expected to acknowledge a legal obligation...

...But now the alliance is once again profitable in terms of money, educational privileges, and Church influence on state policy...

...To fulfill its side of the bargain, the Church abandoned the Center Party to its fate and instructed the clergy to withdraw from opposition politics...

...The Nazi leaders, in turn, responded with soothing statements and false promises, while all the time permitting their storm troopers to show by word and deed their basic contempt for the Church and, indeed, their commitment to its ultimate eradication...

...Of what use is a church tied up with the self-same power center at which our political and ethical troubles are likely to originate...

...Surely a common bond of suffering, especially after 1941, militated against the flourishing of anti-Semitism...

...It is only justice, furthermore, that a descendant of German Jews should be the first to present a detailed record of the Catholic hierarchy's relations with the Nazi regime...

...The answer is that the German Church, like the Italian, is a state institution whose dignitaries are screened by the state before their appointment and who, like any other officials, swear allegiance to the state...

...Decentralizing decision-making, it pre95 pares the individual conscience to meet, if need be, extreme situations without explicit guidance...

...Only on one issue did the Catholic Church take a stand: it absolutely refused to collaborate in the extermination of mental defectives cared for in Catholic institutions...

...Yet this reviewer doubts that Catholic anti-semitism, found mostly among the rural population, survived for very long the tribulations suffered by the Church under the Nazi regime...

...Thus the Pope's reticence to castigate openly the Nazi extermination— as the Allies asked him to—was due to the fact that such a pronouncement would violate the international neutrality of the Church...

...Of course there are materials, including the Papal archives, not accessible to Lewy which might shed more light on the motivations of particular dignitaries...

...In pushing for the Concordat the Church was, after all, not much different from German business or the army...

...Just as the army was anxious to exclude the new storm troopers from military power, so the Church was fearful of its position vis-a-vis new social and political institutions...

...The question remains: when the German Church faltered under the challenge of the Third Reich, why did its extra-territorial head, the Pope in Rome, do so little to rectify its course...

...In Germany the church-state alliance has a long and fluctuating history...

...By 1934 it had become abundantly clear that the Church was up against a totalitarian regime...

...Is it likely that such Church officials would be capable of developing independent positions and entering into open battle against the hand that had fed them for so long...

...If the Church had reservations about the racist aspects of Nazi ideology, it advanced them in a decidedly minor key...

...But it is hard to believe that such speculation was strong in the minds of Church leaders...

...He describes in detail, how the hierarchy was able to solidify lay opinion in its successful stand against Nazi eugenic policies...

...and the expediency of this policy is most sharply illustrated by the case of international war...

...The truth is that if the Pope, or to be more precise, the Bishop of Rome, exercises an imperium, it is only in Italy...

...But if the idea that Nazi policies had to be accepted or rejected as a whole ever occurred to the Church leaders, they did not show it by their public behavior...

...To a considerable extent this record is now shown to be a product of imagination intermingled with elements of misrepresentation...

...These sources show that while the German Church worked to prevent the Nazis from coming to power, a policy of accommodation was promulgated almost from the very beginning of their take-over...

...In other countries he may make an occasional far-reaching decision, mainly regarding internal Church organization —such as the banning of the French worker priest movement—but primarily he must permit the national hierarchy of each country to work out its own political solutions...

...And yet the Church persevered in its "co-existence" policy, even turning its back on priests and Catholic laymen who offered resistance and became martyrs...

...But what may have started as an all-too-normal advancement of vested interests rapidly lost meaning in a state where law was replaced by terror and fear...

...The defenders of the Church do not say that the Jewish question was outside its jurisdiction, but that the Church did all it could under the circumstances...

...By the violent reaction which greeted the accusation that Pius XII was passive in face of the extermination of the six million, we learn that the Church considers itself a moral institution which must "testify for the truth...

...Lewy shows that Pius XII had his doubts about certain aspects of the Concordat—but in the end he gave in...

...It proceeded smoothly under the Weimar regime, protected by constitutional safeguards and the support of a crucial political faction...

...A more recent diplomatic publication reveals that Pius XII also argued that he could not properly condemn the Nazis without simultaneously condemning the Soviets...

...The Church, moreover, may well have had a long-range objective...

...then the bishops could assume public leadership at infinitely smaller risk and with the certainty of enhancing their prestige...

...As head of the Church, the Pope must respect the national foundation of its various branches...

...These could do little, however, to change the picture of the German Church which Lewy has constructed from his close study of nine episcopal archives, the German diplomatic correspondence, the abundant printed record, and the official German government documents both in Washington and in the Koblenz Federal archives...

...Acts of racial and religious persecution were protested circumspectly, through official channels, but never taken up as public issues...

...Gilman opines that today, political candidates must be 'marketed' like a Chevrolet...

...And irony again because it is the German playwright Hochhuth who has directed universal attention to Pius XII's reticence to condemn publicly Hitler's policy of Jewish extermination...

...Even the shipping of people to the death camps was protested only in terms of injustices done to certain individuals related to Church members...

...Now, thanks to Lewy's painstaking work, the full record of the German hierarchy's activity under the Third Reich lies open...

...Oh, for the simple days of personal, unscientific craftsmanship!!!—from an item titled, "The Marketing of a Political Candidate," Printer's Ink.96 practice of diplomacy has created a professional deformation which seriously impairs the Papal ability to fill the high office of guardian of the moral law...

...The Church carried this one case to the public—and its resistance was successfully maintained...

...Irony because during the occupation and Adenauer years, the German Church profited from its supposed resistance record...

...In fact, he hails the new 'scientific' political huckstering as a step in the 'right direction' and exhorts the social scientists to achieve greater 'scope and accuracy' to 'develop the marketing potential of a candidate,' just as the physical sciences are used to develop appealing and marketable corn flakes or corn plasters...

...Perhaps the Church had lost influence over many urban Catholics, who were then open to Nazi recruitment...

...Even after the experience of the Third Reich, it still shows no desire for the moral and intellectual freedom which a separation from state power would bring...

...Both irony and justice attend the world-wide public trial which the Papacy and the German Catholic Church are now undergoing for their conduct during the Third Reich...

...The motivations of Church leaders are not difficult to understand...

...The alliance became a disaster when state power was seized by the brutal representatives of a hostile counter-ideology...

...Moreover, Catholic anti-Semitism, with its historical mythology, was not necessarily responsive to the Nazi brand of racist anti-Semitism...

...The Church policy of mutually beneficial relations with established states, regardless of their politics, was quickly reduced to a strategy for mere survival...

...In fact, most post-war German state administrations did indeed fulfill the educational commitments the Nazi regime had made to the Church...

...Quick to fall in step with its new masters, the Church stressed its anti-Bolshevist record and gave full approval to the burgeoning nationalism...

...further, this agreement became a lever with which the Church achieved its long-coveted goal of establishing denominational elementary schools throughout Germany...

...By contrast, the French Catholic Church, relieved for over half a century of political obligations, encourages and even conducts experiments in new forms of community organizations...

...But here we are back at the question so clearly suggested by the attitude of the Catholic Church toward Mussolini and Hitler...

...The German Church was eager to support national policies, first against the Bolsheviks, later against the Allies...

...It would seem that, except in John XXIII, the "DON'T BE HALF-SAFE, USE...

...To reply that the Pope's absolute power brought absolute corruption is to rely on a worn-out cliche...

...The price to be paid for such privileges seemed outside the departmentalized concerns of the groups who momentarily enjoyed them...