Articles by Harry Schnitker, Ph.D.
The Role of Pope Pius XII
Jul 25, 2011 / 00:00 amTo many, the role of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War, and in particular his action or lack of action on behalf of the Jewish people, are the sum-total of the history of the Catholic Church during the war. This is, of course, nonsense. Whilst it is true that the Church is led by the Pope, it is not true that the Pope is the Church. This has been recognized by Popes ever since Innocent III adopted the title, ‘Servant of the Servants of Christ’, as one of the official titles of the office of Pontiff, as long ago as the thirteenth century. The Bishop of Rome is the primary bishop of the Church, and communion with him is a prerequisite for membership of that Church. However, the Church is the body of believers; it consists, in other words, of all Catholics.
The Church and the Spanish Civil War
Jul 18, 2011 / 00:00 amIn many respects, the war that ripped apart Spain between 1936 and 1939 was the testing ground for the fate awaiting the Church across Europe during the Second World War. Here were all the ingredients that marked the Church’s experience between 1939 and 1945. Spain had long been torn between liberals and conservatives, and one of the hallmarks of a liberal ‘progressive’ viewpoint was a pronounced anti-clericalism. Almost invariably, this meant that the Church in Spain, as in so many other countries, believed itself forced to side with the forces of the right. I write ‘believed itself forced’ as this was not actually the case. Successive Popes since Leo XIII had been constructing a Catholic social alternative to both Marxism and Capitalism, and their position made uncomfortable reading to the adherents of a politically conservative world view. The emphasis on the rights of workers, the increasing emphasis on the status of St. Joseph as a workman, and the growing acknowledgement that conservatives had contributed to the polarization between the classes caused discontent amongst the forces of the right. Indeed, in countries where Pope Leo XIII’s teachings were fully implemented, countries like Belgium or Holland, the threat of Communism was almost invisible, and there was no need to placate far right dictatorship. On the other hand, it has to be acknowledged that the Church’s leadership had been slow to react to the propaganda from the left, which had succeeded in identifying the Church as right-wing and anti-progressive in the minds of many. It also has to be acknowledged that many in the leadership of the Church, both in Rome and at a national level, came from the landed aristocracy or from backgrounds in which a more right-wing worldview was the norm. In Germany, aristocrats occupied many an episcopal see, and included amongst their number that inveterate opponent of the Nazis, Bl. Clemens August Cardinal von Galen. Not all men who led the Church came from this background, however, and the opposing political stance of two Cardinal Archbishops of Paris from this period illustrates just how much background influenced their politics. Jean Cardinal Verdier was born into a very modest family and rose through the ranks of the Church on merit. He was to prove a tenacious opponent of the extreme right, which was so prevalent in France in the period. When the Nazis invaded France, Verdier took a strong stance against the aggression, but also against their ideological view. His successor, Emmanuel Célestin Cardinal Suhard, became Archbishop in 1940. His own background was rather more middle class, and his pre-occupations mirrored this. Unlike Verdier, Suhard was to support the Vichy regime of the devoutly Catholic but virulently anti-Semitic Marshall Pétain, at least until 1942, when the Cardinal protested against the deportation of the Jews. The difference between the two cardinals is a subtle one; both maintained the Church’s strict denunciation of racism and Social Darwinism, but their backgrounds proved formative with respect to their willingness to co-operate with right-wing politicians. In Spain, the episcopate shared the hallmarks which I have just pointed out. However, there the Church faced additional problems. One of these was the fragmented nature of Spanish society. The Church equated Spain with the ruling cultural group in the country, the Castilians. However, Catholicism was also closely identified with the national identity of the Basques, whereas amongst Catalan speakers the clergy were frequently regarded as enemies of their nation. The poison of extreme nationalism divided believers in the country along ethnic lines and the Church was to pay a severe price for this. Many of the clerical victims of the revolution and the Civil War were Catalan servants of Our Lord. Added to this already volatile mixture of nationalism, secularist liberalism, anti-clericalism, and a Church led by men whose instincts were to choose sides rather than suggest a radical alternative, was the spectre of anarchism. This movement had been particularly successful in Spain, and its nihilist creed had little time for the certainties of the Church. All these different strands collided in 1931, when the monarchy was abolished and a new constitution proclaimed. It was marked by a strong anti-clericalism, a marked pacifism and a widespread reform of landownership. It is of the greatest importance to note this mixture; the Church, or at least some in the Church, saw the combination as anti-Catholic and sided with the opposition. They need not have done so, but could have opposed those elements of the new regime that were inimical to the Church, and support those which coincided with the teachings of the magisterium. However, one has to consider the provocations of the new republic, too. The banning of the Jesuits was an outright challenge to the effectiveness of the Church in Spain, and the attempts to remove Church involvement in education hit at the heart of the Church’s attempts to maintain a specific system of education through which the message of Jesus could be conveyed. It would be naïve to suggest that the Church should have allowed itself to be intimidated in this fashion. Its critics at times seem to deny the Catholic Church the right to defend its engagement with its community, a denial rarely extended to other organizations. Whilst one certainly would not want to hide the fact that some clergy were closely aligned with the landowning classes, or were overt monarchists, or strong supporters of the Castilian dominance of Spain, it will not do to suggest that all priests and all religious in that country were interested in only defending their own positions. Indeed, the position of an ordinary parish priest over much of what was then a deeply impoverished country was hardly something to fight for. When the Church did enter the fray, many of its servants did so because they knew that they were defending their role as the proclaimers of Salvation, a task entrusted to them by Jesus and, therefore, a non-negotiable task. For them, the silencing of the Church was anathema. It was this that motivated Pope Pius XI to publish his Encyclical, Dilectissima Nobis. This was a very measured response to the provocations, and his Holiness was careful not to align the Church with one party or another: “Universally known is the fact that the Catholic Church is never bound to one form of government more than to another, provided the Divine rights of God and of Christian consciences are safe.” This is surely the key sentence from the Encyclical: the Pope clearly states that the Church is not taking a party-political position, but that he is defending the right of the Church to proclaim salvation – the Divine rights of God – and the civil liberties of individual Catholics. It is a theme we shall encounter time and again in this series. All over Europe, the Church attempted to safeguard what it considered to be its role as the disseminator of Truth and Salvation, as well as the freedom of Catholics to practise their Faith and adhere to its strictures. That this freedom was endangered is beyond dispute: the figures speak for themselves. Twenty percent of all clergy in Spain were murdered during the civil war; 13 bishops, 4,172 priests, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns and sisters. Against this, one has to place the fact that the Church was not persecuted in all Republican controlled regions. In the Basque country, for example, many clergy supported the Republic, which they saw as a means to further the national aspirations of their flock. Yet it is little wonder, if rather unedifying, that the Church saw Franco as a tool of salvation: he re-instated all previous privileges and provided it with a central role in the Spain over which he ruled. This was to be the position of the Church in Spain for several decades. It was not until the Second Vatican Council that the Papacy managed to enforce a more critical attitude amongst the Spanish episcopate, and, towards the end of the Franco regime, the Church actually became one of the dictator’s fiercest critics. The current Bishops’ Conference in Spain has acknowledged that its predecessors should have been much more critical of Spain’s right-wing dictator, and that they had plenty of guidance to help them reach this conclusion. Yet it bears repetition, if only because the fact has been ignored so frequently: the Republic constituted a real and grave danger to the Church and its message of hope and salvation. This is not an excuse for siding with dictators like Franco, but it does explain why this happened.
The threat from Communism
Jul 11, 2011 / 00:00 am“He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Turning Point for Europe, 1994) With his customary restraint, this is how the then Cardinal Ratzinger evaluated Marx and his legacy, some years after the utopia which he had brought into being had collapsed around its own flaws. If Pope Benedict XV had been working the Vineyard at the time when the wild animals broke through its walls, then Pope Benedict XVI is there at a time when the breaches are being repaired, and the reasons for their appearances examined. It is rather easier for the current Pontiff to examine coolly Marx and his heirs than it would have been for the previous Benedict or his successors. They were faced with a reality that was stark: Marx’s heirs saw the Catholic Church – and all religion for that matter – as intrinsically opposed to their ideal society. Applying Marx’s analytics, they determined that the Church was parasitical on society, contributed nothing in terms of either economics or welfare, and taught an ‘ideology’ which clouded the eyes of the working classes from the vicious realities of capitalist exploitation. As Marx wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” It is a strange analysis, for it almost appears to provide a reason for the continued existence of Faith and a validation for that existence. Of course, Marx based his judgment on the basis of materialism: there is no need for Faith in a worldview that has regard only for the physical existence of mankind. With this statement, the starting shot was fired for a conflict that lasted for a century and a half. Supremely confident of victory in that conflict, Marxists dismissed the Church as antiquated, medieval, an institution that would, inevitably, die once the Marxist utopia had been achieved. They were, as we now know, badly mistaken. It brings to mind the quip and counter-quip of Stalin and Pius XII. Asked by an adviser how the Pope would react to a certain policy, Stalin replied “how many divisions does the Pope have?” Upon hearing of the dictator’s death, Pius XII is supposed to have remarked “now he will find out how many divisions we have”. The conflict was, from the start, marked by inequality. On the surface, the Marxists appeared to have the upper hand. They controlled governments, armies and whole peoples. The Church, on the other hand, had emerged from the Great War weakened and divided. Catholic had fought Catholic as the demands of nationalism had overruled any sense of belonging to the Body of Christ. Yet it was the Body of Christ that ensured the survival of the Church, even there where her structures had been destroyed, as in the Soviet Union. As has frequently been observed, one simply cannot stop people from believing in God, or from living their lives in accordance with Scripture. It was, therefore, inevitable that for as long as people could pass on knowledge of the teachings of the Church, the materialistic state was doomed to failure, particularly as the promise of continuous happiness on earth based on material well-being was a hollow one. For all that, the threat was real and the swathes of martyrs from the Soviet Union and Spain from the Interbellum period amply testify to its reality. For Pope Pius XI it had been a personal reality, too. As noticed before, he had been the Nuncio in Warsaw when the Soviets invaded Poland in 1920, and had been an eyewitness to the ruthless destruction of Catholic churches and the purposeful extermination of Catholic priests and religious. His reaction was the publication of the Encyclical, Divine Redemptoris, which came out in 1937. In it, he again reiterates Pope Benedict XV’s warnings that the preaching of the Word had fallen on deaf ears, and, interestingly, he also links the rise of communism to the pervasive liberal and laicist tendencies of the previous century. Divine Redemptoris is an unequivocal rejection of Marxism in all its guises. As always, it had taken the Church some time to sum up its position, but from 1937 onwards it was official: Marxism was incompatible with Catholicism. This matters greatly if one is to consider the stance of the Church, and even more of parts of the Church, during the Second World War. Pope Pius XI was not a man of words alone: from the earliest days of his pontificate, he tried to organize Catholic social action. This was of vital importance as it would illustrate the Catholic alternative to Marxism, but also to Capitalism. The Church had been active in attempting to mitigate the excesses of the free market since the nineteenth century, and had been appalled in almost equal measure by the materialistic creed of Capitalism and Marxism. Work was to be seen as part of human life, contributing to its dignity and to the praise of God. This message was promulgated by Catholic trade unions, by the Catholic Action Movement, Catholic youth movements, and Catholic education. The values of the Gospel were to be communicated more effectively if the threat of secularism, materialism, relativism, extreme nationalism, and Marxism were to be met. All this was placed under the protection of St. Joseph, whom Pope Pius XI regarded as the ideal of the pious working man. That this organized militant Catholicism was to clash with the organizations of militant atheism or Nazi neo-paganism was inevitable. The authoritarian regimes of the Interbellum and war years were adamant that they did not wish for any competing ideas to be expressed in their domains, and organizations who espoused these ideas were to be removed or incorporated. This created many a Catholic martyr. Thus the leader of Catholic Action in Spain, Bl. Bartolome Blanco Marquez, was killed by the Republican regime, whilst in Germany Bl. Karl Leisner fell victim to the cruelties of Dachau concentration camp for his leadership of the Catholic Youth Movement in that country. What the two examples prove is the extent to which the Church was caught between various evils. Unfortunately, it cannot be said that she emerged everywhere with her honor intact. One of the main reasons for this – which is NOT an excuse – is the fear of atheist Marxism, outlined above. In several countries, individual bishops, priests and lay Catholics saw in the right-wing dictators a perfect foil for the known threat of the Soviets. In other countries, still, nationalist considerations played a significant role in the support lent by some Catholics to regimes that were far removed from the ethos of the Gospels. Again, at times one may understand this perfectly, but it is not an excuse. The shadow of Marxism, then, loomed large over the Church of the Interbellum and the war years, and informed many a decision. Initially, at least, it may have seemed as if the Church was, indeed, going to throw its weight behind the new dictators of the right. There were elements in their ideological theories that appealed to Catholics. Their rejection of an outright free market, for example, or their emphasis on communal responsibility, both correlated strongly with Catholic social teaching. A rejection of class divisions, too, chimed with Church teachings. Added to this was their strong stance against Marxism. In Italy, the appeal of the dictators became even greater when, in 1929, the Mussolini regime signed the Lateran Treaty which restored an independent Church state, albeit in much reduced form, in Rome. However, it has to be recalled that Pope Pius XI soon rectified the balance. In 1931, for example, he strongly criticized the totalitarian regime in Italy in his encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno, repeating this in 1937 with his outspoken attack on Nazism in another encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge. It was on the testing grounds of Spain during the Civil War that the Church was first to taste some of the divisions that these conflicting ideologies were to cause within Catholic ranks. Whilst the Vatican maintained the strong line of Pope Benedict XV that the Church offered an alternative to Capitalism, Marxism and right-wing nationalism, others in the Church sadly failed to follow its lead.
Prelude: Inside the Church during WWII
Jul 4, 2011 / 00:00 amWith an industrialized violence that claimed untold lives in indescribable fashion, the old world came to an end. It did so in four long years, years that saw the gradual and increased erosion of all that mankind had held sacred on the European Continent for many centuries. Warfare had been brutal before, but not since the Thirty Years’ War had there been such an all-encompassing disaster, and not since Napoleon had the map of Europe been so decisively redrawn.The Great War of 1914-1918 – which really lasted into the 1920s in Russia and the Balkans – ended almost every ancient certainty. For the Catholic Church, it had been an excruciating experience, a war that had amply demonstrated just how powerless she had become. When war broke out, the Church was being led by the aging and ill St. Pius X. His pontificate had been marked by a distinctly hostile attitude towards Modernism and relativism, and by a strong emphasis on the Eucharist and medieval Gregorian chant.Relations with the secular governments of Europe were frequently tense. In 1905, France had indulged once more in one of its frequent bouts of anti-clericalism, and had expelled Catholic religious orders. Czarist Russia continued to suppress Catholics in its part of Poland, the Ukraine and Lithuania. In Portugal and Spain frequent outbursts of liberal anti-Catholicism threatened the Church in the Iberian Peninsula. Relations with Britain, the pre-eminent power of the period, remained tense over Ireland, whilst the Papacy also still refused to recognize Italy since it had occupied Rome in 1871.The only true support for the Church came from Austria-Hungary, where the ancient Habsburg monarchy, embodied by the Emperor-King, Franz-Jozef, proved a stalwart friend of the Church. In Germany, the confrontation between Church and state, the so-called Kulturkampf, had been consigned to the past and relations were amicable. However, there were other undercurrents that worried St. Pius X. Radical socialism and Marxism were gaining ground all over the Continent, and anarchists had caused trouble on various occasions. The organization of Catholic workers had had a slow start, and St. Pius X was wary of any movement that included a non-Catholic element.Underneath the placid surface of what in Britain is known as the Edwardian Age, then, there were plenty of worrying eddies for the head of the Catholic Church. A pronounced pacifist, St. Pius X went into a state of deep anxiety and depression when the war broke out. Like the Emperor, Franz-Josef, he seems to have had an instinctive awareness of what was about to follow. His successor, Pope Benedict XV, was no less clear: the war, he wrote, was “the suicide of civilized Europe”.Determined to prevent the chalice being emptied altogether, he twice initiated peace efforts, the first time in 1916, and once more in 1917. Interestingly, on the Allied side Britain proved most favorable, whilst the Austro-Hungarians proved most receptive amongst the Central Powers. France saw any attempt at peace as anti-French, a sentiment shared in Italy, whilst in Germany it was the Protestant part of the country that rejected a “Popish Peace”. One cannot but help to reflect that all the protagonists regretted their intransigence at one point or another.They ought to have regretted not inviting the Pope to the Versailles Conference, too. Pope Benedict XV warned from 1919 about the dangers of imposing impossibly large restitution payments on Germany, about the weakness of the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and about the totally secular ideals that underlay the League of Nations. From 1920, the Pope began to argue for a united Europe, and for a Continent-wide reconciliation. Few historians, blessed with the benefit of hindsight, would fail to realize the wisdom of Pope Benedict XV’s recipe for a peaceful Europe, just as all now recognize the folly of the Versailles Treaty, which, in effect, proved to be the starting shot for World War Two.Perhaps the most worrying outcome from the war years from the perspective of the Church was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Here, a regime had come to power whose hostility towards religion was dogmatic and total. The suffering of the Church in the new state was total, the persecution, heartless. To the deeply Marian Pope Benedict XV, the message from Fatima, which also emerged during the war years, must have resounded deeply. That the Soviets were to be feared was proven in 1920, when they launched an invasion of newly-independent Poland. Few believed the Poles able to beat their attackers, but, as if by a miracle, the Soviet army was halted outside Warsaw and decisively defeated.The Church played an important role, for the victory took place on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and her priests and bishops had strengthened Polish resolve. However, as the later Pope, Pius XI, who was Nuncio in Warsaw at the time, witnessed, the Soviet army had targeted Catholic priests, churches, religious and the devout, all of whom were singled out for torture, murder and destruction.There is a statue of Pope Benedict XV in the Vatican, which depicts the Pontiff, kneeling beside the tomb of an unknown soldier, praying for solace after what he called the “useless massacre”. The Pope knew that the forces that had unleashed the war were far from gone, and that others had joined them. Each papacy has a cross to bear, but few can have been as heavy as that of Pope Benedict XV. He clearly saw that the door of hell had been opened in 1914, and found himself powerless to close it again. Violent nationalism caused conflicts between Catholic Poland and Lithuania; overt secularism and communism were inflicting damage elsewhere.In Italy, and increasingly in Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, too, extreme right-wing nationalism began to rear its head. In the Ottoman Empire, the Pope had had a taste of what that type of nationalism could achieve, armed with industrial military material: between 1915 and 1922, several million Armenians and other Christians, including thousands of Catholics, had been systematically massacred by ultra-nationalistic Turks. It was a harbinger of things to come.One cannot but approach the history of the Catholic Church during the Second World War from this starting point, from the moment that Pope Benedict XV realized that his dreams for a peaceful Europe and for freedom for the Church were just that: dreams. He responded with a frankness that is almost painful to read. His encyclical Humani Generis Redemptionem, written at the depth of the crisis in 1917, sharply observes the re-emergence of paganism and of the primitive human urges of vengeance and violence, but blames this not on the times, but on the ineffectiveness of the Church to preach its message of love and redemption. It was a clarion call to the clergy to remember to concentrate on what truly mattered, but also to stay true to God’s word as contained within Scripture. It was a wise lesson for his two successors, Pius XI and Pius XII, which they would strive to implement.Both Popes had to steer the Church through the tempest that was the Interbellum and the war years, responding to some of the most brutal men the world has ever seen in positions of absolute power. They would keep Pope Benedict XV’s words in mind, and try to steer on a compass set by the Gospels and Scripture. They would also recall another warning from Humani Generis Redemptionem, namely that the Church should not get involved in a popularity contest: if the Word was unwelcome, the Church should still preach it. Both men stayed true to this, too.
The Catholic Church in the Second World War
Jun 27, 2011 / 00:00 amI would like to begin this new series with a look back to last year, and to the event that, for Catholics, will be one of the abiding memories of 2010: the state visit of the Holy Father to the United Kingdom. In his first address of the visit, in Edinburgh, Pope Benedict XVI broached a subject that has very personal meaning to him. Referring to the Nazis, he said,