Total State v. Total Church

The troubles endured by the Roman Catholic Church in recent years in Mexico, Spain and Italy have set a pattern of conflict which by last week was being closely followed in Germany. The pattern: an authoritarian, international Church in an authoritarian, nationalist State, the two being bound together by their common distrust of freedom and liberalism and driven apart by their respective determination to bring up and educate youth in a different way.

The Total State v. the Total Church battle is by no means new in Germany. The Church has never forgotten that 60 years ago it came to grips with Prince von Bismarck, in the famed Kulturkampj

(culture battle) -- and beat him. Origin of that struggle was the German hierarchy's demand that members of the schismatic "Old Catholic" sect be removed as teachers in state schools. Distrusting ecclesiastical interference in state affairs, the "Iron Chancellor" not only refused the demand but approved a series of "May Laws" to crush the Church. Payment of clerical salaries by the state was dis continued, church property confiscated, religious orders expelled from Germany. Many a priest and bishop who defied these laws was fined and jailed. Net effect was to embitter Germany's Catholic population, increase the strength of the Catholic Centre Party and finally to force Bis marck to back down. Though Germany's Protestant population is double its 20.000.000 Catholics, Adolf Hitler has shown no signs of personally attempting another Kulturkampj. Baptized a Catholic but no longer a practicing one, he has a good Catholic Vice Chancellor in Franz von Papen, whom he sent to Rome a year ago to wangle an agreement with the Holy Roman Church. The Concordat then signed looked good on paper. It recognized the religious rights of the Church and provided for full Catholic education of Catholic children. But Hitler let his young hotheads flout the Concordat to such an extent that by last month it had broken down completely. Though he took candle in hand and marched devoutly in one of the many well-attended Corpus Christi parades last month, Vice Chancellor von Papen seemed no longer persona grata to the Church. On his last visit to Rome the Pope did not deign to receive him.

"Our Dear Children," as the Pope refers to Catholic Youth organizations, number 1,100,000 in Germany and last week were still the centre of a tug-of-war between Church and State. Only group not yet absorbed by the Hitlerjugend, they have been badgered in districts throughout Germany, forbidden to wear uniforms, parade or even play games in public. Typical was their treatment last week in Ulm, where the police forbade them to hold a "parents' evening."

St. Boniface, In Fulda last week the Church made its annual conference of bishops a show of strength. All over the town fluttered the gold-&-white flag of the Papacy. Pilgrims poured in, ostensibly to visit the tomb of St. Boniface who as "Apostle to the Germans" in the 8th Century, fought against the same kind of Teutonic paganism that many a Nazi seeks to revive today. So the Nazi Konigsberg Journal recalled that Boniface placed the German Church "under Rome, and thereby laid the foundations for the later struggles of Popes and Kaisers.''

Munich is both strongly Catholic and strongly Nazi, the scene of Hitler's rise and the home of the No. 1 anti-Nazi churchman, doughty Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber. Last week His rugged Eminence learned that in Freiburg a ban had been lifted on a pamphlet containing his Advent sermons, which flayed Nazi racial beliefs. Last week young Nazi Muncheners tore down posters of a Catholic film, The Papal City, raided the Luitpold Theatre where it was being shown, rushed the audience out in a panic.

Lippmann. The frenetic Volkischer Beobachter, personal newsorgan of Chancellor Hitler, last week explained it all: "The Pope's grandmother was a Dutch Jewess named Lippmann. The Pope is a Jew."

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