Mit Brennender Sorge 5

This is the clearest expression of the anathema accorded the creation or power of the state over the church and the creation of national churches which inevitably must crumble and the world church must prevail in glory. These words were written in the teeth of a vicious and growing totalitarianism, to counter the new paganism.

21. In your country, Venerable Brethren, voices are swelling into a chorus
urging people to leave the Church, and among the leaders there is more than one
whose official position is intended to create the impression that this
infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a signal and meritorious act of
loyalty to the modern State. Secret and open measures of intimidation, the
threat of economic and civic disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain
classes of Catholic functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right
and dignity. Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay
so dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the highest
interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss, there is but one
alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor offers one the Judas bargain
of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our
Lord: "Begone, Satan! For it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and
Him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. iv. 10). And turning to the Church, he shall
say: "Thou, my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my
death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly promises or
threats, I betray the vows of my baptism." As to those who imagine that they can
reconcile exterior infidelity to one and the same Church, let them hear Our
Lord's warning: -- "He that shall deny me before men shall be denied before the
angels of God" (Luke xii. 9).
22. Faith in the Church cannot stand pure and
true without the support of faith in the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. The same
moment when Peter, in the presence of all the Apostles and disciples, confesses
his faith in Christ, Son of the Living God, the answer he received in reward for
his faith and his confession was the word that built the Church, the only Church
of Christ, on the rock of Peter (Matt. xvi. 18). Thus was sealed the connection
between the faith in Christ, the Church and the Primacy. True and lawful
authority is invariably a bond of unity, a source of strength, a guarantee
against division and ruin, a pledge for the future: and this is verified in the
deepest and sublimest sense, when that authority, as in the case of the Church,
and the Church alone, is sealed by the promise and the guidance of the Holy
Ghost and His irresistible support. Should men, who are not even united by faith
in Christ, come and offer you the seduction of a national German Church, be
convinced that it is nothing but a denial of the one Church of Christ and the
evident betrayal of that universal evangelical mission, for which a world Church
alone is qualified and competent. The live history of other national churches
with their paralysis, their domestication and subjection to worldly powers, is
sufficient evidence of the sterility to which is condemned every branch that is
severed from the trunk of the living Church. Whoever counters these erroneous
developments with an uncompromising No from the very outset, not only serves the
purity of his faith in Christ, but also the welfare and the vitality of his own
people.