Posts
http://edwardsliteracylog.blogspot.com/2009/02/mit-brennender-sorge.html
Lauds for Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church in WWII
Albert Einstein on the Catholic Church:"Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly
ANOTHER ACCOLADE
Dr Joseph Nathan, representing the Hebrew Commission in September 1945."We express our heartfelt gratitude to those who protected and saved us during the Nazi-Fascist persecutions. Above all, we acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff [Pope Pius Xll] and the religious men and women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father, recognised the persecuted as their brothers and with great abnegation, hastened to help them, disregarding the terrible dangers to which they were exposed."
Jesuit Honored as 'Righteous Among Nations' for Saving 3 Jewish Children
Pair of Brothers, Cousin Hid Among Catholic School StudentsBy Anita S. BourdinROME, DEC. 15, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Graziano Sonnino and Marco Pavoncello remember Jesuit Father Raffaele de Ghantuz Cubbe for his courage and goodness. It was that courage and goodness that saved their lives, along with the life of Sonnino's brother Mario.The Sonninos and Pavoncello, as young Italian Jews, were saved from the Holocaust when Father Cubbe hid the children at his Jesuit school. Their surname was changed to Sbardella, a southern name of the region of Cassino, which had been bombed by the Allies, meaning their identity was impossible to verify.Father Cubbe (1904-1983) was recognized Tuesday in Rome with the honor of Righteous Among the Nations, the title bestowed by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.Mordechay Lewy, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See, presented the honor to Father Cubbe's nephew, Francesco de Ghantuz Cubbe.Pavoncello and Graziano Sonnino took part in Tuesday morning's ceremony; Mario Sonnino died last July, as did his sister Virginia.Their children and grandchildren were present, as were their nieces and nephews.
MIT BRENNENDER SORGE
http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_brennender_Sorge#cite_note-Vidmar327-1
The encyclical was written in German and not the usual Latin of official Roman Catholic Church documents. It was addressed to German bishops and was read in all parish churches of Germany. Pope Pius XI credited its creation and writing to the Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. There was no pre-announcement of the encyclical, and its distribution was kept secret in an attempt to ensure the unhindered public reading of its
contents in all the Catholic Churches of Germany.
The next paragraphs condemn event the notion of national gods as idolatrous and out of sync with divine order.:
8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community—however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things—whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds...10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.11. None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xl, 15).
Note the Nazi reaction and reprisal due to the reading of this document:
^ Chadwick, A History of Christianity (1995), pp. 254–5
After Mit Brennender Sorge was disseminated throughout German Catholic parishes, Nazi persecution of the Church in Germany began by "outright repression" and "staged prosecutions" of monks for homosexuality, with the maximum of publicity. In Poland, the Nazis murdered over 2500 monks and priests while scores more were sent to concentration camps.
http://http//www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge_en.html
Note this text from Mit Brennender Sorge and the clear implication of unmistakable references to the juggernaut of ongoing Nazi tyranny.
If, then, the tree of peace, which we planted on German soil with the purest intention, has not brought forth the fruit, which in the interest of your people, We had fondly hoped, no one in the world who has eyes to see and ears to hear will be able to lay the blame on the Church and on her Head. The experiences of these last years have fixed responsibilities and laid bare intrigues, which from the outset only aimed at a war of extermination. In the furrows, where We tried to sow the seed of a sincere peace, other men - the "enemy" of Holy Scripture - oversowed the cockle of distrust, unrest, hatred, defamation, of a determined hostility overt or veiled, fed from many sources and wielding many tools, against Christ and His Church. They, and they alone with their accomplices, silent or vociferous, are today responsible, should the storm of religious war, instead of the rainbow of peace, blacken the German skies.
