silence, indifference, or even spite toward their Jewish neighbors. When some called on the churches to interfere with the boycotts, the archbishop of Breslau, Cardinal Adolf Bertram, urged other German bishops to stay silent, saying the boycott was “solely an economic matter”—an area of life that in his view stood outside the bishops’ sphere of activity. Bertram vindictively added in his letter, “the press that is predominantly in Jewish hands has been totally silent regarding the persecution of Catholics in various countries.” Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the archbishop of Munich, wrote a letter after the initial boycotts to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pacelli, stating that “it is, at this time, not possible to intervene because the struggle against the Jews would at the same time become a struggle against the Catholics, and because the Jews can help themselves, as the hasty breaking off of the boycott shows.” Although these are but two examples, they demonstrate that Catholic leadership was aware of Jewish persecution and feared retribution if the Church were to speak out. They largely remained silent.
A second response that I want to touch on is the temptation to take refuge in theology disconnected from the reality of those who suffered most. As anti-Jewish acts worsened and the war began, both Catholic and Protestant clergy sought to use theology to justify their behavior, relinquish responsibility, and insulate themselves and their followers from the horrors of reality. Take, for example, the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) that occurred within the Protestant church. The two prominent factions in this battle were the so-called “German Christians,” generally portrayed as Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, and the “Confessing Church,” largely viewed as the noble resistance against Hitler. Yet, neither of these groups can be characterized so easily. The German Christians represented a fusion of Protestantism and German nationalism that saw the future of both the Protestant church and the German nation as bound up in Hitler’s vision of restoring the German people to
a mythic former glory. The Confessing Church, on the other hand, strongly protested Nazification and state control over the church and its sacraments, as well as the notion that
a Christian’s highest loyalty was owed to the state rather than to God. The famous Barmen Declaration, authored by renowned theologian Karl Barth, is still treated as an authoritative source on the proper relationship between the church and the state for modern Reformed Protestantism. While such notions did indeed represent resistance to Hitler’s attempt to bring the church under his authority, perhaps it is too much of a leap to characterize this pushback as resistance to Nazi policies of discrimination against Jews. Said differently, the enduring work of the Confessing Church concerned itself with what was heresy and not what would enable the Holocaust. While certain values from this movement should not be uncritically diminished, the ideological and theological struggles of the church provided a way to retreat in the face of suffering and injustice. These clergy and other religious thinkers addressed the state and its relationship to the church, not the regime’s attack on Jews and other minorities.
Similarly, the Catholic Church emphasized theological abstractions in the face of war and terror. Church-state relations deteriorated following a series of state power grabs, such as the legal identification of religion and heritage (rather than faith) (i.e. Jews that converted to Catholicism were still considered Jews by blood) and Hitler’s concordat with the Vatican. During this period, German bishops issued a “joint-pastoral letter in which they reminded their clergy to limit their public complaints or rebuttals against the government to blatant attacks on Catholic ’dogmatic and moral teaching.’” Further, if the clergy were going to refute Nazi ideology, they were to “fight against the false teaching and the lie, but never against the mistaken and lying person.”
Another instance of the retreat into theology is to be found in the behavior of Konrad von Preysing, the bishop of Berlin. As the war dragged on and rumors of both an imminent German defeat and Nazi extermination camps spread, von Preysing increasingly used the language of suffering to frame his sermons and articulate his theological views. For von Preysing, the heart of Christianity was the suffering of Christ and by extension the suffering of his followers. Christians, according to von Preysing, should focus on and appeal to the mercy of God and celebrate the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. In 1944 near the end of the war, von Preysing called for all congregations to reconsecrate themselves “to the sacred heart of Christ.” For him, this was the proper response to the woes on the German home front, the faltering war effort, and rumors about the fate of European Jews. This seems, in hindsight, a theological effort on behalf of those who would soon suffer disconnected from those who had already suffered terribly.
To be clear, these failures of Protestant and Catholic clergy should not be spoken of as if simple acts of speaking out against these injustices could have prevented massive death and destruction, nor should any condemnation import the luxuries afforded by modern hindsight and historical study. Rather, in addressing these failures, to compare them with modern issues, it becomes more important to state why something should have happened rather than simply what should have happened.
I recently heard a sermon entitled “Are We There Yet?” The preacher recited a laundry list of everything that is wrong with the world, such as war; a massive and ongoing refugee crisis; economic, political, and racial inequality; escalating political partisanship; a ubiquitous media that makes violence, tension, and fear increasingly present and accessible; rampant materialism that fosters selfishness and indifference; and the like. The preacher’s point, of course, was that we are, in fact, not “there” yet. As the list went on and on, I found myself more and more annoyed at the idea that the church as a whole or any individual church could possibly make all five of these things right. How are we supposed to get “there?” And while it is easy to preach about “there,” wherever and whatever that may be, I believe there is a fundamental difference between advocating for a vision of a world that has triumphed over injustice and being with those who suffer now. In this, I see perhaps not an exhaustive answer but rather some direction for exploring how modern clergy might
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silence, indifference, or even spite toward their Jewish neighbors. When some called on the churches to interfere with the boycotts, the archbishop of Breslau, Cardinal Adolf Bertram, urged other German bishops to stay silent, saying the boycott was “solely an economic matter”—an area of life that in his view stood outside the bishops’ sphere of activity. Bertram vindictively added in his letter, “the press that is predominantly in Jewish hands has been totally silent regarding the persecution of Catholics in various countries.” Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the archbishop of Munich, wrote a letter after the initial boycotts to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pacelli, stating that “it is, at this time, not possible to intervene because the struggle against the Jews would at the same time become a struggle against the Catholics, and because the Jews can help themselves, as the hasty breaking off of the boycott shows.” Although these are but two examples, they demonstrate that Catholic leadership was aware of Jewish persecution and feared retribution if the Church were to speak out. They largely remained silent.
A second response that I want to touch on is the temptation to take refuge in theology disconnected from the reality of those who suffered most. As anti-Jewish acts worsened and the war began, both Catholic and Protestant clergy sought to use theology to justify their behavior, relinquish responsibility, and insulate themselves and their followers from the horrors of reality. Take, for example, the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) that occurred within the Protestant church. The two prominent factions in this battle were the so-called “German Christians,” generally portrayed as Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, and the “Confessing Church,” largely viewed as the noble resistance against Hitler. Yet, neither of these groups can be characterized so easily. The German Christians represented a fusion of Protestantism and German nationalism that saw the future of both the Protestant church and the German nation as bound up in Hitler’s vision of restoring the German people to
a mythic former glory. The Confessing Church, on the other hand, strongly protested Nazification and state control over the church and its sacraments, as well as the notion that
a Christian’s highest loyalty was owed to the state rather than to God. The famous Barmen Declaration, authored by renowned theologian Karl Barth, is still treated as an authoritative source on the proper relationship between the church and the state for modern Reformed Protestantism. While such notions did indeed represent resistance to Hitler’s attempt to bring the church under his authority, perhaps it is too much of a leap to characterize this pushback as resistance to Nazi policies of discrimination against Jews. Said differently, the enduring work of the Confessing Church concerned itself with what was heresy and not what would enable the Holocaust. While certain values from this movement should not be uncritically diminished, the ideological and theological struggles of the church provided a way to retreat in the face of suffering and injustice. These clergy and other religious thinkers addressed the state and its relationship to the church, not the regime’s attack on Jews and other minorities.
Similarly, the Catholic Church emphasized theological abstractions in the face of war and terror. Church-state relations deteriorated following a series of state power grabs, such as the legal identification of religion and heritage (rather than faith) (i.e. Jews that converted to Catholicism were still considered Jews by blood) and Hitler’s concordat with the Vatican. During this period, German bishops issued a “joint-pastoral letter in which they reminded their clergy to limit their public complaints or rebuttals against the government to blatant attacks on Catholic ’dogmatic and moral teaching.’” Further, if the clergy were going to refute Nazi ideology, they were to “fight against the false teaching and the lie, but never against the mistaken and lying person.”
Another instance of the retreat into theology is to be found in the behavior of Konrad von Preysing, the bishop of Berlin. As the war dragged on and rumors of both an imminent German defeat and Nazi extermination camps spread, von Preysing increasingly used the language of suffering to frame his sermons and articulate his theological views. For von Preysing, the heart of Christianity was the suffering of Christ and by extension the suffering of his followers. Christians, according to von Preysing, should focus on and appeal to the mercy of God and celebrate the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. In 1944 near the end of the war, von Preysing called for all congregations to reconsecrate themselves “to the sacred heart of Christ.” For him, this was the proper response to the woes on the German home front, the faltering war effort, and rumors about the fate of European Jews. This seems, in hindsight, a theological effort on behalf of those who would soon suffer disconnected from those who had already suffered terribly.
To be clear, these failures of Protestant and Catholic clergy should not be spoken of as if simple acts of speaking out against these injustices could have prevented massive death and destruction, nor should any condemnation import the luxuries afforded by modern hindsight and historical study. Rather, in addressing these failures, to compare them with modern issues, it becomes more important to state why something should have happened rather than simply what should have happened.
I recently heard a sermon entitled “Are We There Yet?” The preacher recited a laundry list of everything that is wrong with the world, such as war; a massive and ongoing refugee crisis; economic, political, and racial inequality; escalating political partisanship; a ubiquitous media that makes violence, tension, and fear increasingly present and accessible; rampant materialism that fosters selfishness and indifference; and the like. The preacher’s point, of course, was that we are, in fact, not “there” yet. As the list went on and on, I found myself more and more annoyed at the idea that the church as a whole or any individual church could possibly make all five of these things right. How are we supposed to get “there?” And while it is easy to preach about “there,” wherever and whatever that may be, I believe there is a fundamental difference between advocating for a vision of a world that has triumphed over injustice and being with those who suffer now. In this, I see perhaps not an exhaustive answer but rather some direction for exploring how modern clergy might