AN IRREVOCABLE NO

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3251, 12 April 1943, Page 3

AN IRREVOCABLE NO

NO TRUCK WITH HITLER CHURCHES IN FRANCE GERMAN NEO-PAGANISM In' the French national resistance to Hitler a leading part is being taken by Christians, both Roman Catholic and protestant, states the Christian News Letter.

On the Protestant side, a set of theses, known as the “Theses of Pomeyrol,” though they have not been officially adopted by the Reformed Church of France, have been widely circulated. They remind the State and ■society of the demands of truth and justice which God makes upon the whole community, and of the mission of the State to assure to each citizen a regime of law, guaranteeing essential liberties and excluding unfair discrimination, spying and arbitrary dealing. They make a solemn protest against legislation which casts out the Jews from human communities, and conclude with the following declaration: —

“Laying aside all equivocations the Church affirms that it is impossible to describe the necessary submission to the conqueror, as an act of free choice. While accepting the material

consequences of defeat, the Church considers resistance to all totalitarian and idolatrous things as a spiritual necessity.” Roman Catholic Resistance

The majority of the Roman Catholic bishops in unoccupied France have taken a line of grim resistance. A series of printed pamphlets and leaflets is being secretly issued under the title, Papers of Christian Witness. One of the recent pamphlets says in its preface:— “The waiting of France is not indifference or inertia, but a. silent preparation for hastening the day of liberation. The silence of the nation, which is, with its suffering, the only possible form which in the present circumstances it can express its fidelity, condemns in advance to failure the New Order of Hitler and the illusions of co-operation under the sign of the swastika.” The pamphlet launches a vigorous attack on various attempts in Catholic quarters to palter with the issues and to betray the cause of Christianity and humanity, and concludes as follows: — No Peace With Hitler “To Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ we oppose ‘Notre Combat’ (our fight), for we know, and will make known, that in the issue of this fight there are at stake, without any possible doubt, all the reasons for living, and, further, that there can be no peace with Hitler that is consistent with French, human or Christian honour: — “because Hitlerism means domination, pride and falsehood, and above all contempt of man—contempt of justice and of goodness, of the weak and of fidelity;

“ because the religious and racial persecution of Nazism is the most crafty and stubborn;

“because the German neo-paganism signalises the devaluation of Christ-

ian values and compels the Church to repudiate it or to die of asphyxia.

“because the swastika of racialism sets itself up as a cross antagonistic to the Cross of Christ.

“To this idolatrous worship we have decided to say an irrevocable No.”