CATHOLIC RIGHTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20673, 11 March 1937, Page 13

CATHOLIC RIGHTS

PROTEST EXPECTED VATICAN AND GERMANY In usually well-informed circles here it is stated that a probably outcome of the German Bishops’ visit to Rome will be a Note from the Vatican to the German Government protesting against the failure of the latter to uphold the terms of the Concordat, wrote the Berlin correspondent of “The Times” on January 22. The Note is expected to assert that on all outstanding points—free communication between the Pope and the Faithful in Germany, protection of the Catholic associations, freedom of conscience, and education—the Concordat has been broken, and to ask the German Government what steps they intend taking in order to maintain it in future.

Hitherto the German Bishops have been reluctant to see any action taken which might involve a complete breach between the Roman Catholic Church and the State on the ground that the result might well be on unrestrained Kulturkampf; but the Government’s attitude in the school question has precipitated something like a crisis. In many parts of the country the Roman Catholic schools have been supplanted, following plebiscites of parents arranged by Nationalist-Social-ist authorities, by secular community schools, and it is feared that no religious educational institutions will survive the coming Education Bill. No Compromise in Schools On the school question the Church is unwilling to compromise, and it is reported that Cardinal Faulhaber at a recent interview with Herr Hitler found that the State, while willing to concede to the Church its lay and charitable organisations, was adamant on the point that the education of youth was a function of the State which it could not share with the Church. There followed the conference of the Bishops at Fulda, at which two very sharply-worded declarations were drawn up, and the dispatch of the delegation of live to Rome was arranged. The first of the Fulda declarations states that those Catholics who have stood up for the continued existence of the confessional schools are obeying not only the claims of Christian conscience but the law of the land, of which the Concordat is a part. The Bishops protest against the elimination of Catholic schools which has taken place in certain districts of the Reich “on the ground of so-called plebiscites of the parents which lack a legal basis or in very many cases dispense with the freedom of personal decision.”

“Taught by such experiences,” the declaration goes on, “we urge our diocesans not to flag in their defence of the confessional schools, not to succumb to certain promises or threats, but to stand up for their sacred rights with exemplary decision and Catholic firmness of character In the planned community schools we see not only no protection whatever for the Christian faith but, on the contrary as unambiguous utterances have shown, a practical instrument for asphyxiating the Catholic Faith and Christianity in the rising generation and thereby endangering the welfare of the whole German people.” Freedom of Conscience In the second declaration the Bishops remind Roman Catholic parents that the freedom of conscience is assured in the Concordat, and continue:— Any pressure which involves a restriction of the freedom of conscience, no matter from what quarter it comes, is an offence not only against the Concordat solemnly concluded by the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor but against the spirit of a law of the Reich Government. All Catholics, therefore, including officials and employees, may courageously and decisively decline any pressure either to leave the Church or to remove their children from a Catholic school. These declarations are to be read from the pulpits, and the Bishops have also ordered that prayers are to be offered on Sundays and Feast days for the continuance of the Roman Catholic schools. The issue between Church and State is the more acute in view of the fact that where National Socialism is in charge of education ideological influences scarcely compatible with Christian teaching are apt to recent full scope. Thus an educational letter on the significance of Christmas to the camps of the National Labour Service declared that it should be no reproach to anyone if he sought to look for the Son of God not in Heaven, but on earth “where to-day one also specially blessed by the Creator stands before us.”