NAZI DOCTRINES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 191, 15 August 1940, Page 10

NAZI DOCTRINES

ANTI-CHRISTIAN AIMS RELIGION AND THE HOME AUCKLAND, Aug. 11. "The Hitler schools for training the elite, youth groups, labour and army corps are all definitely anti-Christian,' said Bishop Liston, in .an address to members of the Catholic Luncheon Club yesterday. “They are generally propagatory of Rosenberg’s pagan ideal of blood and race, with its cult of the super-man, its propensity to inordinate pride and violence, its hatred of spiritual things and its contempt for the weak. Every obstacle is placed in the way of tnose who would practise religion; they are subjected to ridicule and insult and become marked men.

“It is a fundamental Jaw of Christianity,” Bishop Liston said, "that all human beings, as children of God and equal in origin and destiny, possess essential personal rights, which they do not lose because they happen to belong to a race regarded as inferior.” Plan of Domination The Nazi attack on the Church was an inevitable outcome of the conception that religion was subject to the law of race and must be adapted to it. It was allied to the claim of the Nazi State to dominate life in every sphere. Hitler's plan had been not merely to strike at the leaders, but also to demoralise the ranks, to carry on a campaign of calumny against clergy and religion, and, above all, to insist that the Catholic religion was incompatible with loyalty to the Fatherland. "This policy has been systematically carried out and directed primarily against religious education, both of the Catholic and Protestant Churches,” Bishop Liston continued. "Religious were deprived of the right to teach, subjects of study were curtailed and finally a few months ago all Catholic schools, both primary and secondary, were closed without exception. "Nazi maxims replace prayers, and neo-pagan philosophy is presupposed in text books and examination questions. The right recognised by the Concordat for priests to give religious instruction in schools has been for the most part obstructed or nullified, and the organisation of religious instruction outside schools has been denounced as an act of insubordination and met with violence. "Nor is the sanctuary of the home respected. Pressure on parents, privileges reserved for the youth, penalties

for nonconformity—al! tend to destroy the influence of the home, to separate children from their parents, and to instil into the minds of children not merely indifference, but actual hostility to religion, with all the hatreds as well as the enthusiasms of Nazi morality. "No one can foresee the future," Bishop Liston concluded. “A good number have fallen away, especially among State officials, but the Nazis have failed in their aim of forcing a mass apostasy. The immediate result has been a splendid spiritual revival."