THE GERMAN HIERARCHY AND THE WAR.

New Zealand Tablet, 1 February 1917, Page 20

THE GERMAN HIERARCHY AND THE WAR.

The German Bishops issued for all Souls’ Day a joint Pastoral Letter, in which they ordered a novena of prayers for the dead. Its terms describe eloquently and pathetically the sufferings of the German people. Assuredly, they say, the distress' and sorrows of the war have gradually reached their highest point. There is now scarcely a family to which the fearful news, Fallen ! has not come like a flash of lightning which shatters the house to its foundations, casts strong souls into affliction and, after a glaring illumination, sinks everything in black darkness.’ ' The bishops do not conceal the trials and hardships their flocks are enduring. They dwell on the troubles which the war has brought on the nation, remarking, ‘ Never yet has the pale autumn light of these days exhibited such a sad condition of the world, so many fields of dead, and such numbers of graves, so many in mourning and bowed down by grief, such arrays of weeping children.’ The prelates comfort the afflicted by holding out to them the consolation of Christian hope. The pastoral, like the previous joint utterances of the German bishops, who are not in any way responsible for the state of feeling in Germany that preceded the war, avoids contentious questions respecting the conflict, and breathes a spirit of charity worthy of the warmest admiration.