Catholicism at the Crossroads

I

A HUNDRED years ago Catholicism seemed in danger of being swept away by the rising flood of materialism and its negation of all things supernatural. Since then science has outgrown its naïve pride in the newly discovered ‘allexplanatory natural causes’ which, many believed, left no room for a personal God. Matter, the reverently worshiped substitute for Him, has again lost its character as the Absolute and has been recognized for what it is: a thin veil over still inexplicable forces.

We are witnessing to-day in some quarters a religious revival of great intensity, and a growing understanding of what Christ’s incarnation means: He became Man in order to bring His Realm of Peace and Justice to this world. Therefore, our return to greater religious life is not a return to monastic aloofness. On t he contrary, Christianity must be realized in the daily needs of every human being. Not only must individual freedom and full civic liberties be guaranteed by Christian society; not only must ‘charity’ be given to the poor; but true social justice must be established, granting to each and all a physical existence according to the dignity of human nature, as restored by Christ. This consequence of His life has not yet been generally understood, and it is at the bottom of all conflicts between the temporal policy of the Church and Catholic dogma, between certain parts of the Catholic Hierarchy and the broad masses of the people and their intellectual spokesmen.

Men like Don Sturzo, the eminent priestly scholar and former leader of the anti-Fascist People’s Party of Italy; the American scholar George N. Shuster; the Thomist Jacques Maritain in France; Dr. Heinrich Brüning, last chancellor of republican Germany; all groups of religious socialists, American and European Christian trade-union leaders, and many others less well known to the public, are champions of this ‘political’ consequence of Catholicism.

As far back as the fourth century, the Church Fathers Saint Basil and Saint John Chrysostom expressed similar ideas, which still impress us as amazingly ‘modern.’ ‘The rich take possession in advance of that which belongs to all and seize it on the ground of the right of the first occupant,’ Saint Basil wrote in the seventh chapter of his first homily. ‘If everyone would take only according to his needs and would leave the surplus to the needy, no one would be rich, no one poor, no one in misery.’

The views of Saint John Chrysostom are even more ‘radical.’ As God in the beginning did not create this one rich, the other poor, he declares, in the twelfth homily on the First Letter to Timothy, that the rich man will, in the ordinary course of events, be unable to prove that his possessions were rightfully acquired. ‘I inherited my riches from my father — and he from my grandfather,’ the rich will answer; but this is no suitable argument, for ‘at their origin and source there has been injustice.’ We may perhaps be not altogether wrong in stating that the substance of these ideas may be found again in Karl Marx’s economic system, which is usually described as ‘profoundly anti-Christian.’ Like ‘Marxism,’ Catholicism condemns the exploitation of the working class by our present economic system. ‘Just wages,’ established through ‘free agreements between workers and employers,’ were demanded in the Encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) of Pope Leo XIII, who declared: ‘If through necessity or fear of worse evil the worker accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.’ And the present Pope, while denouncing atheist Communism, emphasized the culpability of those who abuse property rights ‘to deprive the worker of just wages and of the social rights belonging to him.’ When the League of Nations imposed economic sanctions to end international lawlessness, the defiance of Fascist Italy was hailed in Italy’s most important Catholic review, Cività Cattolica, organ of the Jesuits, as ‘a wonderful spectacle of abnegation, cohesion, and Christian strength.’ Coinciding with the news about the Fascist massacre in Addis Ababa on February 19, 1937, there came a circular from the president of the Catholic Action in Italy approving the

There is no dogmatic reason why Catholics should not join the various progressive parties which fight for industrial democracy. We do not mean to suggest that the Church should always back these parties, for such a generalization would obviously be absurd. We do say, however, that by rejecting them a limine the Church has already lost contact with the working class and other progressive forces. She has also lost, for the time being, her natural ally in the fight for Christian democracy. Consequently, if the names of Darwin and Hegel and not those of Christ and His saints are emblazoned on the banner of many labor leaders, it is not the doing of Karl Marx alone.

II

Catholic and non-Catholic workers, middle-class people and intellectuals, are filled with an increasing distrust of the temporal policy of the Church; they feel that there are many contradictory attitudes among her various leaders, and a frequent discrepancy between their words and deeds.

The Holy Father, in his Encyclicals Non abbiamo bisogno of June 29, 1931, and Mit brennender Sorge of March 14, 1937, declared the Fascist and National Socialist ‘totalitarian State’ incompatible with Christian principles; yet the Holy See maintains its relations with National Socialism and Fascism, and, as far as Italy is concerned, even keeps on friendly terms with the State.

This comparative leniency towards the totalitarian States of the Right is in contrast to the relentless fight of the Church against totalitarianism of the Left as realized in Soviet Russia. The fact that the totalitarian State of the Right.— like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Franco’s Spain — calls itself ‘national,’ while the totalitarian State in Russia calls itself ‘proletarian,’ is, in the opinion of many people, of no great importance. Any form of totalitarianism denies the right of the individual to freedom, life, and objective justice; and that this cannot be accepted by a religion based upon the dignity of man needs no further emphasis.

In Germany, men like Cardinal Archbishop Faulhaber of Munich, or the Bishops of Berlin and Münster, have won world fame by their courageous defiance of State despotism — not to speak of those Church laymen who died during the ‘blood purge’ of June 30, 1934. Yet we have seen other high prelates, like Cardinal Schulte of Cologne, endorsing National Socialism. In March 1936, when Hitler tore up the Locarno Treaty, the Cardinal sent a telegram to War Minister Von Blomberg in which he called that action, which brought the world to the verge of another war, ‘an elevating example of sacrifice, ready patriotism, earnest discipline, and upright fear of God.’

In the spring of 1933, when the German Republic, which had tried to bring about social justice and liberty, was crushed by National Socialism, the German Episcopate lifted the religious ban which had been imposed on the Nazi Party for many years. The Apostolic Nuncio in Berlin openly favored the entente between Catholic and Nazi leaders, and the way was prepared for the Concordat of July 1933, which sacrificed not only the Catholic Centre Party to Nazi totalitarianism, but also the Catholic trade-unions and other workers’ organizations which had loyally served the cause of Christianity. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that devout Catholics are wondering whether the active opposition of the Church forced upon her by Nazi totalitarianism would not, in spite of all authoritative condemnations, be withdrawn if the rights of the Church were no further infringed. colonial and international policy of Fascism. Coinciding, too, was the news about the formation of the Rome-Berlin Axis, which is now threatening the security of all peoples.

How the so-called ‘Christian-Social Party’ and the Catholic press of Austria dealt with the Viennese Socialists has certainly not been forgotten. It was out of the blood of two thousand workers, their women and children, that the ‘New Austria’ rose in February 1934 — hailed by many as an example of a ‘truly Catholic State.’

Don Sturzo’s admirable book, L’Église et l’État, summarized the situation recently prevailing in Austria as follows: —

The Austria of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg pretends to be a Catholic State founded upon the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, but in reality it is a dictatorial State with a Catholic and Fascist predominance; the government represents only a minority and is staying in power only on the ground of martial law. The social measures inspired by papal Encyclicals are not realities . . . the masses of the workers have not forgotten the bloody repression of February 1934.

It was due to these discrepancies between words and facts, and not to the National Socialist inclination of a small part of the people, that, the tragedy of Austria took place on March 12 of this year. Austria is 90 per cent Catholic, and the Church exercised a decisive influence there. Many wonder why, then, it was not used for the maintenance of democracy and social justice, which alone could have guaranteed the stability and independence of that unfortunate country. How is it reconcilable with the religious principles of the Church that her temporal policy could compromise on such an important battleground with Fascism and all it stands for?

I should like to quote from an editorial in the Catholic weekly America of January 15, 1938, entitled ‘The Pope and Fascism’: —

It is true that frequently the Church is obliged to tolerate for a time being the lesser of two evils; this does not mean that she approves the evil. On the contrary, she condemns all that is unjust. With Fascism it is possible for her to establish a temporary modus vivendi and to wait for better times. But with Communism, essentially based on Atheism and committed to the fostering of Atheism, no such arrangement is possible.

It seems to me that compromising with something clearly recognized as an evil is always a very dubious act. The idolization of ‘blood and race,’ of ‘State power’ and allegedly semi-divine leaders, is no less Atheism than the form of society practised in Soviet Russia. On the other hand, that ‘temporary modus vivendi’ to which the editorial in the Catholic paper refers has led already to serious inner conflicts for many Catholics, without relieving the troubles with which the world is faced; for instance, the Abyssinian War, that fatal turning point in contemporary history, when high Italian prelates donated the treasures of their churches to Mussolini’s war chest.

Don Sturzo himself affirms that the Catholics in all other countries openly disagreed with the pro-war attitude of the Italian Hierarchy, though the latter was — to say the least — not discouraged by still higher ecclesiastical personalities. The most representative publications, Études of the Jesuits in Paris, La Vie Intellecluelle of the Dominicans in Oxford, and Catholic writers in France, Spain, and the United States, were unanimous in their condemnation of the Fascist aggression.

There is a direct connection between this aggression and the declining influence of the League of Nations, National Socialist rearmament, the breakdown of collective security, the final encouragement which Japan needed for its invasion of China, the Rome-Berlin Axis, involving its carefully prepared interference in Spanish affairs, and the rape of Austria. It was then that the rift in Catholic opinion became apparent. Only a fundamental revision of policy can heal this fundamental rift.

III

Can a revision of Church policy be expected, and, if so, is there still time before greater, maybe irreparable, damage is done to Catholic and non-Catholic Christianity? There are men and women in all countries who believe that financial considerations prevent the Church from taking a firm stand against Fascism — though Fascism is to-day the chief aggressive danger for Christian civilization.

The war in Spain brought these latent resentments to a climax. Forty-eight out of the fifty-one Spanish Bishops came out openly against their government, and the official paper of the Vatican, Osservatore Romano, stated that ‘in the Spanish Civil War the one party is formed by Franco and the Church, the other by the “Reds.”’ Similar pronouncements can be found daily in most of the leading Catholic papers in all countries. When the German Bishops, on January 1, 1937, pledged their support to Hitler to fight ‘Bolshevism,’ they quoted Spain as a special example of ‘Red terror,’ thus using Nazi language to win Nazi friendship. Not one word is printed in Catholic papers about the Spanish Hierarchy, which long since lost all contact with the people and became an institution for the rich, the landowners, the aristocracy.

But this is a ‘Holy War,’ we are told by a spokesman of the Rebels, the Reverend Father Ignacio G. MenendezReigada, in a work entitled Thomist Science, published in Salamanca in 1937.

To this the greatest Thomist of our day, Jacques Maritain, answered in the English monthly Colosseum, of September 1937: ‘War does not become holy: it runs the danger of making what is holy a blasphemy. And the abominable means it uses to-day render such a result inevitable.’

But Maritain is called an ‘idealist,’ as if his views required apology. How difficult it is to get a fair hearing I can testify out of my own experience, for when I returned from Spain last autumn and reported what I had seen I was called a ‘Red,’ or at least a ‘dupe of the Reds.’

‘We [Catholics] are certainly not apologists of Hitler,’ the Catholic Herald of November 19, 1937, wrote in this connection, ‘yet the fact remains that Catholic sacramental and devotional life in Germany continues in full vigor.’

I do not know how this view, which we find expressed in Catholic circles only too frequently, is reconciled with facts. That sacramental life in Germany — though already severely hampered — has not yet been suppressed should not deceive anyone. Rather will one have to agree with Cardinal Faulhaber, who said in his great sermon of February 13 of this year, ‘It is not necessary to burn churches to have religious persecution.’ The illiterates who burned churches in Catalonia after the army, that ‘defender of law and order,’ had mutinied are certainly less guilty in the eyes of God than Franco’s neopagan allies who in Germany and Austria are burning the Church. The policy of the Church towards the legitimate government of Spain reminds us of the most tragic periods in the Church’s history.

Because of a misguided temporal policy, the mediæval Popes fought continually against the legitimate rulers of Lombardy and Sicily, the Hohenstaufen Emperors, and were in league with all anti-imperial rebels. In this struggle the Papacy remained victorious, but with the downfall of the Hohenstaufens began the downfall of Christian unity, the seeds for ‘national Churches’ were sown, and ultimately the Protestant forces broke away from the Holy See.

To-day the danger of an internal landslide must not be overlooked. The lesson of Spain, once one of the most solidly Catholic countries, of the devastation of religious life in Germany, and of the fate which has befallen Austria, should be taken as a final warning.

IV

American Catholicism, bred in the atmosphere of democracy, could be a decisive force in making such danger understood. I have come in contact with many Catholic students in colleges like St. Ambrose in Davenport, Iowa, Assumption College in Windsor, Canada, and in non-denominational institutions like Swarthmore College, the University of Virginia, and Rollins College, Florida; and I found them never more interested than when I discussed with them the outlines of Catholic social justice. I was impressed with the progressiveness of their political and social views. ‘If we want to fight the ideology of the Communists successfully, we must offer a social justice which is greater than theirs,’ is the thought I heard expressed wherever I met young American Catholics.

Among the Catholic teachers of American colleges I found some remarkable representatives of progressive Catholicism; I am thinking in particular of the former President of St. Ambrose, Monsignor Cone, whose whole work was dedicated to a truly democratic community, and of the Father Jesuits of Regis College, Denver, which I visited this spring. Nor should the group of young Basilian Fathers in Assumption College, whose ‘Cultural Forum’ holds a high intellectual level, remain unmentioned.

In October 1937, when the letter of the hundred and fifty Protestant clergymen and educators on the Spanish situation was published, I witnessed the reaction of my Catholic students at Swarthmore College. ‘Imagine non-Catholics having to tell us what to do!’ my discussion group said. ‘But some day, when we are out of college . . .’

Yes, I do believe that ‘some day’ these young American Catholics will have a great deal to contribute to the world cause of the Church, and it would not be the first time that the United States took such a lead. It was due to Cardinal Gibbons’s personal intervention with Pope Leo XIII that the first Catholic workers’ organization of modern times, the Knights of Labor, remained uncondemned by the Church. It is said that the Encyclical Rerum Novarum which outlined the Church’s social programme was directly inspired by this great American Cardinal.

‘I can never forget the anxiety and distress of mind of those days,’ he wrote in the Dublin Review of April 1917. ‘If the Knights of Labor were not condemned by the Church, the Church ran the risk of combining against herself every element of wealth and power. . . . But if the Church did not protect the workingman, she would have been false to her whole history; and this the Church can never be.’

It is therefore strictly in line with Catholic tradition, and with the spirit I have found prevailing in this country, to indicate the decisions which the Church might well take at this crossroads of world history.

Wherever there is a popular front movement the Church should become its leader; where men and women are fighting for better living conditions and for the right to organize, the Church must be on their side; where democratic States are threatened by dictatorship, the Church has to oppose it — unconditionally. Where better and more progressive education is advocated, it is the Church’s fight. Where the issue of antior superSemitism arises, the Church has to demonstrate that Nazis and Jews who boast of their ‘blood and race’ are atavisms belonging to the time when the Book of Ezra was written.

Humanity, faced with totalitarian despotism from both sides and increasing economic anarchy and selfish profiteering, would then look upon the Church as that bulwark of freedom and justice for the weak and oppressed that Christ wanted her to be.