A Separation of Church and State....

MUNICH, Germany, Feb. 13.

The struggle between the German National Socialist State and the Catholic Church may be described at present as being in that preliminary stage in which the leaders are still negotiating to avoid a conflict which neither side courts but in which the rival armies already are manoeuvring for position and making occasional forays into their opponents’ ranks to test the strength of the rival position. In this preliminary struggle the Nazis with their new totalitarian State, obviously are the aggressors; to change the old order is the purpose of their existence.
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The official position of the Church was stated by Cardinal Eugenia Pacelli, the Vatican Secretary at State, in an address to pilgrims of the German Young Men’s League in December, when he said: "The church renders unto the State what is the State’s. As long as measures of the State do not hinder the church in effectively carrying out the God-ordained mission of salvation and as long as the State observes the God-ordained harmony of the two highest powers, or at least assures free and undisturbed activity an the part of the church, it will meet as resistance fram the church. The church loves peace more than war. But it loves truth and God-given freedom more than the false peace of untruth and subjection."
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The attitude of Catholic leaders in Germany ranges from that of Archbishop Conrad Groebar or Freiburg, who put him self “unreservedly” behind the new government to that of Cardinal Michael van Faulhaber of Munich, who proclaimed that the spread of “paganism” means civil war. Cardinal nan Faulhaber, long Nazism’s greatest opponent, is credited with having turned the scale against the Hitler putsch of 1923.
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Divorce From Politics Welcomed.

Many good Catholics-and this includes many priests, this correspondent has ascertained-welcome the church’s divorce from politics; these always deplored the connection, even in self-defense. Others honestly hold it is the duty of every good German to ‘go into the State in order to help stabilize and save it from extremists.’ Many others still believe the Nazi promises…..
Finally, there is a goodly number to whom the brown uniform is a part of business, especially since opposition to it spells economic suicide.

There are few Catholics, therefore who are fighting at present for a restoration of ecclesiastical political power. Even the arrests of priests for indiscreet utterances against the Nazi State as a rule have aroused little opposition, a perfectly good Catholic might be heard to remark, ‘Well, we’ve got to be quiet and so can they.’
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Significantly, the mass of the populace here has never even heard of the Neopagans who have caused such havoc in the ranks of the Protestants in the North.

If, therefore, the church should be compelled to fight it must select an issue which will put the struggle on a strictly religious basis….. The Nazis, however, with the clever tactics of ‘elastic’ attack and war of attrition have dodged the issue so far, which is their biggest success.
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Many Catholics believed the Nazi sterilization law such an issue because it is wholly contrary to church doctrine. But wiser heads of the church soon realized this issue could scarcely be discussed in public and not at all in church and school. [The context was faithful Christianity vs. pacifist prissy Christianity and the Neopaganism of the German Christians, those corrupted mainstream Protestants who had their own schism of the faithful in the Confessional Church.] Therefore a compromise was reached: the church obtained exemption of Catholics from active participation in administration of the law, but not from passive sufferance under the law. Catholic physicians and nurses in hospitals do not need to assist in sterilization operations but sterilization subjects, even when Catholics, must submit to temporal power….

A provision introduced into the penal code permitting euthanasia [mercy killings] under certain circumstances likewise is contrary to Catholic doctrine but not a decisive issue.

The closest approach to open conflict is the struggle over schools and youth organizations. The school conflict just beginning is still not clear as to its ultimate ramifications.
…..

(Nazis and Church Groping for Issue
The New York Times, Feb. 14, 1934, pg. 4
By Otto D. Tolischus)

Note what happened in the 1930s on the issue of the youth movement,

Later in the 1930s, the régime levelled similar accusations against the army Chief of Staff, Werner von Fritsch, who would not comply with nazi policies, against Catholic clerics in order to bring the Church into disrepute so that its influence in education and the youth movement would be reduced, and against branches of the independent youth movement. The pragmatic position of certain nazis in power seems evident from the fact that Röhm was not the only homosexual in the nazi movement, and that before his liquidation homosexuality seems to have been tacitly tolerated in the SA and the Hitler Youth.

......the nazi movement may have attracted some homosexual men because of its....anti-bourgeois doctrines, the male comradeship in an organization like the SA, and the glorification of masculinity, youth and physical prowess and beauty. According to some leaders of the German homosexual emancipation movement, several homosexuals supported nazism for these reasons and some were even affiliated with the Nazi Party, especially the SA and the Hitler Youth. Especially prior to, but also after 1934, nazi policy [on the criminality of homosexuality] was indeed characterized by inconsistency, probably due to a lack of consensus among the nazi leadership.

(Medicine, Male Bonding and Homosexuality in Nazi Germany
By Harry Oosterhuis
Journal of Contemporary History,
Vol. 32, No. 2. (Apr., 1997), :187-205)

It is possible to further delve into history on these issues. I did so some already here. It is projection or as Christ would put it, logs and specks.

"They judge, lest they be judged." --Karl Kraus

Some notes from Shirer in his magnum opus on the pattern of conflict between those who place the Body before Conscience. In that inversion, the Body politic will be placed before the Conscience of a nation, its Church. For the Body is born that way, so how could it be otherwise?

On July 25.... the German government promulgated a sterilization law, which particularly offended the Catholic Church. Five days later the first steps were taken to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. During the next years thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many of them on trumped-up charges of 'immorality' or of 'smuggling foreign currency.' Erich Klausner, leader of Catholic Action, was, as we have seen, murdered in the June 30, 1934, purge. Scores of Catholic publications were suppressed, and even the sanctity of the confessional was violated by Gestapo agents. By the spring of 1937 the Catholic hierarchy of Germany, which, like most of the Protestant clergy, had at first tried to co-operate with the new regimes was thorougly disillusioned. On March 14, 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical, "Mit Brennender Sorge" (With Burning Sorrow), charging the Nazi government with 'evasion' and 'violation' of the concordat [The socialist version of "separation of church and state" is not the same as the Founders.] and accusing it of sowing 'the tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church.' On 'the horizon of Germany' the Pope saw 'the threatening storm clouds of destructive religious wars....which have no other aim than....of extermination.

(The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:
A History of Nazi Germany
By William L. Shirer. (Simon and Schuster) 1990 :234-35)

A little prophecy there...I'm reminded of Karl Kraus saying that the "progress" so venerated by progressives will "...make purses of human skin." Or, perhaps lampshades and the like...

Pius also said that National Socialism was "...the arrogant apostasty from Jesus Christ, the denial of His doctrine and of His work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty and dignity." --Pope Pius XII Ib.

Some argue that the Church did not do enough. They are correct. Yet who else did anything at all? The professors were Hitler's professors or weak, the scientists, the same....but surely the journalists would generally be the defenders of Liberty? No.

"The Press created National Socialism." --Karl Kraus

Einstein noted,

Having always been an ardent partisan of freedom, I turned to the Universities, as soon as the revolution broke out in Germany, to find the Universities took refuge in silence. I then turned to the editors of powerful newspapers, who, but lately in flowing articles, had claimed to be champions of liberty. These men, as well as the Universities, were reduced to silence in a few weeks. I then addressed myself to the authors individually, to those who passed themselves off as the intellectual guides of Germany, and among whom many had frequently discussed the question of freedom and its place in modern life. They are in their turn very dumb.

Only the Church opposed the fight which Hitler was waging against liberty. Till then I had no interest in the Church, but now I feel great admiration and am truly attracted to the Church which had the persistent courage to fight for spiritual truth and moral freedom. I feel obliged to confess that I now admire what I used to consider of little value.

--Albert Einstein
(quoted in Ernst Christian Helmreich,
The German Churches Under Hitler: Backround,
Struggle, and Epilogue (Detriot:Wayne State Univ. Press, 1979) :345)

The problem is, the elites begin to tend to share the same foundation as the socialists and their heretical branch, the fascists. That foundation is some form of anti-spirit form of Naturalism. In modern times this has taken the form of Social Darwinism and in the wake of fascism, NeoDarwinism.