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7/17/2023 0 Comments July 17th, 2023 “Bolshevik Freedom,” Polish poster of Leon Trotsky.
Translation: “Bolsheviks promised, ‘We will give you room. We will give you freedom. We will give you land, work and bread.’ “Abjectly, they unleashed war against Poland. “Instead of freedom, they gave fists. Instead of land, requisitions. Instead of work, misery. Instead of bread, hunger."
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7/17/2023 0 Comments July 17th, 2023 Salvador Huerta Gutiérrez was arrested on April 2, 1927, after he went to the cemetery to pay respects to the the remains of Anacleto González, a well-known Catholic leader martyred during the period of Catholic persecution in Mexico.
When he returned to his mechanical workshop, police officers were waiting for him. They arrested him and then tortured him by hanging him by his thumbs. His torturers wanted to know the whereabouts of two priests: Eduardo and José Refugio. Lifeless, they threw him in a dungeon. In the early hours of April 3, he was led, along with his brother Ezequiel, to the Mezquitan pantheon. Before the firing squad, he asked for a lighted candle, illuminated his bare chest and said: "Viva Cristo Rey y la Virgen de Guadalupe! Shoot! I die for God, whom I love very much!" 7/16/2023 0 Comments July 16th, 2023 Transported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Czeslawa Kwoka - a 14-year-old girl - was killed by the German Socialists with a phenol injection to her heart, on March 12, 1943, for no other reason than she was a Catholic, ethnic Pole.
7/16/2023 0 Comments July 16th, 2023 Active in the Catholic Association of Mexican Youth and the nocturnal adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Luis Magaña Servin was arrested for his Catholic activities during the Cristero War.
Before his execution, at 3 in the afternoon of February 9, 1928, the young, married, father of two shouted: "Viva Cristo Rey y Santa Maria de Guadalupe!" 7/15/2023 0 Comments July 15th, 2023
On July 25, 1931, at 6: 10 p.m., soldiers entered the Parish of the Assumption Catholic Church, in Veracruz, and opened fire on the priests.
Father Ángel Darío Acosta Zurita had just stepped out of the baptistry when he was hit by the bullets, having only the time to cry out "Jesus!" 7/14/2023 0 Comments July 14th, 2023 Then-Bishop Clemens August von Galen, the Lion of Munster, roared against Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party as they persecuted and exterminated the innocent and vulnerable.
THIRD SERMON: The Persecution of Catholics and the Murder of Unproductive Persons To my regret I have to inform you that during the past week the Gestapo has continued its campaign of annihilation against the Catholic orders. On Wednesday, July 30, they occupied the administrative center of the province of the Sisters of Our Lady in Mühlhausen [Kempen district], which formerly belonged to the diocese of Münster, and declared the convent to be dissolved. Most of the nuns, many of whom come from our diocese, were evicted and required to leave the district that very day. On Thursday, July 31, according to reliable accounts, the monastery of the missionary brothers of Hiltrup in Hamm was also occupied and confiscated by the Gestapo and the monks were evicted. Already on July 13, referring to the expulsion of the Jesuits and the missionary sisters of St Clare from Münster, did I publicly make the following statement in this same church: None of the occupants of these convents is accused of any offence or crime, none has been brought before a court, none has been found guilty. I hear that rumors are now being spread in Münster that after all these religious, in particular the Jesuits, have been accused, or even convicted, of criminal offences, and indeed of treason. I declare: These are base slanders of German citizens, our brothers and sisters, which we will not tolerate. I have already lodged a criminal charge with the Chief Prosecutor against a fellow who went so far as to make such allegations in front of witnesses. I express the expectation that the man will be brought swiftly to account and that our courts of justice still have the courage to punish slanderers who seek to destroy the honor of innocent German citizens whose property has already been taken from them. I call on all my listeners, indeed on all decent fellow-citizens, who in future hear accusations made against the religious expelled from Münster to get the name and address of the person making the accusations and of any witnesses. I hope that there are still men in Münster who have the courage to play their part in securing the judicial examination of such accusations, which poison the national community of our people, by coming forward with their person, their name and if necessary their oath. I ask them, if such accusations against the religious are made in their presence, to report them at once to their parish priest or to the Episcopal Vicariate-General and have them recorded. I owe it to the honor of our religious orders, the honor of our Catholic Church and also the honor of our German people and our city of Münster to report such cases to the state prosecution service so that the facts may be established by a court and base slanderers of our religious punished. [Gospel reading for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost: "And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it ...", Luke 19,41- 47] My dear diocesans, it is a deeply moving event that we read of in the Gospel for today. Jesus weeps. The Son of God weeps! A man who weeps is suffering pain, pain either of the body or of the heart. Jesus did not suffer in the body; and yet he wept. How great must have been the sorrow of soul, the heartfelt pain of this most courageous of men to make him weep. Why did he weep? He wept for Jerusalem, for God's holy city that was so dear to him, the capital of his people. He wept for its inhabitants, his fellow-countrymen, because they refused to recognize the only thing that could avert the judgment foreseen by his omniscience and determined in advance by his divine justice: "If thou hadst known ... the things which belong unto thy peace!" Why do the inhabitants of Jerusalem not know it? Not long before Jesus had given voice to it: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" (Luke 13,34). Ye would not. I, your King, your God, I would. But ye would not! How safe, how sheltered is the chicken under the hen's wing; she warms it, she feeds it, she defends it. In the same way I desired to protect you, to keep you, to defend you against any ill. I would, but ye would not. That is why Jesus weeps; that is why that strong man weeps; that is why God weeps. For the folly, the injustice, the crime of not be willing and for the evil to which that gives rise, which his omniscience sees coming, which his justice must impose, if man sets his unwillingness against God's commands, in opposition to the admonitions of conscience, and all the loving invitations of the divine Friend, the best of Fathers: "If thou hadst known, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But thou wouldst not!" It is something terrible, something incredibly wrong and fatal, when man sets his will against God's will. I would. Thou wouldst not. It is therefore that Jesus weeps for Jerusalem. Dearly beloved Christians, the joint pastoral letter of the German bishops, which was read in all Catholic churches in Germany on June 26, 1941, includes the following words: It is true that in Catholic ethics there are certain positive commandments which cease to be obligatory if their observance would be attended by unduly great difficulties; but there are also sacred obligations of conscience from which no one can release us, which we must carry out even if it should cost us our life. Never, under any circumstances, may a man, save in war or in legitimate self-defense, kill an innocent person. I had occasion on July 6 to add the following comments on this passage in the joint pastoral letter: For some months, we have been hearing reports that inmates of establishments for the care of the mentally ill who have been ill for a long period and perhaps appear incurable have been forcibly removed from these establishments on orders from Berlin. Regularly the relatives receive soon afterwards an intimation that the patient is dead, that the patient's body has been cremated and that they can collect the ashes. There is a general suspicion, verging on certainty, that these numerous unexpected deaths of the mentally ill do not occur naturally but are intentionally brought about, in accordance with the doctrine that it is legitimate to destroy a so-called "worthless life," in other words to kill innocent men and women, if it is thought that their lives are of no further value to the people and the state. A terrible doctrine which seeks to justify the murder of innocent people, which legitimizes the violent killing of disabled persons who are no longer capable of work, of cripples, the incurably ill and the aged and infirm! I am reliably informed that in hospitals and homes in the province of Westphalia lists are being prepared of inmates who are classified as "unproductive members of the national community" and are to be removed from these establishments and shortly thereafter killed. The first party of patients left the mental hospital at Marienthal, near Münster, in the course of this week. German men and women! Article 211 of the German Penal Code is still in force, in these terms: Whoever kills a man of deliberate intent is guilty of murder and punishable with death. No doubt in order to protect those who kill with intent these poor men and women, members of our families, from this punishment laid down by law, the patients who have been selected for killing are removed from their home area to some distant place. Some illness or other is then given as the cause of death. Since the body is immediately cremated, the relatives and the criminal police are unable to establish whether the patient had in fact been ill or what the cause of death actually was. I have been assured, however, that in the Ministry of the Interior and the office of the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Conti, no secret is made of the fact that indeed a large number of mentally ill persons in Germany have already been killed with intent and that this will continue. Article 139 of the Penal Code provides that "anyone who has knowledge of an intention to commit a crime against the life of any person [...] and fails to inform the authorities or the person whose life is threatened in due time [...] commits a punishable offence". When I learned of the intention to remove patients from Marienthal, I reported the matter on July 28 to the State Prosecutor of Münster Provincial Court and to the Münster chief of police by registered letter, in the following terms: According to information I have received, it is planned in the course of this week, the date has been mentioned as July 31, to move a large number of inmates of the provincial hospital at Marienthal, classified as "unproductive members of the national community," to the mental hospital at Eichberg, where, as is generally believed to have happened in the case of patients removed from other establishments, they are to be killed with intent. Since such action is not only contrary to the divine and the natural moral law but under article 211 of the German Penal Code ranks as murder and attracts the death penalty, I hereby report the matter in accordance with my obligation under article 139 of the Penal Code and request that steps should at once be taken to protect the patients concerned by proceedings against the authorities planning their removal and murder, and that I may be informed of the action taken. I have received no information of any action by the State Prosecutor or the police. I had already written on July 26 to the Westphalian provincial authorities, who are responsible for the running of the mental hospital and for the patients entrusted to them for care and for cure, protesting in the strongest terms. It had no effect. The first transport of the innocent victims under sentence of death has left Marienthal. And I am now told that 800 patients have already been removed from the hospital at Warstein. We must expect, therefore, that the poor defenseless patients are, sooner or later, going to be killed. Why? Not because they have committed any offence justifying their death; not because, for example, they have attacked a nurse or attendant, who would be entitled in legitimate self-defense to meet violence with violence. In such a case the use of violence leading to death is permitted and may be called for, as it is in the case of killing an armed enemy. No, these unfortunate patients are to die, not for some such reason as this but because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become "unworthy to live," because they are classed as "unproductive members of the national community." The judgment is that they can no longer produce any goods. They are like an old piece of machinery which no longer works, like an old horse which has become incurably lame, like a cow which no longer gives any milk. What happens to an old piece of machinery? It is thrown on the scrapheap. What happens to a lame horse, an unproductive cow? I will not pursue the comparison to the end — so fearful is its appropriateness and its illuminating power. But we are not here concerned with pieces of machinery, we are not dealing with horses and cows, whose sole function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for mankind. They may be broken up, they may be slaughtered when they no longer perform this function. No, we are concerned with men and women, our fellow creatures, our brothers and sisters; poor human beings, ill human beings, they are unproductive, if you will. But does that mean that they have lost the right to live? Have you, have I, the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive? If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill "unproductive" fellowmen, even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenseless mentally ill patients, then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women — the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive. Then it will require only a secret order to be issued that the procedure which has been tried and tested with the mentally ill should be extended to other "unproductive" persons, that it should also be applied to those suffering from incurable tuberculosis, the aged and infirm, persons disabled in industry, soldiers with disabling injuries. Then no man will be safe. Some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of "unproductive" persons, who in their judgment have become "unworthy to live". And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice. Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice. Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, "Thou shalt not kill", which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man's conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished! I will give you an example of what is happening. One of the patients in Marienthal was a man of 55, a farmer from a country parish in the Münster region — I could give you his name — who has suffered for some years from mental disturbance and was therefore admitted to Marienthal hospital. He was not mentally ill in the full sense. He could receive visits and was always happy, when his relatives came to see him. Only a fortnight ago he was visited by his wife and one of his sons, a soldier on home leave from the front. The son is much attached to his father, and the parting was a sad one. No one can tell, whether the soldier will return and see his father again, since he may fall in battle for his country. The son, the soldier, will certainly never again see his father on earth, for he has since then been put on the list of the "unproductive." A relative, who wanted to visit the father this week in Marienthal, was turned away with the information that the patient had been transferred elsewhere on the instructions of the Council of State for National Defense. No information could be given about where he had been sent, but the relatives would be informed within a few days. What information will they be given? The same as in other cases of the kind? That the man has died, that his body has been cremated, that the ashes will be handed over on payment of a fee? Then the soldier, risking his life in the field for his fellow-countrymen, will not see his father again on earth, because fellow countrymen at home have killed him. The facts I have stated are firmly established. I can give the names of the patient, his wife and his son the soldier, and the place where they live. "Thou shalt not kill!" God wrote this commandment in the conscience of man long before any penal code laid down the penalty for murder, long before there was any prosecutor or any court to investigate and avenge a murder. Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was a murderer long before there were any states or any courts of law. And he confessed his deed, driven by his accusing conscience: My punishment is greater than I can bear ... and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me the murderer shall slay me. (Genesis 4,13-14) "Thou shalt not kill!" This commandment from God, who alone has power to decide on life or death, was written in the hearts of men from the beginning, long before God gave the children of Israel on Mount Sinai his moral code in those lapidary sentences inscribed on stone which are recorded for us in Holy Scripture and which as children we learned by heart in the catechism. "I am the Lord thy God!" Thus begins this immutable law. "Thou shalt have not other gods before me." God, the only God, transcendent, almighty, omniscient, infinitely holy and just, our Creator and future Judge, has given us these commandments. Out of love for us he wrote these commandments in our heart and proclaimed them to us. For they meet the need of our God-created nature; they are the indispensable norms for all rational, godly, redeeming and holy individual and community life. With these commandments God, our Father, seeks to gather us, His children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. If we follow these commands, these invitations, this call from God, then we shall be guarded and protected and preserved from harm, defended against threatening death and destruction like the chickens under the hen's wings. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Is this to come about again in our country of Germany, in our province of Westphalia, in our city of Münster? How far are the divine commandments now obeyed in Germany, how far are they obeyed here in our community?
In accordance with all this men may indeed seek to arrogate to themselves divine attributes, to make themselves lords over the life and death of their fellow-men. When Jesus came near to Jerusalem and beheld the city he wept over it, saying: If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies [...] shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. Looking with his bodily eyes, Jesus saw only the walls and towers of the city of Jerusalem, but the divine omniscience looked deeper and saw how matters stood within the city and its inhabitants: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem [...] how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! That is the great sorrow that oppresses Jesus' heart, that brings tears to his eyes. I wanted to act for your good, but ye would not. Jesus saw how sinful, how terrible, how criminal, how disastrous this unwillingness is. Little man, that frail creature, sets his created will against the will of God. Jerusalem and its inhabitants, His chosen and favored people, set their will against God's will. Foolishly and criminally, they defy the will of God. And so Jesus weeps over the heinous sin and the inevitable punishment. God is not mocked, Christians of Münster! Did the Son of God in his omniscience in that day see only Jerusalem and its people? Did he weep only over Jerusalem? Is the people of Israel the only people whom God has encompassed and protected with a father's care and mother's love, has drawn to Himself? Is it the only people that would not? The only one that rejected God's truth, that threw off God's law and so condemned itself to ruin? Did Jesus, the omniscient God, also see in that day our German people, our land of Westphalia, our region of Münster, the Lower Rhineland? Did he also weep over us? Over Münster? For a thousand years he has instructed our forefathers and us in his truth, guided us with his law, nourished us with his grace, gathered us together as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. Did the omniscient Son of God see in that day that in our time he must also pronounce this judgment on us: "Ye would not: see, your house will be laid waste!" How terrible that would be! My Christians, I hope there is still time; but then indeed it is high time: That we may realize, in this our day, the things that belong unto our peace. That we may realize what alone can save us, can preserve us from the divine judgment: that we should take, without reservation, the divine commandments as the guiding rule of our lives and act in sober earnest according to the words: "Rather die than sin." That in prayer and sincere penitence we should beg that God's forgiveness and mercy may descend upon us, upon our city, our country, and our beloved German people. But with those who continue to provoke God's judgment, who blaspheme our faith, who scorn God's commandments, who make common cause with those who alienate our young people from Christianity, who rob and banish our religious, who bring about the death of innocent men and women, our brothers and sisters, with all those we will avoid any confidential relationship, we will keep ourselves and our families out of reach of their influence, lest we become infected with their godless ways of thinking and acting, lest we become partakers in their guilt and thus liable to the judgment which a just God must and will inflict on all those who, like the ungrateful city of Jerusalem, do not will what God wills. O God, make us all know, in this our day, before it is too late, the things which belong to our peace! O most sacred heart of Jesus, grieved to tears at the blindness and iniquities of men, help us through Thy grace, that we may always strive after that which is pleasing to Thee and renounce that which displeases Thee, that we may remain in Thy love and find peace for our souls! Amen. 7/14/2023 0 Comments July 14th, 2023A one-time Revolutionary, General Manuel Reyes Nava joined the Cristero War, in 1927, during the anti-Catholic persecution in pro-Communist, anti-Christian Mexico, when Catholicism was outlawed and countless Catholics were killed. Not long after, he was taken prisoner, in Toluca, and shot by a firing squad, on August 21, 1927.     7/13/2023 0 Comments July 13th, 2023 Socialists believe in confiscation of private land and personal property so the State can redistribute to politically correct citizens.
Those stolen from are often targeted as political enemies (for no other reason than they have what the government wants). Often, they are arrested, imprisoned, killed. Such was the fate of Katarzyna Kwoka and her daughter Czeslawa Kwoka, at the hands of the National Socialists. On September 1, 1939, Hitler's death troops invaded Poland for land, because Hitler fear-mongered that the German population would outgrow its food source in Germany and needed to conquer new lands for more agricultural land. One targeted location for a German colony was the Zamość region of Poland, where the Kwoka family lived, and because of that, the Kwokas were deemed political prisoners, arrested and loaded onto a cattle car. Catholic faithful, Katarzyna Kwoka and her daughter Czeslawa arrived at Auschwitz, on December 13, 1942, with 318 women. Katarzyna Kwoka was renamed prisoner number 26946, and two months later, she died, on February 18, 1943. Her daughter died the following month, on March 12. None of the extreme actions by the National Socialists, an extreme left-wing Socialist party, should have surprised anyone, as Hitler, himself, outlined his plans, in very plain writing, in his 25 Point Program. Here are only a few of Hitler's points: 3. We demand land and territory for the nourishment of our people and for settling our superfluous population. 13. We demand nationalization of all businesses, which have been up to the present formed into companies. 17. We demand land-reform suitable to our national requirements, passing of a law for confiscation without compensation of land for communal purposes; abolition of interest on land loans, and prevention al all speculation in land. 7/13/2023 0 Comments July 13th, 2023 Cristeros killed, executed by the firing squad for their Catholic Faith.
During the pro-Communist, anti-Catholic Mexican government persecution of the Church, countless faithful were martyred and 4,000 priests were martyred or exiled from Mexico for offering the outlawed holy sacrifice of the Mass. Photo: "Shot by General A. Lopez in Trancoso, Zacatecas, 6-7-27" 7/12/2023 0 Comments July 12th, 2023 National Socialist Adolf Hitler announced in the Obersalzberg speech: "And so for the present only in the East I have put my death-head formations in place with the command relentlessly and without compassion to send into death many women and children of Polish origin and language. Only thus we can gain the living space [lebensraum] that we need." And that was exactly what he did. On September 1, 1939, Hitler's troops invaded Poland for land, because Hitler threatened that the German population would outgrow its food source in Germany and needed to conquer new lands for more agricultural land. Czeslawa Kwoka was a Catholic girl, from the Wolka Zlojecka village, in the Zamość region of Poland. She was born in 1928, on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Because Czeslawa Kwoka and her family lived in Zamość, she and the others were deemed political enemies for living in Zamość, the location of a future German colony. Along with her mother, she was deported and transported from Zamość, Poland, to Auschwitz, on December 13, 1942, where the teenage girl was renamed Number 26947. In the photo, the cuts on her lips resulted from a beating delivered by a Kapo who delivered the blows because the girl did not speak German; the Polish language had been outlawed in 1939. On March 12, 1943, Czesława Kwoka died at the age of 14. 7/12/2023 0 Comments July 12th, 2023 SECOND SERMON of then-Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, the Lion of Munster, on July 20, 1941, in which he bravely, dangerously criticized the Nazis and Hitler: Today the collection which I ordered for the inhabitants of the city of Münster is held in all the parishes in the diocese of Münster which have not themselves suffered war damage. I hope that through the efforts of the state and municipal authorities responsible and the brotherly help of the Catholics of this diocese, whose contributions will be administered and distributed by the offices of the Caritas, much need will be alleviated. Thanks be to God, for several days our city has not suffered any new enemy attacks from without. But I am distressed to have to inform you that the attacks by our opponents within the country, of the beginning of which I spoke last Sunday in St. Lambert's, that these attacks have continued, regardless of our protests, regardless of the anguish this causes to the victims of the attacks and those connected with them. Last Sunday I lamented, and branded as an injustice crying out to heaven, the action of the Gestapo in closing the convent in Wilkinghege and the Jesuit residences in Münster, confiscating their property and possessions, putting the occupants into the street and expelling them from their home area. The convent of Our Lady of Lourdes in Frauenstrasse was also seized by the gau [district]authorities. I did not then know that on the same day, Sunday, July 13, the Gestapo had occupied the Kamilluskolleg in Sudmühle and the Benedictine abbey of Gerleve near Coesfeld and expelled the fathers and lay brothers. They were forced to leave Westphalia that very day. On July 15, the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Vinnenberg, near Warendorf, were expelled from their convent and from the province. On July 17, the Sisters of the Cross were driven out of their convent, Haus Aspel in Rees, and forced to leave the district of Rees. Had not Christian love shown compassion for all these homeless ones, these men and women would have been exposed to hunger and the rigors of the weather. Then, a few hours ago, I learned the sad news that yesterday, July 19, at the end of this second terrible week in our region of Münster, the Gestapo occupied, confiscated, and expropriated the administrative center of the German province of the Holy Heart of Jesus, the great missionary house at Hiltrup, which is well known to you all. The fathers and lay brothers still living there were given until 8 o'clock yesterday evening to leave their residence and their possessions. They too are expelled from Westphalia and the province of Rhineland. The fathers and lay brothers still living there, I do emphasize these words, for, as I happened to learn recently, 161 men from the ranks of the Hiltrup missionaries are serving as German soldiers in the field, some of them directly in face of the enemy; 53 fathers are caring for the wounded as medical orderlies, and 42 theologians and 66 lay brothers are serving their country as soldiers, some having been decorated with the Iron Cross and other distinctions. The same can be said of the Kamillus fathers of Sudmühle, the Jesuits of Sentmaring and the Benedictines of Gerleve. While these German men are fighting for their country in accordance with their duty and in loyal comradeship with other German brothers at the risk of their lives, they are being deprived, ruthlessly and without any basis in law, of their home, their parent monastery is being destroyed. When, as we hope, they return victorious they will find their monastic family driven from house and home, and their home occupied by strangers, by enemies! How is this going to end? It is not a question of providing temporary accommodation for homeless inhabitants of Münster. The religious orders were very ready to reduce their own accommodation requirements to the minimum in order to take in and care immediately for those made homeless. No, that was not the reason. I have heard that the convent of the Immaculate Conception in Wilkinghege is occupied by the gau film unit. I am told that a maternity home for unmarried mothers is installed in the Benedictine abbey. I have not yet learned what is happening to Sentmaring, Sudmühle, and Vinnenberg. And no newspaper has so far carried any account of the safe victories won by the Gestapo in recent days over defenseless men and unprotected women, of the conquests made at home by the gau authorities of the property of fellow Germans. On Monday, July 14, I called on the President of the Regional Council and asked for protection for the freedom and property of innocent German citizens. He told me that the Gestapo was a completely independent authority with whose actions he could not interfere. He promised, however, that he would at once convey my complaints and my requests to the Senior President and Gauleiter, Dr. Meyer. To no avail. On the same day, I sent a telegram to the Führer's Chancellery of the Reich in Berlin, in the following terms: After a series of terrible nightly air attacks form July 6 onwards, in which the enemy has sought to destroy the city of Münster, the Gestapo began on July 12 to seize religious houses in the city and surrounding area and to make them over, along with their contents, to the gau authorities. The occupants, innocent men and women, honorable members of German families, whose relatives are fighting for Germany as soldiers, are robbed of their homes and possessions, thrown into the street, driven out of the province. I ask the Führer and Reichskanzler, in the interest of justice and the solidarity of the home front, for the protection of the freedom and property of these honorable German men and women against the arbitrary actions of the Gestapo. I addressed similar requests by telegram to the Governor of Prussia, Marshal Göring, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, and the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht. I hoped that, if not considerations of justice, at any rate a recognition of the consequences for the solidarity of the home front in wartime would move these authorities to put a stop to the action taken by the Gestapo against our brothers and sisters, and that innocent German women would not be refused chivalrous protection. It was a vain hope. The action continued, and the situation which I had long foreseen and of which I spoke last Sunday has now come to pass — we are faced with the ruins of the inner national community of our people, which in the last few days has been ruthlessly shattered. I urgently pointed out to the President of the Regional Council, the ministers and the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, that these acts of violence against blameless German men and this brutal treatment of defenseless German women, which make a mockery of all chivalry and can arise only from deep-seated hatred of the Christian religion and the Catholic Church, that these machinations are sabotaging and destroying the national community of our people. For how can there be any feeling of community with the men who are driving our religious, our brothers and sisters, as easy victims out of the country, without any basis in law, without any investigations, without any possibility of defense and without any judgment by a court? No, with them and with all those responsible for these actions I cannot possibly have any community of thought or feeling. I shall not hate them; I wish from my heart that they may gain a new insight and mend their ways. In this spirit I also at once said a prayer for the soul of Ministerialdirigent [Assitant Secretary] Roth, who died suddenly on July 5. He was a Catholic priest, originally in the archdiocese of Munich, who worked for years, without the permission and against the will of the bishop, as an official in the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs, composing and signing many documents which encroached on the Church's rights and injured the Church's dignity. And now he has been drowned during a boat trip on the river Inn. May God have mercy upon his poor soul! Thus, in accordance with our Savior's command, we will pray for all who persecute us and slander us. But as long as they do not change, as long as they continue to rob and banish and imprison innocent people, so long do I refuse any community with them. No, the community of convictions and aspirations in our people has been irreparably destroyed, against our will and regardless of our warnings. I cannot believe that our long-established citizenry and farmers, craftsmen, and workers, that our women, that our fathers and brothers and sons, who even now are risking their lives for Germany at the front, can have any community of convictions with those who have persecuted and turned out our religious orders. We shall obey them in so far as they are entitled to give us orders as representatives of the lawful authorities. But it must be impossible for us to have a community of convictions, a sense of inner solidarity, with these persecutors of the Church, these invaders of religious houses, who expel defenseless women from their convents, the children of our best families, our sisters, many of whom have lived there for decades in work and prayer, doing nothing but good for our people. I should feel ashamed before God and before you, I should feel ashamed before our noble German forefathers, before my own late father, who was a chivalrous man and brought up, admonished and taught my brothers and me sternly to show the most delicate respect to every woman or girl, to afford chivalrous protection to all the unjustly oppressed, particularly to women as the images of our own mothers, and of the beloved Mother of God herself in heaven, if I had any community with those who drive innocent and defenseless women out of house and home and drive them out of their country without shelter and without resources! Moreover, as I showed last Sunday in St Lambert's church and as I must repeat today with great solemnity, in a warning inspired by love for my people and my country, that these punitive actions by the Gestapo against innocent people, without any judgment by a court or judicial proceedings or opportunity for defense — the "prosecution of accused persons who are condemned in advance and deprived of any means of defense", in Reichsminister Dr Frank's words — destroy men's security under the law, undermine faith in law and destroy confidence in the government of our country. We Christians, of course, are not aiming at revolution. We shall continue loyally to do our duty in obedience to God and in love of our people and fatherland. Our soldiers will fight and die for Germany, but not for those men who by their cruel actions against our religious, against their brothers and sisters, wound our hearts and shame the German name before God and men. We shall continue to fight against the external enemy; but against the enemy within, who strikes us and torments us, we cannot fight with arms. Against him we have only one weapon: endurance - strong, tough, hard endurance. Become hard! Remain firm! We see and experience clearly what lies behind the new doctrines which have for years been forced on us, for the sake of which religion has been banned from the schools, our organizations have been suppressed and now Catholic kindergartens are about to be abolished. There is a deep-seated hatred of Christianity, which they are determined to destroy. If I am correctly informed, the Schulungsleiter [head of indoctrination], Herr Schmidt, before an audience which had been invited by force and which included schoolboys and schoolgirls, expressed this quite frankly. And district leader Mieling applauded him enthusiastically, expressing his intention to exert himself for the execution of such plans. Become hard! Remain firm! At this moment we are the anvil rather than the hammer. Other men, mostly strangers and renegades, are hammering us, seeking by violent means to bend our nation, ourselves and our young people aside from their straight relationship with God. We are the anvil and not the hammer. But ask the blacksmith and hear what he says: the object which is forged on the anvil receives its form not alone from the hammer but also from the anvil. The anvil cannot and need not strike back. It must only be firm, only hard! If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard the anvil usually lasts longer than the hammer. However hard the hammer strikes, the anvil stands quietly and firmly in place and will long continue to shape the objects forged upon it. The anvil represents those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who are driven out and banished for no fault of their own. God will support them, that they may not lose the form and attitude of Christian firmness, when the hammer of persecution strikes its harsh blows and inflicts unmerited wounds on them. It is our religious, the fathers, lay brothers, and the sisters, who are now forged on the anvil. The day before yesterday, I was able to visit some of those who had been driven out in their temporary accommodation and to speak with them. I was greatly edified and encouraged by the valiant bearing of the good men and the weak and defenseless women, who had been so ruthlessly torn from their convent, from the chapel, from the vicinity of the tabernacle, and who are now going into unjust banishment with their heads held high, in the consciousness of their innocence, trusting in Him who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field and even joyous in the joy which the Savior enjoins on His disciples: Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. Verily, these men and women are masterpieces of God's forging. What is being forged in these days between the hammer and the anvil are our young people — the new generation, which is still unformed, still capable of being shaped, still malleable. We cannot shield them from the hammer blows of unbelief, of hostility to Christianity, of false doctrines and ethics. What is instilled into them at the meetings of those youth organizations, which we are told they joined voluntarily and with the agreement of their parents? What do they hear in the schools which the children are compelled to attend without regard to the wishes of their parents? What do they read in the new schoolbooks? Christian parents, ask your children to show you these books, particularly the history books used in the secondary schools. You will be appalled to see how these books, in complete disregard of historical truth, seek to fill inexperienced children with mistrust of Christianity and the Church, indeed with hatred of the Christian faith. In the favored state educational establishments, the Hitler schools, the new teachers' training schools, all Christian influence and even all religious activity are excluded as a matter of principle. And what is happening to the children who were sent last spring to remote parts of the country to escape the air raids? What religious instruction are they getting? How far can they practice their religion? Christian parents, you must concern yourselves with all this. If you do not, you are neglecting your sacred duties. If you do not, you cannot face your own conscience, nor Him who entrusted the children to you that you might lead them on the way to heaven. We are the anvil, not the hammer. Unfortunately you cannot shield your children, the noble but still untempered crude metal, from the hammer blows of hostility to the faith and hostility to the Church. But the anvil also plays a part in forging. Let your family home, your parental love and devotion, your exemplary Christian life be the strong, tough, firm, and unbreakable anvil which absorbs the force of the hostile blows, which continually strengthens and fortifies the still weak powers of the young in the sacred resolve not to let themselves be diverted from the direction that leads to God. It is we, almost without exception, who are forged in this present time. How many people are dependent — on an occupational pension, on a state pension, on children's allowances and so on. Who nowadays is still independent, unrestricted master in his own property or business? It may be that, particularly in time of war, strict control and guidance, even the concentration and compulsory direction of products, of production and consumption, is necessary, and who will not readily bear this out of love for his people and his country? But through this follows dependence on many persons and authorities, who not only restrict freedom of action but also bring free independence of sentiments and convictions into grave danger and temptation, as soon as, at the same time, these persons and authorities represent an ideology hostile to Christianity, which they seek to impose on those who are dependent on them. Dependence of this kind is most evident in officials; and what courage, what heroic courage is required of those officials who in spite of all pressure maintain and publicly confess their faith as Christians, as true Catholics. At this present time we are the anvil, not the hammer. Remain steadfast and firm like the anvil receiving all the blows that rain down on us, in loyal service to our people and country, but also ready at any time to act, in the spirit of supreme sacrifice, in accordance with the precept: "Men must obey God more than men." Through a conscience formed by faith God speaks to each one of us. Obey always without any doubt the voice of conscience. Take as your model the old Prussian minister of justice, I have spoken of him before, who was ordered by King Frederick the Great to overturn and alter in accordance with the monarch's wishes a judgment which he had pronounced in accordance with the law. Then this true nobleman, a certain Herr von Münchhausen, gave his king this magnificent answer: "My head is at your majesty's disposal, but not my conscience." Thus he wanted to say: I am ready to die for my king; indeed I am obedient to him and shall even accept death at the hands of the hangman. My life belongs to the king, not my conscience, that belongs to God! Is the race of such noblemen, who have this attitude and act in accordance with it, are Prussian officials of this stamp now extinct? Are there no longer any citizens or country people, craftsmen or workers of similar mind? Of similar conscientiousness and nobility of mind? That I cannot and will not believe. And so I say once again: become hard, remain firm, remain steadfast! Like the anvil under the blows of the hammer. It may be that obedience to our God and faithfulness to our conscience may cost me or any of you life, freedom, or home. But: "Better to die than to sin!" May the grace of God, without which we can do nothing, grant this unshakeable firmness to you and to me and keep us in it. My dear Catholics of Münster, after a bomb had crashed through the aisle of the Cathedral during the night of July 7-8, another bomb hit the outer wall and destroyed St Ludger's Fountain, the monument to the return from banishment of Bishop Johann Bernhard in 1884. The statues of Bishops Suitger and Erpho flanking the monument were badly damaged, but the figure of St. Ludger, apostle of the Münster region and first Bishop of Münster, remained almost unscathed. The undamaged right hand is raised in blessing and pointing to heaven, as if to convey to us through the almost miraculous preservation of the statue this admonition: Whatever may befall, hold firm to the Catholic faith that was revealed by God and handed down by our forefathers. In all the destruction of the works of man, in all trouble and sorrow I address to you the words which the first Pope addressed to the oppressed Christians of his day: Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about [...] whom resist steadfast in the faith [...] the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. (1 Peter 5,6-11) Let us pray for the banished religious orders, for all who must suffer unjustly, for all in trouble, for our soldiers, for Münster and its inhabitants, for our people and country and for its leader. 7/12/2023 0 Comments July 12th, 2023This was the final Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in San Francisco de Asis, Jalisco, just before the outbreak of the Cristero War (1926–29), a struggle by the faithful against the anti-Catholic, pro-Communist policies of the Mexican government, which enacted, under President Plutarco Elías Calles, a statute to enforce the anti-clerical articles of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which sought to eliminate the power of the Catholic Church.  7/11/2023 0 Comments July 11th, 2023 FIRST SERMON of then-Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, the Lion of Munster, against the NAZIs, July 13, 1941:
My dear Catholics of St. Lambert's: I have longed to read personally from the pulpit of this church today my pastoral letter on the events of the past week and in particular to express to you, my former parishioners, my deep-felt sympathy. In some part of the city, the devastation and loss have been particularly great. I hope that by the action of the municipal and government authorities responsible, and above all by your brotherly love and the collections taken today for the work of the Caritas Union and the Parish Caritas, some of the hardship and suffering will be relieved. I had in mind also, however, to add a brief word on the meaning of the divine visitation: how God thus seeks us in order to lead us home to Him. God wants to lead Münster home to Him. How much at home were our forefathers with God and in God’s Holy Church! How thoroughly were their lives — their public life, their family life, and even their commercial life — supported by faith in God, directed by the holy fear of God and by the love of God! Has it always been like that in our own day? God wants to lead Münster home to Him! Concerning this I had meant to put some further reflections before you. But this I cannot do today, for I find myself compelled to openly and in public speak of something else — a shattering event which came upon us yesterday, at the end of this week of calamity. The whole of Münster is still suffering from the shock of the horrible devastation inflicted on us by the enemy from without during the past week. Then yesterday, at the end of this week — yesterday, July 12 — the Gestapo [German short for Geheime Staatspolizei, in English: State Secret Police] confiscated the two residences of the Society of Jesus in our city, Haus Sentmaring in the Weseler Strasse and the Ignatius-Haus in Königstrasse, expelled the occupants from their property, and forced the fathers and lay brothers to depart without delay on that very day, not merely from their residences, not merely from the city of Münster but from the provinces of Westphalia and the Rhineland. Yesterday, too, the same cruel fate was inflicted on the missionary sisters of the Immaculate Conception in Steinfurter Strasse, Wilkinghege. Even their convent was seized and the nuns are being expelled from Westphalia. They have to leave Münster by 6 o'clock this evening. The premises and possessions of these religious orders are confiscated and assigned to the authorities of the gau [district] of Northern Westphalia. Thus the attack on the religious orders which has long been raging in Austria, South Germany, and the newly acquired territories of the Warthegau, Luxembourg, Lorraine, and other parts of the Reich, has now stricken Westphalia. We must be prepared that in the near future such terrifying news will accumulate — that even here one religious house after another will be confiscated by the Gestapo and that its occupants, our brothers and sisters, children of our families, loyal German citizens, will be thrown on to the street like outlawed helots and hunted out of the country, like vermin. And this is happening at a time when we are in utmost fear and terror of further nightly air-raids which may kill us all or make us homeless refugees! Even at such a time innocent and deserving men and women, who are greatly esteemed by countless people, are expelled from their humble possessions; at such a time fellow Germans, fellow-citizens of Münster, are made homeless refugees. Why? They tell me, "for reasons of state policy." No other reasons have been given. No occupant of these religious houses has been accused of any offence or crime. Not one has been brought before a court, still less found guilty. If any one of them were guilty, let him be brought to justice; but is one also to punish the innocent? I ask you, under whose eyes the Jesuit fathers and the sisters of the Immaculate Conception for many years have been leading their quiet lives dedicated solely to the glory of God and the salvation of their fellow-men, I ask you: who holds these men and women to be guilty of an offence meriting punishment? Who dares to level any charge against them? If any dare, let him prove his assertion! Not even the Gestapo has made any such charge, let alone a court or the public prosecutor. Here I testify publicly, as the bishop who is responsible for the supervision of the religious orders, that I have the greatest respect for the quiet, humble missionary sisters of Wilkinghege who are being expelled today. They have been founded by my esteemed friend Bishop P. Amandus Bahlmann, mainly for missionary service in Brazil. There he worked himself, and his untiring and fruitful activities — not least in the name of German culture and civilization — lasted until his death three years ago. I testify as a German and a bishop that I have the greatest respect and reverence for the Jesuit order, which I have known from the closest observation since my early youth for the last fifty years, that I remain bound in love and gratitude until my last breath to the Society of Jesus, my teachers, tutors and friends, and that today I have all the greater reverence for them, at a moment when Christ's prophecy to his disciples is once again fulfilled: "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." And so from this place, speaking also in the name of the true Catholics of the city and diocese of Münster, I greet with profound love those who have been chosen by Christ and are hated by the world as they go into unmerited banishment. May God reward them for all the good they have done for us. May God not punish us and our city for the unjust treatment and banishment which here has been meted out to His faithful disciples. May God's omnipotence soon return to us these our beloved banished brothers an sisters. My dear diocesans, because of the heavy visitation brought on us by enemy air-raids I originally resolved to keep silent in public about certain recent acts of the Gestapo which simply called for some public protest on my part. But when the Gestapo pay no heed to the events which have made hundreds of our fellow-citizens homeless, when they at this very moment continue to throw innocent fellow-citizens on to the street and to expel them from the country, then I must no longer hesitate to give public expression to my justified protest and my solemn warning. Many times, and again quite recently, we have seen the Gestapo arresting blameless and highly respected German men and women without the judgment of any court or any opportunity for defense, depriving them of their freedom, taking them away from their homes interning them somewhere. In recent weeks even two members of my closest council, the chapter of our Cathedral, have been suddenly seized from their homes by the Gestapo, removed from Münster and banished to distant places. Since then I have received no reply whatever to the protests which I addressed to the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs. But it has at any rate been established by telephone enquiries to the Gestapo that neither of the canons has been accused, or is suspected, of any punishable offence. Without any guilt on their part, they have incurred the penalty of banishment, without any charge against them and without any opportunity to defend themselves. My Christians, hear what I say! It has been officially confirmed that Canons Vorwerk and Echelmeyer are accused of no crime. They have done nothing meriting punishment. And yet they have been punished with banishment. And why? Because I did something that did not please the government. Of the four appointments of canons made in the past two years the government informed me that they objected to three. Since the Prussian Concordat of 1929 expressly excludes any right of objection by the government, I confirmed the appointment in two of the cases. In doing so I committed no wrong, but merely exercised my established right, as I can prove at any time. Let them bring me to court if they think that I have acted contrary to law. I am sure that no independent German court could condemn me for my actions in the appointment of these canons. Was it because of this that the matter was handled not by a court but by the Gestapo, whose actions in the German Reich are unfortunately not subject to any judicial review? Against the superior physical power of the Gestapo every German citizen is entirely without protection or defense. Entirely without protection or defense! In recent years many Germans have experienced this in their own person, like our beloved teacher of religion Friedrichs, who is held prisoner without any legal process or sentence, like the two canons who are now living in banishment. And again it is experienced by those religious orders who yesterday and today have been suddenly expelled from their property, their city and their province. None of us is safe, and may he know that he is the most loyal and conscientious of citizens and may he be conscious of his complete innocence, he cannot be sure that he will not some day be deported from his home, deprived of his freedom and locked up in the cellars and concentration camps of the Gestapo. I am aware of the fact that this can happen also to me, today or some other day. And because then I shall not be able to speak in public any longer, I will speak publicly today. Publicly I will warn against the continuance in a course which I am firmly convinced will bring down God's judgment on men and must lead to disaster and ruin for our people and our country. When I protest against these actions and these punishments by the Gestapo, when I call publicly for an end to this state of affairs and for the judicial review or reversal of all actions by the Gestapo, I do no more than Governor-General and Reichsminister Dr. Hans Frank has done, writing in January of this year in the Journal of the Academy of German Law (2,1941, p.25): We desire to achieve a well-balanced system of internal order in which penal law does not degenerate into the absolute authority of the prosecution over an accused person who is condemned in advance and deprived of any means of defense. [...] The law must offer the individual the legal opportunity of defending himself, of establishing the facts and thus securing himself against arbitrariness and injustice. [...] Otherwise we had better speak not of penal law but of penal authority. [...] It is impossible to reconcile the fabric of law with a sentence pronounced without any defense. [...] It is our task to proclaim, no less loudly and with no less emphasis than others defend authority in every form, that we have courageously to assert the authority of the law as an essential element in any enduring power. These are the words of Reichsminister Dr. Hans Frank. I am conscious that as a bishop, a promulgator and defender of the legal and moral order willed by God and granting to each individual rights and freedoms to which, by God's will, all human claims must give way, I am called upon, no less than Reichsminister Frank, courageously to assert the authority of the law and to denounce the condemnation of innocent men, who are without any defense, as an injustice crying out to heaven. My Christians! The imprisonment of many blameless persons without any opportunity for defense or any judgment of a court, the deprivation of the liberty of the two canons, the closing of religious houses and the eviction of guiltless religious, our brothers and sisters, compel me today to publicly recall an old and unshakeable truth, Justitia est fundamentum regnorum — Justice is the only solid foundation of any state. The right to life, to inviolability, to freedom is an indispensable part of any moral order of society. It is true that the state is entitled to restrict these rights as a penal measure against its citizens, but the state is only entitled to do so against those who have broken the law and whose guilt has been established in an impartial judicial process. A state which transgresses this boundary laid down by God and permits or causes innocent persons to be punished is undermining its own authority and the respect for its sovereignty in the conscience of its citizens. Unfortunately, however, we have repeatedly seen in recent years how penalties of greater or lesser severity, usually involving terms of imprisonment, have been imposed and carried out without the victim's guilt having been proved in a regular court of law and without giving him any opportunity of asserting his right to prove his innocence. How many Germans are now languishing in police custody or in concentration camps, how many have been driven from home, who have never been sentenced by a regular court or how numerous are those who have been freed by the court or released after serving their sentence and have then been re-arrested and held in confinement by the Gestapo! How many have been expelled from their home town and the town where they worked! Here again I remind you of the venerable bishop of Rottenburg, Johann Baptist Sproll, an old man of 70, who not long ago had to celebrate his 25th jubilee as a bishop far away from his diocese, from which the Gestapo had banned him three years ago. I mention again the names of our two canons, Vorwerk and Echelmeyer. And I commemorate our venerable teacher of religion Friedrichs, now in a concentration camp. I will forbear to mention any other names today. The name of a Protestant minister who served Germany in the First World War as a German officer and submarine commander, who later worked as a Protestant clergyman in Münster and for some years now has been deprived of his liberty, is well known to you, and we all have the greatest respect for this noble German's courage and steadfastness in professing his faith. From this example you will see, my Christians, that I am not talking about a matter of purely Catholic concern but about a matter of Christian concern, indeed of general human and national concern. "Justice is the foundation of all states!" We lament, we observe with the greatest anxiety that this foundation is nowadays shaken, that justice — the natural and Christian virtue which is indispensable for the ordered existence of any human community — is not maintained and held in honor in a for everybody unequivocally recognizable way. It is not only for the sake of the Church's rights but also out of love for our people and in grave concern for our country that we beg, we appeal, we demand: Justice! Who must not fear for the existence of a house when he sees that its foundations are being undermined? "Justice is the foundation of all states!" The state can take action with honesty and any prospect of enduring success, against the misuse of power by those whom chance has made stronger, against the oppression of the weak and their debasement to the mean employments of a slave, only if those who hold the powers of the state submit in reverence to the royal majesty of Justice and wield the sword of punishment in the service of Justice alone. No holder of authority can expect to command the loyalty and willing service of honorable men unless his actions and penal decisions prove in an impartial judgment to be free from any element of arbitrariness and weighed on the incorruptible scales of Justice. Accordingly, the practice of condemning and punishing men who are given no chance of defense and without any judicial sentence — in Reichsminister Dr. Frank's words, "the prosecution of an accused person who is condemned in advance and deprived of any means of defense" — engenders a feeling of legal defenselessness and an attitude of apprehensive timidity and subservient cowardice, which must in the long run deprave the national character and destroy the national community. That is the conviction and anxiety of all honest Germans. It was given open and courageous expression by a high legal officer in the National Administration Paper in 1937: The greater the power of a public authority, the more necessary is a guarantee of the impeccable use of that power; for the more deeply felt are the mistakes that are made, and the greater is the danger of arbitrariness and abuse of power. If there is no possibility of redress by an administrative tribunal there must be in each case some regular means of providing a form of control which is as impartial as possible, so as to leave no room for the feeling of legal defenselessness, which in the course of time must gravely jeopardize the national community. (Herbert Schelcher, President of the Supreme Administrative Court of Saxony, Dresden: Reichsverwaltungsblatt [National Administration Paper], 1937, p. 572) The orders and penal decisions of the Gestapo are not open to redress by any administrative tribunal. Since none of us know of any means of achieving impartial control over the actions and persecutions of the Gestapo, the restrictions they impose on men's freedom, their banishment and arrest and their imprisonment of German men and women in concentration camps, there is by now among our people a widespread feeling of defenselessness, even of cowardly apprehension, which does grave harm to the national community. The duty imposed on me by my Episcopal office to speak up for the moral order, by the oath which I swore before God and the representative of the government to "ward off," to the best of my ability, "any harm which might threaten the German people," this duty compels me, in the face of the Gestapo's actions, to state this fact and pronounce this public warning. My Christians! It will perhaps be held against me that by this frank statement I am weakening the home front of the German people during this war. I, on the contrary, say this: It is not I who am responsible for a possible weakening of the home front, but those who regardless of the war, regardless of this fearful week of terrible air-raids, impose heavy punishments on innocent people without the judgment of a court or any possibility of defense, who evict our religious orders, our brothers and sisters, from their property, throw them on to the street, drive them out of their own country. They destroy men's security under the law, they undermine trust in law, they destroy men's confidence in our government. And therefore I raise my voice in the name of the upright German people, in the name of the majesty of Justice, in the interests of peace and the solidarity of the home front. Therefore as a German, an honorable citizen, a representative of the Christian religion, a Catholic bishop, I exclaim: we demand justice! If this call remains unheard and unanswered, if the reign of Justice is not restored, then our German people and our country — in spite of the heroism of our soldiers and the glorious victories they have won — will perish through an inner rottenness and decay. Let us pray for all who are in trouble, particularly for our banished religious orders, for our city of Münster, that God may preserve us from further trials; for our German people and fatherland and for its leader. 7/11/2023 0 Comments July 11th, 2023NAZIs (National Socialist German Workers Party) asserted: "Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler."  7/11/2023 0 Comments July 11th, 2023Father José Trinidad Rangel Montaño, a Claretian priest known for his simplicity and zeal for the salvation of souls, was forced to leave his parish, because he refused to register with the Socialist regime overseeing all churches. Forced into hiding, he continued to administer the Sacraments, which had been outlawed by the anti-Catholic, pro-Communist Mexican government. Hunted down, he was found and arrested, on April 22, 1927. Interrogated and tortured, he was shot to death, on April 25, for his Catholic faith.  7/10/2023 0 Comments July 10th, 2023The German Socialist T4 Program, also called T4 Euthanasia Program, was the operation ordered, in 1939, to kill incurably ill, the physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and the elderly, with extermination centers established at six existing psychiatric hospitals. One man stood above all to condemn the killings: then-Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, The Lion of Münster.  7/10/2023 0 Comments July 10th, 2023An "illegal" underground Mass, in Coalcomán, Michoacán -- on Wednesday, December 12, 1928, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the octave of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary -- during the Cristero War (1926–29), a struggle in Mexico against the persecution of the faithful by the anti-Catholic, pro-Communist Mexican government, which outlawed the Catholic Church.  7/9/2023 0 Comments July 09th, 2023Catholic ethnic Polish villagers from Rachodoszcze, executed by German Socialists, who on April 10, 1943, executed there 34 Polish men, women and children.  7/9/2023 0 Comments July 09th, 2023During the Cristero War, Fiacro de la Asuncion Sanchez Serafin, one of the head Cristeros, was shot to death on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1928, the same day his son, Jorge, made his First Communion in secret, because the Catholic Church had been outlawed by the anti-Catholic, pro-Communist Mexican government.  7/7/2023 0 Comments July 07th, 2023Chinese proverb: Kill the chicken to scare the monkey. To serve as a terrifying warning to others from the German Socialists, bodies of three Catholic ethnic Polish men hang from gallows, publicly executed for "illegally" trading in sugar and flour, in Kutno on June 9, 1941.  7/7/2023 0 Comments July 07th, 2023Capitalism: Creates personal wealth Socialism: Destroys personal wealth  7/7/2023 0 Comments July 07th, 2023Communist Mexican regime's plan: Annihilate wealth; destroy property rights; and place all privately owned economic resources under the control of the State.  7/6/2023 0 Comments July 06th, 2023What was the NAZI Intelligenzaktion? A series of mass murders committed against the ethnic Polish Catholic intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, civic officials and the upper classes). Photo: In occupied Poland, on September 9, 1939, German Socialists (who invaded Poland on September 1, 1939) publicly executed 25 prominent ethnic Polish Catholics before the Municipal Museum, in the Market Square of Bydgoszcz, as part of the mass shootings of Polish intelligentsia. Then to terrorise the townsfolk, the Germans displayed the bodies for six hours. -- wiki  7/6/2023 0 Comments July 06th, 202399 years ago today: Reds rule Mexico, Calles a Communist.  |
AuthorTHERESA MARIE MOREAU is an award-winning reporter who covers Catholicism and Communism. Archives
October 2023
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