“This Note [from Cardinal Pacelli] … accuses the German government of having misunderstood the intention of the encyclical. It is inaccurate, it is written, that Mit brennender Sorge is a hostile document, when it is simply intended to be medicinal. And incidentally, the Note twice awards, in this very first paragraph, an undeniable pat on the back to the government of the Reich. ”>
Prefatory Remarks
For the last eight decades, endlessly, we have been told or heard it implied that to be a good Catholic, one must be “anti-Nazi”. Passed down to the masses, the Catholic intelligentsia and various officials maintain that in 1937 Mit brennender Sorge “condemned the Third Reich and National Socialism,” and that it was issued for that—and only for that. >The usual characterization goes something like this:
Originally published in The Journal of American Reform. Read original article