Mit brennender Sorge

thumb|The encyclical Mit brennender Sorge issued by Pope Pius XI was the first and to date only papal encyclical written in German.

Mit brennender Sorge ( , in English "With deep [lit. 'burning'] anxiety") is an encyclical of Pope Pius XI, issued on 10 March 1937 (but bearing a date of Passion Sunday, 14 March). Written in German, not in the usual Latin, it was smuggled into Nazi Germany for fear of censorship and was read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches on one of the Church's busiest Sundays, Palm Sunday (21 March that year).

The encyclical condemned breaches of the 1933 Reichskonkordat agreement signed between the German Reich and the Holy See. It condemned "pantheistic confusion", "neopaganism", "the so-called myth of race and blood", and the idolizing of the State. It contained a vigorous defense of the Old Testament with the belief that it prepares the way for the New. The encyclical states that race is a fundamental value of the human community which is necessary and honorable, but condemns the exaltation of race, or the people, or the state, above their standard value to an idolatrous level. The encyclical declares "that man as a person possesses rights he holds from God, and which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or neglect." National Socialism, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party are not named in the document. The German term (government of the Reich) is used to refer to the Nazi regime.

The effort to produce and distribute over 300,000 copies of the letter was entirely secret, allowing priests across Germany to read the letter without interference. The Gestapo raided the churches the next day to confiscate all the copies they could find, and the presses that had printed the letter were closed. According to historian Ian Kershaw, an intensification of the general anti-church struggle began around April in response to the encyclical. Klaus Scholder wrote: "state officials and the Party reacted with anger and disapproval. Nevertheless the great reprisal that was feared did not come. The concordat remained in force and despite everything the intensification of the battle against the two churches which then began remained within ordinary limits." The regime further constrained the actions of the Church and harassed monks with staged prosecutions for alleged immorality and phony abuse trials. Though Hitler is not named in the encyclical, the German text does refer to a "Wahnprophet", which some have interpreted as meaning "mad prophet" and as  referring to Hitler himself.

It was reported at the time that the encyclical was paired and somewhat overshadowed by the anti-communist encyclical Divini Redemptoris of 19 March, in order to avoid the charge that the Pope was indirectly favoring communism.

Background

thumb|The Reichskonkordat was signed between the Vatican and [[Nazi Germany on 20 July 1933 in Rome. (From left to right: German prelate Ludwig Kaas, German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Giuseppe Pizzardo, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), Alfredo Ottaviani, and member of Reichsministerium des Inneren (Home Office) Rudolf Buttmann)]]

Following the Nazi takeover, the Catholic Church hierarchy in Germany initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, but by 1937 had become highly disillusioned. A threatening, though initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism. Two thousand functionaries of the Bavarian People's Party were rounded up by police in late June 1933. They along with the national Catholic Centre Party, ceased to exist in early July, as the Nazi Party became the only legally permitted party (Gleichschaltung) in the country. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen meanwhile negotiated the Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics. Kershaw wrote that the Vatican was anxious to reach agreement with the new government, despite "continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and other outrages committed by Nazi radicals against the Church and its organisations".

The Reichskonkordat () was signed on 20 July 1933 between the Holy See and Nazi Germany. According to historian Pinchas Lapide, the Nazis saw the treaty as giving them moral legitimacy and prestige, whilst the Catholic Church sought to protect itself from persecution through a signed agreement. According to Guenter Lewy, a common view within Church circles at the time was that Nazism would not last long, and the favorable Concordat terms would outlive the current regime (the Concordat does remain in force today). A Church handbook published with the recommendation of the entire German Church episcopate described the Concordat as "proof that two powers, totalitarian in their character, can find an agreement, if their domains are separate and if overlaps in jurisdiction become parallel or in a friendly manner lead them to make common cause". Lewy wrote "The harmonious co-operation anticipated at the time did not quite materialize" but that the reasons for this "lay less in the lack of readiness of the Church than in the short sighted policies of the Hitler regime." According to Paul O'Shea, Hitler had a "blatant disregard" for the Concordat, and its signing was to him merely a first step in the "gradual suppression of the Catholic Church in Germany". Anton Gill wrote that "with his usual irresistible, bullying technique, Hitler then proceeded to take a mile where he had been given an inch" and closed all Catholic institutions whose functions weren't strictly religious:

Following the signing of the document, the formerly outspoken nature of opposition by German Catholic leaders towards the Nazi movement weakened considerably. But violations of the Concordat by the Nazis began almost immediately and were to continue such that Falconi described the Concordat with Germany as "a complete failure".

The Concordat, wrote William Shirer, "was hardly put to paper before it was being broken by the Nazi Government". The Nazis had promulgated their sterilization law, an offensive policy in the eyes of the Catholic Church, on 14 July. On 30 July, moves began to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders were to be targeted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped-up charges of currency smuggling or "immorality". Historian of the German Resistance Peter Hoffmann wrote that, following the Nazi takeover:

In August 1936 the German episcopate had asked Pius XI for an encyclical that would deal with the current situation of the Church in Germany. In November 1936 Hitler had a meeting with Cardinal Faulhaber during which he indicated that more pressure would be put on the Church unless it collaborated more zealously with the regime. On 21 December 1936 the Pope invited, via Cardinal Pacelli, senior members of the German episcopate to Rome. On 16 January 1937 five German prelates and Cardinal Pacelli agreed unanimously that the time had now come for public action by the Holy See.

Authorship

thumb|Cardinal Michael Faulhaber (around 1936)

A five-member commission drafted the encyclical. According to Paul O'Shea the carefully worded denunciation of aspects of Nazism was formulated between 16 and 21 January 1937, by Pius XI, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and German cardinals Bertram, Faulhaber and Schulte, and Bishops Preysing and Galen. Cardinal Bertram of Breslau was the chairman of the German Conference of Bishops, and after the Nazi takeover he had favoured a non-confrontational approach toward the government and developed a protest system which "satisfied the demands of the other bishops without annoying the regime". Berlin's Bishop Konrad von Preysing had been one of the most consistent and outspoken critics of the Nazi regime to emerge from the German Church hierarchy. Munich's Archbishop Michael von Faulhaber had been a staunch defender of Catholic rights. The conservative Bishop of Münster, Count Galen, would later distinguish himself by leading the Church's protest against Nazi euthanasia.

Cardinal Faulhaber's draft of the encyclical, consisting of eleven large single sheets and written in his own hand, was presented to Vatican Secretary of State Pacelli on 21 January. According to historian Frank J. Coppa, Cardinal Pacelli wrote a draft that the Pope thought was too weak and unfocused and therefore substituted a more critical analysis. Pacelli described the encyclical as "a compromise" between the Holy See's sense that it could not be silent set against "its fears and worries". Historian William Shirer wrote that the document accused the regime of sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church".

Content

The numbers conform to the headings used in the Vatican's English translation of the text which differs from the official German.

Violations of the Concordat

In the introduction and sections 1–8 of the encyclical Pius XI wrote of his "deep anxiety and growing surprise" on observing the travails of the Catholic Church in Germany with the terms of Concordat being openly broken and the faithful being oppressed as had never been seen before.

Martin Rhonheimer writes that while Mit brennender Sorge asserts "race" is a "fundamental value of the human community", "necessary and honorable", it condemns the "exaltation of race, or the people, or the state, or a particular form of state", "above their standard value" to "an idolatrous level". According to Rhonheimer, it was Pacelli who added to Faulhaber's milder draft the following passage (8):