Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception - Annual Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

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v0CATHEDRAL COLLEGE dividuals, too, are affected by the unjust laws. Witness the following, but one instance of the suppression of the individual. ln Essen, Westphalia, a Catholic municipal employe was dismissed because he refused to let his chil- dren join the Hitler youth organization. Probably in the second measure to drive depression from Germany, to keep all money within the country, the Nazis have found their most able weapon in fighting the Church. That has been the excuse proffered for the unfair, blind trials tendered to OFFENDERS. Concentration camps, a new Nazi invention for political imprisonment, are filled with priests and nuns who have broken the edict by sending money out of the country. lt is an estab- lished fact that many of those who tried to withdraw money from the limits prescribed were but acting in accordance with their orders' rules. Many of the nuns and priests so wrongly taken from their children in Church and school were but offering help to the foreign missions. One sister, Sr. Anna Schroers, was given ten years penal servitude as though she were a com- mon criminal and was fined 150,000 marks, about Sl00,000. How many lives have been given to l-litler's purge of UNDESIRABLES will probably never be- come known. Hundreds of innocent souls are admittedly shut up in these con- centration camps. Sr. Anna Schroers is only one of many. During the month of February, the persecution of the Catholics followed a new trend. Catholics were turning Communist, they were distributing Marxist pamphlets, preaching the doctrine of Russia, or so the Nazis said. It is doubtful whether anything more fantastic and asinine has ever been charged against the Church. Communism, the one common enemy that both Naziism and Catholicism have in common, is now said to be the bosom friend of the latter. During that month, more than l50 leaders in the Catholic Youth Movement were cast into prison under the charge of having sent Red letters to the youth of Germany. A Father Kester was one of those accused of teaching Stalinism to his pupils and was sentenced to two years by what is laughingly called the people's tribunal. The next month, it was discovered that the literature which priests and nuns had been accused of sending out had been mailed to them. On the very day that the mail was brought, Nazi inspectors were sent to call on the recipients of the letters to search their homes for anti-Hitler literature. lt isn't necessary to ask how the inspectors knew the exact date on which the letters were to be found. lt isn't necessary to conjecture as to who were the senders of those letters. It would be too ridiculous to look for the answer when it almost hurls itself upon the questioner. Prussia, the stronghold of German bitterness, has always been opposed to the Catholic Church in DEUTSCHLAND. More than once, the traveller has found in his particular coach on a train, a magazine with grotesque-looking figures drawn on the covers and political cartoons sketched through its pages. More than once, that same traveller has picked up that magazine for something to read, in the absence of matter written in his own native tongue, in order to relieve the inevitable monotony that never fails to come with the long train-journey. On some occasions, that traveller has been a non-Catholic who knows nothing of the Church and finds impressed on his mind the por- trayal of Her clergy as inhuman monsters, seeking to misguide the youth of 76

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A N N U A L l 9 3 6 0 0 fiend, laughing in scorn at them, they beheld a puppeteer dangling his dolls between life and death-instead of salvation, persecution. Three things were his major ideas to drive pestilence and poverty from the doors of his people: exterminate Communism, keep all money from leaving the country, and tolerate no opposition. lnconceivable though it may seem, Herr Hitler has used all three to fight the Catholic Church. Some time ago, Hitler concluded a Concordat with the Pope, agreeing to allow the Church full freedom should the Catholic Center Party be withdrawn from active politics in Germany. The Center Party was immediately dissolved and Bome waited patiently for the fulfillment of the other half of the pledge. Needless to say, it was repucliated, and though Hitler may have proven himself a BRILLIANT statesman, at the same time he showed himself to be an undependable Phari- see, a liar. The whole world was startled from its comparative complacency by the news of Hitler's drive against the Church, when he began to jail priests and -yes, even nuns, At first, the charge of opposition was hurled at the German priests, the priests were preaching against HlTLEBlSM, and the nuns were teaching the children not to follow the state. Yes! True to a certain extent. Then the Hitlerites began to reach into the homes of Catholic families for can- didates to the Brown Shirts. All well and good, Germany needed a large army of youths for national security just as did France and Bussia, Germany had to have the old patriotism recreated before she could rise from her defeated state to the glorf ous Germania of days gone by, Germany needed this for her peoples minds are formed like that. BUT, when the country started to try to make the children mere machines of the state, when it tried to deprive the parents of their God-given rights, when it tried to make the children believe that there was nothing' but the state worth striving for and that there was no God but Hitler, THEN the Catholic leaders acted. We may take a quotation from the BBOOKLYN TABLET to show examples of what hap- pened: Fr, Franz Boelle of Westphalia, was sentenced to six months in prison for criticism levelled at Chancellor Hitler, and Fr. Otto Zimmerman of Stutt- gart, to four months in prison for criticism of the Hitler Youth groups. ln Eich- staett, Bavaria, a priest whose name was not given out by the police was arrested and accused of permitting members of the local Catholic Youth group to engage in military drills. Two other unnamed priests, one in Kellersberg, the other in Plangrath, Bhineland, were sentenced to eight and eighteen months in prison, respectively, for criticism of the Hitler movement, while the latter's sister was given a five months' prison sentence on the same ground. A fine was aiven Er. Albert Coppenrath in Berlin for failing to display the swastika flag on his church on a political occasion. This same charge of opposition to the country has been the excuse for the suppression of speech on the part of members of the Church and their means of expression. All Catholic libraries were closed in Munich because they were allowing the use of FOBBIDDEN books. Catholic newspapers have been forced to close their doors and stop their presses. Of these, the SCHWABZ- WAELDEB VOLKSEBEUND and the HEUBEBGEB BOTE are but two. Nor are these measures employed against the clergy and the Catholic press alone. ln- 75

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ANNUAL 1,936 0 0 the world. Incidents such as these used to be isolated and extraordinary, but Hitler has taken full advantage of the power of the artist's caustically sarcastic pen. These magazines are now visible on every newsstand and are openly sold to passengers on the trains from the platforms. This, however, might not be so bad if it were kept so. But such is not the case. The cartoons are made of an enormous size and are given over to the Brown Shirts for their Sunday afternoon parades, during the progress of which they flaunt them before the eyes of citizens, Protestant, Iewish or Catholic, while they with all their bravado shout for the downfall of all three. These cartoons depict priests as subverters of the people, monsters stealing into the homes of people, radicals of the Pope. In their stupidity, the Nazi leaders forget that 'THIS KINGDOM IS NOT OE THIS WORLD , they don't think of the fact that the House of Peter seeks not temporal power but the conversion of souls to Christ. May we take time here to quote Count Apponyi on the subject of Fascism? I-Ie says in his MEMOIRS, Fascism organizes work with the object of pre- venting any relapse, even of individuals, BELOW THE LEVEL WHICH IS PROPER TO MAN. It keeps open the path by which anyone may attain, through moral strength and conspicuous achievement, to positions of distinc- tion. WITHOUT WEAKENING INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER, from which all great deeds spring, IT SEEKS TO FIGHT THE ABUSES OF INDIVIDUALISMT Does Naziism do that? I-Iitler's fascism is a direct contradiction to this for he himself is an ABUSIVE INDIVIDUALIST. But where Hitler does conform to Count Ap- ponyi's ideas is in these words taken from the same work, The great danger to a power that has no counterpoise, and is not exposed to free criticism, lies in the fact that its possessor loses his clear vision of the limits of the possible. Human nature is imperfect even in the greatest men and cannot endure an excess of power without giddiness. An article in COLLlER'S said the following: Present political and eco- nomic crises have crowded into the background one of the most significant movements of modern times-THE GROWING ATTEMPT TO CRUSH CHRIS- TIANITY. Today the governments of the countries which contain over a third of all Christians are waging a ruthless war against the Christian Church. How true this is of I-IITLERLAND Cfor one can hardly call it Germanyl. Per- haps Herr Hitler has the interests of his country at heart and believes that Catholicism is not good for his people. Another great German Chancellor once believed that. Bismarck inaugurated a policy of persecution and insult against the Church with all the forces he could muster. With his vain KUL- TURKAMPE, foolishly and blindly he proceeded to strip this age-old Divine Institution of I-Ier rights. History gives us the outcome: Bismarck died, a broken and beaten man. Can it be that Hitler trusts that he can succeed where Bismarck failed Perhaps the Chancellor is ambitious, ambitious to make Germany the all-powerful state on the field of combat and feels that Christendom with I-Ier doctrines of peace and brotherly love stand in his way, ambitious to become the all-mighty emperor of that all-powerful state. Yes, maybe the Chancellor is ambitious-but CAESAR, TOO, WAS AMBITIOUS. PAUL F. MECONI '36 77