Persecution in the Third Reich

        Simultaneously with unverified reports from Rome that German-id Vatican relations are improving, and that an entente may soon be reached, comes news of further Nazi onslaughts against Church, the

SCHOOLS DISSOLVED IN THE RHINELAND

        April 18, 1939, was a black day for Catholic Rhineland. By a decree of the Nazi authorities all Catholic and Protestant elementary schools were abolished and trans-formed into Nazi common schools. The change was “symbolically” indicated by the immediate removal of the crucifix from all classrooms.

        In the most Catholic part of Germany not a single Catholic elementary school and hardly any Catholic secondary school is left. A year ago there were altogether 4,828 elementary schools with 19,-875 classes and 912,320 pupils in the Rhine province. Of these 4,828 schools, 3,317 were Catholic, 1,376 Protestant, 16 Jewish and only 119 mixed. The Catholic schools were attended by 651,518 children.

        In the Rhineland the suppression of the Catholic school was not carried through on the basis of a so-called “parents plebiscite,” but against the formally expressed will of the overwhelming majority of the parents.

        When in Bavaria and other parts of the Reich the Nazis organized their “plebiscite,” the Catholics in the Rhineland decided immediately to start a counter-agitation before it was too late. The clergy asked all parents to sign a petition by which they requested the maintenance of Catholic schools for their children. The lists of signatures were communicated to the State authorities.

        The result unfortunately the only result was that the abolition of Catholic education was postponed until it was finished in most other parts of Germany.

        Since 1933 the Nazis have sup-pressed about 17,000 Catholic elementary schools out of a total of about twenty thousand.

        Those two or three thousand Catholic schools which are still in existence in Silesia, East Prussia. Hanover and elsewhere will certainly be transformed into Nazi common schools within a few months or even within a few weeks. Article 23 of the Concordat which “guarantees” the Catholic schools is completely destroyed.

CARDINAL’S PASTORAL

        Cardinal Schulte, Archbishop of Cologne, and Bishop Straeter, Apostolic Administrator of Aix-la-Chapelle, have issued pastoral letters protesting against the suppression of all Catholic schools and replying to the arguments of the Nazis, e.g., the allegation that in most other countries State schools are non-denominational.

        Bishop Straeter states that in all other Western countries Catholics have the right to start their own private schools, while in Germany the State has a school monopoly and parents have no possibility of keeping their children away from schools the teaching of which is open to grave objections.

“SOLEMNLY GUARANTEED”

At the same time that all Catholic schools were suppressed in the Rhineland, the farewell letter of Msgr. Wolker, the last ecclesiastical director of the Catholic Young Men’s Association of Germany, was made known.

        After the dissolution of all diocesan federations and the confiscation of their property by the secret police, the hierarchy tried to obtain by negotiations the withdrawal of those measures.

As Msgr. Wolker explains in his farewell letter, the endeavour’s had no success at all. The Catholic youth associations, which had been solemnly “guaranteed” in the Reich Concordat, are not allowed to exist.

“GIVE BACK THE OTAV CATHOLIC SCHOOL”

        Special services of intercession for the re-establishment of Catholic schools are held in all parish churches in Germany. On Sunday a special prayer for the return of the Catholic school has to be said at the end of each Mass.

        In the archdiocese of Cologne, this prayer is worded as follows:

        “O Lord, preserve to our children the true Catholic faith; we pray Thee, graciously hear us.

        “O Lord, give back to our children the Catholic school; we pray Thee, graciously hear us.

        “O Lord, fill the hearts of all Catholic fathers and mothers, teachers and priests, with holy anxiety for the souls of our children; we pray Thee, graciously hear us.”

SUBSIDIES WITHDRAWN

        According to the London Times, the Church in Austria will no longer receive financial subsidies from the State as the result of a decree passed by Dr. Seyss-Inquart, Nazi Governor of Austria, who has now been appointed a Minister without Portfolio in the German government.

        The new financial burdens on the Church, due to discontinuance of subsidies, brought Austrian bishops together in a conference last Sun-day to study the problem.

        Theodore Cardinal Innitzer, in a message read in all Catholic churches in Austria, appealed to the faithful last Sunday not to leave the fold as the Church faced increased pressure from National Socialism.

        In his message, Cardinal Innitzer said a tax on church members probably would be introduced soon. Its rates, he suggested, would be between three and eight per cent of the regular State income tax rates.

BAVARIAN CLERGY ALSO LOSE STATE SUBSIDIES

        The Bavarian Ministry of Education and Religion has decided to suspend all State payments to the clergy. The payment of these sums was fixed by the Concordat.

        As a result, the financial situation of the Church will become extremely precarious.

INTERFERENCE WITH AP-POINTMENT OF PRIESTS

        Catholic Church authorities in Vienna were notified by the Nazi Party last Friday that henceforth personnel changes in the clergy must be sanctioned by the party.

        Church officials, according to the Associated Press, Interpreted the order to mean that party approval must be obtained for appointment of new vicars, pastors and high dignitaries.

        The party also insisted on examining lists of candidates for theological schools and religious Orders, reserving the right to decide who is to study for the priesthood or enter an Order.

        In informed quarters it is believed much will depend on the practical application of the new rule.

        If applied stringently the party would be in a position to dominate Church policies by permitting only persons sympathetic to the party to attain controlling theological positions.

        Previous encroachments of the State on the sphere of the Church. in education notably, have been more or less on the borderline be-tween the two jurisdictions. This action is an outright invasion of a prerogative that cannot on any grounds be allocated to the State. The administration of its own personnel is the right of any organization or institution. When that is gone its Independence is lost and its life forfeited.

        The Nazi demand for authority over clerical appointments cannot be interpreted in any other light than a bold attempt to hasten the downfall of the Catholic Church already implicit in previous actions of the party and State.

ARCHBISHOP WAITZ LOSES HOME

Archbishop Sigismund Waitz, according to an Associated Press dis-patch of May 15, has lost his fight to retain his archiepiscopal palace. The Nazi district office will use the palace after the building has been renovated.

        The Gestapo (secret police) took over the Franciscan monastery as its official building and various Catholic orphanages were turned over to the Hitler youth.

The palace is claimed as property of the State and it was disclosed April 24 that the Archbishop had been given notice the State no longer could permit him to reside there. He then appealed to Chancellor Hitler, asking him to rescind the order.

NAZIS ARREST MONKS IN AUSTRIA

        The renewed Nazi anti-Catholic drive in Austria was heralded by the recent arrest of about a dozen monks of the Benedictine monastery of Gottweig, near Krems, in Lower Austria.

        The monks, including the abbot of the monastery, are accused of financial Irregularities following a report by a Nazi commissar who had been appointed to supervise the administration of the monastery.

The Governor of Salzburg has ordered the entire community of Sisters of Charity to leave the town of Kufstein.

        According to the Vienna edition of the Voelkischer Beobachter, two of the Sisters “tortured a dying man, a man named Andreas Ferner, by interrupting his cries of Long Live Germany, with exclamations of Long Live Christ.””

APOSTASIES IN SALZBURG

        Five per cent of the 78,244 Catholies of Salzburg apostatized in 1938.

        This fact was revealed by a preacher giving a mission in Sale-burg cathedral at the end of last month.

        Throughout the archdiocese, however, the number of apsotasies was 5,424-half per cent of the number of Catholics.

        Few return to the Church, the preacher added, the figure for the archdiocese being 67, and, in the city of Salzburg, 43.

        It is hoped that this year a more vigorous resistance will be put up against the flow of apostasies.

Spanish Rumors

        There is little doubt, writes Robert Sencourt in the London Catholie Herald (May 5), that Germany has brought her weight to bear on Italy, but there is no reason to think that either of the axis powers have control of Spain.

        A spate of rumors and insinuations, coming mostly from Paris, have suggested threatening troop movements and Spanish preparations to seize Gibraltar.

        They can be easily explained: the propaganda agents and correspondents who used to operate from Barcelona are now in Paris.

        The most fantastic lies was that told about Marshal Petain, the French Ambassador to Spain; it was said that he found Franco’s behavior impossible.

        On the contrary, he came to Paris to insist that the French government should fulfñi its promise to Franco and return the Spanish gold, fishing smacks, etc., to which he had a legal right, but which France was still keeping.

        The retention of the fishing smacks was particularly resented In Spain because when they had actually started on their voyage to Spain they were turned back by French naval vessels. There is desperate need for them as Franco has still over ten million starving people to feed in the former Red territory.

        The British government has acted more wisely. It has sent five hundred tons of food with lorries to transport it, and more is to follow. These are all free gifts from government to government, and they dispose of the rumor that Spain is about to become enemy territory; for, if it were, we could not afford to lose these lorries,

        The truth is that Franco declared neutrality in the September crisis, proposing an alliance with Portugal which he has since ratified, and neither will nor can come into conflict with France and England.

        The idea is absurd. Franco has practically no navy, and he has an immense coast line in the Mediterranean, between Gibraltar and Southern Portugal, and from Vigo to San Sebastian. How could he de-fend it against the most effective fleets in Europe? Besides, to him, Great Britain is an enormously profitable customer; he could not give her up.

        In addition to all that Franco in his victory is facing a heavier task than war. The suddenness of the Red collapse made his task a gigantic one. With very short notice he had to provide three million people in Catalonia with food at a time when the bridges were broken, when the trains could not run, and the lorries were mostly worn out.

        But, six weeks later, he had to provide for over seven million more. To all these millions food has to be given by the week. Business had come to a complete halt, capital and raw material were both exhausted.

        In addition, Franco has to undertake the moral and spiritual building up of all these people de-moralized by Red misrule.

        This task is so formidable that few are allowed to see how it is being carried out. It is hard to get Into Spain at present. It is still harder to get news out. For the first time Franco faces scarcity. We have hailed his triumph with thankfulness; to thankfulness we must now add sympathy and sympathy should be practical. And we should fight ruthlessly against a suspicion that is as mean as it is absurd.

Congress of Catholic Farmers Held in Paris

        Paris has just witnessed a remarkable gathering of the Catholic Young Farmers (J. A. C.), lasting four days and assembling over twenty thousand members from all parts of France. The congress marked the tenth anniversary of this rapidly growing organization. Delegations from the group were officially received at the City hall of Paris by the Minister of Agriculture and by the Papal Nuncio. Pope Pius XII sent a telegram of blessing.

        Beside the regular congress meetings, a special service of meditation was held in Notre Dame, a special Mass celebrated in the “Vel. d’Hiver,” one of the largest auditoriums of Paris. Six Cardianis and forty bishops led the devotions of a con gregation of thirty thousand faithful. A special feature of this s ice was a procession bearing “the fruits of the earth.” The Young Farmers have nearly one hundred thousand members scattered throughout France.

        Received by the Minister of Agriculture, the National committee of the JA. C. presented a series of requests for aid in their work against “the Increasing moral decadence in France.” Among these re-quests were: social insurance for farmers equal to that for city work- men; marriage loans for rural couples: special agricultural schools, and an apprentice system for young farmers.