Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Mit Brennender Sorge: (With Burning Concern), by Pope Pius XI. 1937

Nazism Anti-Christian. MIT BRENNENDER SORGE Unequivocally Condemned Nazi Racism. It Affirmed the Equality of All Human Beings

The encyclical of Pope Pius XI, MIT BRENNENDER SORGE (“With Deep Anxiety”), was issued on Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937. The reviewed item is the official English text as issued by the LONDON TABLET.

It has nowadays been argued that the Roman Catholic hierarchy opposed Nazism only insofar as it clashed with specific Catholic doctrines or infringed on the “privileges” of the Catholic Church. This is patently untrue, as shown below.

Failing that, we sometimes hear the complaint that MIT BRENNENDER SORGE did not specifically mention the Jews. This “moving of the goalposts” counterargument ignores the fact that Jews-are-special thinking did not exist at the time. In fact, it did not become common until nearly three decades after World War II.

Except for the titles [in CAPs], the following are quotes from MIT BRENNENDER SORGE:

GERMANOCENTRIC SUPREMACISM, RACISM, AND DEIFICATION OF THE NATION CONDEMNED

“Whosoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other value of the human community–however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things–whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order or the world planned and created by God: he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.” (p. 188).

“‘Revelation’ in its Christian sense, means the world of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the ‘suggestions’ of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people’s history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency.” (p. 195).

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

“Beneath her dome, as beneath the vault of heaven, there is but one country for all nations and tongues; there is room for the development of every quality, advantage, task and vocation which God the Creator and Saviour has allotted to individuals as well as to ethnical communities.” (p. 191).

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We should add that BLUT UND BODEN came from Judaism. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/nazism-antichistian-cardinal-faulhaber/