Editing Pope Pius XI (section)

==== ''Mit brennender Sorge'' ====

The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity and interfered with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies.<ref>Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair – German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; {{ISBN|0-674-63680-5}}; p. 136</ref> By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, had become highly disillusioned. In March, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical ''[[Mit brennender Sorge]]'' accusing the Nazi Government of violations of the 1933 Concordat, and of sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church". The Pope noted on the horizon the "threatening storm clouds" of religious wars of extermination over Germany.<ref name="William L. Shirer p234-5" />

Copies had to be smuggled into Germany so they could be read from church pulpits.<ref>Manners 2002, p. 374.</ref>
The encyclical, the only one ever written in German, was addressed to German bishops and was read in all parishes of Germany. The text is credited to Munich Cardinal [[Michael von Faulhaber]] and to [[Cardinal Secretary of State]] [[Eugenio Pacelli]], who later became Pope Pius XII.<ref>August Franzen, Remigius Bäumer Papstgeschichte Herder Freiburg, 1988, p. 394.</ref>

There was no advance announcement of the encyclical, and its distribution was kept secret in an attempt to ensure the unhindered public reading of its contents in all the Catholic churches of Germany. The encyclical condemned particularly the paganism of [[Nazism]], the myth of race and blood, and fallacies in the Nazi conception of God:

{{blockquote|Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental 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 of 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.<ref>''Mit brennender Sorge'', 8.</ref>}}

The Nazis responded with an intensification of their [[Kirchenkampf|campaign against the churches]], beginning around April.<ref name="Ian Kershaw p.381-382">[[Ian Kershaw]]; ''Hitler a Biography''; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; p.381-382</ref> There were mass arrests of clergy and church presses were expropriated.<ref>[[Joachim Fest]]; ''Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler 1933–1945''; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; London; p.374</ref>

[[File:Musei Vaticani Papa Pio XI Adolfo Wildt.jpg|thumb| Pope Pius XI in a portrait by [[Adolfo Wildt]] exposed in the Vatican Museums in Rome]]