Persecutions of the Catholic Church and Pius XII
According to John Cornwell, the Church was faced with a dilemma: compromise with the governments in order to maintain a structure with which to survive, or resist or confront and risk annihilation.
[6] In his "Myth of the Twentieth Century", published in 1930, Rosenberg proposed to replace traditional Christianity with the neo-pagan "myth of the blood":[7] We now realize that the central supreme values of the Roman and the Protestant Churches, being a negative Christianity, do not respond to our soul, that they hinder the organic powers of the peoples determined by their Nordic race, that they must give way to them, that they will have to be remodeled to conform to a Germanic Christendom.
The Catholic Church officially condemned the Nazi theory of racism in Germany in 1937 with the encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge", signed by Pope Pius XI.
Smuggled into Germany to avoid prior censorship and read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches, it condemned Nazi ideology[11] as "insane and arrogant".
It denounced the Nazi myth of "blood and soil", decried neopaganism of Nazism, its war of annihilation against the Church, and described the Führer as a "mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance".
[16] During the 1939 invasion, special death squads of SS and police arrested or executed those considered capable of resisting the occupation, including professionals, clergymen and government officials.
The following summer, the A-B Aktion (Extraordinary Pacification Operation) by the SS rounded up several thousand Polish intelligentsia and saw many priests shot in the General Government sector.
[14] Historically, the church had been a leading force in Polish nationalism against foreign domination; thus the Nazis targeted clergy, monks and nuns in their terror campaigns.
The expansion of Imperial Japan across the Asia Pacific from 1941 was accompanied by many atrocities against Catholic missionaries, clerics, nuns, and lay people.
In the Soviet Union and mainland China, the Catholic Church largely ceased to exist, at least publicly, during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
[27] Thus, after World War II, the Vatican kept its nuncios in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania and China, until these countries severed relations interrupting communication with bishops as well.
[30] In an attempt to prevent governmental usurpation of ecclesiastical offices, the Vatican threatened to excommunicate anyone who did so, or, illegally granted or received episcopal ordination.
For centuries, access to the people of China was difficult for the Catholic Church, because it did not recognize local Confucian customs of honouring deceased family members.
On 8 December 1939 the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of Faith issued, at the request of Pius XII, a new instruction by which Chinese customs were no longer considered superstitious, but an honourable way of esteeming ones relatives and therefore permitted by Catholic Christians.
[34] As the Church began to flourish, Pius XII established a local ecclesiastical hierarchy and received the Archbishop of Peking, Thomas Tien Ken-sin, SVD, into the Sacred College of Cardinals.
[46] The pontificate of Pius XII from the very beginning faced problems, as large parts of Poland, the Baltic States, and their Catholic populations were incorporated into the USSR.
[47] Pius also was aware that, in months preceding the encyclical Orientales omnes Ecclesias, all Catholic bishops of the Ukrainian Church had been arrested, including Josyf Slipyj, Gregory Chomysyn, John Laysevkyi, Nicolas Carneckyi, Josaphat Kocylovskyi.
The slow pace of de-Stalinisation and the Soviet crack-down of the Hungarian Revolution thwarted major results aside from modest improvements in Poland and Yugoslavia after 1956.
Pope Pius XII responded with an apostolic letter Flagranti Semper Animi,[57] in which he defended the Church against attacks and Stalinist persecution tactics.
Pope Pius responded with a letter commemorating the 10th anniversary of the beginning of World War II, Decennium Dum Expletur.
In honour of Saint Stanisław, Pope Pius XII issued Poloniae Annalibus, giving consolation and again expressing his certitude that Christ will win and the persecution will end.
At the 300th anniversary of the successful defence of Jasna Góra, Pope Pius XII wrote again to Poland, congratulating the courageous defenders of the faith in his time.
Gloriosam Reginam salutes the modern day Polish martyrs and expresses confidence in victory for Mary, Queen of Poland.
anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Andrew Bobola by the Russians: "The haters of God and enemies of Christian teaching attack Jesus Christ and his Church."
[63] Attempts were made to divide the clergy into opposing camps by creating a government-controlled association of priests headed by Bishop Joseph Plojhar.
After the Orthodox Church excommunicated all politicians involved in its parliamentary passing, the government withdrew the text from final vote in the upper house.
De Facto however, the spirit of the concordat was accepted and the Church began to flourish in the years prior to World War II.
To President Tito "a provocation", this represented to Pope Pius "a just recognition of his extraordinary merits and a symbol of our affection and encouragement for our beloved sons and daughters, who testify to their faith with steadfastness and courage in very difficult times."
Gestapo raids led to the murdering, assassination, and deportation to concentration camps of numerous religious, including the Franciscan friar Maximilian Kolbe.
[79] Pope Pius XII informed the cardinals in 1945 that among all the horrors which priests and religious had to endure in concentration camps, the fate of Polish inmates was by far the worst.
