Archbishop Faulhaber gives a major speech on Church-State relations to thousands gathered at the Munich Catholic Congress - Oct. 26, 1919
Source: Timeline
Oct. 26, 1919 Archbishop Faulhaber gives a major speech on Church-State relations to thousands gathered at the Munich Catholic Congress.
The speech appears on the front page of the Munich Kirchenzeitung - English translation of speechPacelli sends Gasparri a laudatory report about the speech: www.Pacelli-Edition.de, Document No. 328.
Gasparri replies a month later with extensive words of praise from Pope Benedict XV for the “zelante” (zealous) Archbishop and his conduct at the Congress: www.Pacelli-Edition.de, Document No. 5503.
Faulhaber's speech appears in French translation in Documentation Catholique on Jan. 3, 1920.
Oct. 26, 1919 Münchener Katholische Kirchenzeitung, Nr. 44, Nov. 2, 1919, pp. 1-5, publishing Oct. 26, 1919 speech by Archbishop Faulhaber [note: some portions of this speech are enclosed in brackets, indicating those portions omitted in the version of the speech later published in French in Documentation Catholique]
“Religion and Church in Public Life: Keynote Address of His Excellency Archbishop von Faulhaber at the plenary assembly on Sunday, 26 October, in the Krone Circus”
My dear Diocesans!
[I welcome the times in which the spirits are clearly distinguished and hate the times of double-mindedness. For Christ or against Christ. We want distinction and decisiveness, we want clarity about the spirits. We do not want politics, but if we must indeed protect consciences for the tasks of state citizenship, it is indispensable to outline the issues of public life, especially with my theme:]
Religion and Church in public life.
The new era has the desire to remove the influence of religion and the Church from public life. [The Weimar Reich Constitution is a new milestone of this modern development since the Peace of Westphalia. And Bavaria has hereby not only danced the Reich’s tune, it has preferred to go yet much further in pressuring the Church and religion out of public life. (Cries: Unfortunately!)] Therefore we must see to it that religion and the Church have a right in public life, that they are a state necessity, and that they are an eternal blessing for public life.
Religion and the Church have a right in public life.
Christ gave his apostles the mission: Go out into all the world and teach all peoples! To the whole world and all nations then, the good news must go. There is salvation in no other name, there is no other foundation laid. The religion of the cross shall become the salvation of the world and renew the face of the whole earth. Indeed for public societies of the people, the message of Christ shall become the yeast that penetrates the whole mass. The savior had already said to the apostles: What I whisper in your ear, you will thereupon preach from the rooftops, that is, in the public squares of the towns and villages. And when Peter, the gatekeeper of the Kingdom of God on earth, shook the dust of the Jewish land off his feet, his face then was turned toward Rome, that place where the military roads of world history came together. Not in the deep valleys of the Himalayas, not in the solitude of the African deserts, but in Rome, upon the capital of knowledge and world history of the time, was his doctrinal see established. You see, Christ built his Church on the military roads of history. Religion and Church have a right in public life. [(Applause.) Note: All audience reactions were omitted in the version published in Documentation Catholique.]
There comes now from Erfurt a new gospel: religion is a private affair. If that means everyone can take of it whatever he wants, that anyone can put out his own catechism, as he wishes, if that means religion is not a community activity, if we are thus supposed to tear down our churches and smash our organs, if that means religion is only and exclusively a private affair, then the saying is false. (Quite right!) If it means religion is first and foremost a personal affair, then the saying is correct. First the interior life must be leavened by the Kingdom of God, first must the individual possess the spirit of prayer and of faith, of love for God and love for neighbor, before confessing this spirit on the streets of public life. Christ said to the Pharisees: Go into your chamber and pray! To the Pharisees, who went about the streets with their piety, who used piety as placard without having the Kingdom of God interiorly, to them he said: Whoever denies me before people, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Applause.) A human being is a personal unity, he is not an amalgam of a private half and a state citizen half. (Very good! strong acclamation.) So he cannot be inwardly a Christian and outwardly a pagan. (Very good!) One cannot be for Christ and gather for Christ at home with the family, and on the other hand be against Christ and scatter against Him upon the street as an official, as a parliamentary delegate. (Applause.) One can change coats when one goes out, but one cannot change what is in the soul as one changes clothes. (Applause.) If the individual is obligated to acknowledge God as Lord and Creator, and if the civil society of the state arises from individual persons alone, then why should that which is an obligation for the individual not also be reflected in public life. (Acclamation.)
[Yet a third right pertains to religion and Church in public: a political right! Struggle against persons or parties is alien to us. For me, person or party is the form of an ideology and false doctrine. (Very good!) I am speaking not of the party of Social Democracy, I am speaking here of the false doctrine of Socialism. (Strong acclamation.)] If Socialism now advances the saying, religion is a private affair, then it must logically also advance the saying: hostility to religion is a private affair. (Tempestuous applause.) But if an anti-religious spirit lives in politics and weaves legislation on its weaver’s loom, then religion too must occupy itself with politics. (Acclamation.) How can one say: You are intruding from the ecclesiastical realm into the governmental-political realm, if one is continually intruding from the governmental realm into the ecclesiastical realm? (Loud cries of Bravo.) A few days ago a newspaper spoke out with an openness that is worthy of thanks: “The order of the day is the altercation between Socialism and the Church.” How can we, then, shut up religion as a private affair within the four walls of the house? (Absolutely right!) Now we also understand, my worthies, why the fight is always against the Catholic Church at the end of the day. All these battles of the day are local skirmishes in a great world battle, which began at the start of history between the good and evil spirits. The closer the fullness of time approaches, the more clearly the two camps, for Christ and against Christ, are revealed, and the more clearly appears the Catholic world religion as the Kingdom of Christ. The names change, the contrasts remain. Many a one thinks he is a big player and is only a piece on a chessboard. Religion and the Church have a right in public life.
Religion and Church are a State Necessity for Public Life.
Here I go back to ancient Plato and his fundamental principle: Whoever destroys religion destroys the foundations of the social order. (Absolutely right!) It would be good if Ministers of Education and Culture had to first undergo an exam about this ... (the rest of the words were drowned out by a tumultuous storm of applause). One state necessity is certainly authority, trust in those who are to lead the people. We know, unfortunately, how many it has smitten among us in Bavaria. For us, however, all authority rests upon God’s Fourth Commandment, and God’s Fourth Commandment sets this earthly authority upon God’s authority in the first three Commandments. If, therefore, a state government throws the first three Commandments out the window, then it has removed the foundations of its own authority and the people have said with instinctive logical correctness: If you no longer believe in the authority of God, then we too no longer believe in your authority. (Tumultuous applause.) Whoever wants to have authority must acknowledge the Fourth Commandment and thereby religion. Whoever destroys religion destroys the foundations of social life.
Sound principles are certainly a state necessity. Only strong dogmas create strong nations. We have sound principles in our Catholic dogmas, anointed with the blood of martyrs since the time of the Catacombs, consecrated through the centuries by their confessions of faith. And these statements of the faith of the Church, they shine into the life of people and also strengthen the loyalty and faith of people. Where faith in God dwindles, the people’s trust necessarily becomes shaky. Sound principles are something we have in the glorious work that appeared at Pentecost in 1918, in the Code of Canon Law, the constitutional proclamation of the Catholic Church. 1918 brought us the constitutional proclamation of the Church, 1919 the constitution of the Reich. The constitution of the Church, which grew up from the Church’s life of law as a growth of peaceful development; the Reich constitution, the child of the Revolution. And the aftermath would indeed show what a difference there is between the laws of God’s realm and those of earthly realms. Everything is flooding and surging and pressing around us; but we do not want new floods, we want a rock in the flood. The Church’s Code of Canon Law is a rock of law in the floods of our time. There God’s spirit hovers over the chaos. There, sound goals without compromise (Very good!), there, a leadership to which we gladly extend our hand. Just compare what programs of recent years have had to be struck down and refashioned. (Cheerful acclamation.)
Sound foundational principles, but also sound foundational laws! A foundational law is more than a foundational principle. A foundational law is a principle that offers a “You shall!” and takes me by the hand and sets me on a specified path. Such foundational laws are: Honor your father and mother, do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie. The Decalogue has given us the foundational laws of public life. To be sure, these are also points of natural law. But historically it is firmly established that only where these laws erect a longterm governmental structure worthy of humanity, do the citizens feel religiously obligated to their fundamental laws. If some individuals say: I too get there, without religion – they should not forget that they are living on soil where the mission of Christianity has introduced these foundational principles as the common intellectual heritage of our time. (Acclamation and applause.) How then will the state, when it casts its laws and regulations into the world, obligate its citizens in conscience to its laws? By police and new letters of the law? A state authority that is supported only by police and handgranades is going about on crutches. There must come about an obligation by conscience, and that comes only from religion. So it is remarkable, on the one hand one wants to exclude religion from public life, and on the other hand, one has to admit there is absolutely no moral obligation, no matter of conscience, thus no possibility of establishing the entirety of the state if it is not done with the foundation of religion. Whoever destroys religion destroys the foundation of the social order. So, have those who are advancing the saying that religion is a private affair, have they totally forgotten that there can be no real overcoming of capitalism (Very good!), that we, if we do not succeed in educating and obligating consciences in citizenship, will inevitably fail in actually breaking our era’s spirit of profit-seeking and damnable Mammonism?
It was a world-historical moment when the final reading of the constitution ended in Weimar. There were the men of state standing around their constitution and asking themselves: Now we have a constitution; but how are we now going to obligate the citizens to it? (Very good! Jollity.) Naturally we are going to obligate them as in the good old days (Jollity), with the formula of an oath: I swear! But no! Swearing means to call on God’s name. For God’s sake, we really want to keep this name out of public life. The way out: The oath is taken as a religious oath by those who believe in the name of God, and in a civil oath for those who do not believe in it. (Jollity and acclamation.) But swearing an oath is not speaking with a forked tongue, it is intended to provide clarity and truth (Bravo!), it should rule out forked-tonguedness and double-mindedness in an important matter. (Bravo!) Either an oath is an appeal to God from the mouth of those who believe in God, or there is no longer any oath. (Absolutely right!) If, on the one hand, God is given the heave-ho, right in his face, from public life, then he cannot be summoned back again when you are helpless without him. (Prolonged applause.) We declare the oath permissible in public life, we never yet discovered in Kaiser era that it was a piece of the Middle Ages. But we must guard ourselves against the holy oath being emptied of meaning by this civil concept and guard against the holy oath being degraded to a matter of raw police power. (Absolutely right!) ...
[My dear Munichers!] From the arena of this Circus, [as in the days of Nero,] the faith in the invincibility of the cross and the love for our Holy Church are taken together out into public life. [Catholic Munichers and Diocesans,] do not allow your sanctuary to be [laid waste], do not allow the sacred rights of your Church to be trampled underfoot; [wake up and wake each other up!] (Thunderous, repeatedly crescendoing, minutes-long applause and hand-clapping.]