Pacelli reports to Gasparri that the new Reich Constitution will apply to Bavaria as well as to the nation, and that Pacelli is returning to Munich on August 8th. - Aug. 7, 1919

 Source: Timeline

Aug. 7, 1919 Pacelli reports to Gasparri that the new Reich Constitution will apply to Bavaria as well as to the nation, and that Pacelli is returning to Munich on August 8th.

English translation

Also on Aug. 7, a Bavarian priest complains to Pacelli that the German Bishops are giving in to subordination of Church to State while claiming to the world “that the ‘Center Party’ has really once again come to the rescue.” English translation of letter from Fr. Hollweck

 Aug. 7, 1919 Pacelli in Rorschach to Gasparri in Rome, encrypted cable:

Reich Constitution applies also for Bavaria, but has not yet entered into effect. I leave tomorrow for Munich, I will immediately inquire and report whether there is need for a provisional proposal to provide for the parishes.

Source: Pacelli-Edition.de, Dokt. No. 5090

Aug. 7, 1919 Hollweck to Pacelli:

Most Reverend and Gracious Herr!

Your Excellency!

Recent days have brought me so much work that I have not been in position to answer the questions that were posed. Upon my return on the evening of the 4th, from Munich, where I had to consult the doctor, I used my first free moments to review the wide-ranging questions that I am to answer and about which I have in the meantime reflected much and which I have weighed much back and forth.

1. What concerns future appointments to German Bishop positions ...

2. As to what concerns the other concepts that Your Excellency touched upon in the letters of the 5th and 17th of July and which concern the general status of the Church in the realm of the German States and in the German Reich overall, what I perceive is that efforts were also made by the German diplomatic representation at the Holy See to put to rest the objections that the recent negotiations in Weimar, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart etc. must have aroused.

It was also pointed out to me that freedom of conscience and religion really are well recognized in these foundational laws. To be sure these declared the individual to be religiously free, but only in order to be able, unhindered, to turn one’s back on religion and indeed on all religions. The provisions do not have the meaning and intent to exercise no compulsion as to religion. The individual is invited, rather, to liberate himself from all religioin. That is how this concept was already understood by the Revolutionaries of 1848 and represented by them and accepted in “the Foundational Rights of the German People.” One eventually saw through that and, from the actual practice of liberalism, learned it even better. From it no benefit is going to bloom for the Church and for Catholics, and nothing is to be hoped from it.

A “State Church” is something we have not had indeed for a long time. This is indeed no longer a danger and the further warding off of such danger is nothing worth fighting for or giving anything up for. On the other hand, the principle of subordination of the Church to State law, taken up even by Catholics and their leaders and representatives – in the ambit of common law – is so serious a mistake and so great a danger that all the so-called gains, tax receipts, support of universities and the theological faculties in them, recognition of the Church as a society of public right, freedom of appointing to benefices, and so forth completely disappear. All of that can and will in the future be changed on occasion and the German Bishops, the representatives of the German Catholics, have made themselves defenseless in the face of that. They have without protest agreed to the principles of this subordination of Church to State. Hopefully the Holy See will rescue the ecclesiastical principle even for Germany. The German Catholics have rescued the Protestant “church,” that is, so-called Christianity, itself and its positions a well-paid theology professors, but the Church is left in the lurch. It must save itself. One has allowed everything to happen to oneself and now is not protesting. Jurists and theologians are praised as “farsighted” and “peaceable.” But I am becoming bitter. The experiences of recent times have made me bitter, because even those are abdicating upon whom I had placed my hopes – the Bishops and the theologians. The all keep quiet and they are trying to make it out to the world that the “Center Party” has really once again come to the rescue.

In deepest reverence and devotion signs

Your Excellency’s most subordinate servant

R.J. Hollweck, professor

Source: Pacelli-Edition.de, Dokt. No. 2893