Venerable Brethren
Greeting and Apostolic Benediction
1.   With deep anxiety and increasing dismay, We have for some time past beheld the sufferings of the Church, and the steadily growing oppression of those men and women who, loyally professing their faith in thought and deed, have remained true to her amidst the people of that land to which St. Boniface once brought the light and glad tidings of Christ and the Kingdom of God.
2.   This anxiety of Ours has not been lessened by the accurate reports dutifully brought to Us by the representatives of the most Reverend Episcopate, who came to visit at Our sick-bed.  They related much that is consoling and edifying about the struggle for Religion that is being waged by the faithful, and yet, despite their love for their people and their fatherland, with every possible attempt to reach a dispassionate judgment, they could not pass over much that is bitter and sad.  After receiving their accounts, We could say in great thankfulness to God: "I have no greater grace than this, to hear that my children walk in truth." (III John, 1, 4.)   But the frankness befitting Our responsible Apostolic Office, and the desire to place before your eyes and those of the entire Christian world the actual facts in all their gravity, require Us to add:  A greater anxiety, a more bitter suffering in Our Pastoral care, We have not, than to hear "many leave the way of truth." (II Peter, 2, 3.)
3.   In the summer of 1933, Venerable Brethren, We accepted the offer made by the Government of the Reich to institute negotiations for a Concordat in connection with a proposal of the previous year, and to the satisfaction of you all brought them to a conclusion with a solemn agreement.  In this We were guided by the solicitude incumbent on Us to safeguard the freedom of the Church in the exercise of her apostolic ministry in Germany and the salvation of the souls entrusted to her, and at the same time by the sincere wish of rendering an essential service to the progress and prosperity of the German people.
4.   In spite of many serious misgivings at the time, We forced Ourselves to decide that We should not withhold Our consent.  We wished to spare Our faithful sons and daughters in Germany, so far as was humanly possible, the anxiety and suffering which, in the given circumstances,  We would certainly have otherwise had to expect.  Through Our act We wished to prove to all, that seeking only Christ and the things of Christ, We do not refuse the hand of peace of Mother Church to anyone who does not himself reject it.
5.   If the tree of peace which We planted with pure intention to German soil has not borne the fruit We desired in the interests of your people, no one in the wide world who has eyes to see and ears to hear can say today that the fault lies with the Church and her Head.  The lessons of the past years make it clear where the responsibility lies.  They disclose machinations that from the beginning had no other aim than a war of extermination.  In the furrows where We labored to plant the seeds of sincere peace, others were sowing--like the enemy in Holy Scripture (Matthew, 13, 21.)--the tares of distrust, of discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open enmity against Christ and His Church, an enmity in principle, fed from a thousand springs and working with every means at its disposal.  With them and only with them, as well as with their open and silent supporters, lies the responsibility that now, instead of the rainbow of peace, the storm-clouds of destructive Religious conflicts are visible on the German horizon.
6.   We have not tired, Venerable Brethren, of portraying to the responsible guides of the destinies of your country the consequences that necessarily follow if such trends are left unhindered and much more if they are viewed with favor.  We have done everything to defend the sanctity of a word solemnly pledged, to protect the inviolability of obligations, freely undertaken, against theories and practices which, if officially approved, must destroy all confidence and render valueless any word that might also be pledged in the future.   When once the time shall have come to place before the eyes of the world these Our endeavors, all right-minded persons will know where they have to look for those who kept the peace, and where for those who broke it.  Everyone in whose mind there is left the least perception of the truth, in whose heart there is a trace of feeling for justice, will then have to admit that in these grievous and eventful years after the signing of the Concordat, in every word and in every action of Ours, We have stood faithful to the terms of the agreement.  But with amazement and deep aversion he will be obliged to admit that to change the meaning of the agreement, to evade the agreement, to empty the agreement of all its significance, and finally more or less openly to violate the agreement, has been made the unwritten law of conduct by the other party.
7.   The moderation We have shown in spite of everything was neither dictated by considerations of human expediency nor motivated by unseemly weakness, but simply by the desire that We might not perchance tear up valuable wheat with the tares; by the intention not to pronounce judgment openly until minds were made ready for the inevitability of this judgment; by the determination not to deny definitively the good faith of others before the hard language of facts had torn away the coverings under which a systematic camouflage has been able and is able to disguise the attack on the Church.  Even today, when the open campaign waged against the denominational school guaranteed by the Concordat, when the nullification of the freedom of the vote for Catholics who should have the right to decide in the matter of education, shows the dreadful seriousness of the situation in a most important field of the Church's life and the unparalleled torment of conscience of believing Christians, Our Pastoral care for the salvation of souls counsels Us not to leave unheeded even the slight prospects of return to a loyal adherence to a responsible agreement.  In compliance with the prayers of the Most Reverend Episcopate
We shall not weary in the future also of pleading the cause of outraged right with the rulers of your people.    Unconcerned with the success or failure of the day and obeying only Our conscience and in accordance with Our Pastoral Mission, We shall oppose an attitude of mind that seeks to stifle chartered right with open or covered violence.
8.   The purpose of the present Letter however, Venerable Brethren, is a different one.  As you kindly visited Us as We lay on Our bed of sickness, so today We turn to you and through you to the Catholic faithful of Germany, who, like all suffering and oppressed children, are particularly close to the heart of the Common Father.  In this hour, when their faith is being tried like pure gold in the fire of tribulation and concealed and open persecution, when they are surrounded by a thousand forms of organized bondage in matters of Religion, when the lack of true information and absence of the customary means of defense weigh heavy on them, they have a double right to words of truth and spiritual comfort from him, to whose first predecessor the significant words of the Savior were spoken: "But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou being once converted, confirm thy brethren." (Luke, 22, 32.)

True Belief In God
9.   Take care, Venerable Brethren, that first of all belief in God, the primary and irreplaceable foundation of all Religion, be preserved true and unadulterated in German lands.  He is not a believer in God who uses the Word of God rhetorically but he who associates with the Sacred Word the true and worthy idea of God.
10.   He who, in pantheistic vagueness, equates God with the universe, and identifies God with the world and the world with God does not belong to believers in God.
11.   He who replaces a personal God with a weird impersonal Fate supposedly according to ancient pre-Christian German concepts denies the Wisdom and Providence of God, that "reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly" ("Wisdom, 8, 1.)  and directs everything for the best.  Such a one cannot claim to be numbered among those who believe in God.
12.   He who takes the race, or the people, or the State, or the form of Government, the hearers of the power of the State or other fundamental elements of human society--which in the temporal order of things have an essential and honorable place--out of the system of their earthly valuation, and makes them the ultimate norm of all, even of religious values, and deifies them with an idolatrous worship, perverts and falsifies the order of things created and commanded by God.  Such a one is far from true belief in God and a conception of life corresponding to true belief.
13.   Beware, Venerable Brethren, of the growing abuse in speech and writing, of using the thrice Holy Name of God as a meaningless label for a more or less capricious form of human search and longing.  Work among your faithful that they may be vigilant to reject this aberration as it deserves.  Our God is the personal, superhuman, almighty, infinitely perfect God, one in the Trinity of Persons, threefold in the Unity of the Divine Essence, the Creator of the Universe, the Lord and King in whom the history of the world finds fulfillment, Who suffers and can surer no other god beside Him.
14.   This God has given His commandments in His capacity as Sovereign.  They apply regardless of time and space, country or race.  As God's sun shines on all that  bear human countenance, so does His Law know no privileges or exceptions.  The Rulers and ruled, crowned and uncrowned, high and low, rich and poor, all alike are subject to His Law.  From the sum total of His rights as Creator flows connaturally the sum total of His claims to obedience on the part of the individual and every kind of society.  This claim to obedience comprehends every walk, of life, in which moral questions demand a settlement in harmony with God's Law and consequently the adjustment of transitory human legislation to the structure of the immutable Law of God.  Only superficial minds can lapse into the heresy of speaking of a national God, of a national religion; only such can make the mad attempt of trying to confine within the boundaries of a single people, within the narrow blood stream of a single race, God the Creator of the world, the King and Lawgiver of all peoples before whose greatness all peoples are small as a drop of a bucket. (Is., 40, 11.)
15.   The Bishops of the Church of Christ set up "for the things that appertain to God" (Heb., 5,   1.)  must be watchful that such pernicious errors, which are usually followed by more pernicious practices, find no foothold among the faithful.  It is the Holy Duty of your Office, as far as in you lies, to do everything to bring it about that the Commandments of God shall be regarded and obeyed as the Obligatory Basis of morally ordered private and public life, that the Sovereign Rights of God, the Name and the Word of God, be not blasphemed; (Tit., 2, 5.)  that the blasphemies--in word, writing and picture, at times countless as the sands by the sea--be made to cease; that over against the defying Promethean  spirit of deniers, scorners and haters of God the propitiatory prayer of the faithful never falters but that, like incense, it may rise hour after hour to the Most High and stay His hand raised to punish.
16.   We thank you, Venerable Brethren, your Priests and all the Faithful, who have done and continue to do their duty in defending the sovereign rights of God against and aggressive neo-paganism that unfortunately in many instances is favored in influential quarters.  Our thanks are doubly sincere and coupled with admiration and approval of those who in the exercise if their duty were found worthy of making earthly sacrifices for God's sake and of enduring earthly suffering.

True Belief In Christ
17.   No belief in God will in the long run be preserved pure and genuine, if it is not supported by belief in Christ: "No one knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither does any one know the Father, but the Son and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him." (Matthew, 11, 27.)   "This is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the only True God and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." (John, 17, 3.)   Hence no one may say: I am a believer in God; that is religion enough for me.  The Words of the Savior allow no room for this kind of evasion.  "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.  He that confesseth the Son hath also the Father." (John, 2, 23.)
18.   The fulness of Divine Revelation has appeared in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God.  "God, Who at sundry times and divers manners spoke in times past to the Fathers through the Prophets, in the fulness of time hath spoken to us by His Son." (Hebrews, 1, 1.)  The Sacred Books of the Old Testament are all God's Word, an organic part of His Revelation   Corresponding to the gradual unfolding of the Revelation, the dimness of the time preceding the full noon day of the Redemption hovers over them.  As is inevitable in the case of books of history and law, they are the reflections in many particulars of human imperfection, weakness and sin.  Side by side with infinitely much that is high and noble, they relate the dissipation and worldliness that occurred time and again among the covenanted people who bore the Revelation and Promise of God.
19.   Yet for every eye not blinded by prejudice and passion  out of the human failings, of which the Bible history speaks, shines forth all the more clearly the Divine Light of the work of salvation finally triumphant over all defects and sin.  God's pedagogy of salvation develops on such a back-ground often times dark into perspectives that point the way, warn, fill with dread, elevate and make happy at the same time.  Only blindness and pride can close their eyes to the treasures of instruction for salvation, that are in the Old Testament.  He who wants to see the Biblical History and the Wisdom of the Old Testament banished from the Church and school, blasphemes the Word of God, blasphemes the Almighty's plan of salvation, makes the narrow and limited mind of man judge over the Divine Plan of history.  He denies belief in the real Christ, Who appeared in the flesh, Who took His human nature from that people which was to nail Him to the cross.  He stands uncomprehendingly before the world-drama of the Son of God Who opposed to the felony of His crucifiers the Divine high-Priestly action of the Redeemer's death and thus brought the Old Testament to its fulfillment and completion in the New, by which it is superseded.
20.   The climax of revelation reached in the Gospel  of Jesus Christ is definite, is obligatory for ever.  This Revelation knows no addition from the hand of man, above all, knows no substitution and no replacement by arbitrary "revelations" that certain speakers of the present day wish to derive from the myth of blood and race.  Since Christ, the Anointed, accomplished the work of redemption, broke the dominion of sin, and merited for us the grace of becoming children of God--since then no other name has been given under Heaven to men, through which they can be saved, but the Name of Jesus. (Acts, 4, 12.)  No man, though all knowledge, all power, all outward might on earth should be embodied in him, can lay any other foundation than that which is already laid in Christ. (I Cor., 3, 11.)  He who sacrilegiously disregarding the yawning abyss of essential distinction between God and creature, between the God-Man and the children of men, dares to place any mortal, were he the greatest of all times, beside Christ, or worse, above Him and against Him, must be told that he is a false prophet, in whom the words of Scripture find terrible application: "H that dwelleth in Heaven, shall laugh at them." (Ps., 2, 4.)

True Belief in the Church
21.   Belief in Christ will not be preserved true and genuine, if not supported and protected by belief in the Church, "the pillar and ground of the Truth." (I Timothy, 3, 15.)  Christ Himself, God praised forever in the ages, has erected this Pillar of Faith.  His command, to hear the Church, (Matthew, 18, 17.)  to hear His own Words and Commandments (Luke, 10, 16.)  in the words and commandments of the Church, is meant for the men of all times and places.  The Church founded by the Redeemer is one--for all peoples and nations.  Beneath her vault, that like God's firmament arches over the whole earth, there is a place and home for all peoples and tongues; there is room for the development of all the particular qualities, points of excellence, missions and callings, that God has assigned to individuals and peoples.  The heart of Mother Church is wide and big enough to see in the development, according to God's purpose, of such special qualities and gifts rather the richness of variety than the danger of separation.  She rejoices in the intellectual advancement of individuals and peoples.  With the joy and pride of a mother she sees in their genuine achievements the fruits of education and progress, that she blesses and furthers whenever she can in conscience do so.  But she knows, too, that limits are set to this freedom by the Majesty of God's Law that has willed and founded this Church one and indivisible in all essentials.  He who touches this Unity and Indivisibility, takes from the Bride of Christ one of the Diadems with which God Himself has crowned her.  He subjects her Divine Structure that rests on Eternal Foundations to the re-examination and remodeling of architects, to whom the Heavenly Father has granted no plenipotentiary powers to build.
22.   The Divine Mission of the Church that works among men and must work through men may be lamentably obscured by human failings that again and again sprout up as tares amid the wheat of God's Kingdom.  He who has heard the Savior's Word about scandals and those who give scandal, knows how the Church and each individual has to judge on what was sin and is sin.  But because of these deplorable discrepancies between believing and living, between word and deed, between the outward conduct and the interior disposition of individuals--even though there might be many such--to forget the immense sum of sincere pursuit of virtue, of the spirit of sacrifice, of brotherly love, of heroic striving after holiness; or worse, to conceal all this knowingly, is to display regrettable blindness and injustice.  When it becomes perfectly clear that the hard standard applied to the hated Church is forgotten the very moment there is question of societies of a different nature, felt to be akin in sentiment or interest, then the one who so acts and pretends that he has been offended in his sense of cleanliness, shows that he is related to those who in the cutting Words of the Savior see the mote in their brother's eye, but do not see the beam in their own.  Questionable as is the intention of those who make a career, and in many instances a low profession, of busying themselves with human failings in the Church, and though it be true that the Authority of him who holds Ecclesiastical Office is founded on God and is independent of his human or moral standing; nevertheless, no period of time, no individual, no community is free from the duty of sincere examination of conscience, of unrelenting, of thorough renewal in mind and deed.  In Our Encyclical on the Priesthood, in Our Letters on Catholic Action, We pointed out with adjuring insistence the Sacred Duty of all members of the Church, and particularly members of the Priesthood and Religious State, that they should bring their belief and conduct into the agreement required by the Law of God and demanded by the Church with emphasis.  And today We earnestly repeat:  It is not enough to be counted a member of the Church of Christ.  One must be also a living member of this Church-- in Spirit and in Truth. And only they are such, who are in the Grace of the Lord and ever walk in His Presence--in innocence or in sincere and efficacious Penance.  If the Apostle of the Gentiles, the "Vessel of Election," kept his body under the rod of chastisement and mortification in order that he might not, after preaching to others, become himself a castaway, (I Cor., 9, 27.)  can there be any other way but that of the closest union of apostolate and personal sanctification for the others to whose hands is committed the keeping and increase of the Kingdom of God?  Only in this way can it be proved to the present generation, and especially to the adversaries of the Church, that the leaven of Christendom has not become stale, but is capable and ready to bring to the people of today who are caught in doubt and error, in indifference and perplexity, in weariness in believing and in separation from God, the spiritual renewal and rejuvenation of which they stand, whether they admit it or not, in greater need than ever before.  A Christianity that enters into itself in all its members, that strips off all mere outward show and worldliness, that takes the commandments of God seriously, and proves itself in love of God and active love of one's neighbor, can and must be the pattern and leader to a world sick to its very heart and seeking for support and guidance if unspeakable misfortune and a cataclysm far beyond all imagination is not to burst over it.
23.   In the final analysis very true and lasting reform has proceeded from the Sanctuary; from men who were inflamed and driven by Love of God and their neighbor.  From their magnanimity and readiness to hearken to every call of God and to realize that call first of all in themselves, they grew in humility and in the conviction of their calling to be luminaries and renewers of their times.  When zeal for reform did not spring from the pure source of personal singleness of heart, but was the expression and outbreak of passionate frenzy, it caused confusion instead of bringing light, tore down instead of building up; and not seldom was the point of departure for errors more disastrous than were the evils that it was the intention or the pretended intention to correct.  True, the Spirit of God breatheth where He will. (John, 3, 8.)   He can raise up stones to prepare the way for His Design. (Matthew, 3, 9; Luke, 3, 8.)   He chooses the instruments of His Will according to His Own plans, and not according to those of men.  But He Who founded His Church and called it into being in the storm of Pentecost, does not blast the foundation of the establishment He Himself intended for salvation.  Those who are moved by the Spirit of God have of themselves the proper inward and outward attitude towards the Church, which is the precious fruit on the tree of the Cross, the Pentecostal Gift of God's Spirit to a world in need of guidance.
24.   In your districts, Venerable Brethren, voices are raised in ever louder chorus urging men on to leave the Church.  Among the spokesmen there are many who, by reason of their official position, seek to create the impression that leaving the Church, and the disloyalty to Christ the King which it entails, is a particularly convincing and meritorious form of profession of loyalty to the present State.  With cloaked and with manifest methods of coercion, by intimidation, by holding out the prospect of economic, professional,civic and other advantages, the loyalty of Catholics and especially of certain classes of Catholic Officials to their Faith is put under a pressure that is as unlawful as it is unworthy of human beings.   All Our fatherly sympathy and deepest condolence We offer to those who pay so high a price for their fidelity to Christ and the Church.  But here We reach the point of supreme importance, where it is question of safety or destruction, and where consequently, for the believer the way of heroic fortitude is the only way of salvation.  When the tempter or oppresser comes to him with the Judas-like suggestion to leave the Church, then, even at the cost of heavy, earthly sacrifices he can only reply in the Words of the Savior: "Begone, Satan: for it is written:  The Lord thy God thou shalt adore and Him only shall thou serve." (Matthew, 4, 10; Luke, 4, 8.)  But to the Church he will say: Thou my Mother from the days of my childhood, my comfort in life, my intercessor in death, may my tongue cleave to my palate, if I, yielding to earthly enticements or threats, should turn traitor to the promises of my Baptism.  But to those who think that they can continue outward leaving of the Church with inward loyalty to the Church, let the Savior's Words be earnest warning: "He that shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father Who is in Heaven." (Matthew, 10. 33/)

The Belief in the Primacy
25.   Belief in the Church will not be kept pure and genuine if it is not supported by belief in the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome.  At the very moment when Peter, foremost of all the Apostles and Disciples, confessed Faith in Christ, the Son of the Living God, the answer of Christ rewarding his Faith and his confession was the Word that speaks of the building of His Church, the One Church, and on Peter the Rock. (Matthew, 16, 18.)   Belief in Christ, in the Church, in the Primacy are thus connected in the holiest way.  Real and lawful Authority is everywhere the bond of unity, a source of strength, a security against disruption and dissolution, a pledge for the future; it is so in the highest and holiest sense in the case for the Church where alone to such Authority the Guidance of Grace by the Holy Ghost and His assistance against which nothing can prevail have been promised.  When people who do not even agree on their Faith in Christ hold before you as a thing to be desired or allure you with the picture of a German national church, know this: it is nothing but the denial of the Church of Christ, a manifest apostasy from the command to evangelize the whole world, to whose fulfillment only a Universal Church can be commensurate.  The history of other national churches, their spiritual torpor, their attachment to or enslavement by earthly powers, shows the hopeless sterility that comes over every branch that separates itself from the Living Vine of the Church.  To be on the alert right from the very start and to oppose an unflinching "No" to such sophistries, is to serve not only the purity of one's Faith in Christ, but also the well-being and vital forces of one's people.

No Changing the Sense of Holy Words and Ideas
26.   You must be especially alert, Venerable Brethren, when fundamental religious conceptions are robbed of their intrinsic content and made to mean something else in a profane sense.
27.   Revelation, in the Christian sense, is the Word of God to man.  To use the same word for the "whispered inspiration" of blood and race, for the manifestations of the history of a people, is confusing in any case.  Such false coinage does not deserve to be received into the vocabulary of a believing Christian.
28.   Faith is the certain holding as true what God has revealed and through His Church proposes for belief, "the evidence of things that appear not." (Hebrews, 11, 1.)   The joyous and proud confidence in the future of one's people, dear to everyone, means something quite different from faith in the religious sense.  To play one off against the other, to try to replace one by the other, and thereupon demand to be recognized as a "believer" by the convinced Christian, is an empty play on words or a willful effacing of distinctions, or worse.
29.   Immortality in the Christian sense is the continuance of the life of a man after temporal death, as a personal individual, to be rewarded or punished eternally.  To designate with the word immortality the collective continued enjoyment of life in association with the continued existence of one's people on earth for an undetermined length of time in the future, is to pervert and falsify one of the principal Truths of the Christian Faith and strike at the foundations of every Religious Philosophy that demands a moral ordering of the world.  If they do not want to be Christians, at least they should forego enriching the vocabulary of their unbelief from the Christian treasure of ideas.
30.   Original sin is the inherited, though not personal, fault of the descendants of Adam, who sinned in him; (Romans, 1, 12.)  loss of Grace, and therewith loss of eternal life, with the propensity to evil that each one must combat and overcome by Grace, Penance, struggle and moral endeavor.  The Passion and Death of the Son of God redeemed the world from the inherited curse of sin and death.  Faith in these Truths that today are clearly scorned in your country by the enemies of Christ belongs to the inalienable substance of the Christian Religion.
31.   The Cross of Christ, though the mere name may have become to many a folly and scandal, (I Corr., 1, 23.)  is still for the Christian the hallowed Sign of Redemption, the standard of moral greatness and strength.  In its shadow we live.  In its kiss we die.  On our graves it shall stand to proclaim our Faith, to witness our hope turned towards the Eternal Light.
32.   Humility in the Spirit of the Gospel and Prayer for the help of God's Grace are compatible with self-respect, self-confidence and heroic purpose.  The Church of Christ, that in all ages up to the present time counts more Confessors and voluntary Martyrs than any other body, does not need to receive instruction from such quarters about heroic purposefulness and heroic achievements.  In its shallow twaddle about Christian humility being self-abasement and unheroic conduct, the disgusting pride of these reformers mocks itself.
33.   Grace, in the loose sense of the term, can be said to be everything that the creature receives from the Creator.  Grace in the proper and Christian sense of the word embraces, however, the supernatural manifestations of Divine Love, the loving kindness and working of God, whereby He raises men to that inward participation of life with Himself, that is called in the New Testament sonship of God.  "Behold what manner of Charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called and should be the sons of God." (I John, 3, 1.)   The repudiation of this supernatural elevation of Grace on account of the supposedly peculiar German type of being, is an error and an open challenge to a fundamental Truth of Christianity.  To put supernatural Grace on the same level with the gifts of nature robs the vocabulary fashioned and sanctified by the Church.  The Pastors and Guardians of God's people will do well to act with vigilance against this looting of the Sanctuary and this work of confusing minds.

Moral Doctrine and Moral Order
34.   The moral conduct of mankind is grounded on Faith in God kept true and pure.  Every attempt to dislodge moral teaching and moral conduct from the Rock of Faith, and to build them on the unstable sands of human norms, sooner or later leads the individual and the community to moral destruction.  The fool, who hath said in his heart, there is no God, will walk the ways of corruption. (Ps., 13, 1.)   The number of such fools, who today attempt to separate morality and Religion, has become legion.  They do not or will not see that by expelling confessional, i.e. clear and definite, Christianity from instruction and education, from the formation of social and public life, they are treading the ways of spiritual impoverishment and decline.  No coercive power of the State, no mere earthly ideals, though they be high and noble in themselves, will be able in the long run to replace the final and decisive motives that come from belief in God and Christ.  Take the moral support of the Eternal and Divine, of comforting and consoling belief in the Rewarder of all good and the Punisher of all evil, from those who are called on to make the greatest sacrifices, to surrender their petty self to the commonweal, the result will be in countless instances not the acceptance, but the shirking, of duty.  The conscientious observance of the Ten Commandments of God and the Commandments of the Church--the latter are only the practical applications of the Principles of the Gospel--is for every individual an incomparable schooling of systematic self-discipline, moral training and character formation--a schooling that demands much, but not too much.  The God of kindness, Who as Lawgiver says: "Thou shalt," gives in His Grace also the power to do.  To disregard such profound and efficacious factors in moral training, or knowingly to bar their way to the field of popular education, is inexcusable cooperation in the religious undernourishment of the community.  To hand over moral teaching to subjective human opinions that change with the trend of the time, instead of anchoring it to the Holy Will of the Eternal God and to His Commandments, is to open wide the door to the forces of destruction.  Thus to have ushered in the betrayal of the eternal principles of an objective morality for the schooling of conscience, for the ennoblement of every sphere and branch of life, is a sin against the future of the people, whose bitter fruits the coming generations will taste.

Recognition ot the Natural Law
33.   It is part of the trend of the day to sever more and more not only morality but also the foundation of law and jurisprudence, from True belief in God and from His revealed Commandments. Here We have in mind particularly the socalled natural law that is written by the Finger of the Creator Himself in the tables of the hearts of men (Cf. Rom., 2, 15.)  and which can be read on these tables by sound reason not darkened by sin and passion.  Every positive law, from whatever lawgiver it may come, can be examined as to its moral implications, and consequently as to its moral authority to bind in conscience, in the light of the commandments of the natural law.  The laws of man that are in direct contradiction with the natural law bear an initial defect that no violence means, no outward display of power can remedy.  By this standard must we judge the principle: "What helps the people is right."  A right meaning may be given to this sentence if understood as expressing that what is morally illicit can never serve the true interests of the people.  But even ancient paganism recognized that the sentence, to be perfectly accurate, should be inverted and read: "Never is anything useful, if it is not at the same time morally good.  And not because it is useful, is it morally good, but because it is morally good, it is also useful." (Cicero, De officiis, 3, 30.)   Cut loose from this rule of morality, that principle would mean, in  international life, a perpetual state of war between the different nations.  In political life within the State, since it confuses considerations of utility with those of right, it mistakes the basic fact that man as a person possesses God-given rights, which must be preserved from all attacks aimed at denying, suppressing or disregarding them.  To pay no heed to this truth is to overlook the fact that man as a person possesses God-given rights, which must be preserved from all attacks aimed at denying, suppressing or disregarding them.  To pay no heed to this truth is to overlook the fact that the true public good is finally determined and recognized by the nature of man, with his harmonious coordination of personal rights and social obligations, as well as by the purpose of the community which in turn is conditioned by the same human nature.  The community is willed by the Creator as the means to the full development of the individual and social attainments, which the individual in give and take has to employ to his own good and that of others.  Also those higher and more comprehensive values, that cannot be realized by the individual but only by the community, in the final analysis are intended by the Creator for the sake of the individual, for his natural and supernatural development and perfection.  A deviation from this order loosens the supports on which the community is placed, and thereby imperils the tranquillity, security and even the existence of the community itself.
36.   The believer has an inalienable right to profess his faith and put it into practice in the manner suited to him.  Laws that suppress or make this profession and practice difficult contradict the natural law.
37.   Conscientious parents, aware of their duty in the matter of education, have a primary and original right to determine the education of the children given to them by God in the spirit of the True Faith and in agreement with its principles and ordinances.  Laws or other regulations concerning schools that disregard the rights of parents guaranteed to them by the natural law, or by threat and violence nullify those rights, contradict the natural law and are utterly and essentially immoral.
38.   The Church, the guardian and exponent of the Divine Natural Law, cannot do otherwise than declare that the registrations which have just taken place in circumstances of notorious coercion are the result of violence and void of all legality.

To Youth
39.   As the Vice Regent of Him who said to the young man of the Gospel:  "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the Commandments," (Matthew, 19, 17.)  do We especially address fatherly words to youth.  By a thousand tongues today a gospel is preached in your ears that is not revealed by your Heavenly Father.  A thousand pens write in the service of a sham Christianity that is not the Christianity of Christ.  Day by day the press and the radio overwhelm you with productions hostile to your Faith and Church and, with no consideration or reverence, attack what must be to you Sacred and Holy.
40.   We know that many, very many, of you for the sake of loyalty to your Religion and Church, for the sake of belonging to Church associations guaranteed by the Concordat, have borne and still endure bitter days of misunderstanding, of suspicion, of contempt, of denial of your patriotism, of manifold injury in your professional and social life.  We are aware that many an unknown soldier of Christ stands in your ranks, who with heavy heart but head erect bears his lot and finds comfort solely in the thought of suffering reproach for the Name of Jesus. (Acts, 5, 41.)
41.   Today, when new perils and conflicts threaten, We say to this youth: "If anyone preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received" at the knees of a pious mother, from the lips of a Catholic father, from the education of a teacher true to his God and his Church, "let him be anathema." (Gal., 1, 9.)  If the State founds a State-Youth to which all are obliged to belong, then it is--without prejudice to the rights of Church associations--an obvious, an inalienable right of the young men themselves, and of their parents responsible for them before God, to demand that this obligatory organization should be cleansed of all manifestations of a spirit hostile to Christianity and the Church, which, up to the recent past and even at the present moment, place Catholic parents in hopeless conflicts of conscience, since they cannot give to the state what is demanded in the name of the State without robbing God of what belongs to God.
42.   No one has any intention of obstructing the youth of Germany on the road that is meant to bring them to the realization of true popular union, to the fostering or the love of freedom, to steadfast loyalty to the fatherland.  What We object to, and what We must object to, is the intentional and systematically fomented opposition which is set up between these educational purposes and those of Religion.  Therefore we call out to youth: Sing your songs of freedom, but do not forget the freedom of the sons of God while singing them.  Do not allow this noble freedom, for which there is no substitute, to pine away in the slave chains of sin and sensuality.  He who sings the song of loyalty to his earthly country must not, in disloyalty to God, to his Church, to his eternal country, become a deserter and a traitor.  You are told a great deal about heroic greatness, in designed and false contrast to the humility and patience of the Gospel.  Why is silence kept about the heroism of moral struggle?  Why is it not told you that the preservation of Baptismal innocence represents an heroic action which should be assured of the appreciation it deserves in the religious and moral sphere?  A great deal is told you of human weaknesses in the history of the Church.  Why is nothing said of the great deeds that accompany her on her way through the centuries, of the Saints she has produced, of the blessings which came from the living union between this Church and your people and enriched the culture of the west?  You are told a great deal of the exercises of sport.  Undertaken with discretion, the cult of physical fitness is a benefit for youth.  But now so much time is devoted to it, in many cases, that no account is taken of the harmonious development of mind and body, of what is due to family life, of the Commandment to keep Holy the Lord's Day.  With a disregard bordering on indifference, the Sacredness and Peace that are in the best Tradition of the German Sunday are taken from it.  With confidence We expect from practicing Catholic youth that, in the difficult circumstances of obligatory State organization, they will insist unflinchingly on their right to keep Sunday in a Christian manner, that in the cult of physical fitness they will not forget the interests or their immortal souls; that they will not allow themselves to be overcome by evil, but will strive to overcome evil by good; (Rom. 12, 21.)  that their highest and Holiest ambition will be so to run the race towards immortal life as to achieve the Crown of Victory. (Cf. I Cor., 9, 24.)

To Priests and Religious
43.   We address a special word of recognition, encouragement  and exhortation to the Priests of Germany, on whom, in subordination to their Bishops, there rests the task of showing the flock of Christ in a trying time and under difficult circumstances, the right paths, by precept and example, by daily sacrifice and apostolic patience.  Be not weary, beloved sons and sharers in the Holy Mysteries, in following the Eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, Who bestows love and care like the good Samaritan.  Keep yourselves day by day in conduct undefiled before God, in unremitting discipline and perfection, in merciful care for all entrusted to you, especially for those endangered, the weak and the wavering.  Be the leaders of the faithful, the support of the stumbling, the teachers of the doubtful, the consolers of those who mourn, the unselfish helpers and counselors of all.  The trials and sorrows through which your people have passed since the war have left their mark on its soul.  They have left behind conflicts and bitterness that can be healed only slowly, that can be overcome only in the spirit of unselfish and active charity.  This charity, which is the indispensable armor of the Apostle, especially in the world of the present day stirred up and distorted with hate, We pray and beg the Lord to bestow on you in superabundant measure.  This apostolic love  will make you, if not forget, at least forgive the many undeserved offenses that more plentifully than ever before are strewn in the path of your Priestly Ministration.  This comprehending and merciful charity towards the erring, and even towards the contemptuous, does not mean and cannot mean, that you renounce in any way the proclaiming of, the insisting on, and the courageous defense of the Truth and its free and unhindered application to the realities about you.  The first and obvious duty the Priest owes to the world about him is service to the Truth, the Whole Truth, the unmasking and refutation of error in whatever form or disguise it conceals itself.
44.   To Catholic Religious of both sexes We likewise express Our Fatherly thanks, together with our utmost sympathy in the fate that, in consequence of regulations against the Religious Orders, has taken them out of the work of their chosen career, which they had loved and made rich in blessing.  If individuals have fallen short and proved themselves unworthy, their misdeeds, punished by the Church herself, do not lessen the merits of the overwhelming majority, who, in unselfishness and voluntary poverty, were striving to serve their God and people in the spirit of sacrifice.  The zeal, fidelity, striving after virtue, active charity and readiness to help on the part of the Orders engaged in the ministry, hospitals and schools are, and remain, a praiseworthy contribution to private and public prosperity, to which undoubtedly a later and quieter time will accord more justice than the troubled present.  We feel confident that Superiors of Religious Communities will take occasion from their trials and difficulties to call down from the Almighty fresh blessing and fruitfulness on their heavy work through redoubled zeal, deepened life of prayer, holy earnestness in their vocation and religious discipline.

To The Faithful of the Laity
45.   Before our eyes stands the countless throng of faithful sons and daughters, for whom the suffering of the Church in Germany and their own suffering has in no way diminished their devotion to the cause of God, their tender love for the Father of Christendom, their obedience to their Bishops and Priests, their cheerful readiness, come what may, to remain true in the future to what they have believed and have received from their forefathers as a Sacred Inheritance.  From a heart that is deeply moved We send them all our Paternal greeting.
46.   And this, first and foremost, to the members of the Church Associations, who courageously and oftentimes at the cost of painful sacrifice have kept true to Christ and did not give up the rights which a formal Agreement, made in good faith and trust, had guaranteed to the Church and themselves.
47.   We address a particularly heartfelt greeting to Catholic parents.  Their God-given rights and duties in education are this present moment at the very center of a struggle which could not conceivably be fraught with graver consequences for the future.  The Church of Christ cannot wait until her Altars have been overthrown, until sacrilegious hands have set the Houses of God on fire, before she begins to mourn and lament. When the attempt is made to desecrate the Tabernacle of a child's soul sanctified in Baptism by an education that is hostile to Christ; when from this living temple of God the eternal lamp of belief in Christ is cast out and in its place is brought the false light of a substitute faith that has nothing in common with the faith of the Cross, then the time of spiritual profanation of the Temple is at hand, then it is the duty of every professing Christian to separate clearly his responsibility from that of the other side, to keep his conscience clear of any culpable cooperation in such dreadful work and corruption.  The more the opponents are at pains to deny and gloss over their dark intentions, all the more is vigilant distrust called for, and distrustful vigilance that has been aroused by bitter experience.  The formal maintaining of Religious instruction, especially when controlled and shackled by those who are not competent, in the framework of a school that in other departments systematically and invidiously works against the same Religion, can never be a justification for a believing Christian to give his free approval to such a school that aims at destroying Religion.  We know, beloved Catholic parents, that there can be no question of such willingness on your part.  We know that a free and secret ballot would in your case be equivalent to an overwhelming vote for the Religious school.  And therefore We shall not weary in the future of representing to responsible parties the injustice of the coercive measures so far adopted, and the obligation of allowing free expression of a free will.  Meanwhile do not forget this: from the bond of responsibility established by God that binds you to your children, no earthly power can loose you.  No one of those who today are oppressing you in the exercise of your rights in education and pretend to free you from your duty in this matter, will be able to answer for you to the Eternal Judge when He asks you the question: "Where are those I have given you?"  May everyone of you be able to answer: "Of them Thou hast given me, I have not lost anyone." (John, 18, 9.)
 48.   Venerable Brethren, We are certain that the words which We address to you, and through you to the Catholics of the German Reich, in this decisive hour, will awaken in the hearts and actions of Our loyal children the echo that answers to the loving solicitude of the Common Father.  If there is anything that We beseech of the Lord with particular fervor, it is this, that Our words may also reach the ears and hearts of those who have already begun to allow themselves to be inveigled by the enticements and threats of those who take their stand against Christ and His Holy Gospel and cause them to reflect.
49.   Every word of this Letter has been weighed in the scales of Truth and of Charity.  We did not desire to share any accountability, by reason of untimely silence, for a want of enlightenment, nor, by needless severity, for the hardening of heart of any one of those who are placed under Our Pastoral responsibility and are no less included in Our Pastoral Charity because at the moment they are walking estranged in the ways of error.  Though many of those who adapt themselves to the ways of their new environment, who have for their deserted Father's House and for the Father Himself only words of disloyalty, ingratitude or even insult; though they forget what they have cast behind them, the day will dawn when the horror of being in spiritual dereliction far from God will strike the hearts of these prodigal sons, when homesickness will drive them back to the "God who rejoiced their youth" and to the Church whose maternal hand pointed out for them the way to the Heavenly Father.  To hasten this hour is the object of Our unceasing prayers.
50.   Just as other times of the Church, so will this be the harbinger of new advance and inward purification, if the readiness to suffer and confess the Faith on the part of Christ's Faithful is great enough to oppose to the physical violence of the persecutors of the Church the intransigence of inward Faith, the inexhautibleness of hope that rests on eternity, the commanding power of active Charity.  The Holy Seasons of Lent and Easter, that preach recollection and Penance and direct more often than at other times the eyes of the Christian to the Cross, but at the same time to the Glory of the Risen Christ, may they be for all and everyone of you a joyfully welcomed and eagerly used occasion to fill heart and mind with the spirit of heroism, patience and victory that shines forth from the Cross of Christ.
    Then--of this We are certain--will the enemies of the Church, who fancy that her hour has come, soon recognize that they rejoiced too soon and were too quick to dig her grave.  Then will the day come when, instead of the too hasty songs of victory raised by the enemies of Christ, the Te Deum of liberation can rise to Heaven from the hearts and lips of Christ's Faithful; a Te Deum of thanks to the Highest; a Te Deum of joy, that the German people, even in its erring sons of today, has trodden the way of Religious home-coming, that they once more bend the knee in Faith purified by suffering before the King of time and eternity, Jesus Christ, and that they prepare to fulfill that calling which the designs of the Eternal God point out to them, in the struggle against the deniers and destroyers of the Christian west, in harmony with all right-minded people of other nations.
51.   He Who searches the heart and reins (Ps., 7, 10.)  is Our witness, that We have no more heartfelt wish than the restoration of a True peace between Church and State in Germany.  But if, through no fault of Ours, there shall not be peace, the Church of God will defend her rights and liberties in the Name of the Almighty, Whose arm even today is not shortened.  Trusting in Him "We cease not to pray and beg" (Coloss., 1, 9.)  for you, the children of the Church, that the days of anguish may be shortened and that you may be found true in the day of searching; and We pray also for the persecutors and oppressors; may the Father of all Light and all Mercy grant them an hour of enlightenment, such as was vouchsafed to Paul on the road to Damascus, for themselves and all those who with them have erred and err.
52.   With this prayer of supplication in Our heart and on Our lips, We impart as a pledge of Divine Assistance, as a help in your difficult and weighty decisions, as strength in the struggle, as consolation in suffering, to you, the Episcopal Pastors of your loyal flock, to the Priests and Religious, to the lay apostles of Catholic Action, to all your Diocesans, finally to the sick and imprisoned, in Fatherly Love, the Apostolic Blessing.
    Given at the Vatican, on Passion Sunday, March 14th, 1937.

                                                                                                          PIUS PP. XI.

    As Peter was given a new name so does the new Supreme Pontiff become known by another.  After the election he extends his first blessing to the people -- a Benediction which was not given in the open for years until Pope Pius XI established the custom.
    The Coronation, one of the most magnificent of Vatican Ceremonies, takes place shortly after the election.  With the Pope carried high in a golden chair and attended by brilliantly attired chamberlains and soldiers, the Coronation Mass is an unrivaled spectacle of beauty, dignity, and ancient pageantry.  At the Coronation, in the midst of the pomp and splendor, a master of ceremonies recites in Latin:  "Holy Father, thus does the glory of the world pass away."  As the first Cardinal Deacon places the three-crowned Tiara on the head of the Pope, he says: "Receive the three-crowned Tiara, and know that thou art the Father of Princes and Kings, the Pastor of the earth, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, to Whom be honor and glory forever.  Amen."
    The CORONATION of Pope Pius XII took place on the balcony of St. Peter's in March, 1939. (From the book "The Vatican and Holy Year" by Stephen S. Fenichell & Phillip Andrews. -- 1950 edition.)

    (Tradition is an equal part [along with the Bible] of the Authoritative Teaching of the Church -- From the book "The Immaculate Way" by Brian Farrely, S.S.M. -- 1963 edition.)