B_345_The-Rulers-of-Russia

never suffer any other divinity beside Him . . . only superficial
minds can fall into the error of speaking of a national God, of a
national religion, of foolishly attempting to restrict within the
narrow confines of a single race, that God, Who is the Creator of
the world, the King and Lawgiver of all peoples, before Whose
greatness the nations are as small as drops of water in a bucket.' 1 —
(Isaias xl, IS.)
One or two phrases from Rosenberg's book, The Myth of the
Twentieth Century, 1
will show how accurately Pope Pius XI diagnosed
the error which is the root principle of the deviations from
order in present-day Germany. "The racebound national soul" he
writes, "is the measure of all our thoughts, aspirations of will and
deeds, the final criterion of our values." Again, "Right is the expression
of the exigencies of blood and race . . . a right holds
good in the measure in which it puts itself at the service of the
race." Accordingly, the moment Catholics in Germany and Austria
leave the church after Mass, they find society in the process
of organisation on the principle that the highest form of life is
German national life, not the Divine life of Sanctifying Grace.
German blood is higher and nobler than Sanctifying Grace, participation
in the Inner Life of the Blessed Trinity, won for us by
Our Lord's obedience unto death. Hence it will claim to organise
life and morality. The German member of Christ is, therefore,
faced with a terrible conflict, for this deification of the German
Race and Blood will inevitably and logically lead to persecution,
not only of Jewish naturalism, with its practical deification of the
Jewish Race, but also of Catholic Supernaturalism.
Pope Pius XI in his Letter of 14th March, 1937, On the Condition
of the Church in Germany, and the German Bishops in their
Joint Pastoral Letter of 19th August, 1938, bear witness to the
intensity of this persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany.
It is well to quote at some length from these authoritative pronouncements,
in view of such statements as the following from
Herr Hitler, in the Reichstag on January 30th, 1939: "No one in
Germany has so far been persecuted for his religious views, nor
will any one be persecuted on that account. . . . But the National-
Rosenberg may be styled the theorician of the Nazi reaction. By a decree
of the Hitlerite Government of January 31st, 1934, he was given the charge
of controlling the intellectual and philosophical formation of the Nazi party.
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