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PERTH, THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1942.
NO. 3,019.
J9
Executed on Political Pretext
auch Crucified ic;-Day on Same ClIalqe: AVERY queer expression current in many countries is that of "Political Catholicism." From What does it what did it derive? In what sense must a Cathomean? lic be "a-politic"? Jesus Christ was condemned on the first Good Friday for "politicism." He was accused) of setting the people against Caesar and the Romans. But, in reality, He was condemned for reacting against the politics of the High 'Priests, who longed for a temporal reign of the Messiah and the temporal triumph of the Jewish people and the Sacerdotal caste, instead of the religious triumph of God and His Messiah. Jesus Christ did not share these aspirations, which debased His divine mission to a simple political sphere. Hence He was condemned to death. In 1923, when the Supreme Procurator of the U.S.S.R., Krylenko, at the instigation of Trotsky and Zinoviev, arrested all the clergy at Leningrad, and initiated the great Moscow trials, he accused the Catholic Church of being a political, counter-revolutionary ororganisation, and this accusation was often repeated during that period. The Soviet State had confiscated the churches, deprived the Church of its juridical personality and instituted in its place ''religious societies" of the faithful, profaned the sacred vessels, desecrated holy relics, forbidden the teaching of Catechism to children under 18 years of age, confiscated the paro-
POLITICAL CATHOLICISM chial registers, given a decisive deathblow to Christian marriage, and prohibited the celebration of Mass and of religious cult in private houses. The clergy, comparing this legislation with Canon Law, and finding it contrary, manifested their firm intention to disregard it and continued to teach Catechism to the children, and to say Mass; they printed and distributed notices to their parishioners, urging them to have these anti-religious laws repealed. The March, 1923, trial was held exclusively to determine the criminality or non criminality of preferring the divine law to the Soviet law when this latter contradicted the former. Krylenko declared it to be a crime, and condemned the accused for political, counter-revo-
lutionary agitation. Since that date all the Catholic priests in the Soviet (except two foreigners who enjoy special privileges) have gradually been arrested by the KRO-'branch of the GPU for combating the counter-revolution-and sent to concentration camps for political counter-revolutionary activity. While the Soviet leaders were suppressing the Catholic clergy, they declared to the world that they were protecting the Russians' freedom of conscience, and
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that this liberty would suffer no detri-
ment while the clergy abstained from political activity. The term, Political Catholicism, passed from the Soviet into Germany. When the national -Socialist Party began to preach, and later impose, the teaching of a doctrine the Hierarchy judged incompatible with divine Revelation and gradually suppressed every possible means of combating it through the press, the school, the pulpit and Catholic associations, the Hierarchy protested and warned the faithful to protect the integrity of their Faith. But they had to pay the price. The clergy was hunted down, tribunals published strange accounts of arrests, the National Press began a campaign of defamation to which it was forbidden to answer; and all these measures are said to be taken not against religion, but against the Political Catholicism of the clergy! Here, as in the U.S.S.R., whoever refused to submit to the anti-religious legislation was accused of political ac-
tivity. "Political Catholicism" has since made a tour of the world. The expression was popular in Spain and in Mexico, and has now become current in many other countries. It is on the
lips of enemies of the Church, of non practising Catholics, and even of certain practising Catholics, who do not scruple to criticise their Bishops and the Sovereign Pontiff. "Political Catholicism" may mean that a Catholic employs the Church, her means of sanctification, her moral authority, her influence over consciences, not for a religious end, but a political one. The Church's mission of saving all the souls redeemed by the Blood of Christ gives her a pre-eminence over all political parties, and whoever seeks to deter the Church in her mission in order to obtain material advantages for himself, his party, or his country is sacrificing religion to politics. "Political Catholicism" may be understood in another sense: the effort of a Catholic to serve, at the same time, both his country and his religion by participating in the political life of the country in which he lives. This again may happen in several ways: for example, in Holland and Belgium there are Catholic Parties, legally recognised, whose members strive to defend in Parliament the religious liberIn ties attacked by other parties. France, the United States, England, (Continued on Back Cover.)
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