On
this date, July 13, 1941, Bishop Von Galen delivered a sermon denouncing the Gestapo. We, the
comrades of Unit 1012, remember this sermon every year on this date. We believe
that Von Galen would most likely speak out against the ACLU Demons and show
support for those victims’ families, if he was alive today. Please read this sermon by him.
The Official Portrait Of Blessed Clemens
August Graf Von Galen (1878 - 1946). [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=19239&PIpi=8721167]
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INTERNET
SOURCE: http://www.priestsforlife.org/preaching/vongalen07-13.htm
SERMON DELIVERED BY BISHOP CLEMENS
AUGUST COUNT OF GALEN ON JULY 13, 1941
AT THE CHURCH OF ST. LAMBERT, MUENSTER
My dear Catholics of St. Lambert:
Today I had intended to speak my
personal episcopal message from the pulpit of the town and market church
concerning the events of the past week, and especially to express my very deep
sympathy to my former congregation. The devastation and losses have been
particularly great in certain parts of the parish of St. Lambert's, though also
in other parts of the town. I hope that some of the distress will be alleviated
by the efforts of the municipal and state authorities and also by your
brotherly love and the results of today's collections for the Charitable Fund
and the Parish charity.
I had made up my mind to speak a few
words about the purpose of these visitations, how God tries by this means to
call us back to Himself. God wants to call Munster to him. How truly our
forefathers were at home with God and in God's holy Church! How entirely their
lives were borne up by faith in God, led by the fear and the love of God,
public life as well as family and society life! Has it been thus in our own
days? God wants to fetch Munster home to Himself!
I had meant to speak to you on these
lines today but I must leave that aside now, for I find it necessary to speak
here publicly for another matter, a terrible occurrence which overtook us
yesterday at the end of this week of horror.
The whole of Munster is still beneath
the shadow of the terrible devastation which the outside enemy and opponent in
war has caused us during the past week, and yesterday, on July 12, 1941, the
secret Police took possession of the two settlements of the Society of Jesus,
the Jesuit Order in our town, Haus Sentmaring on the Weselerstrasse, and the
Ignatiushaus in the Konigstrasse, drove the inmates out of their property,
forced the priests and brothers immediately on the same day to leave not only
our town, but also the provinces of Westphalia and Rhineland. And the same hard
fate was yesterday imposed also on the Sisters in the Steinfurtherstrasse.
Their house too was confiscated and they must leave Westphalia and Munster by 6
this evening. The houses and properties of the Order with inventory were taken
over for the "Gauleitung" of Northern Westphalia.
So now the storming of the
monasteries, which has already raged long in the Ostmark, in South Germany, in
the newly acquired territories, in the Warthegau, in Luxemburg, in Lorraine and
in other parts of the country, has broken out here in Westphalia. We must
expect such alarming items of news to pile up in the next few days, when one
monastery after another is confiscated by the Gestapo, when its inmates, our
brothers and sisters, children of our families, faithful German citizens, are
thrown into the streets like worthless rascals, chased from the country like
criminals, and at that time when all the trembles before new night attacks
which kill us all, which can make every one of us homeless refugees; then
innocent, highly respected men and women beloved by many are driven out of
their modest possessions, and German citizens, fellow townsmen in Munster, are
turned into homeless refugees.
Why? I was told: for state-political
reasons! No further reasons were given. Not one inhabitant of these monasteries
has been accused of any offense, or brought before law or condemned. And if anyone
were guilty, then let him be brought before the law. But should the innocent
also be punished?
I ask you, before those whose eyes the
Jesuit brothers and the sisters of the Immaculate have for years led their
quiet lives devoted only to the honour of God and the welfare of their fellow human
beings: who thinks these men and women guilty of any punishable offense? Who
dares to bring an accusation against them? Let him who dares, prove it. Not
even the Gestapo has brought such an accusation, let alone a court of justice.
I bear witness here publicly as Bishop to whom is entrusted the supervision of
the Orders, that I have the greatest respect for the quiet, unassuming
Missionary Sisters of Wilkinhege who are today being driven out. They were
founded by my very honored episcopal friend and fellow countryman the Bishop
Amandus Bahlmann, who started the Order mainly for the Mission in Brazil, in
which he, earning the gratitude of Germans in Brazil, worked untiringly up to
the time of his death three years ago.
I bear witness as a German man and as
bishop that I have the greatest respect and admiration for the Jesuit Order
which I have known from my earliest youth and for 50 years from close
observation; that I shall be bound to the Society of Jesus, my teachers and
friends, in love and gratitude until my last breath, and that I have an even
greater admiration for them now in this moment when Christ's prophecy to His
disciples is again being fulfilled: "As they have persecuted me, so they
will persecute you also. If you were of this world, the world would love its
own, but because you are not of this world, but I have chosen you from the
world, [sic] therefore the world hates you."
So I greet you with deep love from
this place in the name of all faithful Catholics of the town of Munster and the
Bishopric of Munster, as those chosen by Christ and hated by the world, as you
go out into undeserved banishment.
May God reward them for all the good
they have done for us! May God not punish us and our town for the unjust
treatment and banishment which has been meted out to his disciples. May
almighty God bring back our beloved brothers and sisters.
My dear diocesans! Because of the
terrible visitations which have come upon us through enemy attacks, I meant to
be silent in public over other recent measures taken by the Gestapo, which call
for my public protest. But if the Gestapo takes no consideration for the events
which make hundreds of our fellow citizens homeless, if just at this time they
continue to throw innocent citizens into the streets and drive them from the
country, then I can no longer hesitate to utter my just protest and earnest
warning.
Often in recent times we have had the
experience that Gestapo robbed innocent and highly respected Germans of their
freedom without any sentence, drove them out of their homes and interned them
somewhere. Within the last few weeks two of my closest advisors, members of the
Chapter of our Cathedral, were suddenly fetched from their homes, taken away
from Munster and banished to far away places where they were told to stay
permanently. I have had no answer whatsoever to my protests to the Minister of
State. But this much could be established by means of telephone inquiries from
the Gestapo: there is no suspicion or accusation of any punishable act on the
part of either of the members of the Cathedral Chapter. They have been punished
by banishment without any guilt on their part, without any accusation or the
possibility to defend themselves.
Christians, listen carefully! It has
been officially confirmed to us that no accusation of any punishable act is
made against the members of the Chapter, Vorwerk and Echelmeyer.. They have
done nothing punishable, and yet they are punished with banishment.
And why? Because I have done something
which did not please the Government. At the four appointments to the Cathedral
Chapter in the last two years the Government informed me in three instances
that the nominations were not acceptable. Because according to the Prussian
Concordat of 1929 intervention on the part of the Government is specifically
excluded, I completed the nominations in two out of the four cases. If it is
thought that I have acted against the law, let me be brought before the law. I
am certain that no independent German Court will be able to condemn me for my
actions in filling the vacancies.
Is it for this reason that not a court
of justice but the Gestapo, whose activities in Germany are unfortunately not
subject to any legal examination, have been used? Every German citizen is
entirely unprotected and defenceless in face of the physical superiority of the
Gestapo- entirely defenceless and unprotected. That is a thing that my fellow
Germans have discovered in recent years, as for instance our beloved teacher of
religion, Friedrichs, who is held captive without trial and without sentence.
Thus the two gentlemen of the Chapter who are in exile and thus also the
members of our Orders, who yesterday and today have suddenly been driven out of
their property and out of town and country.
No one of us is sure, however faithful
and conscientious a citizen he may be and however convinced he may be of his
own innocence, that he will not one day be fetched from his home, deprived of
his liberty and locked up in the cellars and concentration camps of the
Gestapo.
I am quite clear about that, it may
happen to me, today, any day. Because I shall then no longer be able to
speak publicly, I want today to give a public warning against continuing on
this path which, according to my firm conviction, will bring God's judgment on
humanity and will lead to misery and destruction for our people and our
country.
If I protest against these measures
and punishments by the Gestapo, if I publicly demand an end to these conditions
and a juridical examination or the withdrawal of these Gestapo measures, then I
am only doing what the Governor General, Minister of State Dr. Frank, did when
he wrote in February of this year in the publication of the Academy for German
Justice--
"We want that dependable balance of internal order which will
not allow the penal code to be debased to absolute authoritarianism of the
power to prosecute against the accused who is already condemned from the
beginning and deprived of every means of defence. The law must give the
individual the legal possibility of defence, of explaining the circumstances of
the deed and thereby of security against arbitrariness and injustice...
otherwise it is better not to speak of a penal code, but of penal force. It is
impossible to combine the idea of the Building of Justice with that of condemnation
without any manner of defence... It is our task, like others, to represent
authority in every form, and to give expression to the fact that we have to
defend courageously the authority of justice as an important part of a lasting
power." Thus wrote the Minister of State, Dr. Hans Frank.
I am fully aware that I, as bishop and
as exponent and defender of divinely appointed justice and moral order, which
gives to each individual those original rights and that liberty before which it
is God's will that all human opposition must cease; that I, like Minister
Frank, am called to defend courageously the authority of justice and to condemn
the undefended condemnation of innocent people as an injustice that cries out
to Heaven.
Christians! The imprisonment of many
innocent people without the opportunity of defence and without a court
sentence; the case of two members of the Cathedral Chapter who have been
deprived of their liberty; the dissolution of the monasteries and the
banishment of the innocent members of their orders, our brothers and sisters;
all these things cause me today to recall publicly the old truth:
"Justitia est fundeamentum regnorum", justice is the only secure
foundation of every form of government.
The right to live, to be unmolested,
the right to liberty is an indispensable part of every ordered community life.
Certainly the State is justified in limiting this right of its citizens by way
of punishment; but this authority the State only has vis-à-vis offenders
against the law whose guilt can be proved by means of impartial legal
proceedings. The state which oversteps this divinely willed limit and allows or
causes the punishment of innocent people, undermines its own authority and
every regard for its sovereignty in the minds of the citizens.
Unfortunately during the last few
years we have repeatedly had to observe that more or less heavy penalties,
mostly in the form of deprivation of liberty, were imposed without any crime
having been proved against the victims by a regular legal procedure, and
without their being given the opportunity to defend their rights or to prove
their innocence.
How many Germans are languishing in
police detention or concentration camps, who were ejected from their homes, who
were never condemned by a public court or who, after being acquitted by a court
or after serving the sentence imposed by the court, have again been taken into
custody by the Gestapo and held captive. How many have been driven out of their
home and out of the place where they work! I recall again the Reverend Bishop
of Rottenburg, Johannes Baptista Sproll, an old man of 70 years, who recently
had to celebrate his 25-years jubilee as bishop far from his diocese, because
three years ago the Gestapo turned him out of his bishopric. I mention once more
the two members of our Cathedral Chapter, the Reverend Gentlemen Vorwerk mad
Echelmeyer. I recall our most honoured teacher of religion, Friedrichs, who is
languishing in a concentration camp. I will refrain from mentioning any further
names today. The name of an evangelical man, who risked his life for Germany as
a German officer and submarine commander during the World War, and who has for
years been deprived of his liberty, is well known to all of you, and we have
the greatest regard for the bravery and religious courage of this noble German.
(Pastor Niemoller is meant-remark of the copier.)
From this example you can see, my
Christians, that it is not merely a Catholic concern about which I speak to you
publicly today, but a Christian, yes a human and national, a religious matter.
"Justice is the foundation of
States"! We observe with great sorrow today how the foundation is being
shaken, how justice, how natural and Christian virtue, indispensable for the
ordered existence of every human community, is not being preserved and held up
unmistakably recognizable for all. Not only because of the rights of the
church, not only for the right of human personality, but also for love of our
nation and in deep concern for our country, we ask, we demand: "Justice"!
Who would not fear for the existence of a house when he sees the foundations
being undermined?
"Justice is the foundation of
states"! Only when the possessors of state power bow in reverence before
the royal majesty of Justice and use the sword of retribution only in the
service of Justice; only then can the power of the State stand with sincerity
and the chance of lasting success before the illegal use of force by those who
are accidentally the stronger, before the suppression of the weaker and their
debasement to unworthy servitude.
That holder of office will be able to
count on an honest following and the free service of honorable men, whose
measures and Judgments prove themselves in the light of unbiased opinion to be
far from all arbitrariness and weighed by the incorruptible scales of Justice.
Therefore the practice of condemnation and punishment without the chance of
defence, without sentence, "the undefended damnation of those who are
already condemned beforehand", as Minister of State Frank called it,
creates a feeling of being without rights, and a mental attitude of fearfulness
and servile cowardice, which in the long run must ruin the character of a
nation and tear up its feeling of unity.
This is the conviction and the sorrow
of all right-minded German men and women. This was openly and courageously
expressed by a high official of the law in the year 1937 in the
"Reichsverwaltungsblatt". He wrote: - "The greater the absolute
power of an authority, the greater is the need for a guarantee of unimpeachable
dealings; because errors are felt more heavily, and the danger of arbitrariness
and wrong use is greater. If recourse to administrative Justice is excluded,
there must in every case be a regular way for unbiased control, so that there
can be no feeling of lack of rights, which in any case would be bound in the
long run to harm the feeling of national unity.
This recourse to administrative
Justice is excluded in the penal measures of the Gestapo. As none of us know of
any means for the unbiased control of the measures taken by the Gestapo, of
their limitations of liberty, their prohibitions of residence, their arrests
and their imprisonment of German citizens in concentration camps, therefore in
the furthest parts of the German nation a feeling of lack of rights, yes, of
cowardly fear, has already taken hold, which is causing great harm to German
national unity.
The obligations of my episcopal office
to protect moral order, and the obligation of the oath which I took before God
and the representative of the Reich Government in which I promised to prevent
with all my power any harm which might threaten the German State, force me in
face of the deeds of the Gestapo to pronounce this fact in a public warning.
My Christians: It may be said against
me that by this frank speech I am weakening the internal Front of the German
people now in this time of war. In reply I state: It is not I who am the
cause of any weakening of the internal front, but those who, regardless of war,
regardless of external tribulation, here in Munster at the end of a terrible
week of grim enemy attacks, impose heavy punishment on innocent citizens
without sentence and without the chance to defend themselves, robbing our
fellow-countrymen, our brothers and sisters, of their property, throwing them
into the street and hunting them from the country! They destroy the
security of right, they undermine the consciousness of right, they
destroy faith in the government of our State! I therefore, in the name of the
upright German people, in the name of the Majesty of Justice, in the interests
of peace and the unity of the internal front, raise my voice; therefore I call
aloud as a German man, as an honourable citizen, as representative of the
Christian religion, as a Catholic bishop:
We demand Justice!
If this call remains unheard, then the
reign of Queen Justice will not be restored, then our German nation and country
will go to pieces through inner putrefaction and rotting, in spite of the
heroism of our soldiers and their glorious victories!
Let us pray for all who are in need,
especially for the exiled members of our Religious Orders, for our town of
Munster, that God may withhold further trials from us, for our German nation
and country and for its Leader-
Our Father . . . . . . .
Coat of Arms of the German Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster (1933–1946). |
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