MM#486--When Is A Compromise With Power A Betrayal

Welcome And The Deal That Breaks

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Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and to this Theory to Action podcast. Today we are going to go back to 1933 Germany, and we're going to watch a deal that gets made and then watch a deal that gets shredded piece by piece until a pope himself had to say in writing, smuggled into the country by night, enough is enough.

Why German Catholics Wanted Guarantees

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Now let's set the table because you'll have to understand the time and place, and especially how German Catholics responded before you can understand why they were signing anything at all. So for decades, going back to Bismarck's Kulture Kampf in the 1870s, German Catholics had been treated like second-class citizens in their own country, in Germany. Their schools were harassed, their priests were watched, Bismarck tried to break the church, and the church survived, but she survived scared, scarred, and she never forgot. So by the time you get to Weimar, Germany, in the 1920s, it's chaotic. It's a wobbly coalition government. It's kind of a mess. Catholic leaders wanted one thing above all else a real legal, national guarantee. They didn't want anything like a patchwork deal that they had gotten in Bavaria in 1924 or Prussia in 1929. They wanted a real deal. They wanted signed, sealed, binding on the country. So there was a precedent that we could get German Catholics, especially, could get something in writing that would protect them a little bit. It's agonizing when you think about it. An entire community spending 50 years just trying to get someone in power to promise in writing that they be left alone.

Hitler Needs Votes For Power

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And then Adolf Hitler shows up. January 30th, 1933. Hitler becomes chancellor. And still at that moment, inside a technically democratic system, he needed votes. Specifically, he needed the Catholic center party votes to pass the enabling act, the law that would ultimately hand him dictatorial power. Got to remember the president Hindenburg still is living. Yeah, the uh the Enabling Act is passed in March of 1933, and Hindenburg doesn't die. Hindenburg is Paul von Hindenburg, the president of the Weimar Republic, roughly from 1925, I think. He he dies in August of 1934. So many people thought in Germany, certainly not an excuse, but everybody thought, or many people thought, that Hindenburg, even after the Enabling Act is passed, Hindenburg as president, he formally remained the head of state, the commander-in-chief, the holder of the constitutional powers. And so he had on paper, he had the right to dismiss Hitler as chancellor and appoint a new government or call new elections. He still held power. The problem was he was elderly in very bad L health and somewhat ill. He uh the Enabling Act is passed in Marched in March of 33. One example that's often cited is he pressures Hitler to limit a April 1st, 1933 anti-Jewish boycott. Many people point to this as Hindenburg trying to flex his muscle. It was it was quite minor. It was a symbolic intervention. He never followed up to make sure Hitler was actually executing on what Hindenburg wanted to do, and it and it did not alter the Nazi regime's trajectory. And frankly, Hindenburg was surrounded by many advisors who wanted to use Hitler to crush the radical communist, but they were not inclined to launch a constitutional showdown with Hindenburg still on still in still in power. So back to so back to Hitler shows up. It's January 33. He just becomes chancellor. He's still within that democratic system, and he needs votes to solidify himself as chancellor. Specifically, he needs that Catholic center party's votes to pass this enabling act. So Hitler makes the offer.

The Reichskonkordat Bargain Explained

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He signs a or he says, sign a concordat with me, and I'll guarantee your schools, your parishes, your legal standing in exchange, your church gets out of politics. You see, this is the trade that every desperate party makes with a rising strongman, protection for silence. So on July 20th, 1933, the future Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Picelli, he signs the Reichskoncordat for for Rome. France von Papen signs for Germany. And on paper, it's not a bad deal at all. Catholic Church gets legal recognition, gets freedom of worship. Catholic schools and religious teachers get protection. Clergy gets pulled out of party politics. In exchange for all of those guarantees, there is legal recognition. But here comes our most important nugget. A signed law means nothing to a regime that doesn't believe in law. A signed law means nothing to a regime that doesn't believe in law or justice.

How The Nazis Gut The Agreement

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Because almost immediately the Nazis start to break the spirit of that concordat. Catholic youth groups, they get dissolved. Catechism classes get harassed, priests get watched by the Gestapo for what they say from the pulpit. And underneath all of it, the regime is rolling out forced sterilization laws, anti-Semitic violence is getting ramped up, and all of that spit directly in the face of everything that the church teaches about human dignity. Imagine being a parish priest in 1934. His youth group is gone, his classroom is under surveillance, and in his hand he's holding a signed treaty from the Vatican that was supposed to protect him. But it's worthless. It's just paper. Now, does that remind you of anything?

The China Parallel And Cardinal Zen

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It reminds me of what's happening in China right now. 2018, the Vatican signed a secret deal with the Chinese Communist government over who gets to appoint Catholic bishops. The deal has been reviewed. And now renewed in 2020, in 2022, and again in 2024. And in the 2024 renewal, last by Pope Francis, it was renewed not for two years, but for four years, so it is running through 2028. But our cardinal on the ground, Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired bishop of Hong Kong, has spent years telling anyone who would listen that the deal is a betrayal of the underground church in China. The underground church that stayed loyal to Rome throughout decades, many decades of persecution through Mao, through all of the other communist dictators of China. So it's the same story. It's a different century. But in 2022, Chinese authorities installed a bishop of their own, choosing in the Zhangxi province, without so much as a phone call to Rome. The next year they transferred another bishop to Shanghai the same way. And Cardinal Zen, he was hauled into a court that same year over a fund he helped to run for legal aid. While the Vatican, they were supposed to have his back, they stayed largely silent. See, a concordat doesn't protect you, and a bishop's agreement doesn't protect you. Only the will to enforce it protects you. So it's a different time, a different continent, different papal leadership. But the same lesson continues to apply.

Pius XI Says Enough Is Enough

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So let's go back to 1937. Because let's see what happens when a Pope actually decides enough is enough. So in 1937, Rome had seen enough. On March 14th, 1937, some four years after the Concordat was signed, Pope Pius XI released an encyclical called Mitt Brenninde Zorga. That is German for with burning concern. This wasn't a diplomatic memo, this was smuggled into Germany, printed in secret and read from pulpits on Palm Sunday, right under the Gestapo's nose. Now normally most encyclicals, especially prior to 1965, were written in Latin. Popius XI wrote this one in German on purpose. And here's a detail I love. Straight from Mark Roebling's book, Church of Spies, a book that reads like a thriller, but it but because basically it is one. Let's go to the book. Twelve secret presses printed the text in Germany. Kalanda Stein network of couriers carried copies to every parish. Catholic youth used backpack caravans and hiked through the Bavarian Alps, the Black Forest, and along the Rhine River. Altar boys pedaled bicycles at night. High school athletes ran across barley farms. Nuns rode motorcycles to remote villages. In church confessional booths, the couriers delivered their cargo to priest. The priests locked the text in their tabernacles, and on Palm Sunday they read it from every pulpit in the Reich. Think about that for a second. Nuns on motorcycles smuggling a clandestine document, a papal encyclical written in German, past the Gestapo. It's 1937.

Mit Brennender Sorge And Spiritual Resistance

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The encyclical did three things, and each one is bigger than the last. First, it flat out accused the Reich of violating the Concordat, cataloging point by point the broken promises on schools, on youth groups, on the harassment of priests. Rome stopped playing diplomat and started playing prosecutor. Second, this one was big. The encyclical condemned Nazi racial ideology and the abuses flowing from it point by point without ever using the word Nazi or not Naziism in the text itself. That is not weakness, that's strategy. Rome named the poison without naming the bottle. So no regime censor could point to a single sentence and ban the whole document outright. You cannot preach that every person is made in the image of God on Sunday and then support a state teaching that entire races are subhuman on Monday. The Pope didn't need the word Nazi to make the verdict unmistakable. Third, the encyclical call German Catholics to spiritual resistance, to hold the line, to reject the substitution of race and blood for God and truth, even if the law offered no protection at all. You see, that's the real turning point. Rome moved from legal negotiation to spiritual defiance. And that's the moment the Vatican admitted out loud that the signed piece of paper was never going to save anyone from a regime built on lies. And here's what I want you to walk away with. Paper promises from people who don't believe in the truth are worthless. Whether it's a concordat in 1933, Berlin, or a bishop's agreement in Beijing in 2024, the law only holds if the people in power actually believe truth is real and actually intend to keep their word. That's the lesson history continues to keep handing us generation after generation. And it's why moral clarity, naming evil as evil, naming a lie as a lie, matters more than any signature on any page.

The Cost Paid By Priests

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Because when it happened, that encyclical back in 1933, it didn't come free. The priests who were reading it knew some blowback was coming. And certainly the regime, the Nazi regime, turned its full weight of the state on the clergy. There was surveillance, there was arrests, there were show trials, there was concentration camps. Several hundred German priests and religious were killed for it, thousands more were imprisoned and abused. At Dachau concentration camp alone, Nazis held over 2,700 priests prisoners, and more than a thousand clergy died there. Most of them not even German. They were priests from Poland or across occupied Europe. But they were paying for their faith that would not bend, that would read an encyclical in the face of Nazi persecution. And God bless every one of them. The ones who read that encyclical anyway, knowing exactly why what it might cost them. So in today's Mojo Minute, let us always remember the lesson from history that just keeps getting handed to us. Signatures on paper, signatures on pages of some worthless document. They don't mean a thing if the regime signing it is just going to lie over and over again. The best way, the best way to confront evil has never changed. Moral clarity and standing up for the truth. Name evil as evil.

Prayers And The Core Lesson

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Let us pray for the church in China. Let us pray for Cardinal Zen and his flock. Let us especially pray for Jimmy Lai, who's in solitary confinement as we speak, and his courageous stand. And as always, let's keep fighting the good fight.

Resources And Closing

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Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at TeamMojoAcademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your emojo.