100. The Totalitarian Menace;    101. Pius XI and Catholic Liberty ; 102. Pius XII and Totalitarianism ;    103. Russian Communism

100. THE TOTALITARIAN MENACE

“The word ‘totalitarian” was coined by Mussolini and did not exist before in the Italian dictionary, in the famous words: Nothing outside or above the state, nothing against the state, everything within the state, everything for the state.¹ In this new type of society, then. The governing body would permeate all and the citizen would be expected to give his all, even to the extent of worshipping the state by a Statolatry scarcely different from the ancient omen imperial cult.  This materialistic “Totalitarianism” threatened to wreck human dignity and Christian culture; its antidote lay in the spirit of the thoroughgoing Christianity of the motto of St. Francis of Assisi: “My God and my All.”

‘ Don Luigi Sturzo, Nationalism and Internationalism (New York: Roy Publishers, 1946), p. 40.

Philosophic origins. Absolutism, of course, is no new phenomenon in history. Yet Totalitarianism is no mere Absolutism. It is not so much a de facto dictatorship as a system of government, an all-embracing view of humanity. Machiavelli doubtless contributed much to its genesis by his divorce of public and private morality, an attitude implicitly favored by the Lutheran revolt. Rousseau paradoxically opened a way to Totalitarianism as well as to Democracy by envisioning an omniscient interpreter of the “general will.” Comte contributed much by his Positivism in which social development and organization were studied after exact biological norms. Thereby the individual human being was subordinated to the species, his liberty regarded as an obstacle to a centralized and standardizing social bureaucracy—tendencies appearing as well in Bentham. That dictatorial mandate which Comte bestowed on a vague “humanity” or “society,” Hegel more specifically conferred on the state. For him, history is the march of the Absolute Idea through the world, and in Hegel’s own era this had been incarnated in the Prussian state. Marx, it will be recalled, changed Hegelian Idealism into Communist materialism, and he had merely to adapt Hegelian “military class dictatorship” into “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Thus “positivist democracy on the lines of Comte led to the omnipotent bourgeois state; Idealist nationalism on the lines of Hegel to the omnipotent state-nation; Socialism on the lines of Karl Marx to the omnipotent class-state. In all three there is the stuff of the totalitarian monistic state.” ^{2 [p. 683]}

^-Don Luigi Sturzo, Church and State, trans. Barbara Carter (New York: Long-mans, Green and Co., 1939), p. 452.

Historical evolution. The first totalitarian state was set up in Russia during November, 1917, but early efforts to propagate its ideas outside Soviet borders failed, though Bavaria and Hungary teetered on the brink for a time. Mussolini installed his Fascist dictatorship in 1922, but took care to announce that Fascism was “not an article of export.” In 1923 Rivera asserted a dictatorship in Spain which his son strove to revive as Falangism in the next decade—though Franco never completely identified himself with the latter. During January, 1933, Adolf Hitler founded the Nazi brand of totalitarian rule in Germany, and this in time created in its own image semi-totalitarian satellites before and during World War II—as Russia has been able to do since. Abortive totalitarian môvements were those of English Mosleyites, Belgian Rexists, French Croix de Feux, and American Bundists, each paralleled by clever Communist branches. Totalitarianism, however, has everywhere been somewhat modified or restrained by the varying traditions of the national environment into which it has been introduced.

2) COMMON FEATURES

Administration. “To realize the totalitarian state, a complete administrative centralization is first of all required, with the transfer of the sum total of all powers to the government, the government itself becoming the blind executor of the will of a leader endowed—it does not matter how—on a dictatorial scale with all moral, juridical, and political powers. For the dictatorial machine to gain momentum, it is necessary to suppress all political and civil freedom, all the fundamental rights of human personality and of the family, of communities and of cities, of universities and of churches . . . The chief instrument of suck powers id force.  ^{[p. 684]} be placed on a secret police—which has assumed the well-known names of OGPU in Russia, OVRA in Italy, and Gestapo in Germany. Recourse scan be also had to private armed bands, the armed gangs of the Black-shirts in Italy, and of the Brownshirts in Germany.”

Religion. “As long as the Church could be useful toward bringing about or maintaining dictatorships, its help was sought and concordats were negotiated. But when the Church became an obstacle to the spirit of the totalitarian states, it was persecuted and even abolished. The Bolshevists tried to form a church of their own, then they suppressed it, proscribing its priests and closing its buildings, declaring freedom of worship, but imposing so many restrictions that this freedom became illusory. Hitler promised that the state would respect both Catholics and Protestants, attempted to make out of the Protestant church a Hitlerian church, stipulated a concordat with Rome.  Bur the soon failed in his promises to both the Catholics and Protestants by beginning a subtle persecution which aimed at the complete de-Christianization of Germany. Mussolini settled the Roman Question with the Vatican and accepted a concordat on Pius XI’s terms. Generally speaking, he attempted to avoid open conflict with the Church, by favoring it up to the point where it did not threaten the development of Fascism.  Here the chief conflict arose out of the question of education of the youth and of their Catholic societies. . .

Education. “The totalitarian state has monopolized the schools, the sport activities of the youth, the cinema, the radio, the cress; s.ecial schools have even been created in order to shape the Still another step: the effort is made to weaken or even influence of the family; hence the special Fascist, Nazi, and Communist institutions for youth. At t e age of six, one became in Italy a mem c er of the Sons of the She-Wolf, at the age of eight of the Balillas, then of the Young Italians, and so on for every age to the grave. In Germany children were conscripted into the Children’s Group of the Hitler Youth at the age of six; . . . from ten to fourteen years boys and girls belong N to the Young Folk and Young Maidens respectively; from fourteen to eighteen to the Hitler Youth proper and the Bund of German Girls, respectively. Before being admitted to the party itself or one of its organizations of adults, the adolescents had to go through the rigorous training of the Labor Service—both sexes—and of the army. The Russians had the ‘voluntary’ organization of the Young Pioneers, embracing the ages from eight to sixteen; younger children may be banded together in the Octobrist groups. From the age of seventeen a Russian boy or girl is eligible for the Communist Youth: Comsomol.”³

Sturzo, Nationalism and Internationalism, op. cit., pp. 40-42.

Goals. Such states set millennial goals: Italy dreamed of a new Roman a ^{[p. 685]} Empire and “mare nostrum”; Nazi Germany idealized a triumphant “Herrenvolk”; Russia propagated the “Communist International.” All this demanded complete regimentation, and fostered militarism and ideological imperialism.

(3) POLITICAL SURVEY (1918-39)

Peaceful trend (1919-29). Despite bickering over reparations between France and Germany leading to temporary occupation of the Rhineland by French troops, there were hopeful signs for peace as business revived and reconstruction got under way. When in 1924 France demanded a definition of the League’s attitude toward aggressors, Great Britain, fearing continental involvement, demurred. Failing sanctions, resort was had to voluntary pledges. At Locarno (1925), Stresemann promised that Germany would respect her Western frontier as definitive, and Germany was admitted to the League and Cologne freed from occupation. The Dawes (1924) and Young (1929) Plans contemplated the economic rehabilitation of Germany, largely through loans from the United States. And in 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact garnered many facile promises to outlaw war from the national policies.

Rival alliances, however, were not slow in arising. The world depression again disrupted German economy and supplied fuel for Nazi agitation. Chancellor Bruening proposed to retrieve German prosperity and national prestige through a Customs Union with Austria (1931), but France vetoed the scheme and the Slavic lands were alarmed. Both Germany and Austria then resorted to dictatorship, and eventually played into the hands of the Nazis. Successful Japanese defiance of the League of Nations in Manchuria (1931) encouraged “have-not” or ambitious governments in the belief that strong-arm methods would succeed.

Nazi aggression, a clever compound of threats and bluff, began tô make headway from 1933 against a divided Europe. Though an attempt to seize Austria in °1934 proved premature in that it aroused the suspicions of Fascist Italy, Hitler conciliated Mussolini by complacency toward the latter’s invasion of Ethiopia (1935) at a time when Great Britain and France talked of applying economic sanctions against Italy through the League. A rift appeared between Britain and France on the nature of these sanctions, and Hitler seized this moment (March, 1936) to reoccupy the Rhineland with military forces. Shortly afterwards (October, 1936), Mussolini joined Hitler in proclaiming a “Rome‑Berlin Axis,” which pressed its military assistance upon the nationalist rebels in Spain. The Spanish Civil War was to some extent used as a rehearsal for future world conflict: Germany and Italy ostentatiously backing the Franco forces, while Russia and France aided the “Loyalists. ^{[p. 686]}” Nationalist successes in Spain alarmed the West, and France feared encirclement by totalitarian powers. While Britain and France hesitated over thorough rearmament, the Axis continually advertised its preparedness, especially in the air. Annexation of Austria by Germany early in 1938 proved easy, but Nazi pressure upon Czechoslovakia threatened British and French intervention in defense of the smaller country. But Anglo-French aversion for war and their military unpreparedness eventually led to acquiescence in Nazi encirclement of a reduced Czechoslovakia on the understanding that this would constitute a final liquidation of all German territorial demands arising from the defunct Versailles peace settlement. This Munich Appeasement Pact (September, 1938) was practically repudiated early in 1939 when the Nazis occupied the whole of Czechoslovakia as well as Memel, and the Fascists overran Albania. When, therefore, Hitler repeated his ultimatum tactics in the summer of 1939, with Danzig and Poland substituted for Memel and Czechoslovakia, even the more peacefully inclined Western statesmen agreed that appeasement had gone far enough. After reaching a pact of expediency with Soviet Russia regarding the disposal of Poland, Hitler, refused carte blanche on his sweeping and peremptory demands upon the West, resorted to World War II at dawn of September 1, 1939. This brought France and Great Britain into a European conflict which
presently engulfed the United States and most of the countries of the globe.

B. Totalitarian Ideologies

1) POLITICAL-LEGAL THEORIES

Fascism. “Conceiving the doctrine of Natural Law to be indissolubly wedded to liberalism-democracy-socialism, Fascism rejected the natural law as weal. There are and can be no rights other than those the state accords . . . Criticising the “plutodemocracies,” Rocco said: “For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means and its whole  life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state therefore guards and protects the welfare an . eve opment of individuals not for their exclusive interest, but because of the identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole.” Hence, in Mussolini’s words, “The state is not only the present, but it is also the past, and above all the future. Transcending the individual’s brief spell of life, the state stands for the immanent conscience of the nation.” ⁴ Nazism. “The ‘blood and soil’ principle was nothing more or less than the peculiar Nazi theory of racial superiority. To the Nazi all races were inferior to the Aryan, and among Aryans the Nordic was the highest, ^{[p. 687]} finest type. . . . The state was but the vital expression, the living will of the national conscience. But the will of the people and the state are united in the leader. Thus, law, in the form of a Hitler decree, could be called both the will of the people and the will of the leader. There was an irrefutable presumption that the of the leader was the will of the people and for the best interests of the state—a sheer totalitarian ‘principle. A corollary of the leadership principle was the notion of ‘national conscience.’ The national conscience was the sentiment of the people. It was arrived at, however, not by consulting the people, but by taking careful heed of party directions. . .. A major change in German criminal laws was the power extended to courts to convict of crime one who had performed an act not specifically declared to be criminal by statute, provided the act offended the ‘national conscience.’ . . .”

4‘Francis P. Le Buffe and James V. Hayes, American Philosophy of Law (New York: CrusacIPress, 1947), p. 127.

5 Ibid., pp. 131-33.

Communism. “Law is now considered not merely a necessary evil, but a valued and important instrumentality of the socialist state. During the years since Lenin seized power, law has grown by leaps and bounds in Russia. So far have the jurists swung from their original intention to eliminate law entirely, that now they speak of it as the expression of the toiler’s will. If in the earlier stages of the Marxian evolution law is a weapon in the hands of the dominant class, so in Russia law is a weapon in the hands of the ruling party, the Communist Party.” Stalin commented on Marxian “withering away” of the state thus: “We are in favor of the state dying out and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and mighty authority of all forms of state which have existed up to the present day. The highest possible development of the power of the state, with the object of preparing the conditions for the dying out of the state, that is the Marxist formula. Is it ‘contradictory?’ Yes, it is ‘contradictory!’ But this contradiction is a living thing, and completely reflects Marxist dialectics.” This cavalier treatment of contradiction enables the 1936 Constitution to guarantee freedom of religion, of press, of speech, of assembly, etc., “in conformity with the interests of the toilers, and in order to strengthen the socialist system.” G Article 135 even provides for universal suffrage; thus does Totalitarianism utilize the democratic terminology.

2) ECONOMIC THEORIES

Fascism: “Over all conflicts of human and legitimate interests, there is the authority of the government; the government alone is in the right position to see things from the point of view of the general welfare. This government . . . is over everybody, because it takes to itself not only ^{[p. 688]} the juridical conscience of the nation in the present, but also all that the nation represents for the future. . . . The citizen in the Fascist state is no longer a selfish individual who has the antisocial right of rebelling against any law of the collectivity. The Fascist state with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill. . . . We have given rhythm, law and protection to work; . . . we do not waste time in strikes and brawls.

6 ibid., p. 141.

Nazism: “The state’s duty towards capital was comparatively simple and clear. It merely had to see that capital remained the servant of the state and did not contemplate obtaining control of the nation. In taking this attitude the state could confine itself to two objects: maintenance of efficient national and independent economy on the one hand, and the social rights of the workers on the other. . . . This will find expression in a wise grading of earnings such as shall make it possible for every honest worker to be certain of living an orderly, honorable life.. . . A nationalist socialist trades union . . . is not an instrument of class war, but one for defense and representation of the workers. . . . If we review all the causes of the German collapse, the final and decisive one is seen to be the failure to realize the racial problem, especially the Jewish menace ...” (Hitler).

Communism: “There are three fundamental aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat: (a) Utilization of the power of the proletariat for the suppression of the exploiters, for the defense of the country, for the consolidation of the ties with the proletarians of other lands, and for the development and the victory of the revolution in all countries; (b) the utilization of the power of the proletariat in order to detach the toiling and exploited masses once and for all from the bourgeoisie, to consolidate the alliance of the proletariat with these masses, to enlist these masses in the work of socialist construction, and to assure the state leadership of these masses by the proletariat; (c) the utilization of the power of the proletariat for the organization of Socialism, for the abolition of classes, and for the transition to a society without classes, to a society without a state” (Stalin) .

Totalitarian spirit, however, is perhaps better conveyed by this salute to a socialized humanity by the Soviet poet Bednyi: ⁷

“Million-footed: a body. The pavement cracks.

A million mass: one heart, one will, one tread.

Keeping step, keeping step.

On they march. On they march.

Out of the factory quarters, smoke-wreathed,

Out of black dungeons, filthy rat holes,

He came—his fingers bent like pincers,

Burst the thousand year old chains rattling about him,

Came now the new ruler onto the street. . . .’

‘Cited by Edmund Walsh in Last Stand (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1931), p. 171.^{[p. 689]}

101. PIUS XI AND CATHOLIC LIBERTY

Achille Ratti (1857-1939) was born at Desio, near Milan, the son of bourgeois parents: his father was manager and part owner of the Gadda silk mill. He received his elementary education from Don Volontieri, a priest who for forty-three years maintained a practical and comparatively progressive school in his own house. It was he and Achille’s uncle, the priest Don Damiano Ratti, who fostered the boy’s education at San Carlo Seminary in Milan. Here he made a brilliant record in mathematics, philosophy, theology, and canon law, and was sent to complete his studies at the Lombard College at Rome. He was ordained to the priesthood at the age of twenty-two in the Lateran, December 20, 1879. He continued his studies three years longer at the Gregorianum, receiving doctorates in theology, philosophy, and canon law.

Scholarly career. Father Ratti returned to San Carlo Seminary as professor of theology and sacred eloquence (1882-88) . Thereafter he spent many years in research, first in the Ambrosian Library at Milan (1888-1910) , and then as vice-prefect of the Vatican Library at Rome (1910-18) . Some of his research on Milanese history has been published in his Historical Essays. Until the age of sixty, however, Father Ratti lived a relatively retired life, broken only by incessant mountain-climbing on vacations, reception of library visitors, and occasional trips as manuscript scout or delegate to library conventions. Quiet, reserved—but as the future would prove, strong-willed—he was observant as he walked the city streets or rode on the top of London buses. During much of this time he was chaplain at the Cenacle Convent, and catechist for the Milanese chimney sweeps.

Diplomatic service. Yet such a man seemed destined to remain forever in obscurity, had not the Allies decided to resurrect a country. In 1918 even the Vatican diplomatic corps lacked an expert in Polish history going back to Monsignor Garampi’s mission in 1763. But Ratti had published a monograph on the subject. He was summoned, and soon named nuncio to Poland and consecrated bishop. At Warsaw (1918-21) he provided bishops for the new and rearranged dioceses, negotiated a concordat with the Pilsudski government, and assisted in relief work. He stayed in the city during a critical communist siege of Warsaw, repulsed by Pilsudski and Weygand on August 15, 1920. The eminently ^{[p. 690]} successful nuncio was recalled and made cardinal-archbishop of Milan in June, 1921. He had barely time to inaugurate the Catholic University at Milan on December 7, when he was summoned to Rome by the death of Benedict XV, January 22, 1922.

Papal election. If reporter Morgan’s information be correct, the conclave elected Cardinal Lauri, who refused the tiara. Be that as it may, on the fourth day and fourteenth ballot a two-thirds majority was found in favor of Ratti, who accepted saying: “Pius is a name of peace. As I desire to devote my efforts to the peace of the world ... I choose the name of Pius.” The new pope’s first effort in this direction was to resume a custom abandoned since 1870: he appeared on St. Peter’s balcony to give his blessing urbi et orbi. In the crowd, it is said, was Deputy Mussolini who may have been impressed sufficiently by the popular enthusiasm for the Roman pontiff to modify somewhat an hitherto uncompromising anticlericalism.

(2) PAPAL PEACE CRUSADE

“Pax Christi in Regno Christi” was Pius XI’s motto, and to its realization he devoted his entire pontificate. This was the theme of his first encyclical, Ubi Arcano: “Because the world has determined to do without God, it is in chaos and peace has not yet come. After the terrors of the war, hate still remains, the presage of further wars between the nations. . . . There is but one remedy for these disasters: let us begin Christ’s reign in the world, and the world will have peace” (December, 1922). In his letters regarding Red Cross work and the Washington Disarmament Conference (1922), Pius XI urged mercy and forbearance. To the theme of peace he returned during the 1925 Jubilee Year when he issued the encyclical Quas Primas, instituting the feast of Christ the King. Then he admonished: “He would gravely err who would withdraw from Christ as Man the rule of all civil affairs whatsoever, since He received from the Father such an absolute right over created things that all things are placed under His will. .. . Therefore, let not the rulers of nations refuse to render to the rule of Christ the public duty of reverence and obedience for themselves and for the people, if they desire that their authority remain secure.”

Concordats were the pope’s attempt to conclude peace with the vatious national governments.  In this he was not averse to negotiating with forms of government with which he did not wholly approve, remarking that he was “disposed to treat with the devil himself, when the salvation of souls is concerned.”  Because the epoch-making Lateran Pact with Fascist Italy, presently discussed in greater detail, Pius XI concluded agreements with Latvia (1922), Poland and Bavaria(1925), Lithuania (1927), Portugal (1928), Prussia and Rumania (1929), and Nazi Germany ^{[p. 691]} (1933) . Well aware of the dangers of prevailing selfish nationalism, he warned: “Difficult, not to say impossible, is it for peace to endure between states and peoples, if in place of true and genuine love of country there reigns, or rages, a hard and egotistical nationalism; that is to say, if envy and hatred supplant mutual desire for good; distrust and suspicion replace fraternal confidence; strife and conflict take the place of concord and co-operation; and ambition for primacy and predominance excludes respect and protection of the rights of all, even the smallest and weakest.”

Missionary effort the pope tried to raise above national and racial considerations. The headquarters of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith were transferred from Lyons and Paris to Rome in May, 1922. The pope’s personal consecration of six Chinese bishops at Rome stressed his wish for a native clergy. An encyclical, Rerum Ecclesiae (1926) , directed foundation of schools for training native clerics, and during 1928 the encyclical Rerum Orientalium encouraged reunion work among Eastern sects.

Requiescat in pace. During the Munich Crisis, Pius XI, though ailing, labored strenuously for peace. Indeed, in his radio address of September 29, 1938, he offered his life for it: “With all our heart we offer for the salvation and the peace of the world this life, which in virtue of those prayers the Lord has spared and even renewed.” Like another Moses, the pope interposed himself to avert the divine wrath. It would seem that the exchange was accepted: peace was preserved for 1938 against expectations, and Pius XI died on February 10, 1939. His last words, scarcely audible, were: “Peace, peace, O Jesus!”

(3) LATERAN SETTLEMENT (1929)

Preliminaries. Benito Mussolini (1886-1945), ex-Socialist, had organized the Fascists in 1919, fusing them with D’Annunzio’s Nationalists who had protested against the Liberals’ “weak and pacific” politics. Leaving for another topic the history of Fascist Italy, it is enough to note here that the Fascists, after seizing power during October, 1922, were brought into conflict with that Liberal-Masonic-Anticlerical clique that had long blocked settlement of the “Roman Question.” Though Mussolini’s ideas were totalitarian, he recognized that they could not at once be put into full execution. Reconciliation with the Holy See, so highly esteemed by most Italians, might consolidate support of a Fascist dictatorship. During this early period Pius XI held aloof from politics, save to praise the government for its removal (1925) of anticlerical bans on Catholic education, and to remark wistfully on the absence of an Italian representative among the diplomats accredited to the Vatican.

Lateran Treaty. Mussolini took up these hints in 1926 by opening [p. 692] unofficial talks with the Vatican about the Roman Question. From 1926 to 1928 these were conducted by Francesco Pacelli, brother of the future pope, for the Vatican, and Domenico Barone for Il Duce.Both were conscientious lawyers, and when Barone died in 1928 such progress had been made that Mussolini and Grandi continued them officially with Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, whom Pius XI had retained as secretary of state from his predecessor’s pontificate. At length a satisfactory accord was reached, and the principals signed what is known as the n February 11, 1929. This set up an independent Vatican city-state, guaranteed as sovereign, neutral, and inviolable territory in international law: “Italy recognizes the sovreignth of the Holy See in the international field as an inherent attribute of its nature, in conformity with its tradition and the exigencies of its mission in the world: (Article 2).  On the other hand, On the other hand, “The Holy See . . . declares thr ‘Roman Question’ definitively and irrevocably settled and therefore eliminated and recognizes the kingdom of Italy under the dynasty of the House of Savoy, with rome as the capital of the Italian state” (Article 26). A financial convention replaced the inoperative “Law of Guarantees.” After the Holy See had made generous condonation of property to the state and private individuals, it accepted an indemnity of 750,000,000 lire in cash, and 1,000,000,000 lire in government bonds.

Consequences. After this treaty had been ratified on June 7, the pope emerged from his 108-acre state for the first time, July 25, 1929. Accompanying the Lateran Treaty, a Concordat opened a new alliance of church and state: the Church was declared the religion of the state; religious teaching was made obligatory in state schools for Catholics; clerical and religious immunity were recognized; canonical matrimonial law given civil effects; and Catholic organizations legally authorized.  It will be seen in the national history of Italy that Mussolini soon violated the spirit of this Concordat, thereby provoking a spirited contest between papal and secular jurisdictions. Nonetheless, despite threats from Fascists and occupation of Rome by both Germans and Americans, the Lateran Pact and its Vatican State creation seem to have stood the test of World War II.  As part of international law, it is not bound up per se with the Concordat, nor does it lose its validity with a change of Italian government. Nevertheless the Italian Republic under Premier Di Gasperri took care to renew the Lateran Pact explicitly on February 11, 1949.

B. Papal Magisterium

(1) CONDEMNATION OF TOTALITARIANISM

Catholic liberty was championed by Pius XI against a prevailing trend to dictatorship. His appeal was intellectual and moral, though ^{[p. 693]} the Mexican persecution evoked the warning that all physical self-defense was not denied Christians. In Nos es Muy (1927), the pope sustained the Mexican bishops in that: “You have also affirmed that if the case arose where the civil power should so trample on justice and truth as to destroy even the foundations of authority, there would appear no reason to condemn citizens for uniting to defend the nation and themselves by lawful and appropriate means against those who make use of the power of the state to drag the nation to ruin.” Only Spaniards averted totalitarian persecution by these means; elsewhere Catholics could not or would not see the threat until it was too late.

Non Abbiamo Bisogno (1931) is the pope’s classic, though by no means unique, condemnation of Fascism. In this encyclical Pius touched on the basic issue between theChurch and totalitarian regimes. For
the pope asserted: “We are happy and proud to wage the good fight for the liberty of conscience.” And he struck back with the verve of a Hildebrand: “Tell us, therefore, tell the country, tell the world what documents there are . . . that treat of politics planned and directed by Catholic Action. . . . We find ourselves confronted by the resolve . . . to monopolize comaletely the young . . .for the exclusive advantage of a party and a regime of a party and a regime based on an ideology which clearly resolves itself into a true, a real pagan worshi of the state —the Statolatry—which is in no less contrast with the natural rights of the family, than it is in contradiction with the supernatural rights of the Church. . . . We have seen in action a species of religion which rebels ... even to cry out: ‘Down with the pope and death to

Him.’”

Mit brennender Sorge (1937) gave the Nazi brand of totalitarianism a modern version of papal anathema: “None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national god, or national religion, or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations, before Whose immensity they are as a drop in a bucket. . . . Should any man dare in sacrilegious disregard of the essential differences between God and His creature, between the God-Man and the children of men, dare place a mortal, were he the greatest of all times, by the side of, or over against Christ, he would deserve to be called a prophet of nothingness to whom the terrifying words of Scripture would be applicable: ‘He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them.’ ... The day will come when the Te Deum of liberation will succeed premature hymns of the enemies of Christ.”

Divini Redemptoris (1937), finally, warned men not to fall into the utopian web of Communism: “The means of saving the world today from the lamentable ruin into which amoral Liberalism has plunged us are neither the class struggle, nor terror, nor yet the autocratic use of

 ^{[p. 694]} state power, but rather the infusion of social justice and the sentiment of Christian love into the social-economic order. . . . We have indicated how a sound prosperity is to be restored according to the true principles of a corporative system which respects the proper hierarchic structure of society, and how all the occupational groups should be fused into an harmonious unity, inspired by the principle of the common good.”

(2) SOCIAL REGENERATION

Domestic society was safeguarded by the encyclical Casti Connubii (1930) which included this definitive condemnation of contraception: “Any use whatever of matrimony, exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life, is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such acts are branded with the guilt of grave sin.” Already in Divini Illius Magistri (1929) the pope had upheld the parents’ rights to supervise the education of their children, along with the supernatural prerogatives of the Church in the educational field. In this document Pius XI cited with approval the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the Oregon School Case. Higher ecclesiastical studies were the subject of the papal directive, Deus Scientiarum (1931).

Economic society was recalled to the Leonine teaching of Rerum Novarum on its fortieth anniversary by Pius’s Quadragesimo Anno (1931) . In applying his predecessor’s teaching to twentieth-century conditions, the pope distinguished the individual and social aspects of property, while suggesting a corporate economic system as a via media between Capitalism and Socialism. Speculation and credit manipulation, partial causes of the world depression of 1929, came in for sharp criticism: “In our days not alone is wealth accumulated, but immense power and despotic economic domination is concentrated in the hands of a few, and that those few are frequently not the owners, but only the trustees and directors of invested funds, who administer them at their good pleasure. This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will.” The pope urged co-operation between employers and employees; they ought not place all their hopes in state intervention. This, if necessary, should moderate and arbitrate rather than participate; reasonable public ownership of certain natural resources, however, need not be deemed socialistic.

Catholic Action was called upon for the work of social regeneration ^{[p. 695]} by Pius XI, who diffused ever more widely and strongly the movement initiated by St. Pius X. “We have called this movement so dear to our nee’ in the work of the Church in is in effect a social apostolate also, inasmuch as its object is to spread the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, not only among individuals, but also in families and in society. It must, therefore, make it a chief aim to train its members with specia care and to prepare them to fight the battles of the Lord. The task of formation, now more urgent and indispensable than ever, which must always precede direct action in the field, will assuredly be served by study-circles, conferences, lecture-courses, and the various other activities undertaken with a view to making known the Christian solution of the social problem” (Divini Redeinptoris).

102. PIUS XII AND TOTALITARIANISM

Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958) belonged to a distinguished Roman family. His grandfather Marcantonio had been undersecretary of the Papal State and founder of Osservatore Romano; his father Filippo and elder brother Francesco were competent lawyers, the latter participating in the negotiations for the Lateran Pact. Eugenio himself was at first destined for the law, and for a time attended the state-controlled Liceo Visconti where he defied anticlerical professors, once substituting a denunciation of the Italian annexation of Rome for a prescribed theme to justify it. About 1894 he resolved to enter the clerical state and enrolled at Capranica College. His health broke down under his efforts, but he survived to be ordained on April 2, 1899. He continued postgraduate studies at the Apollinaris, earning doctorates in theology, philosophy, canon and civil law.

Diplomatic career. In 1901 Father Pacelli was assigned work under Monsignor Gasparri in the Congregation of Extraordinary Affairs where he remained until 1917, becoming its secretary in 1914. During 1901 he was bearer of a papal letter of condolence to Edward VII in London; here he returned in 1908 for the Eucharistic Congress and in 1911 for the coronation of George V. On May 13, 1917, he was consecrated bishop by Benedict XV and named nuncio to Bavaria. During July he met the Kaiser but proved unable to win his assent to the pope’s peace plan. During the communist riots in the spring of 1919, mobsters invaded the Munich nunciature, but were faced down by Archbishop Pacelli; repeatedly his life was in peril on the streets. Named nuncio to Germany in 1920, he retained both German legations until 1929. He participated in arranging the Concordats with Bavaria (1925), Prussia ^{[p. 696]} (1929), Baden (1932), Germany (1933), and Austria (1934) . On his departure from Germany he received enthusiastic testimonials from all German groups save the Nazis whom he had often criticized. Named cardinal in December, 1929, Pacelli became papal secretary of state, February, 1930. In 1934 he toured South America and in 1936 the United States. He was legate to congresses at Lourdes (1935), Lisieux (1937), and Budapest (1938) . His opposition to Totalitarianism was well known: he denounced it at Lourdes in 1935, and participated in the papal rebuke to Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna for his overly-warm welcome to Nazi Anschluss. Reputedly another excoriation of Totalitarianism was scheduled for February 11, 1939, but Pius XI died the preceding day.

Election to the papacy. As camerlengo, Cardinal Pacelli administered the Holy See during the ensuing sede vacante and made arrangements for a conclave which at long last included Cardinal O’Connell of Boston —for whom Pius XI had extended the Lyonnaise (1274) prescription from ten to eighteen days. On March 2, 1939, reputedly on the third ballot and almost unanimously, Cardinal Pacelli was elected to the supreme pontificate. His was the first papal election announced orbi by radio as well as urbi, and Cardinal Caccia-Dominioni discharged well this new extension of an ancient announcer’s role. On the feast of St. Gregory the Great, March 12, 1939, Eugenio Pacelli was crowned as Pope Pius XII. Thus began a long, eventful, and progressive pontificate, conscientiously discharged until terminated by the pope’s death at Castel Gandolfo, October 9, 1958.

(2) DOCTRINAL GUIDANCE

Ecclesiology. In 1943 Pius XII in an encyclical, Mystici Corporis, expounded the true doctrine and warned against errors: Christian union with the Divine Head is not merely moral, nor does it constitute a single physical person, but is supernatural. Expressions alluding to the “soul” and “body” of the Church ought not to be used in such wise as to suggest a separation   of a visible from > an invisible Church; rather, non-Catholics in good faith are described as “related, even though unsuspectingly, to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer in desire and resolution.” Even so, “they still remain deprived of so many precious gifts and helps from heaven, which one can enjoy only in the Catholic Church.” In 1950, in Humani Generis, the pope warned against vestiges of Modernism and the vagaries of Existentialism. Docility to papal instructions —which are not to be regarded merely as advice—was stressed in order to offset any theological relativism. Ci Riesce (1953) suggested modern norms for tolerance of non-Catholics. ^{[p. 697]}

Holy Scripture. During 1943 also the pope commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of Providentissimus Deus by issuing Divino Afflante Spiritu. The latter encyclical emphasized the new information afforded by archaeological discoveries in regard to the languages, literature, history, and customs of Biblical peoples. Nowadays Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, original tongues of the Scriptures, are essential to scholarly exposition. Accordingly, without prejudice to the Vulgate, versions directly from the original texts should be prepared and appropriately translated to the vernacular, subject to hierarchical sanction. In 1945 a papal motu proprio, In Cotidianis Precibus, but some of these norms into effect by permitting liturgical use of a new Psalter directly based on the Hebrew.

Canon Law. The apostolic constitution, Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis (1945), changed the required two-thirds majority for papal elections dating from 1179 to two-thirds plus one, and clarified procedure. In the same year an important Allocution to the Rota distinguished between ecclesiastical jurisdiction derived immediately from God independently of the people, and civil authority, deduced “as most Scholastics teach” mediately from God through the people. Between 1949 and 1957 the Holy Father issued a new Oriental Code for the Eastern Rites in communion with the Holy See.

Mariology. Pius XII, when dedicating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by establishing the feast in 1942, suggested prayers for the opportuneness of defining the doctrine of her Assumption. This definition he made on November 1, 1950, in the constitution, Munificentissimus Deus: “We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma that the Immaculate Mother of God, ever Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory.” The invocation, “Regina assumpta in coelum,” was added to the Litany. The centennial of the definition of the Immaculate Conception-1954—was proclaimed a “Marian Year,” climaxed by the festive celebration of the “Queenship of Mary,” henceforth assigned to May 31.

The Missions received attention from Pius XII who, adhering to the policy of his two predecessors, fostered a native clergy. He consecrated twelve missionary bishops October 29, 1939, erected a Chinese hierarchy in 1945, set up a missionary college for native students (1947) , and admitted a Chinese and Indian to the Sacred College (1946; 1953) . In 1939 more liberal norms were permitted for use of Confucianist ceremonies. During 1947 Provida Mater Ecclesia recognized the “secular institutes” as means of domestic asceticism; analogous and overlapping was the development of a lay missionary movement. ^{[p. 698]}

 (3) LITURGICAL DISCIPLINE

General liturgy. Pius XII, besides legislating on six of the sacraments, issued an important encyclical, Mediator Dei (1947), on the liturgy. He there defined liturgy as “the integral public worship of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, of its Head and members.” He warned against liturgical excesses and any changes introduced without papal sanction, such as revival of disused rubrics or unauthorized use of the vernacular. Besides new feasts, a new common of popes, a new Psalter, the pope introduced a considerable, but merely transitional simplification of the rubrics of the Mass and Office in 1955. A new Holy Week ritual, optional and partial in 1951, became obligatory and definitive in 1955. In 1958 four ways of promoting greater participation of the congregation in the Mass were recommended.

Baptism. Through the Congregation of Rites the pope sanctioned alteration of the saliva rubric (1944)—a change once denied to the Malabarese. In 1951 he provided for congregational renewal of baptismal vows at the revived Holy Saturday Vigil.

Confirmation. Pius XII conceded general faculties to pastors and their equivalents in the Latin Rite to administer this sacrament in case of danger of death and the absence of a bishop (1946) .

Penance. During 1947 the provisions of canon 883 for faculties for confession on a sea voyage were extended to air travel.

Holy Eucharist. During World War II the pope allowed not only soldiers but war workers to have evening Mass, with corresponding modifications of the Eucharistic fast (1942), and permitted use of water only in ablutions where wine was not easily obtainable (1944) . Regulations about the time of the Mass and the Eucharistic fast were standardized and fused with previous indults for the sick by Christus Dominus (1953), subject to a confessor’s sanction. The latter restriction was removed in March, 1957, by a supplementary regulation requiring a three-hour fast from solids, a single hour from liquids—save intoxicants—for all, and permitting the sick true medicine whenever needed. Water was entirely excluded from the Eucharistic fast.

Holy Orders. By Sacramentum Ordinis (1947) the pope settled longstanding theological disputes about the matter and form of this sr^,,-rment by defining that “the matter of the sacred orders of deacon a, priesthood and episcopacy is the imposition of hands alone; the form is the words determining the application of this matter by which the sacramental effects are univocally -signified.. . .” These words are to be found in the Preface.

Matrimony. In 1940 the Holy Office condemned direct sterilization and in 1944 censured those “who either deny that the primary end of ^{[p. 699]} marriage is the procreation and education of children, or teach that the secondary ends are not essentially subordinate to the primary end.” The pope made the first change in the Latin Code during 1948 by suppressing the exception from canonical form of marriage made by canon 1099 in favor of those baptized but not educated in the Church. In 1949 Pius XII initiated the Oriental matrimonial code; the manner of computing affinity and the form of marriage constituted the more notable differences from the Latin. Addressing Catholic physicians in 1949, the pope “formally excluded artificial insemination from marriage.” Besides renewing his predecessor’s ban on contraception, Pius XII in an address to Catholic midwives during 1951 condemned the abuse of “rhythm.”

B. Secular Problems

(1) WORLD WAR II (1939--45)

Causes. Versailles divided the powers into “haves” and “have-nots,” and the latter were susceptible to any appeal, however radical, promising redress of their grievances. In Germany, the Socialist-Center Bloc which ran the Weimar Republic was saddled with payment of reparations. When France insisted upon repayment, however, Great Britain tended to side with Germany, thereby virtually suspending the victorious Entente Cordiale. The world depression (1929-33) hastened the decline of peace organization: economic self-sufficiency became the goal and over-all planning of a socialist or fascist type became attractive. The economic status of the German and Austrian states became straitened, but Laval’s France vetoed any union. German President Hindenburg then turned from the discredited democratic leaders to Hitler’s promises, and neither he nor the Germans were again allowed to change their minds. For Hitler cornered political power and geared the entire German economy for war. In 1935 he courted Mussolini in the latter’s Ethiopian venture, and secured his benevolent neutrality the next year during his own gamble of rearming the Rhineland in defiance of Versailles terms. France, without a cabinet, hesitated and lost. Germany and Italy cemented their understanding in the Berlin-Rome Axis (1936), to which Japan, which had successfully defied the League in Manchuria, adhered later. Russia, however, held aloof from both Fascists and Liberals. Military rearmament was pushed forward to outstrip, especially in the air, Britain, France, and the lesser states, while Russian policy and strength remained an enigma. Preparedness and bluff enabled the Axis to appropriate Austria, Czechoslovakia, Memel, and Albania within a year (1938-39) .

Hostilities broke out on September 1, 1939, when Britain and France refused to appease Hitler on his demands on Poland. Thinking to remedy German errors in World War I, Hitler at first avoided a war on two fronts. He appeased Russia with half of Poland in order to be free to deal with the West. France was defeated and occupied along with the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. Unable either to force Great Britain’s surrender or her alliance in an anticommunist “crusade,” Hitler seems to have assumed that he could destroy Russia alone while slowly starving out the British Isles. And so he might have done had not his Japanese partner, interested as always in local more than overall Axis objectives, provoked the United States into global war by attack on Pearl Harbor. American-British aid was henceforth given without stint to Russia with such success that German advance was halted. Then, caught at last in his dreaded two-front war, Hitler dodged encirclement until the Allied landings in North Africa, Italy, and France produced the dire Nazi-dämmerung at Berlin, May, 1945.

Armistice, rather than peace, was the sequel.. Self-defense had induced the Liberal nations to ally themselves with Communism. The war thus failed to be an ideological contest with Totalitarianism, however much wishful propaganda might sometimes represent it. Concern for their soldiers’ lives led the Liberal leaders to make great concessions to their Soviet partner in order to ensure a speedy end to the war, and to this purpose also a fateful atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, quickly terminating the contest in the Far East. Principles were again sacrificed at the peacemaking in the hope that present injustices might be eventually remedied in a new world organization, the United Nations. Fearing to ruin this, as the League had been, by American and Russian abstention, material unanimity was purchased at the expense of formal disagreement, and the world remained divided, now into the armed camps of Liberalism and Communism.

(2) PAPAL PEACE EFFORTS (1939-45)

Unsuccessful appeals. In May, 1939, Pope Pius XII privately proposed an international conference to Germany, Poland, France, Great Britain, and Italy. This plan, following several weeks after an un-co-ordinated suggestion by President Roosevelt of the United States, was rejected. But the pope continued his earnest efforts to avert war down to the last hours before the commencement of hostilities. In October, 1939, his encyclical Summi Pontificatus denounced the general forgetfulness of human solidarity, and the excessive use of secular power, unrestrained by either divine or human law. By December, 1939, Pius XII had a five point peace program to propose: (1) national rights to independence; (2) disarmament; (3) international institutions; (4) revision of treaties; and (5) introduction of the Christian ideals. These points, along with other recommendations, the pope reiterated in his annual Christmas ^{[p. 701]} broadcasts. In 1940 he called for triumph over hate, mistrust, the substitution of utility for right, selfishly maintained disparities in economic resources, and the “spirit of cold egoism.” He pleaded during 1941 for the rights of small nations, national minorities, while deploring hoarding of economic resources, total warfare and persecution of religion. Between 1940 and 1946 he was in frequent consultation with Myron Taylor, personal ambassador of President Roosevelt. He did not, however, directly participate in any armistice or peace negotiations, and while favoring a “community of nations,” did not attempt to formulate a charter for the “United Nations.”

Relief activities. The Pontifical Relief Commission was set up in 1939 under Monsignor Cortesi, and in time relief centers were opened in all occupied countries to dispense food, clothing and medicine to men of all religions and races; by the end of the war the Commission was operating in forty countries. Between 1939 and 1945, moreover, the Vatican Information Service sent five million messages for private soldiers, often anticipating the secular sources; e.g., the first news of American survivors from the Ploesti air raid came from the Vatican. During 1943-44 Vatican trucks foraged for food in Italy, and for a time a third of Rome’s flour was being supplied through the Vatican commissary. Soup kitchens and emergency shelters were established in Rome, and after the war many of these relief agencies continued to assist dispossessed persons, especially children.

Roman crises. Throughout the war, the pope rejected suggestions from either side to leave Rome. After the bombings of San Lorenzo and the Lateran during the summer of 1943, the pope hastened to the scene within the hour, and his cassock was stained with blood as he participated in the relief work. Besides eliciting diplomatic protests, bombing of Vatican City—without casualties—by an unidentified plane failed to budge the pope. During the Nazi occupation of Rome, September, 1943, to June, 1944, the Vatican freedom was constrained, but ways were yet discovered to help the poor and give asylum to Jews. To Nazi pressures Pius XII replied: “Kindly inform whoever may be interested that not only do I refuse to leave Rome no matter what happens, but herewith protest in advance any violence planned against, not my modest person, but against the Vicar of Christ.” This determination he repeated to the cardinals in consistory of February 9, 1944, although allowing them full freedom to leave. Allied bombing of Castel Gandolfo and of Monte Cassino yet followed, perhaps unavoidably. Tension eased, however, after the entry of American troops into Rome, June 6, 1944. The day coincided with D-Day, the Norman Reconquest that soon ended the war. ^{[p. 702]}

 (3) POST-WAR PEACE EFFORTS (1945-58)

The “Cold War.” From 1947 the American Marshall Plan for European Recovery (ECA) was opposed by the “Cold War,” warming in 1948 to the contest for Berlin. Already in December, 1945, the pope had deplored the surviving “bacillus” of Totalitarianism; a year later he lamented that the ideals of the Atlantic Charter and of the Four Freedoms were being tarnished. During 1947-49 he appealed for internationalization of Jerusalem and the Holy Places, and for a peaceful solution for the Arab-Jewish tension in Palestine. In 1948 he analyzed the situation as a continuing insecurity arising from fear of aggression. The pope made peace one of the intentions for the Holy Year of 1950, and pleaded: “Away with the barriers! Break down the barbed wire fences! Let each people be free to know the life of other peoples; let the segregation of some countries from the rest of the civilized world, so dangerous to the cause of peace, be abolished. How earnestly the Church desires to smooth the way for these friendly relations among peoples! For her, East and West do not represent opposite ideals, but share a common heritage to which both are called to contribute in the future also. By virtue of her divine mission she is a mother of all peoples, and a faithful ally and wise guide to all who seek peace.” But apparently East and West still endorsed Kipling’s dictum, for the Holy Year was marred by the opening of the Korean War (1950-53) . As this and other limited conflicts ever threatened to develop into World War III, Pius XII repeated his appeals for peace, notably during the Marian Year of 1954 and the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Yet it was not “peace at any price,” for the pope pointed out the dangers of the newer Moscow line of “peaceful co-existence.”

Anti-Communist defense. It was atheistic Communism with all its materialistic implications that Pius XII continued to indict to those who refused to detect the menace. In postwar elections, especially in Italy and France, the pope publicly commanded Catholic participation under pain of mortal sin. On July 1, 1949, a decree of the Holy Office declared bluntly that it was illicit for a Catholic to be a member of or to support any Communist party. He might not contribute to, subscribe to, or circulate publications in favor of Communism, and those guilty of such offenses were barred from the sacraments and remained, as apostates, subject to a specially reserved censure of excommunication. Right down to the last year of his pontificate Pius XII denounced Communist persecution, first in the Succession States and the Balkans, finally in China where schism was being fostered. In condemning the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, February 20, 1949, the pope enunciated what may be taken as a statement of the issue: “The totalitarian and antireligious state ^{[p. 703]} wants a Church that is silent when she should speak; a Church that adulterates the law of God, adapting it to the whims of human desires when she should instead be loudly proclaiming it; a Church that does not resist the oppression of the conscience of the people and does not protect their legitimate rights and just liberties; a Church that with unbecoming servility remains enclosed within the four walls of the temple, forgetful of the divine mandate received from Christ: ‘Go you into the highways; instruct all the nations.’ Beloved sons and daughters, spiritual heirs of a countless legion of confessors and martyrs, is this the Church you venerate and love?”

103. RUSSIAN COMMUNISM

Political. The Bolsheviki overthrew the Liberal Provisional Regime—capitalistic, discordant, hesitant—by promising: (1) peace at any price; (2) land for all peasants; and (3) “all power to the soviets”; that is, the workers’ factory councils. The first promise won over war-weary troops, although peace was purchased from Germany at the expense of ceding Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, March, 1918. After the collapse of the Central Powers and the Russian Counter Revolution, Ukraine was regained for the Soviet Union from a rightist-alien expeditionary force (1918-21) . The second pledge induced the peasants to allow the Communists to have their own way in the towns, while they were permitted to reapportion the land to suit themselves. The third part of the Communist program permitted a minority to seize control in Petrograd—soon Leningrad—and cow the Duma into submission. Though the Communists won but twenty-five per cent of the thirty-six million votes in the December, 1917, elections and gained merely 156 of the 601 seats in the Duma meeting in January, 1918, that body was soon terrorized into legalizing earlier Communist decrees of agrarian reapportionment, debt cancelation and socialization of banks. From this original concession of authority the Duma never had a chance to retreat, for in July, 1918, the primitive Communist Soviet Constitution restricted full citizenship to the proletariat; all other classes and parties were disenfranchised. Though political authority theoretically was derived from a confederation of national republics and their component local soviets, actually a dictatorship of the Council of Commissars existed. The Cheka Police enforced their rule by sheer terror, taking hostages for the good behavior of all suspects. The courts openly discriminated against “hostile classes” so that the old nobility and bureaucracy was killed or exiled.

Economic. Expropriation embraced government property and banking ^{[p. 704]} capital (1917); transport, internal trade, large-scale industry capital, foreign trade capital and loans (1918), and small business capital (1920) . From 1917 to 1921, then, the state endeavored to run everything Workers were given charge of the factories, but their haphazard methods and lack of training resulted quickly in industrial chaos. Labor had to be made compulsory and the working day lengthened. All land was nationalized on paper, and the peasants were assured that a White Russian counter-revolt would mean a return of serfdom. During the White Russian offensives, indeed, the Reds, under guise of martial law, employed confiscation against all real or alleged reactionary groups. In self-defense the Soviet War Minister, Trotsky, organized a Red army of workers, disciplined by the Cheka—later OGPU—secret police. But the “Whites” were divided in aims and organization, and there was no enthusiasm for restoration of the monarchy or the privileged classes. Allied assistance came in halting and meager fashion from war-weary and halfhearted nations, and was abandoned in 1920. Hence, by 1921 the Communist government of Premier Lenin (1917-24) was securely in power in Russia. On the other hand, for the moment it had been foiled in its efforts to foster world revolution, for serious Communist risings in Germany and Hungary had been put down. For its first quarter century the Communist experiment was confined to Russia.

“New Economic Policy.” Although successful over reactionaries, Lenin recognized danger signals for his rule appearing by 1921. There were mutinies among the armed forces; the peasants were deliberately under-producing and hiding grain; hoarding and black markets were flourishing. The state had attempted too much in trying to socialize everything, and the peasants had effectively resisted socialization while the more eager workers had bungled seriously. Too much had been tried too quickly by too few. Without abandoning his ultimate objectives, Lenin now resolved upon a strategic retreat which would placate the peasants and illegal bourgeoisie. Hence, peasants were reassured that requisition of grain would now cease; taxes would be equitably assessed upon the amount produced; and land grabs could be condoned as long-term leases. When the black market trading was legalized, the NEP bourgeois emerged into the open where he could be taxed—and noted for future destruction. Industries employing less than twenty workers were then turned back to private management, while the Communists concentrated upon large-scale industry. This they tried to revamp with foreign capital and technicians. Foreign trade and transport remained state monopolies, and banking and minting were government preserves. ^{[p. 705]}

Nevertheless, differentiated wages revived individual initiative, and economic life began to improve. Party dictatorship. The Communist Party retained its rigid political monopoly and police system. The Constitution of 1922, although conceding cultural autonomy to the many nationalities within the federated Soviet Union, was chary about delegating political power. Only the proletariat were allowed to participate in elections, and these were little more than ratification of lists of party nominees. Even though a series of indirect representatives ascended to an All Union Congress, any expression of the popular will was practically impossible. In theory the All Union Congress selected an All Union Executive Committee which chose the Union Council of Commissars with charge over national and foreign affairs. Actually, behind this façade all real power rested with a restricted Communist Party. Though this expanded its membership from 23,000 in January, 1917, to 7,200,000 in January, 1957, at any period it constituted but a small percentage of the total Russian population.

Faction contests. When Lenin’s health began to fail in 1922, a struggle for the succession began between Leftists under Trotsky who denounced NEP as a betrayal of Communism, and Rightists led by Stalin who were primarily interested in Russian nationalism. Trotsky, intellectual, mercurial, a brilliant speaker, advocated world revolt at once; Stalin, ill-educated, plodding, a wire-puller, argued that a powerful Russian state must be the immediate objective. As the secretary-general of the Party, Stalin outmaneuvered Trotsky in dominating patronage after Lenin’s death in 1924. From 1923 to 1925 Zimoviev and Kamenev joined Stalin against Trotsky; then they sided with the latter. Relegated to a minor role, Trotsky agitated, opposing concessions to the rising wealthy peasants, the kulaks. In 1927 the OGPU under Stalin’s orders began for the first time to purge Reds; by 1929 Trotsky was in exile and Stalin was dictator. Events were to demonstrate him a “realist” who stole Lenin’s policy. Yet he was ever more concerned with achieving objectives by any means than with fidelity to correct theory.

Revolutionary atrocities. The Orthodox Russian Church had been separated from the state by the Liberal revolution in March, and during August the Orthodox clergy had utilized their independence to choose their first patriarch in two hundred years: Tikhon Belavin (1917-25). By Article 13 of their 1918 Constitution the Soviets proclaimed equal freedom for religion and atheism. But in practice wholesale confiscation of church property commenced: everything except a minimum of buildings and utensils needed for cult was taken or put at the disposal of lay ^{[p. 706]} trustees similar to the French “cultural associations.” The clergy were deprived of all civil rights and discriminated against in the vital matter of ration cards—which all Russians needed until 1935.

Popular resistance to these measures was met by severe reprisals. Between 1918 and 1920, it has been estimated that 26 Orthodox prelates and 1,200 priests were slain; by 1941 their hierarchy had declined from 130 to 28, their clergy from 50,000 to 5,000. Leading prelates from Tikhon of Moscow down had been arrested.

Among Catholics, Monsignors Budkiewicz and Cieplak, and 14 clerics were outstanding victims. Between 1917 and 1950, the Catholic hierarchy was reduced from 7 to none, the clergy from 896 to 2.

Meanwhile the “Living Church,” a latitudinarian, subservient group of collaborationists, was foisted upon the Russian people as a government protégé. Religious instruction was strictly forbidden in all public and private schools, although catechism might still be taught to groups less than eighteen, and a few government-controlled Orthodox seminaries were permitted to function. Libertine excess was allowed and even encouraged: “bourgeois morality” was ridiculed; civil marriage introduced, concubinage condoned, parental rights unrecognized, illegitimate children placed on a legal par with legitimate, and “postcard divorces” sanctioned.

Calculated repression. During the NEP period, religious policy was likewise somewhat modified without any basic change in the Marxist long-term attitude toward religion. Exposed to international denunciation, the Soviet regime accepted some food donations through the Papal Relief Commission (1922) and released Patriarch Tikhon (1923) . Less support was given to the farce of the “Living Church,” and direct attacks upon the clergy and faithful were discontinued for a time. Yet during 1922-23 all of the nine Catholic prelates had been executed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Holy See named ten new prelates in 1926, but all had been apprehended by 1932 when but fifty priests survived. If less violence was displayed against the Orthodox clergy, antireligious propaganda and ridicule of religious observance increased. These measures were promoted by the Militant Atheists’ League, organized in 1925, but making but slow progress before 1928. In 1924 the legal catechism class was reduced to three, and sermons subjected to a preliminary censorship. A “new calendar”—the Gregorian—together with civil holidays deliberately at variance with the ecclesiastical disrupted the Orthodox festivals. The Militant Atheists spread antireligious propaganda in markets, music-halls, by playing-cards, and children’s ABC’s. Anti- Christmas and anti-Easter carnivals strove to attract the people from worship. Religious ceremonies and persons were parodied or caricatured on the streets or in cartoons; shrines and miracles were “debunked”; statues equipped with flashing signs: “Join the League of Godless today. ^{[p. 707]}” If less violent means were employed, Communist persecution of religion continued.

“Five Year Plans.” After exiling the Leftists, Stalin amazed his supporters by renewing a drive for the Communist ultimate objectives: complete industrialization and collectivized farming. In the First Five Year Plan (1928-32), Russia was to become self-sufficient on a time table. This program stressed quantity, but its quality proved sub-standard. Managers were threatened with punishment for failure to turn out quotas, and the workers’ authority in the factories was lessened. At the same time an agrarian program was pushed over peasants’ objections. Cattle, tools, and fields were to be held in common, and any who deserted NEP for collectivized farms were favored. Kulaks retaliated as before by hoarding and production strikes, but food was a secondary objective to Stalin: during the famine of 1932-33 many millions (three to seven) were deliberately allowed to die. Thus the kulak was “liquidated.” A Second Plan (1933-37) stressed increased production, but consumption and quality as well. Achievements in industry and agriculture were such that by the end of the period the Soviets could at last point to rising standards of living, and ration cards could be abandoned. By not counting human costs, Stalin had modernized Russia rapidly, if imperfectly.

Communist purges continued as Stalin struck at rivals, now to the right, then to the left. Collectivization had alienated Premier Rykov, Bukharin, and Tomski; in 1930 these Rightists were demoted, to be purged in 1938. In 1934 murder of Stalin’s friend Kirov set off a series of reprisals and demonstration trials: in 1936 Zimoviev and Kamenev “confessed” plots against Stalin; in 1937 Radek and five thousand others were executed for plotting with Trotsky or Hess, or committing sabotage of one kind or another; then came the turn of Marshal Tukhachevsky and seven generals purged for conspiring with an “unfriendly power.” By 1938 no dissent could be heard in Russia.

Religious persecution was accentuated during this period, with special vehemence during 1929-30 and 1937-38. The attack began with the closing of churches-1,440 during 1929—and this continued whenever and wherever expedient. The clergy were prosecuted in large numbers: imprisoned, executed, deported, or relegated to rural areas; at one time 150 bishops were under arrest. The revolutionary six-day week with periodic labor shifts, in force from 1929 to 1940, played havoc with religious observance. Once again the 1929 Constitution proclaimed “freedom of religious cult and of antireligious propaganda”: all proselytizing ^{[p. 708]} was banned, while the atheistic program was accelerated. Positively atheistic education became obligatory, and the Militant Atheist League used physical and moral pressure to discourage fidelity to religion. Training schools and study clubs in atheism and materialism were sponsored. During 1934-37 a lull occurred: during 1934 a stricter domestic morality was imposed, and in 1935 the anti-Easter campaign was so far abandoned as to sanction sale of Easter cakes. Christmas trees and wedding rings came back on the market. Despite these trifling baits, in 1937 indictment and arrest of the clergy was resumed, and this time chiefly on charges of lack of patriotism. More churches were closed: Timasheff cites 1,100 Orthodox, 240 Catholic, 61 Protestant, and 110 Mohammedan religious edifices closed during 1937.⁸ Despite some courting of the New Deal by allowing an American priest at Moscow, the Soviet government did not deviate from a basic policy of extermination of religion during this period. Monsignor Frizon, Catholic administrator of Odessa, was shot in 1937.

Thermidor. At the end of the collectivization, Soviet Russia under Stalin’s dictatorship had reached a point which Chamberlin and other qualified observers have labeled as the Thermidorian Reaction to the Communist Revolution. In defense of this hypothesis, it may be remarked that, (1) property is no longer egalitarian in theory or practice: though Lenin took no more than a worker’s wage, now Soviet bureaucrats live luxuriously; (2) religion is rather to be dominated than destroyed—on which below; (3) family morality and school discipline again follow conventional norms; (4) national imperialism and PanSlavism have replaced cosmopolitanism; (5) regimented discipline has replaced progressive education; (6) the proletarian is no longer specially privileged: merit is recognized irrespective of class origin, and some of the second generation Communist commissars were never workers; (7) culture fosters the national and conservative: military titles and uniforms, clubs, servants, etc., have returned; Russian history is no longer entirely condemnatory of the czarist or even the Christian past; (8) labor incentive has returned with larger salaries, personal property, and savings-bank accounts. The seven-day week and eight-hour day returned in 1940. No investments are available, indeed, save in government bonds, nor are shops and farms allowed in private hands, but one may own as much non-productive wealth as he pleases, so long as he does not enter into competition with the state monopoly on production; (9) foreign policy veered from the Axis (1939-41) to the Liberal Allies ^{[p. 709]} (1941-45), and thereafter courted satellites and allies. All territorial cessions of 1918 save Finland have been recovered, and Soviet troops, who have long outstayed their role as “liberators,” hold down subject peoples against their manifest will in the immemorial imperialist fashion.

‘N. S. Timasheff, Religion in Soviet Russia (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942), p. 52.

Stalinist religious policy during this period did manifest some analogies to the French Thermidorian reaction, but it will be recalled that Thermidor was followed by a “Second Terror.” The 1936 Stalinist Constitution proclaimed freedom of religion and restored to the clergy their civil rights—but this document in its entirety means simply what the Communist dictatorship wishes it to signify. During 1939-40 another lull in persecution began, and the government embarked on a new compromise, possibly suggested in an interview with the modernist prelate Kallistratos of Georgia who asserted that communism and Christianity were not opposed and would eventually fuse. After the Nazi invasion of 1941, moreover, Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow declared that the Orthodox Church would support the national government in its peril. As invaders opened the churches, Stalin’s government in desperation turned to the Church as a patriotic agency. A puppet patriarch was installed in 1943, and Orthodox antipathies against Catholics, Latin or Ruthenian, were encouraged. In March, 1946, the 1596 Reunion of Brest was declared abrogated and all non-Latin Catholics subjected to the Stalinist Patriarch of Moscow, both in Russia and in the satellite countries. The Militant Atheist League was suppressed in 1942, and the more blatant antireligious propaganda discontinued. Crude massacres and public tortures were abandoned for more secret and subtle methods of “brain-washing.” Yet down to Stalin’s death in 1953, Timasheff’s words, written in 1942, remained valid: “Never forget that the ‘New Religious Policy’ is merely a compromise, reluctantly accepted for compelling reasons, and contrary to the convictions of the government. Hence the concessions are precarious.” ⁹

° Ibid., p. 161.

Stalin’s successors since 1953, whatever their differences of technique, have given no evidence of departing from basic Communist objectives. At first, an attempt was made to replace his one-man rule with a “collective leadership” under Stalin’s hand-picked successor, Georgi Malenkov, as chairman (1953-55) . But the farm program which by then enveloped ninety-nine per cent of the land, proved less successful, despite vast forces of slave labor controlled since World War II. Malenkov was then demoted and a partnership of Nikolai Bulganin as premier (1955-58) and Nikita Khrushchev as party boss succeeded. There was some ^{[p. 710]} moderation in the “hate the West” themes, and a breaking down of the isolation of the “iron curtain,” although this did not permit any real independence to the satellites. In 1956 Khrushchev accused Stalin of arbitrary and not always infallible dictatorship, and proceeded to give an appearance of humanizing and democratizing the Soviet administration. Yet the leading rivals were successively eliminated and he emerged in 1958 as Stalin’s sole heir, both as party chairman and premier. The Soviet Union, where already in 1937 sales taxes took eighty-five to ninety per cent of the product, geared everything to collective leadership, military might, and scientific achievement. Apparently less stress was laid on surpassing the West by war than by economic and scientific progress. Yet little seems changed and the world remains divided in two camps. Supposedly Liberal “cosmopolitan” internationalism breeds war and slavery, while Communist “proletarian” imperialism promotes freedom and peace.

The enigmatic new regime, while not abandoning threats of war, made increasing efforts to give the impression that religious persecution exists nowhere under Soviet rule. But there is no sign of Communist leaders deserting their atheistic and materialistic premises. Dictator Khrushchev, even while giving the impression that surviving religious people would be tolerated so long as they persisted in their “illusions,” admitted bluntly in 1957 that Communist doctrine remained officially “atheistic.” Yet instances of “believers” did appear in Communist households, among commissars and generals. Since a Pravda editorial of July, 1954, Kremlin leaders have searched for “scientific-atheistic” propaganda, but ancient literature had little to offer of such a pseudo-scientific nature, and Soviet writers, even when tempted by prizes, proved sluggish or inept in producing the “high quality” propaganda desired. And young radicals were beginning to regard the “Communist Old Regime” as the “opiate of the people.” Little of the Communist ideals of 1917 survived, but Soviet dictatorship was still a dread reality.

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