My Battle Against Hitler

by Dietrich von Hildebrand,John Henry Crosby

  Israel was the representative people of humanity in yet a second respect. It is the people to whom God spoke, among whom he revealed himself to humanity, the people he chose to be representatives of all humanity, to whom he addressed words that are the concern of all humanity. Although he bestowed upon the Greeks a unique capacity for arriving at genuine knowledge of creation, and although the Greeks were called to discover the world of natural values for humanity, he unveiled himself to the Jews, he revealed to this people that which is of real and ultimate significance for every human being. He himself spoke to Abraham and Moses, he announced through the prophets him who would become not only the Messiah for Israel but the redeemer of mankind.

  And he chose this people—which through revelation became the representative people of humanity more than merely extrinsically—in order to bestow human nature upon his only begotten Son. The fact that Christ in his human nature was a Jew, that in being born a Jew of the Virgin Mary he took on human nature fully, forms the character of the Jewish people’s representation of humanity in the deepest and clearest way. Christ spoke to humanity when he spoke to Israel, and Israel’s response to his manifestation was the response of humanity. The apostles and disciples who recognized and followed him were representatives of humanity, as were the Pharisees and all who crucified him. It is more than naïve to see the crucifixion of Christ as a specific response of the Jewish people exclusively, as if his fellow countrymen would not have crucified him had he been Roman, Greek, Persian, or Germanic. The “let him be crucified” was the voice of fallen humanity, which Israel represented here as in every other situation. But the response of the apostles and disciples, “Lord, where shall we go, for you have the words of eternal life?,” was also the voice of humanity in its searching and yearning for God. And is not the denial of Christ by Peter and the sleeping of the three disciples on the Mount of Olives a prototype of our bearing toward Christ, does not Christ in the liturgy speak to all of us each year when he asks—“Sic non potuistis una hora vigilare mecum?”—“Could you not watch with me for even just one hour?” Israel is the representative people of humanity; therefore its fate must touch us more, must concern us more, than that of any other people.

  Israel’s Influence on the Christian West

  The spirit of this representative people of humanity, which finds expression in the unique poetry of the Psalms and the Song of Songs, and which is so thoroughly formed by God’s grace, has had a tremendous influence on the formation of the Christian West. When once I was speaking with Theodor Haecker (who in his book Virgil, Father of the Christian West has given us one of the deepest books on the Christian West) about the elements that formed the spiritual countenance of the Christian West, he said to me very emphatically, “Do not forget Israel!” The influence of Israel on the thought, imagination, and feeling of the Christian West occurred above all through the liturgy. The liturgy is largely comprised of materials taken from the Old Testament, as in the Psalms and in many readings and antiphons, thereby absorbing much of the spirit of the Jewish people as representative of humanity.…

  Of course, the Old Testament was always transmitted to the Christian West in the light of the New Testament, and this light reveals the true meaning of the books of Moses and the Prophets, of the Psalms, and of all the other books of sacred Scripture. In it the true and authentic image of the Old Testament becomes visible, which, after all, is essentially ordered to the New Testament. For the Christian West, the Old Testament has always represented divine revelation in a state of advent, and its eternal content lives on as a part of the New Testament.

  Israel—the Lost Son

  Thus far we have only discussed the influence of the Jewish people on the Christian West insofar as it is expressed in the Old Testament, that is, before Christ. Through the rejection of the Messiah, however, the status of the Jewish people was substantially altered. The role of representative of humanity, once that of Israel, has now passed over to the Church of Christ. The head and heart of humanity, the link between God and man, is no longer in Jerusalem but in Rome.

  Nonetheless, Israel has not ceased to have a certain primacy of place among the peoples (Zentralvolk). Just as belief in the true God and expectation of the Messiah once provided the source of unity for Israel, so its rejection of Christ has fused it together over the past two thousand years and placed its mark on its being and destiny. Israel is perpetually formed by the religious: positively at first, and then negatively. For, willingly or not, Israel is always concerned with the great question of human destiny, namely the stance toward Christ: initially in its longing expectation of the Messiah and today in its compulsive hardness toward Christ. Yet even in its apostasy, in the lapsing of its vocation, Israel continues to be a metaphysical representative people of humanity. The continued existence of the Jews as a unified people as well as their dispersion throughout the whole world are a consequence of their rejection of the lapis angularis, the cornerstone. The present unity of the Jewish people and their difficult fate are not caused by a particular religion but by their rejection of the true religion. Thus, they continually bear witness to Christ indirectly. The Jews in their many sufferings and in their continuing existence are, like no other people, the expression of the mysterious dispensation of Providence. They are the “pedal point” of human history, and an abiding mystery surrounds them. A pedal point is, after all, an underlying voice that, without entering directly into the musical event, in its very separation and through its mere presence nevertheless belongs deeply to the whole, lending color to everything, and which in the end joins in the overall harmony of the piece of music.

  The destiny of the Jews and their attitude toward Christ has always possessed a unique importance. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, expresses this most emphatically: “In respect to the gospel, they are enemies on your account; but in respect to election, they are beloved because of the patriarchs. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:28–29).

  Israel is unique among the nations in every respect. Throughout most of its history, Israel has dwelt in isolation from all others, like no other people, not in its own land but scattered about the world in the most varying of countries, always in a segregated corner under foreign authority and under severe laws discriminating against Jews (Ausnahmegesetzen)—put simply, in the ghetto. In the midst of the Christian West and without taking part in its formation, Israel has lived its separate existence. Its direct influence upon the Christian West during this time has been slight. Even so, Israel does not stand within the Christian West as a foreign body but as a providentially intended element of central importance. The lost son too belongs to the family and cannot be considered as just another foreigner. Indeed, the conversion of all people and all nations is a central and immediate concern of Christians. Yet the conversion of Israel, the people of God, is the special concern of Christianity in quite another sense.

  The first reason for this rests upon the fact that this representative people of humanity, through whom God spoke to mankind, was called to recognize Christ before all others. In other words, since, as we know through revelation, the conversion of the people of Israel is of such paramount importance in the eyes of God, it must also find a special place in the heart of every Christian.

  Second, Israel’s role in the spiritual formation of the Christian West is too great and deep to be considered like that of the Chinese and Indians (who in their own right are not and ought not to be considered far from our hearts). The Jews are the “beloved for the sake of the fathers,” they are as a people so interwoven into salvation history that they belong to the Christian West in the deepest spiritual way, even if exteriorly they remain cut off.…

  Tua res agitur!

  There is one thing above all that we must not forget, namely that the present attack on the Jewish people is not just about a minority problem, as important as these problems are in themselves. As we saw in the beginning, Israel was the representative people of humanity
and God addressed man as such when he spoke to Israel. Hence the current attack on the Jews targets not only this people of fifteen million but mankind as such. Each one of us must perceive the present degradation of the Jews as an attack on human nature.…

  Above all, Catholics must all perceive the present-day attack against the Jews as something that directly threatens them. Did not Christ the Lord say, “What you have done to the least of my brothers, you have done to me”? Is not the defamation and degradation of the Jews a direct attack against the incarnate God, against human nature sanctified by the Incarnation? Indeed, what is happening today is not the special concern of a particular people. No, true for us all are the words, Tua res agitur!—This concerns you!

  * * *

  * This essay was translated by John Henry Crosby and first published in Logos (2006), 9/4, 145–72.

  THE DANGER OF QUIETISM

  Der christliche Ständestaat

  March 10, 1935

  In von Hildebrand’s memoirs we often read about Austrian and German Catholics who were overeager to build bridges between Christianity and Nazism. But there is another group of Catholics who failed in a different way to join in the struggle against Hitler, namely those who thought they had good religious reasons for not getting involved. These Catholics thought that they could live their faith in a purely interior way and that they need not give it any more of an external expression than celebrating the liturgy in church. They did not feel impelled by their faith to bear witness in the public square. Von Hildebrand says that these Catholics run the risk of “quietism,” and in this essay he challenges them to take their faith outside the church sanctuary and into public life, especially when public life has been taken over by criminals.

  The Center Party to which he refers at the beginning was the Catholic political party in Germany. Von Hildebrand wants to say that through the political involvement of this party in an earlier generation, German Catholicism became too worldly and lost some of its religious luster. He warns his readers not to react so strongly against that politicized Catholicism as to fall into the opposite danger of quietism.

  The period of political Catholicism in Germany and Austria (now a thing of the past) had certain merits, and though these positive aspects are sometimes unjustly forgotten or denied today even by Catholics, such a movement did undoubtedly harbor dangers from a religious point of view. After the great period during which the Center Party* was founded—a period in which fundamental religious motifs determined the politics of the party—it was increasingly taken over by the autonomous laws of party politics. This process of secularization went hand in hand with a threat to properly religious formation. A tactical attitude also gained too much influence in the properly religious sphere. The religious significance of the Party’s external organization was overshadowed, and political tasks were given too much prominence at the expense of the full development of the divine life implanted in individual believers at baptism.

  For many, working on behalf of Catholic schools, state support of the clergy, and equal treatment of Catholics employed by the state, and even the augmentation of the Center Party’s power took precedence over evangelization and the purely religious transformation of the individual in Christ. Many saw membership in Catholic organizations or parties as the mark of being fully Catholic. What is more, the spirit of compromise—which is inevitable in politics—frequently played too strong a role in the religious sphere of life.

  This is why many committed Catholics were calling loudly for a depoliticization of Catholicism even before the era of National Socialism. Once National Socialism came to power, however, and the Catholic political organization broke down, the watchword for many German Catholics became “withdrawal into the purely religious sphere.” In many Catholic circles, some even in Austria, one encounters the view that the lesson to be learned from the defeat of political Catholicism in Germany is that Catholics should turn away from politics in order to concern themselves exclusively with religious matters and adopt a passive attitude toward political events. Indeed, one may sometimes hear even the clergy in Austria voice the opinion that one must already mentally adjust now to the possibility of a National Socialist regime and should be on one’s guard against cultivating excessively intimate ties with the present regime.

  However, there is clearly something ambiguous about this call to depoliticize Catholicism and to concentrate solely on religious matters. When it entails a due regard for the primacy of the purely religious sphere, disavows an excessively intimate relationship between religion and party politics, and aims to put an end to the politicizing of religion, it is undoubtedly good and justified. The bankruptcy of political Catholicism in Germany does indeed teach us this lesson. But it is utterly impossible to expect Catholics to be indifferent to politics at a time when the debates in the political sphere concern not just political issues but, as our martyred Chancellor Dollfuss once stated, fundamental beliefs about the meaning of existence.

  When today the Antichrist is rearing his head in Bolshevism and National Socialism, when Christ is persecuted with unprecedented hatred, and a revolt is raging not only against the sphere of the supernatural but even of the person in general, all Catholics must fight for Christ in the political sphere with full personal commitment, representing importune opportune (in season and out of season) the claims of the kingdom of God and thus, implicitly, those of morality and the natural law. They will feel called to this commitment to the extent that they live in Christ and see everything in the light of the supernatural, to the extent that they have interiorized their religious existence and are conscious of the primacy of the properly religious sphere as the unum necessarium (the one thing needful).

  In a time when the state expressly advances totalitarian claims and incessantly seeks to overstep its divinely ordained sphere of competence, indifference to the political sphere on the part of Catholics constitutes an outright desertion of duty. It is precisely the rootedness of genuine Catholics in a realm that transcends politics, their freedom from the inner dynamism of political practice, and their consideration of all things in conspectu Dei (before the face of God) that requires them to erect a dam against every encroachment of the state.

  In point of fact, the real lesson to be learned from the bankruptcy of politicizing Catholicism is this: rather than politicizing Catholicism, one must instead Catholicize politics. For the human being is an integral whole, and true religiosity will inevitably induce him to regard all areas of life in their orientation to God and to work, always and everywhere, for the kingdom of Christ. This begins in one’s own person, in the induere Christum (putting on Christ) and the full development of the supernatural life implanted in us by holy baptism; it entails “radiating Christ” not only in the apostolate of being, but also in the apostolate of the word; and, finally, it requires a commitment to Christ in the earthly public sphere and in political activity, in order that there, too, everything may be formed in the spirit of the natural law and of Christian teaching.

  Naturally, the principal contribution of the Christian in this sphere is his personal transformation in Christ. But that must not be his only contribution. It is of course true that, for the Christian, the transformation of the face of the earth does not proceed primarily from without by means of laws of the state, but rather from within by means of the conversion of the person. Naturally, the Christian rejects every form of earthly messianism and remains ever aware of “how great is heaven and how small the earth.” Nevertheless, he makes use of all legitimate earthly means in order to shape the polis (the political community) in such a way that the kingdom of Christ may be built up within it.

  Thus “Catholic Action,” in accordance with the intentions of the Holy Father [Pope Pius XI], is indeed apolitical in the sense that it must not be understood as a political party or engage in party politics itself; but it certainly extends into the political sphere, since Catholics who are active politically have the same obligation to carry the spirit of Ch
rist into this domain that they have with regard to any other sphere of life. Anyone who does not admit this is not thinking as a Catholic, but in the manner of pietistic quietism. This is undoubtedly a danger today.…

  The professed goal of Catholics calling for their own “depoliticization” is, in itself, quite ambiguous and misleading; but at the present moment it entails a particular danger. Bolshevism and National Socialism are primarily worldviews. They neither are, nor wish to be, mere political systems. Apathy toward the political sphere on the part of Catholics easily leads, therefore, to apathy toward National Socialism as a whole. Many say, “Why should we always simply attack and criticize? Let us depart from the political sphere; let us search out and convert those who have gone astray. Let us, who stand aloof from politics, spread the spirit of love and reconciliation.”

  This is, at bottom, a cowardly flight from the battle to which God is calling us. It is our obligation as soldiers of Christ to wage war against the Antichrist and to rip the mask from his face. The “apolitical” disposition cultivated by certain Catholics, which induces others to refrain from exposing and relentlessly fighting against National Socialism, is an evil sophism. What is at stake in the position one adopts toward National Socialism as a whole—not merely toward some of its theoreticians such as Rosenberg and Bergmann, etc.—is nothing less than the question: Are you for Christ, or against Him?