March 1937 was a remarkable month in the history of the modern papacy. Between 14 and 28 March three major papal encyclicals were published, Mit brennender Sorge on Nazi Germany, Divini Redemptoris on Communism and Nos es Muy Conocida purportedly on the situation in Mexico.Footnote ¹ These conference papers examine the content, purpose and reception of Mit brennender Sorge, why it was published when it was and why the three encyclicals were published in the order that they were – Mit brennender Sorge on 14 March, Divini Redemptor five days later and Non es Muy Conocida on 28 March.

As Philippe Chenaux explains, the context in which all three encyclicals were written was the fact that various consultors of the Holy Office had already been charged in 1934 with examining three ‘heretical’ totalitarian doctrines – Communism, National Socialism and Fascism – in preparation for the publication of another ‘Syllabus of Errors’. Mit brennender Sorge not only protested against Nazi persecution of the Church in Germany, it systematically attacked the major elements of National Socialist ideology – race, totalitarian state power etc. The only thing not explicitly mentioned is Nazi anti-semitism, as Rafaella Perin points out. Was this because an explicit condemnation would have appeared to be a criticism of the Third Reich's anti-semitic policies and therefore interference in the domestic politics of a country with which the Holy See had diplomatic relations? It should be noted that the Vatican also avoided condemnation of Kristallnacht in November 1938, effectively using the archbishops of Mechelen-Brussels, Milan and the Patriarch of Lisbon to criticise that episode. Was the Vatican still seeking to avoid an open rupture with Hitler's regime, in the hope of reaching a compromise? Or was it also because of continuing attachment to the Catholic Church's theological ‘anti-Judaism’. In 1937 and 1938 Nazi Germany was not the only country to introduce anti-semitic legislation: Poland, Hungary, Romania and Italy did so too. The documents from the pontificate of Pius xi in the Vatican Archives demonstrate that the chief concern of the Vatican's diplomatic envoys was that the discrimination and ‘apartheid’ imposed on the Jews of these countries did not extend to those Jews who had converted to Catholicism.Footnote ²

Marie Levant suggests that the 1933 Reichskonkordat was negotiated under duress and that the Vatican made the fatal mistake of not listing the Catholic associations of ‘religious, charitable or cultural ends’ to be protected by clause 31. The Nazis were thus able to begin violating the agreement almost as soon as it was signed and seventy diplomatic protests were made by the Vatican between its ratification in September 1931 and the publication of the encyclical. Furthermore, as Alessandro Bellino explains in his contribution, in this same period the Nazis exploited clerical sex abuse scandals and currency law violations by male and female religious to discredit the Church in Germany and alienate more and more of the faithful from it.

In her contribution Emma Fattorini argues that Pius xi’s decision to publish the encyclical in March 1937 was prompted by the spiritual insights experienced during his long illness in late 1936 and early 1937, in particular his meditations on St Theresa of Lisieux. That Pius xi was prompted to take a ‘prophetic’ stand against National Socialism at this point seems very plausible. In support of her argument she points out that after the publication of the encyclical Pius took several further steps against Nazi racialism, including the condemnation of racialism by the Congregation of Universities and Seminaries in 1938, on the very day of Hitler's May visit to Rome, the pope's ostentatious boycott of that visit and his cri de coeur in a public audience in September 1938 that ‘Spiritually we are all Jews’. Thus the publication of Mit brennender Sorge marked a decisive turning point in Pius xi’s pontificate, though if Pius xi became more ‘Churchillian’, as Francois Delpla describes him, others in the Vatican, like Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, Secretary of State, remained ‘appeasers’ as far as the Fascist dictators were concerned

Filippo Frangioni's explanation for the publication of Divini Redemptoris a few days after Mit brennender Sorge is that it was intended to lighten the blow upon National Socialism by reiterating the Church's absolute rejection of Marxism and other forms of Socialism. Certainly, Pius xi had already condemned Communism in five previously published encyclicals,Footnote ³ and in an unpublished encyclical of 1932 – Divinum Mandatum (Contro le persecuzioni in Russia).Footnote ⁴ The contributions in the ‘Reception’ section of the book suggest that Catholics in most countries were more concerned about Communism than Nazism. In Spain, according to Gianmaria Zamagni, the Primate, Cardinal Goma, preferred not to publish Mit brennender Sorge for fear of upsetting Nazi support for the Nationalist cause. But Michel Fourcade says that in France a strong vein of Catholic ‘anti-Germanism’ prompted several journals and intellectuals to examine Mit brennender Sorge more carefully. Nevertheless, we know from the archives that the Vatican was anxious that the encyclical should be publicised as widely as possible.Footnote ⁵

It is obviously not possible to examine every individual contribution in this excellent collection, but I would mention Christophe Chalamet's extremely interesting chapter which examines the reaction of the Swiss Calvinist theologian Karl Barth to Mit brenneder Sorge. My only criticism of the collection as a whole would be the use of a question mark in the title, because these essays demonstrate that Pius xi was indeed hostile to National Socialism.