Mit Brennender Sorge

Mit Brennender Sorge (German for With deep anxiety) is an encyclical of pope Pius XI, published on March 10 1937 (but bearing a date of Passion Sunday, 14 March), about the condition of the Catholic Church of Germany under Hitler's Government. It contains a condemnation of the Nazi theory of races and Nazi ideology. It is one of the few encyclicals in the history of the Roman Catholic Church not written in Latin but in a national language (in this case German). The encyclical was adressed to German bishops and to German Catholics and was read in all parish churches of Germany. Mit Brennender Sorge had to be disseminated in secrecy.

Some passages stated:

''"Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds"

"None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xI, 15). "''

External link

Text of the encyclical (in English)