The Franciscan University of Steubenville Campus
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Below is the chapter "The Danger of Quietism" which I have reproduced from the book My Battle Against Hitler by Dietrich von Hildebrand
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The Danger of Quietism
Der christliche Standestaat
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 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 it its religious luster. He warns his readers not to react so strongly against politicized Catholicism as to fall into the opposite of quietism. [Notes by the editors]
The period of political Catholicism in Germany and Austria (now a thing of the past) had certain merits, and thought these positive aspects are sometimes unjustly forgotten or denied today even by Catholics, such a movement did undoubtedly harbor danger 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 - 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 over-shadowed, and the 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 memebership 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 whay many committed Catholics were callilng 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 purley 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 form politics in order to concern themselves exclusievely 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 politicizaing 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 at 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 religiou sphere as the unuum 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 form 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 Christ 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...
This 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. Bloshevism 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 as 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 it theoreticians such as Rosenberg and Bergmann, etc. - is nothing less than the question: Are you for Christ, or against Him?
Here too, Christs's words hold true: "He who is not with me is against me" (Mt 12:30). The soldier of Christ is obligated to fight against sin and error. His battle against the Antichrist is prompted by his love for Christ and for the salvation of souls; he fights this battle for the salvation of those who have gone astray. His attitude is one of true love. But those who flee from the inevitable battle and treat irenically those who have gone astray, obfuscating their error and playing down their revolt against God are, fundamentally, victims of egoism and complacency.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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