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Sunday, July 20, 2014

THE REICHSKONKORDAT (20 JULY 1933)



            On this date, 20 July 1933, The Reichskonkordat (English: Reich Concordat) is a treaty between the Holy See and Germany negotiated during its transition into Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) on behalf of Pope Pius XI and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen and President Paul von Hindenburg on behalf of the German government respectively.

            I will post the information from Wikipedia.


The signing of the Reichskonkordat on July 20, 1933 in Rome. (From left to right: German prelate Ludwig Kaas, German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Giuseppe Pizzardo, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, Alfredo Ottaviani, and member of Reichsministerium des Inneren (Home Office) Rudolf Buttmann)
The Reichskonkordat (English: Reich Concordat) is a treaty between the Holy See and Germany negotiated during its transition into Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) on behalf of Pope Pius XI and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen and President Paul von Hindenburg on behalf of the German government respectively. The treaty guarantees the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, but Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed, leading to protest from the Church, including in the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge encyclical of Pope Pius XI.

The Reichskonkordat is the most controversial of several concordats between Germany and other nations that the Vatican negotiated during the pontificate of Pius XI. It is frequently discussed in works that deal with the rise of Hitler in the early 1930s and the Holocaust. The concordat has been described by some as giving moral legitimacy to the Nazi regime soon after Hitler had acquired quasi-dictatorial powers through the Enabling Act of 1933, though Reichskanzler Hitler himself is not a signatory to the treaty and the treaty does not make mention of Hitler, or the Nazi Party. The source document is addressed to President Paul von Hindenburg.

The treaty places constraints on the political activity of German clergy of the Catholic Church. This contributed to a decrease in the previously vocal criticism of Nazism by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Germany, after September 1933 when the treaty was ratified. From a Roman Catholic church perspective it has been argued that the concordat prevented even greater evils being unleashed against the Church. Though some German bishops were unenthusiastic, and the Allies at the end of World War II felt it inappropriate, Pope Pius XII successfully argued to keep the concordat in force. It is still in force to this day.


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