Bishop Clemens August von Galen and the White Rose

One of the inspirations for the formation of the White Rose resistance group was the sermons of Bishop Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Münster, who spoke out openly, defiantly, and forcefully against the practices and ideology of the Nazi regime.

Known as the Lion of Münster, Bishop von Galen had exposed the neo-pagan ideology of National Socialism in a letter for Lent 1934, and he repeatedly stood up for the liberty of the Church and church associations, for the protection of religious education, for the dignity of all, and against the racial doctrine of Nazism, petitioning government authorities and speaking out publicly. In 1936, he protested, "There are in Germany new graves which contain the ashes of those whom the German people looks upon as martyrs," and in 1937, Pope Pius XI invited him to Rome to advise him on the encyclical letter Mit Brennender Sorge.

When government authorities began to confiscate convents and monasteries, expel and even arrest priests, brothers, nuns, and sisters, and knowledge of the German euthanasia programs was learned in 1941, Bishop von Galen gave a series of powerful sermons. Although newspapers did not report them, copies of the sermons were nevertheless circulated in secret, and it was after Hans Scholl read them, the sermon of August 3, 1941 especially, that he decided to form the White Rose with Alexander Schmorell, George Wittenstein, and others. Sophie Scholl had also read the sermons, and she joined when she learned of the group.

Bishop von Galen was featured in a documentary, which Cinema Catechism previously posted in November 2010.

Below are excerpts of some of these sermons of Bishop von Galen:

The Oppression of the Innocent
Sermon of 13 July 1941

Many times, and again quite recently, we have seen the Gestapo arresting blameless and highly respected German men and women without the judgment of any court or any opportunity for defence, depriving them of their freedom, taking them away from their homes interning them somewhere. . . .

None of us is safe - and may he know that he is the most loyal and conscientious of citizens and may he be conscious of his complete innocence - he cannot be sure that he will not some day be deported from his home, deprived of his freedom and locked up in the cellars and concentration camps of the Gestapo.

I am aware of the fact: This can happen also to me, today or some other day. And because then I shall not be able to speak in public any longer, I will speak publicly today, publicly I will warn against the continuance in a course which I am firmly convinced will bring down God’s judgment on men and must lead to disaster and ruin for our people and our country. . . .

The right to life, to inviolability, to freedom is an indispensable part of any moral order of society. . . . A state which transgresses this boundary laid down by God and permits or causes innocent persons to be punished is undermining its own authority and the respect for its sovereignty in the conscience of its citizens. . . .

How many Germans are now languishing in police custody or in concentration camps, how many have been driven from home, who have never been sentenced by a regular court or how numerous are those who have been freed by the court or released after serving their sentence and have then been re-arrested and held in confinement by the Gestapo! How many have been expelled from their home town and the town where they worked! . . .

Remain Firm in the Face of Evil and Oppression
Sunday, 20 July 1941

Become hard! Remain firm! We see and experience clearly what lies behind the new doctrines which have for years been forced on us, for the sake of which religion has been banned from the schools, our organizations have been suppressed and now Catholic kindergartens are about to be abolished - there is a deep-seated hatred of Christianity, which they are determined to destroy. . . .

Become hard! Remain firm! At this moment we are the anvil rather than the hammer. Other men, mostly strangers and renegades, are hammering us, seeking by violent means to bend our nation, ourselves and our young people aside from their straight relationship with God. We are the anvil and not the hammer. But ask the blacksmith and hear what he says: the object which is forged on the anvil receives its form not alone from the hammer but also from the anvil. The anvil cannot and need not strike back: it must only be firm, only hard! If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard the anvil usually lasts longer than the hammer. However hard the hammer strikes, the anvil stands quietly and firmly in place and will long continue to shape the objects forged upon it.

The anvil represents those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who are driven out and banished for no fault of their own. God will support them, that they may not lose the form and attitude of Christian firmness, when the hammer of persecution strikes its harsh blows and inflicts unmerited wounds on them. . . .

At this present time we are the anvil, not the hammer! Remain steadfast and firm like the anvil receiving all the blows that rain down on us, in loyal service to our people and country, but also ready at any time to act, in the spirit of supreme sacrifice, in accordance with the precept: "Men must obey God more than men." Through a conscience formed by faith God speaks to each one of us. Obey always without any doubt the voice of conscience. . . . And so I say once again: become hard, remain firm, remain steadfast! Like the anvil under the blows of the hammer! It may be that obedience to our God and faithfulness to our conscience may cost me or any of you life, freedom or home. But: "Better to die than to sin!“ May the grace of God, without which we can do nothing, grant this unshakeable firmness to you and to me and keep us in it! . . .

When Man Sets his Will Against God’s Will
Sermon of 3 August 1941

It is a deeply moving event that we read of in the Gospel for today (Luke 19:41-47). Jesus weeps! The Son of God weeps! . . . Why did he weep? He wept for Jerusalem, for God’s holy city that was so dear to him, the capital of his people. He wept for its inhabitants, his fellow-countrymen, because they refused to recognize the only thing that could avert the judgment foreseen by his omniscience and determined in advance by his divine justice: "If thou hadst known ... the things which belong unto thy peace!" Why do the inhabitants of Jerusalem not know it? Not long before Jesus had given voice to it: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Luke 13:34). . . .

That is why Jesus weeps; that is why that strong man weeps; that is why God weeps. For the folly, the injustice, the crime of not being willing. And for the evil to which that gives rise - which his omniscience sees coming, which his justice must impose - if man sets his unwillingness against God’s commands, in opposition to the admonitions of conscience, and all the loving invitations of the divine Friend, the best of Fathers: "If thou hadst known, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But thou wouldst not!" It is something terrible, something incredibly wrong and fatal, when man sets his will against God’s will. . . .

"I am the Lord thy God!" Thus begins this immutable law. "Thou shalt have not other gods before me." God - the only God, transcendent, almighty, omniscient, infinitely holy and just, our Creator and future Judge - has given us these commandments. Out of love for us he wrote these commandments in our heart and proclaimed them to us. For they meet the need of our God-created nature; they are the indispensable norms for all rational, godly, redeeming and holy individual and community life. . . .

And how do matters stand with the observance of the fourth commandment, which enjoins us to honor and obey our parents and those in authority over us? The status and authority of parents is already much undermined and is increasingly shaken by all the obligations imposed on children against the will of their parents. Can anyone believe that sincere respect and conscientious obedience to the state authorities can be maintained when men continue to violate the commandments of the supreme authority, the Commandments of God, when they even combat and seek to stamp out faith in the only true transcendent God, the Lord of heaven and earth?

The observance of the first three commandments has in reality for many years been largely suspended among the public in Germany and in Münster. . . . How the name of God is abused, dishonored and blasphemed!

And the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." In place of the only true eternal God, men set up their own idols at will and worship them: Nature, or the state, or the people, or the race.

And how many are there whose God, in Paul’s word, "is their belly" (Phil 3:19) - their own well-being, to which they sacrifice all else, even honor and conscience - the pleasures of the senses, the lust for money, the lust for power! In accordance with all this men may indeed seek to arrogate to themselves divine attributes, to make themselves lords over the life and death of their fellow-men.. . .

Jesus saw how sinful, how terrible, how criminal, how disastrous this unwillingness is. Little man, that frail creature, sets his created will against the will of God! Jerusalem and its inhabitants, His chosen and favored people, set their will against God’s will! Foolishly and criminally, they defy the will of God! And so Jesus weeps over the heinous sin and the inevitable punishment. God is not mocked!

Christians of Münster! Did the Son of God in his omniscience in that day see only Jerusalem and its people? Did he weep only over Jerusalem? Are the people of Israel the only people whom God has encompassed and protected with a father’s care and mother’s love, has drawn to Himself? Are they the only people who would not? The only people that rejected God’s truth, that threw off God’s law and so condemned themselves to ruin? Did Jesus, the omniscient God, also see in that day our German people, our land of Westphalia, our region of Münster, the Lower Rhineland? Did he also weep over us? Over Münster? . . .

My Christians! I hope there is still time; but then indeed it is high time:
That we may realize, in this our day, the things that belong unto our peace!
That we may realize what alone can save us, can preserve us from the divine judgment: that we should take, without reservation, the divine commandments as the guiding rule of our lives and act in sober earnest according to the words: "Rather die than sin."
That in prayer and sincere penitence we should beg that God’s forgiveness and mercy may descend upon us, upon our city, our country and our beloved German people. . . .

_____________________

Upcoming: Bishop von Galen speaks out against the killing of the "unworthy" and "unproductive" members of society
.