Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 by Saul Friedländer Page A

press, theater and literature. Still, it was un-Christian to hate other races and to subject the Jews and foreigners to disabilities through discriminatory legislation that would merely bring about reprisals from other countries.” 23
    Soon after he took power, and intent on signing a Concordat with the Vatican, Hitler tried to blunt possible Catholic criticism of his anti-Jewish policies and to shift the burden of the arguments onto the church itself. On April 26 he received Bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabrück as delegate from the Conference of Bishops, which was meeting at the time. The Jewish issue did not figure on Berning’s agenda, but Hitler made sure to raise it on his own. According to a protocol drafted by the bishop’s assistant, Hitler spoke “warmly and quietly, now and then emotionally, without a word against the church and with recognition of the bishops: ‘I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.’” 24 The protocol does not record any response by Bishop Berning.
    On the occasion of the ratification of the Concordat, in September 1933, Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli sent a note to the German charge d’affaires defining the church’s position of principle: “The Holy See takes this occasion to add a word on behalf of those German Catholics who themselves have gone over from Judaism to the Christian religion or who are descended in the first generation, or more remotely, from Jews who adopted the Catholic faith, and who for reasons known to the Reich government are likewise suffering from social and economic difficulties.” 25 In principle this was to be the consistent position of the Catholic and the Protestant churches, although in practice both submitted to the Nazi measures against converted Jews when they were racially defined as Jews.
    The dogmatic confrontation the Catholic hierarchy took up was mainly related to the religious link between Judaism and Christianity. This position found an early expression in five sermons preached by Cardinal Faulhaber during Advent of 1933. Faulhaber rose above the division between Catholics and Protestants when he declared: “We extend our hand to our separated brethren, to defend together with them the holy books of the Old Testament.” In Scholder’s words: “Faulhaber’s sermons were not directed against the practical, political anti-Semitism of the time, but against its principle, the racial anti-Semitism that was attempting to enter the Church.” 26 Undoubtedly this was the intention of the sermons and the main thrust of Faulhaber’s argumentation, but the careful distinctions established by the cardinal could mislead his audience about his and the church’s attitude toward the Jews living among them.
    “So that I may be perfectly clear and preclude any possible misunderstanding,” Faulhaber declared, “let me begin by making three distinctions. We must first distinguish between the people of Israel before and after the death of Christ. Before the death of Christ, during the period between the calling of Abraham and the fullness of time, the people of Israel were the vehicle of Divine Redemption…. It is only with this Israel and the early biblical period that I shall deal in my Advent sermons.” The cardinal then described God’s dismissal of Israel after Israel had not recognized Christ, adding words that may have sounded hostile to the Jews who did not recognize