by Albert Hartl
Publisher’s
Introduction
God’s Law is translated from the Third Reich original
Das Gesetz Gottes. It was publised in 1940 by Nordland Verlarg, the publisher of
many significant SS works.
The author, SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Hartl, wrote
under pseudonym Anton Holzner. Das Gesetz Gottes was his third book.
Hartl was a former Catholic priest who left the
priesthood and the church, and became an SS officer. His works present a
non-Christian religious perspective.
Original Introduction
Providence rules over the fate of people and folks.
This affirmation of a higher power should stand at the
beginning of this book.
Countless Germans - laymen, priests and monks – have
waged the most difficult inner and outer struggles for their simple belief in a
God since natural German faith has been supplanted by foreign missionaries.
Millions of people struggle today for the Almighty and
his laws. “God’s Law” reports of this.
This account has grown from my own personal experience
and the same experiences of more than a dozen friends - former Catholic priests
and monks – which correspond to reality in their overall result and in their
individual features. My wife, who stood at my side in building a new world, also
participated in the composition of this publication.
Natural faith incorporates the highest moral
responsible within it. From that arose the obligation to publish this book.
Part One
For a child, God manifests himself in the works of
creation and in father and mother.
Plain, natural and free are child’s faith and
child’s piety.
1.
Everybody is very proud of Peter. In games, he is
always the winner. When it’s about getting into mischief, he is always their
ringleader. Often, very often, he then silently suffers the blows for all, that
is why they often call him “prince”.
The grownups in the village also like him a lot; they
find that he is different from other children. When he, wearing his little
sailor’s jacket, clenching his fists somewhat defiantly in his pants pockets,
comes along the path bare foot, they cannot help but to say a right friendly
word to him.
But the friendliness is not one-sided, quite the
opposite. There is actually nobody in the village whom Peter does not know,
there is actually nothing that he does not like infinitely.
The houses in the village, the people, the horses of
the priest, the cows of Prozenbauer, the little creek, the meadows and fields,
all that belongs to Peter’s child’s world. It is small in space, but it offers
him so much breadth and size than he cannot imagine it any prettier.
2.
Peter Schaedl’s home village lies in the Bavarian
mountains. The priest, the teacher, the backer and the butcher live in the few
houses. A smithy and several farmyards also belong to it. This little village
enjoys a great reputation; it has the reputation of a splendid, model village,
because it has the highest church tower far and wide. The mountain upon which it
lies is not unknown. The people in the valley say that the residents there have
the thickest skulls. The story might have some truth in it, but up in the
country one does not speak of it.
In any case, all kinds of stubbornness is already
showing itself in Peter’s little head. When the maid orders him to do this or
that, and the lad does not like it, then he simply throws himself to the ground,
if possible on his back, in order to protect the most sensitive part of all
children. But the maid also sees with the same aggravation that the teacher’s
son and the priest’s dog are the most impertinent ones in the village.
Often when Peter, on assignment from his father, must
take a letter in the most severe winter to a peasant in another town and he has
hardly left the village, he positions himself on the snow-swept country road and
stomps and tramps his feet, and from pure rage he shouts very loudly against the
sharpest wind. But by the time he has reached the peasant, he has long since
reconciled with himself; then so much good spirit and joyfulness again laughs
from his little heart that he is not allowed to leave again until he has eaten
some nice, thick honey bread. On the way home a peasant often comes with a
sleigh or wagon, then Peter can steer the horses.
When the father learns of Peter’s defiance, he always
says the same words to him. With a serious wrinkle on his brow, he says:
“Thick-head”, or “You young rogue, you”. But Peter senses in the words, next to
the seriousness, simultaneously a certain pride of the father, and hence he
remains like he is.
3.
In school Peter is one of those who always sit up
front in the first row. Why, he does not know himself; he actually does nothing
for it.
Often, a small troop of boys rushes into the
schoolroom. On their roaming they have forgotten that they only have a short
recess, until suddenly their conscience tears them from play and admonishes them
of their duty. Many a peasant then sees a child racing round the corner of the
school building shaking its head. Tense and a little afraid, they stand in the
classroom. Things were never any different.
Peter stands in their middle and accepts the
punishment full of calm and ease. He is not especially well-behaved otherwise as
well. Just like the other boys, he takes pride in racing through morning prayer,
fast and unclear. Boys must not pray so well-behaved as girls; that is Peter’s
opinion.
Now and then, when Peter and some other boys have to
stay after school due to unruliness, the schoolmistress must take the bicycle to
the next village, because she also teaches there. When she has then tightly
closed the door and hardly left the building, it is always Peter who makes sure
that the others, and especially he himself, very quickly leave through the
windows unscathed.
Once he stood up during class and roguishly said
something bad to the schoolmistress. The others laughed slyly full of malicious
pleasure. But then he had
to stand in front of the pulpit, present his hand and
receive several slaps. But Peter does not let himself be shamed by a young
woman, so he goes back to his seat with beaming smile on his face, even if it is
hard for him.
Never, however, has Peter had to sit with the girls as
punishment. He has often reflected why the other boys tolerate that; he would
rather ran out of the classroom and never come back...
Probably it is his natural talent, which always
balances and makes up for everything, so that he is always among the best
pupils. When the school administrator once came to the village for an
examination, he decided that the boy should immediately skip a grade. But the
father strictly countermanded and proscribed that; Peter is unspeakably happy
about that.
4.
When the family has eaten their noon soup, Peter’s
path takes him to the smithy. The old man there is so fond of the boy that he is
sad, if he does not come. The blacksmith is actually the only one who really
knows the boy, as he says. When Peter can barely see over the anvil with his
big, brown child’s eyes or watches for hours as the glowing iron is beaten, then
he is full of questions and interest for the man’s work. If he does not happen
to know much new about the peasant’s cows and pigs, both talk little, but they
understand each other well. What the old blacksmith especially treasures in the
boy is the roguishness and gaiety on the one side and the seriousness and
kindness on the other.
One day construction work is done on the smithy.
During the noon break, the workers go over to the inn; they drink their beer
there. Only one of them stays behind day after day and consumes his meager
bread. Peter observes that for some time. Because he knows that the man has many
children and that he may hence be so poor, he suddenly runs home in order to
fetch one of his self-earned pennies from his savings can. When he has returned
to the construction site, he places the money as if he has lost it. He repeats
this several times. But one day the man seems to have noticed him doing it,
since then Peter has no longer been at the smithy for a long time.
5.
Peter’s freedom is almost unlimited. In the
countryside is common practice anyway that the children are left on their own a
lot, since Peter’s father places great value on his children growing up with
much freedom and independence.
So each of the children, as well as father and mother,
go their own way, all on their own. Nonetheless, the family lives with great
agreement and harmony according to the traditional laws of their ancestors.
Like grandfather and great-grandfather, Peter’s father
as well is a strict teacher. He has silently hoped for two things from his son:
that he becomes a good pupil and a good fellow. Already now, in his earliest
childhood, the boy seems to fulfill both wishes. More than once he has made it
clear to the boy that he must treat him, as a teacher’s son, more strictly in
all things, of whatever kind, than any other child in the town. Peter has
understood his father in this point as well, just as he also understands his son
in all things. Not in the teacher, but indeed in the father, Peter has his very
best comrade. He is not treated by him like a small child, rather valued as a
good friend and equal. It is not the custom for Peter to show it in outward
things, but all the love, all the respect and all the pride that Peter is able
to summon up are for his father.
Peter’s mother stems from an upright Bavarian family.
She is loved by her children such as children can love only their mother. She is
a pious woman who has made it her most eminent task to use all human powers to
secure for her children a good place in heaven. She was all the happier, when
she reached the age of five and, according to custom, had to stand at the
priest’s side as acolyte. The father had given his consent, because he did not
want to take the joy from the child as well as his wife, and besides, he
himself, like all teachers in the village, participates in each mass, because he
has to play the organ. Peter himself is happy that he no longer, like earlier
and the like the other boys, has to knell at the benches so pious and quiet and
pray. He has fun with all the splendid and shining implements which he can wield
or, if he – wearing his little red coat with the white pointed hood - must
stride to the altar, must swing the incense container or hand the priest the
wine. And besides, he finds being an acolyte has all kinds of advantages, for it
is the custom that Peter gets 10 cents for every mass; and each New Year, he and
the other three acolytes go to the church caretaker in order to get the “golden
fox”, a gold ten mark coin. Peter then happily returns home with his treasure
and saves it well in his saving bag.
When now and then a peasant in the village dies, then
Peter figures among the big shots. In the afternoon he is then invited to the
funeral feast at the farmstead, and according to custom he is owed two half
beers. If the little acolyte then comes home so terribly happy and pleased, the
mother scolds him in the future he should only take one swallow of beer. But
Peter finds beer drinking so nice and interesting, because the adult men do it,
and hence he does not like to leave the full glasses standing.
6.
Among Peter’s most beautiful childhood days is the
annual Corpus Christi festival with the procession.
Amidst the unbroken, festive bell chiming, everybody
gathers around the whole village to participate in the procession. The peasants
and peasant women, the girls in white dresses, the boys in blue Sunday pants,
the adolescent lads and lasses, clubs and flags and many more people from other
villages come along. When the procession leads along paths strewn with aromatic
hay and through the waving corn fields, when the sun beams in the clear blue sky
and the meadows stand in full flowered splendor, Peter rejoices inside at all
the beauty.
In the middle of the procession strides the “master”
in gold brocade overcoat under a canopy, carrying the monstrance.
Peter, who walks directly in front of the priest,
forgets what a dignified office he must hold on this day. And although the
mother has often told him how he should do it and has given him all the best
advice, he does not notice at all whether or not the incense container in his
hands swings back and forth.
Peter only sees all the splendor, sees the flags wave,
sees how the sun reflects in the clan polished helmets of the fire department
and in the great trumpets of the band, and how all the implements and flagpole
tops shine and glisten. To the right and left of the path lie the many colorful,
big and small flowers that the pious people have strewn. And when the long
procession of the faithful then turns into the great village street, then the
chiming of the church bells mixes with the sounds of the band; then the
fire-engine chief, like always at festive occasions, fires the old canon, and
the heavy shells resound in a dull roar over all the festivities. Peter wants to
shout aloud with joy amidst all the music.
When the procession has afterward dispersed, the
church bells have made their last swings and Peter’s mass garment already hangs
again in the closet, he still stands a long time on the path, gathers up many
colorful flowers, is still amazed here and there at all the beautifully dressed
people who are on the way home, and is overjoyed with all the festive events.
7.
Peter should be right pious and well-behaved toward
the priest, for he is the one who represents dear God on earth, and he is also
the one, who will one day get for Peter a right pretty place in heaven, perhaps
right next to dear God; that is what his mother tells him. Full of satisfaction,
she observes that the churchyard is one of the boy’s favorite places to stay.
Peter likes to be there, for the servants let him harness the oxen, they take
him into the field and he is allowed to feed the horses.
When Peter meets the priest, he greets him friendly,
just like his mother has told him, and just like the other children and the big
people also do.
He has considered whether we would also actually like
to be priest one day, for he is the mightiest, the people usually only say “sir”
to him, and they are devoted to him and pay homage to him. What he preaches, is
the truth, what he does, is pious, and want he wants, happens. Besides, things
never go badly for him, he has plenty to eat and to drink and has the most land
and cattle in the village. Peter can only image the king more powerful, but he
is so far away that he can form no real picture of him.
8.
Although the teacher’s boy has spent a large portion
of his childhood in the sphere of the priest, he still lives with a very great
inner distance from him. As well as he understands the blacksmith and as much as
he likes the Loidl and Gosch peasants, as much as he likes the peasant woman in
the other town as well, so alien to him remains the priest from the start.
Perhaps the reason is that the priest and the teacher of the village are so very
much different, and Peter knows that they have had many a quarrel. Indeed, that
does not manifest itself to him in daily life, but various events let him
surmise it and feel it unconsciously.
Peter does not know that his mother is a pretty young
woman, and if almost daily all kinds of nice things from the rectory are
delivered to the teacher’s house, he finds that wonderful and does not think
anything of it. But one time he is present, when the father comes home at noon
and is very unhappy to find that a good goose from “over there” again lies on
the table.
The son has a special, silent admiration for his
father in one certain point. The teacher Schaedl does not go to confession in
the village; for this purpose, he travels once a year to the big city, and he
does that for his wife’s sake. Peter only knows that the father comes home on
that day with many packages, what else he does in the city, he does not ask.
At the outbreak of the great war, the priest spoke of
the Russians, who pass through the country burning and pillaging, and said that
the people should build caves, take everything along and pray for God’s mercy.
Then it was teacher Schaedl who called the people together and filled them with
courage and enthusiasm, when he convinced them of the powerful force that
protects the borders. And when they all went home bravely and happily, Peter was
again very proud that he, too, is one of the Schaedls.
Severe storms cross over the heights and nearby
villages almost every evening after the summer heat of the high summer days. The
mountain creeks surge and churn into the valley, storms race across the land,
and hail pelts the fields.
On such evenings, Peter stands in front of the door,
looks at the darting lightning and hears the crashing thunder, or he stands on
the bridge, when the last thunder rolls, and gazes long into the creek’s dirty
torrent.
But one night, one of the great buildings in the
village, struck by lightning, is suddenly on fire. The teacher, like many times
already, is the first who comes to help. While he saves people and property at
the risk of his own life, and the alarm bells call the surrounding peasants to
help, and women and children have assembled in the rectory and pray for support
and assistance. But Peter is not among them. Barely comprehending the tremendous
power of the forces of nature, he stands on the path in reverence before his
father’s action, all alone, amidst the great confusion. All around them there is
haste, racing, fetching, bringing, shouting, extinguishing.
Peter hears and sees nothing of all that. He only
feels the nearness of the mighty fire; inwardly excited and moved, his gaze
follows the father, continually exposed to death by fire, working relentlessly
with concentrated will.
Then his gaze turns toward the sky, which stands out
black and threatening against the dark red, glowing ball of fire. For a long
time he looks back and forth between sky and earth. His gaze is fixed by the
mighty event of the huge fire and then again by the clouds in the sky, which
race past like great rags, whipped by the sweeping storm. When Peter then sees
the hurrying people, the fleeing cattle, and between all them his father, and
then again the broad plain of the fields and forests suddenly dipped into a
bright light of lightning, as the rain pours down into the large puddle around
him, he is suddenly completely seized. Strange, uncanny, magnificent and
wonderful at the same time, a sudden realization comes to the boy.
Peter feels that sun, rain, storm, hail, lightning and
thunder, that snow and ice are sent by dear God. Now he knows that grass and
flowers, that forests and forests, that animals and people are works of his
creation, that courage and cowardice, that nobility and baseness, hatred and
love, that good and evil are the supreme laws that he gave man.
Part Two
The church world tempts the human child with its
strangeness and its splendor. Healthy natures rebel against its unnaturalness
and its compulsion of soul.
1.
“Schaedl, to the directorate!” a shrill voice suddenly
shrieks through the study hall, where 200 cloister students, standing behind
pulpits, have just engrossed themselves into their books.
What is hidden behind these words, Peter cannot yet
surmise. It cannot be anything good, if he has to go to the directorate,
especially since he was accompanied the whole day by an unsure, fearful feeling.
In the belief that one of his boyhood pranks will again come up for discussion,
he knocks on the door. “Praised be Jesus Christ” – “In eternity, amen”, comes
the reply of the strict director.
“Schaedl, I have to inform you that your father has
died...”
Moments pass before little Peter comprehends the
meaning of the words. Father dead? – His big brown eyes look desperately at the
face of the director for a soothing word. Perhaps the father is very, very ill –
but dead? – Father dead? – Then Peter’s whole numbness dissolves into a great
sobbing that shakes his little body. He still hears from the director that he
should pray in the chapel instead of howling, and then everything is just like a
dream to him.
The full reality first comes to him the next day, when
he is on the way from the train station to his home village. The path sees
longer to him than ever before. His father is so far away from him. He should
never see him again, should never hear him speak again, never again be with him
in the garden? – They would no longer look together at the pictures from
father’s big chest, and he would no longer have any, any comrade?
Peter had not seen his father for two years. Back
then, the teacher had gone to the great war. In order to know the boy well cared
for, according to the wish of his pious wife, he had sent him to the famous
cloister school famous far and wide. In Russia’s trenches, however, the father
had contracted an illness, and now he had died from it. The burial is the next
day. The whole community has come. All the teachers of the surroundings are
there. The peasants have come, and also all the clubs with flags are present.
Nobody from the area far and wide has allowed himself to be prevented from
paying his final respects to the teacher. The procession of mourners is so long
that it cannot take the closed path to the cemetery. They walk around the whole
village, such as is otherwise customary only holidays. Although the women cry
and the men, in sincere grief, now and then hold their hand over their eyes,
Peter looks straight ahead and upright. As the eldest son, he walks directly
behind the coffin. He is filled with endless pride, for they carry the father to
the grave as if in a triumphant procession. Peter now feels very close to him,
for him, the father will live on. He cannot imagine that the words about hell
and hell fire, which he always had to memorize in the cloister school, should
apply to the father; he is quite certainly not dependent on prayers of
intercession and requiems, for he has died like many other soldiers who fell in
the great war for their Germany. Peter now knows it quite certainly, he wants to
be like his father; his father will be his example, for his whole life.
After the burial, Peter is reprimanded by his aunt,
because he has not cried enough in the procession, but the grandmother takes him
under her protection. “Peter is still a child and does not know what death
means”, she says. Then Peter goes to his mother again and asks to take him from
the cloister school. But her fate has bond her even more tightly to her faith,
she has become even more pious, and her will is that Peter become a clergyman.
The same day, the boy leaves the home village. The
path is long and difficult, but he memorizes it well and will never forget it.
He sees every flower, every stalk, all the little animals on the ground, the
fields, meadows and forests and the creek, his little creek, which winds past
his father’s house.
Now and then, peasant folk encounter him on the path;
they want to go up to him and comfort him; but Peter evades them, they have all
become so strange to him, as if he had never had anything to do with them. An
endless grief and the feeling of complete abandonment overcome him, and still,
he does not want to see the people. Suddenly, he starts to run off the path into
the fields, ever faster, similar to a hunted animal. He sees the village lying
far behind him, and far behind as well does he leave his freedom and his
childhood.
2.
Peter cannot come to like the daily cloister routine
at all. He is accustomed to shaping his day anew with much manifoldness again
and again. But here, each day initially seems the same to him without any
variation.
Every morning at 5, the father on duty enters the
sleeping hall in order to rip the warm blankets from any of the boys who have
not jumped out of bed at the first ring signal.
Peter is always the first outside, because he is
already long awake. Among 50 boys in one sleeping hall, even early in the
morning he always finds a few ready for mischief. Even if some still dream fast
asleep, and others energetically ask for quiet, for him that is no reason to
break off the fun, for first they must soon get up anyway, and besides that, the
chapel soon presents ample opportunity to doze off half asleep.
One quickly slips into the long pants legs, the black
jackets, the shoes and socks, and then it is off to the house chapel for morning
prayer. if any care burdens the boy’s heart, it is quickly entrusted to dear God
in a short request and afterward all cloister pupils chant the Latin morning
prayer while kneeling for the duration of a quarter hour at the prayer bench,
the Latin morning prayer.
After morning wash comes preparation in the study hall
for the instruction, and afterward, celebration of the mass assembles the whole
horde of boys again in the house chapel. By breakfast Peter has so much empty
space in his stomach that he almost has no time at all to make use of the day’s
first period of allowed talking. Peter stuffs everything he can into his mouth,
as if he were afraid that it could still be taken away from him. He has often
observed boys go without the coffee and black bread. At first, he felt sincere
sympathy at the sight of them, thinking they were ill. But now they are dummies
in his eyes, because he knows that they only do that as a sign of their special
piety and hence also go to the chapel to pray before class. He would prefer a
thousand-fold more to devour their rations than to be so pious just once.
In class, Peter is not a bad pupil, but there are only
a few subjects that he takes on with full enthusiasm. Father Canisius, the
mathematician, and Father Richard, the natural scientist, impress the boy as
well as Father Gregor, who knows so much in history class, and Father Uto, who
can play the violin so beautifully.
All the other monks with whom he has class, Peter does
not like very much; he can never get along well with them. His fresh and lively
manner leads to constant admonishments from his teachers, against whom the young
pupil, however, in his children’s bravado and gaiety, resists incessantly.
3.
“Schaedl, get out!” roars Father Josef, if he catches
cloister pupil Schaedl at any “crime”. When Peter has then left the school
bench, the father works over the boy’s round cheeks with a mixture of tender
pats and slaps.
One time the pupils are supposed to write an essay.
Peter chews on the pen- holder and gazes contentedly out of the classroom
window. His thoughts go from the tall tress and groomed lawn of the cloister
park to the meadows and forests of his homeland. Then a great reverence suddenly
overcomes him, and he must get a grip on himself, so that he does not act like
many a new lad who, when he awakens from his pretty dream in the morning,
secretly cries in his pillow out of pure home-sickness or calls for his mother.
With measured, silent steps, his head lowered over a
prayer book, Father Korbinian has meanwhile probably already ended his tenth
round through the rows of pupil benches when he suddenly, reaching Peter’s
bench, stops in front of it for a few short minutes without any movement and
then suddenly, abruptly and furiously rips out a lock of his hair. Afterward, he
carefully puts the boy’s hair into his book and goes on. He has already observed
the dreaming boy for a long time, and he wants to punish him this way. Peter
looks at the monk in disbelief. Such a thing has never before happened to him;
he knows well that back home the boys have a lot of fun among themselves by
pulling out the other’s hair, and that afterward there is always a big brawl,
but the monk knows perfectly well that he cannot start a brawl with him, and
this cannot be a game, either...
Almost desperately, he looks at the priest again. But
when he continues his walk as self-evident, as if all that were nothing at all,
Peter would like most to cry, to cry without end. Never before had he felt like
that.
He remembers that he had often been punished by his
father as well, and when he got a hard spanking, he clenched his teeth so that
it would not hurt, but he had never cried.
Although the monk’s behavior seemed strangely odd and
inexplicable to Peter, Peter controls himself now as well and does not cry.
Awakened from his dream, he endeavors to finish his essay. After Father
Korbinian has walked around for a long time praying piously, he returns to
Peter’s seat and throws the hair down in front of the lad with the words: “Here
is your hair. I don’t keep other people’s property.”
After the daily instruction, the pupils pass through
the long cloister halls on the way to prayer. Peter, still moved and excited by
the preceding event, does not keep step with the lad ahead of him. For that, the
supervising father orders him to fast at lunch.
For that meal, the boy is only allowed to quickly
consume a bowl of soup, he must renounce the main course in favor of a
well-behaved boy. During the first part of the meal, there is a reading aloud
from a pious book, and while the other boys can afterward talk, Peter must kneel
in a corner of the dining room and tell his beads.
Although Peter can quickly forget this kind of
punishment and reprimand, and they impress themselves on him over time, the
yearning for youthful deed and pranks again and again takes hold of him.
When all the 200 boys of the cloister school must form
a long double-line after the noon meal, in order to be “driven to stroll” for
half an hour, as it is called in the pupil’s jargon, when the sun shines, the
birds sing and the sky is so blue, then it is most difficult for Peter to be
good. He often has the burning wish to climb one of the park’s tall trees, like
he always did at home, if he felt like it. Once, out of sheer joy at the
delightful thought, an impertinent whistle suddenly erupts from him. Because he
actually did not think anything about it, he gives a friendly smile to Father
Benedict rushing toward him. But while he walks next to the little sinner, he
takes his earlobes between his fingers and twists, squeezes and pinches them
around for minutes until they are fire-red. Peter clenches his little fists, he
is boiling with rage and a hatred against this man that he would like most of
all to go at him with his fists. But Peter is powerless against this monk. He
does not understand why the monk takes such joy in tormenting him... And while
the other pupils hardly notice the whole thing, thick tears of rage and pain
roll down the boy’s cheeks. But the more Peter expresses his rage, and the
cooler the monk’s smiles, the more firmly does he pummel the child’s ear between
his fingers.
The cloister pupils have free time in the afternoon,
during which they may read, draw, write or paint. Father Franz, from whose nose
drops of tobacco constantly run, usually has supervision in the large reading
hall.
Already on the first day, when Peter had barely passed
his entrance examination, Peter had gotten into a fight with another little
test-taker, and as both youngsters rolled on the floor of the cloister hall, it
was Father Peter who came along. Since that day, he has never taken his eye off
Peter, and never fails to observe him suspiciously. If Peter breaks the holy
silence or otherwise does something not allowed, Father Peter comes, and Peter
must take not just one, rather several pinches of strong tobacco and stuff it
into his nose. But the monk shakes with laughter and delight when the strong
tobacco brings tears to the boy’s eyes.
What Peter likes least of all is that all of them,
after there was already class in the morning and afternoon, must do their home
work in the great study hall, standing behind pulpits. Often, when he is all too
bored and tired, he very quietly calls one of his fellow pupils to the side,
they give each other signs, hide themselves behind the back of the boy ahead and
enter a pleasant conversation. “Schaedl to the pillar” resounds almost every
other day, and then Peter, if he was not good, must walk, his books under arm,
to the large pillar in the middle of the hall, kneel there and learn his Latin
for the remainder of the class.
But Peter’s naughtiness is also often punished with
beatings. If he often does not rightly know why he is punished, that is
especially true for the blows he receives from Father Konrad.
That Father is known to have his favorites among the
cloister boys. In the beginning, he also showed a lively interest in Peter. He
gave him the pet name “Schnauzerl”, gave him a lot of sugar candy and was always
especially nice to him.
One day Peter is supposed to go to the Father’s room
and fetch himself some chocolate. When Peter stands in the room and watches
intently to see what nice thing the Father will give him, he suddenly grabs the
boy and puts him on his lap. For Peter, that is terribly uncomfortable. At home
he only rarely was allowed to sit on even his father’s lap, and that was when he
still wore a skirt and wax apron and still had his finger in his mouth. Because
Peter is not accustomed to it, he quickly slides off the Father’s lap and goes
through the door. Since that day, however, Father Konrad is as if transformed,
almost daily he reprimands or hits the boy.
Even the worst punishment that exists in the cloister
is not spared Peter. A walk to the village, allowed in his view, brings it to
him. That he must spend half a day in a dark room with bread and water does not
bother him particularly, but he is upset that the punishment is supposed to
result in a bad note in his record.
Peter goes to the director and wants to complain. He
had always been allowed to say anything he was thinking to his teacher in the
village school, and so he now presents his case to the director as well without
any concern. The well-meant explanation of the honorable monk is followed by
Peter’s counter-explanation. Argument and counter-argument from oldster and boy
now collide, until he can only save himself from the thick-skull by pushing him
out the door with the words, “You scoundrel, now get out of here!” But for Peter
that is no reason to go. He remains a while in front of the door of the feared
director, knocks again and then enters the room anew with the words: “Director,
sir, I still do not understand the punishment”. The man resorts to kindness.
With much patience, like a kindly old father, he quite calmly explains the
situation to the boy, and Peter’s defiance is thereby gradually broken.
Peter does indeed have respect for most of the
cloister’s monks, because they are his teachers, but not a genuine reverence
toward them, and although many of them have applied their special methods of
punishment to him daily, he no longer has any pronounced fear of them. After a
special incident, he downright afraid of only the raging fury of Father
Hieronymus.
It is the last day before the start of vacation. Peter
Schaedl, Bruno Stadler and Friedel Sachs were naughty and as punishment had to
kneel on the floor before Father Hieronymus. Full of rage, he walked back and
forth repeatedly, scolding. Peter does not feel much affected by the hefty
curses, he thinks about being on vacation already the next day.
With big, energetic steps, arms crossed on the back,
the monk crosses the room, scolding incessantly. The indifferent behavior of the
boys angers him greatly. Full of outrage, he steps toward the boy being punished
kneeling in front of him: “You scoundrel, you, you probably don’t care, if
you’re being punished. Well, just wait, I’ll help you”, and with these words be
gives the boy such a hard blow to the face that he almost loses his balance.
Peter remembers he only received such a blow just once, perhaps, from his
father. Peter’s face still glows like fire, and his head spins, as an unwanted
tear rolls down his cheek.
“What, and then howl right off and be sensitive? “ the
Father almost oversteps himself and, in rage, lets the boy feel some more hard
blows. Peter swallows the bitter tears and stares ahead with a dark gaze. Father
Hieronymus does not like it that the boy still expresses his defiance and
thick-headedness, he should kneel on the floor and be humble. Panting in the
room, totally enraged without any taming, he roars again: “So, he still wants to
be obstinate, I will drive that out of you!”
Under the constantly renewed slaps and blows, Peter’s
rage gradually recedes, he becomes ever more indifferent to the situation, he
automatically does what the monk demands of him.
But Peter has experienced one thing that day,
something that had until then always been alien to him and that he had never
felt, he has learned to hate a person in the bottom of his heart and with all
his strength.
4.
As the cloister school’s pupil, Peter may indeed only
spend his vacations at home in his black seminary uniform, and although he feels
the homeland so totally differently than before, the freedom that he enjoys,
full of memory of his earliest childhood, still has a redeeming and happy effect
on him.
When Peter is back in the cloister school, Peter sets
aside some of the money that his mother gave him and only turns in some of it.
Because neither his mother, to whom he has constantly
made it clear that in the long-run life in the cloister school is unbearable for
him, nor any of the monks or his comrades understand him, he quietly hatches a
plan, and one day he escapes through the back door of the kitchen, where entry
is forbidden even to the monks, to say nothing of the pupils, to freedom and
runs off.
But the joy suddenly and abruptly comes to an end when
a hand snares Peter’s collar from behind and does not let go of him. A Father
drags him along, and whether Peter wants to or not, he must again return to the
cloister school.
The patience of his educators has come to an end due
to this final degree of disobedience.
Although the impression from many punishments,
debasements and blows remain deep seated in Peter, and although his boy’s soul
has been deeply shaken by this or that incident and he has often been almost
desperate and unhappy, his unbending youthful manner, his gaiety and naturalness
again and again lift him above every misfortune, every aggravation and every
baseness. Peter Schaedl is still the always laughing, singing, whistling boy who
is always ready for new pranks. Now as before, he cannot understand that as a 12
year old one is not allowed to laugh and shout. It does not want to sink into
his head that he may not speak when he wants to and other similar things.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that
the lively, fresh lad from the Bavarian mountains has within a short period
acquired a substantial record of punishments.
Be it that he once climbed a tree instead of playing
the assigned games, that he once sent impertinent letters home, that he soon
gave a mocking nickname to one of the monks and is then obstinate, or that he
always holds his head so cocky. All that combined contributes, at any rate, to
the deepest outrage of his teachers and educators, and after the failed escape
attempt a letter one day goes to Peter Schaedl’s mother, in which it is written
that the boy must leave the cloister school, since all pedagogical measures have
failed and his temperament is not to be tamed.
But the reply to that goes like Peter knows his mother
for so long: a single request to try it again with the boy, since he cannot be
that ruined and bad.
5.
So it comes to pass that Peter Schaedl remains in the
cloister school. And since he can think of nothing else, he makes the attempt to
reconcile himself a little better to the external circumstances of this daily
routine. For this, he does not utilize any especially great will and good
resolutions, rather he shows, almost unconsciously, more indifference toward the
things that he previously only encountered with iron struggle and stubborn
resistance, and turns to other interests.
If the cloister school brought nothing but this hard,
bitter daily routine, then Peter would certainly repeat his escape attempt in a
more perfected form, then he would in the long run never endure the constant
being pious and good, the eternal indifference of praying, being silent,
learning. But he gradually discovers many new things in the cloister school and
finals many interesting things that occupy, fill, excite and enrich him.
First, it is the cloister itself. It was once the
hereditary seat of the royal house, and many monuments, many graves and many
pictures bear witness to more than a thousand years of German history, to old
noble families, to great men, to wars and victories, to joy and distress, to
warriors and thinkers, to women and marriages, to monks and artists. Testimony
to Germanic and Christian history is given in most manifold portrayals within
these castle and cloister grounds.
Especially on Sunday afternoon, when the pupils are
given two hours off to make confession and for pious reflection, Peter finds
rest and time, unobserved and unnoticed by all the others, to sneak off on a
journey of discovery. Then he finds ever new niches with only inscriptions and
symbols, ever new testimony to an old time.
Hours of complete joy are also brought to Peter by the
cloister’s musical events, which take place from time to time, regardless of
whether they take place in the church or the festive hall.
When a mass by Orlando di Lasso, Bach or Haller is
played, if Peter sings along with his high soprano vice in Haydn’s creation or
in songs of the Bavarian marksmen, then he rejoices inwardly, then his heart is
so free and happy and festive that he forgets the cares of daily life. That is
an experience for him which repays him for a long time for all suffering.
It is similar for him later during the two to three
hour Sunday hikes. When the path leads along numerous fish dikes, through great
hops gardens into the infinitely wide forest, when Peter again and again has
something new to see on the right and on the left, and when he is even given
permission to leave the ranks and play in the forest, then he is in his element,
then he forgets that he is a cloister pupil.
6.
From time to time, when his path leads through
isolated cloister halls and corners, Peter encounters many a monk who was
previously unknown to him. Often they get into little conversations.
The abbot of the cloister is a long grayed, dignified
elder. Only seldom do the pupils see him, for he is very distant to them. But he
often shows a special benevolence toward Peter.
One year during Christmas vacation, Peter did not
travel home to his mother, rather experienced the holidays in their special
radiance and in their whole solemnity in the cloister.
It is midnight mass. The church altar radiates with
the most beautiful floral decorations, and on both sides stand might fir-trees,
still with fresh dew and fragrant scent. Dozens of candles are burning and
flickering in the whole room. The church is filled with people from the
surroundings. About fifty monks stand motionless in the choir section with their
long, black, billowing Benedictine cowls. Left of the altar, however, stands the
abbot in gold brocade with headband and staff in front of his throne seat. About
twenty clerics surround him, likewise dressed in white and gold brocade. Twelve
little candle-boys in white-red garments, among them Peter Schaedl, accompany
the ceremonies, soon standing, soon kneeling, then again slowly and
ceremoniously striding. The incense mixes with the fragrant scent of the
fir-trees and with the sweet aroma of the hot-house flowers and penetrates all
the senses. The music resounds from the large, far famous organ with hovering
chords.
Peter Schaedl is totally under the spell of this hour.
He feels like he is in the outer court of heaven. If the child Jesus would now
come to him smiling, take him by the hand and invite him to walk through heaven,
to a visit with dear God himself or even with the most blessed Mother Mary, he
would accept that not as a miracle, rather as a firm reality.
The abbot must have observed the boy in this blessed
dream state, for the next day he says to him: “Remain as good as you were at
Christmas mass, like a true Christian child.”
The old prelate meets with the boy one more time and
pays special attention to him.
In the cloister there is a small chapel, of which many
secretive things are said. No stranger and none of the pupils is allowed to
enter it, even for the monks it is accessible only in the rarest cases. When
guests come from the royal house or from old noble families, then they may enter
the secretive room for a very short time.
No pupil knows whether ghosts haunt this chapel at
night, whether figures from ancient times appear. It is said that the abbot and
Father Odilo, called “the great silent one”, are the only people who spend much
time there. None of the pupils also knows the chapel’s correct name. Most are
only briefly interested in it, and then it is forgotten again. Some of them
often call it the chapel of the ancestors, but most of the monks say prelate
chapel.
One day on his explorations, Peter winds up in this
chapel, which is otherwise locked, and which one can only open with a gold key,
as is told. He cannot actually see anything special in it, and yet there is
something in the room that certainly captivates him, so he sits down on one of
the empty benches and looks around silently. The walls are decorated with
ornaments with delicate colors. In part, they are plant imitations that flow
into each other and are intertwined, in part there are spirals or angular,
simple figures. Between them there are wavy lines and other simple decorations.
Peter cannot find any real meaning behind it, just
like he still cannot fully grasp many things in the pictures and on the tombs,
but yet, he sees something mysterious behind the things, and they simultaneously
seem self-evident to him. On the arched dome ceiling of the chapel, the sun is
portrayed with many stars, but between them many crests and letters, of which
Peter does not know whether they are of Greek origin or are supposed to
represent German letters from the oldest times.
Peter still sits alone in the darkness of the old
chapel when suddenly the heavy door slowly opens and the cloister’s abbot enters
the shrine. At first, the elderly man is startled and very surprised at the
sight of the boy, but he is not angry: “Go now to study, I want to pray here a
little, and tomorrow you come to me”, he says to the young pupil petrified with
terror and fear. The next day Peter is serious when he goes to the venerable
Father Abbot. Without much ado he says to him: “Christian child, examine your
heart, whether you are not called upon to join our cloister and become a son of
Saint Benedict. I will do everything for you in order to ease your path into our
community. You can come to me anytime and count on me.” Peter is very moved by
the abbot’s words.
Next to the abbot, Father Odilo is the most venerable
member of the cloister. He speaks with his brothers as little as with strangers
and is everywhere called “the great silent one”. Many say he is dumb, others say
that he possesses amazing knowledge, especially in the area of history he knows
of things that are not to be read in any book. Sometimes one sees him walking
with a stick seeking underground watercourses. Members of the royal family are
supposed to come to him in order to seek advice in their special affairs. When
he comes upon the boys, he looks at one or the other with a kind smile, but
usually his eyes and his senses seem far away.
For Peter, Father Odilois is the great saga figure of
his youthful years, who makes many unreal things from books and fairy-tales
become alive for him.
Father Dominikus as well, the glowing patriot, plays a
big role in Peter’s days. When the monk follows the political events inside and
outside his land every day and always just has prayers said for the well-being,
for the victory and for the strength of his own fatherland, Peter’s boyish heart
beats with full understanding and feeling for the Father’s good cause. But when
in 1918 the revolution overthrows the throne and ends the war unfavorably,
Father Dominikus is broken by the failure of his prayers, becomes mentally ill
and dies prematurely. This fate has a lasting effect on Peter Schaedl.
7.
So Peter Schaedl initially lives in a constant
opposition of daily routine and festive mood, in a permanent up and down. If he
had just felt free and happy, then soon afterward everything that he does is
just compulsion and humiliation. If he is once fulfilled and interested, he is
soon afterward dull, inwardly empty and tired. If he wants to rejoice today,
then tomorrow he could just cry. If for a short time he feels protected,
embraced and treasured, soon afterward he is again terribly alone and hated by
many. Peter has never before in his young life felt such contrasts as now. He
does not know what he should do, he feels that he is unhappy, that days come and
go, that everything passes by him without him being able to undertake a decisive
intervention, a fundamental change. Peter feels completely subconsciously that
he is powerless. From time to time, a great hope comes over him, he waits and
waits, but he himself does not know for what.
He is supposed to become a priest or even a monk, but
everything that he reads in his pious books leaves him totally cold. He
participates in all religious exercises, but they say little to him, and the
daily framework of this life is detestable and loathsome to him. His inner
nature still rebels against the borders within which his young life is squeezed
like between four walls. He does not want to act so piously as is again and
again demanded, he does not want to recite the memorized prayers hundreds and
hundreds of times. He does not want to be good and serious and sedate. He does
not and does not want that. He wants to shout aloud, as loud and as long until
he simply cannot do so any longer. He wants to be happy and joyful, go on
adventures, hear and see interesting things, think up impertinent pranks, laugh,
shout to his heart’s desire, lie in the grass and look at the sun, he wants to
stand in his life as a full-valued person and not be treated like a toy.
8.
A few years have passed since the death of village
teacher Schaedl. At first, the boy thought about his father in many sad hours,
and when he came home on vacation, something was greatly missed by him there,
and he also noticed that since his father’s death many things had changed at
home.
Peter’s childhood ended with his father’s death.
Initially, he had not sensed that at all, but as he became older and more aware
over the years, he clearly felt that there could never be a continuation of his
previous childhood.
In the most recent period - since he often lives under
the spell of free, happy hours and then again in the middle of the hard daily
routine, which bring so many exhausting manifestations for him - his memories of
his father are often intersected by strange thoughts, which previously only
seldom, but now ever more frequently pop up.
Peter, unsatisfied with himself, must often think that
he has become a terrible loser. Again and again, he mentally envisions his
father’s life, and the son cannot forget the words that the man had often
spoken. “One must always stand one’s ground, wherever one is placed.” Several
times a day Peter thinks about it, and he begins to apply these words to his
present existence. Gradually he becomes convinced that the monk’s are completely
right, when they again and again educate and discipline him so strictly. The
pious mother reinforces this feeling in him through her letters. Once she wrote
to the director: “And even if a thick-head is ever so big and the boy still so
fresh, seven to nine cloister years are still mightier, especially if a boy is
all on his own.”
Peter senses that it is pointless to continue to rebel
against the compulsion of the cloister. After all, he must again and again think
that he is a scoundrel, a sinner and villain. At each confession he must hear
it, in each religion class it is presented to the young seminary pupil, every
punishment is supposed to show him that he is a pitiful sinner, an earthworm,
who must do penance for his and his parents’ sins.
From the start, Peter has asked a hundred times: “What
is sin, how have my parents sinned?”, but he has never much understood the
answers to that, and when he continued to ask, he had to memorize the answers.
The most ugly things about the corruptibility of
people and their vices are presently to the boy daily, and in opposition to that
the works of the saints of the church radiant constantly in pictures and
writings as shining examples.
All pious doctrines and sayings, all punishments and
acts of penance, all prayers and religious events, the compulsion and the
distress, the severity and the bitterness of the last years have made the boy
tired, he is passive, indifferent toward his previous interests, and he has lost
his will.
Very gradually, the thickheaded romp capitulates to
the world in which he stands alone and abandoned since his father is no longer
with him. The fresh prince of the village becomes a quiet cloister pupil who
endeavors to fulfill the demands of the cloister seminary.
Peter himself does not notice that the monks now
doctor him with much mildness, kindness and with much wisdom in order to make
him even more submissive, even more pious.
Step by step, he becomes accustomed to learning even
what he does not like. The young seminary pupil applies his energy and drive for
action more and more to intellectual works. In his free time, he no longer draws
caricatures, also no longer writes any letters home, rather devotes the time to
learning Greek and Latin. He translates French lectures, voluntarily learns the
English and Italian languages, although he has no special talent for it.
Since the older classes have permission to get up
early, Peter is at the wash basin already at 04:00 in order to then work.
The pupil takes holy communion daily, and Sundays he
attends mass three times. Each day of the week he tells his beads or the way of
the cross, and each week he confesses his sins. With unstoppable zeal he pounces
on all means that are offered to him and that lead to the path to piety and
wisdom. Again and again, he is immersed in pious books, and from time to time he
takes holy oaths.
Peter Schaedl also renounces the last earthly joys
solely to serve his motto: “Pray and work”, that is what he seeks.
Through good works, work and prayer the boy gradually
gets to the Abitur examination. But his healthy freshness has given way
to a nervous, overworked appearance, his impertinence to softness and his
natural faith to a forced piety. The exuberant joy has become a serious, sedate,
quiet adolescent.
“Over the course of his stay at our institute, Peter
Schaedl has developed into a young man of sedate, very solid character”, stands
written in the exit certificate upon leaving school. When Peter then wants to
travel home to his overjoyed mother during vacation, his prefect says to him:
“Mr. Schaedl, in the last years you were the most diligent seminary pupil of the
house. God will reward you for it one day.”
Peter Schaedl now feels like he is in a different
world that is actually not his own. He lets himself drift as if in a dream that
leads far away from reality.
His confessor and spiritual guide tells him that this
is the kingdom of mercy, in which those wander who walk upon God’s tracks. Peter
thanks God daily for this mercy and counts himself happy that he has managed to
tame his unruly nature.
Part Three
Holy faith in the Highest conveys invincible strength.
But sincere incorrect faith as well has already led
many people and families to many a righteous work.
1.
Peter Schaedl is a final year student of theology in
the priest seminary.
The chubby-faced, fresh, always happy and sunny boy
with his overflowing vitality has – through a nine year cloister and seminary
education – become a slender, serious and reserved young theologian, whose
original temperament only rarely shows itself.
What once seemed to him an unbearable compulsion is
now his most sacred obligation, to which he devotes himself with all his energy
and a full heart.
Peter Schaedl wants to become a holy priest, he has
sworn that to himself. And at the same time, he wants to be life-knowledgeable,
a modern priest. But this double goal costs hard struggle and difficult work.
Peter believes he has become acquainted with life. In
order to be able to one day perform real manual labor and at the same time earn
money for the many books at the university, he works weekdays since the
Abitur examination as a peat-cutter and on Sundays as an assistant waiter in
a large amusement park.
Early in the morning each day he hikes with two
comrades to church, takes communion and attends mass. Then he goes to work. He
works with shovel and pickaxe as well as possible. The hands get many blisters
and the upper torso a painful sunburn. Peter does not have much conversion with
the co-workers, because the foreman pushes for swift completion. But that cannot
prevent the three theology students from learning from the conversations,
especially during lunch break, that the workers are dissatisfied with
everything. Peter gets along very well with everybody, but he does not know much
about their cares and he does not know them. He only knows that most of them are
decent fellows, and that their dissatisfaction about the existing conditions,
about which the grumble daily, cannot be unfounded.
During this period of semester break, when he is an
assistant worker, Peter has two experiences that will occupy him greatly for
many years. It is a humid August day and Peter finds the work more oppressive
than ever before. All the brown bodies of the working men are bathed in the
sweat of hard work; the heat could almost drive them to desperation. In the late
afternoon, relief is finally in sight. Three storms draw together, from left and
right and from the high mountain they draw closer and closer. Lightning darts
from the thick storm clouds, thunder growls and throws its echo from one
mountain to the other. Directly over the peat-cutting site, which is located in
front of the mountains, three storms collide with uncanny force. Soon shrill and
edgy, soon light and shining far, the lightning darts to the ground or glides
along the sky, and right afterward the thunder bangs as if the whole earth
wanted to collapse. At any moment, the lightning can strike the group of workers
and take its toll.
One of the men suddenly jabs his spade full of fury
into the ground and curses: “You Lord God, up there, if there is one, strike
here, hit, show what you can do! Or are you just as poor as us?!”
Utter silence is the result of this terrible challenge
from the worker. For a few seconds, each holds his breath. Peter’s back runs hot
and cold.
A new lightning bolt strikes the ground and a blow
follows again, somewhere nearby a tree collapses in splinters.
Slowly, the storm distances itself and a brief rain
shower purifies the air. Work and daily routine continue.
But Peter Schaedl is deeply shaken by this for long
days afterward, that a human being can mock God in such a manner and challenge
his power. He now knows that he will one day have to work very hard as a priest
and to atone for these blinded and misled people. The young student sends
countless prayers to heaven for these blasphemers.
During the semester as well, he prays not only at the
assigned prayer times full of sincere reverence, rather frequently seeks out the
seminary chapel in all silence, stands praying for a while before a pious
picture in the park, slides the rosary between his hands evenings and mornings.
And even during work, he thinks in short prayers about his Lord God.
Often, when he is mentally tired, he simply recites
through a memorized prayer a dozen times. Often, he re-reads prayers from a
selection of pious books, often his praying is also purely mechanical lip work.
But the young theologian knows from the works of
intellectual literature and the words of his spiritual guides that there is also
a higher level of prayer: Man’s observing and examining immersion into God.
Whenever sees himself ripe inside for that, whenever
he feels “grace” within himself, he devotes himself to this higher level of
prayer. Then he kneels in a quiet corner of the chapel, closes his eyes and
images himself with all his senses in “God’s proximity”. He knows he is very
close to him and is completely filled with the greatness of the creator. He
feels himself united in a mighty chorus with the millions of people on earth who
all in their own manner pay homage to God at that same hour. He feels his praise
of the creator to be in harmony with the rustling of the forests and seas, with
the song of the birds, with the blossoming of the flowers, with the might of the
mountains, with the greatness of the stars, with the sounds, colors and forms of
all arts.
Such an hour of God’s proximity gives the man striving
for perfection, the priest in training, ever new strength, always gives his work
new elan and lets him overcome every resistance of his human weaknesses.
A special time of prayer in the priest seminary is the
annual Shrovetide. When the poster pillars of the big city proclaim the
Shrovetide balls every evening, when the Shrovetide procession moves through the
streets of the city and exuberant festiveness fills the people, then the young
theologians are told about the ugly sins and vices that are committed during
these days, and they hear what pain has been inflicted on God by the evilness
and wantonness of people. When they hear of the bitter consequences in the
beyond, of the horrible pains in hell that await the ruined sinners, then a
quiet yearning for the Shrovetide joys of the world can only occasionally come
up in the young student for the priesthood. At first, his heart is filled with
pity for the people, and without all too great effort he devotes himself to
hours of prayer and atonement and other pious exercises, which are carried out
in the seminary during Shrovetide.
Peter Schaedl has a second experience as
worker-student that seems even more unique and odd than the first one.
Peter is lodged with several other temporary workers
in the servant quarters of an estate in the vicinity of the peat-cutting site.
One Saturday, he is invited by the estate owner to his
house for a glass of beer. Peter feels comfortable and safe in the pretty rooms
of the estate owner, and so both men get into a stimulating conversation.
It has already gotten late when the estate owner’s
children and his niece, who is a guest, enter the room in order to say “good
night”. While the father is occupied with the children, the young theologian
casts a shy gaze at this girl, whom he finds as beautiful as few other girls.
Then she comes to him, shy and blushing, and offers him a gentle handshake, and
Peter believes he hears a very soft “good night” from her. This moment
completely confuses the student, he has never before experienced anything
similar. This evening takes a strange turn for him from the moment when that
young niece enters the room.
During the next few days Peter is completely absorbed
with the memory of that evening. As much as he resists with prayers and good
resolutions, he must again and again remember the girl’s appearance. He could
not say how old this girl was, he also could not describe her face, he only
remembers that she had brown hair and wore a blue dress, and that she was as
slender as a deer.
He sees her once again. One evening when he is on the
way to church, she looks out the window of the master’s house. When Peter looks
up at her, she suddenly disappears. Or had she not nodded slightly with her
head? –But perhaps that is more of the young man’s hoping and wishing than
reality.
Full of yearning, the young theologian walks around
the vicinity of the manor evening after evening. But one day as he is walking in
the shadow under the old chestnut tree, he can see the faint outline of a girl
next him in the darkness. Peter greets and his greeting is reciprocated. He
cannot make out much, but suddenly he again feels that strange, warm and tender
handshake, he feels the same hand that he felt that past evening lying in his.
Peter hardly dares to look at the girl. For a few short seconds he feels very
close to the young creature, when he suddenly feels her full, fresh lips on his.
But before he can think of anything, the figure has again disappeared into the
darkness.
Never before, as far back as Peter can remember, did
he get a kiss. Not from his parents, not from his siblings, form none of his
relatives, let alone from any girl. Peter is terribly ashamed, because he
believes he has done everything wrong and stupidly, and acted ridiculous during
this evening encounter. For days the young student torments himself with this
thought, and his only wish, his full yearning is to see the girl again or
perhaps even speak with her. But then the young priest in training is gripped by
fear. In the religious books he has read it, and he still remembers the words of
his priestly educators: “Through a single kiss one can contract the worst
diseases for one’s whole life. A single kiss can put a terrible curse on the
whole body. But worse yet are the consequences for the soul. Even for the common
man, a kiss is a serious sin of unchastity and is punished with eternal
damnation, but for a young person who wants to devote himself to God’s service,
it is a discharge of deep and harmful depravity.” The young theologian is
confused and unhappy the next few weeks. He never again sees the manor master’s
niece, because she has journeyed away. He totally forgets all the beauty and
uniqueness of the evening event. Full of fear, he awaits the outbreak of a bad
disease and feels like a poor, wretched sinner burdened with a great guilt. Even
confession, absolution and penance can no longer free him from this burden.
When Peter returns to the priest seminary at the
beginning of the semester, he can hardly still look his superiors in the face.
Under the influence of his education, the evening
event becomes for him a terrible sin, a perceived guilt that he carries with
him, which he tries to eradicate through tireless industriousness. At the
university he plungers into a jumble of lectures and exercises. Aside from his
theological and philological disciplines, he attends lectures about psychology,
pedagogy, art and the history of literature in order, after all, to also become
a well-educated and contemporary spiritual guide.
In the lectures on the history of literature, Peter
meets many a nice female student and gets into conversations with many a female
singers or actresses. And each time, he is terribly reminded of his first closer
encounter with a young girl.
He cannot comprehend that these girls are not supposed
be fullvalued human beings. He finds that dear God has equipped them with many
right attractive talents. But that, after all, is the devil in them, that is
what Peter has learned, and he remembers again and again that the female
creature brings terrible dangers. When the seminary’s regent then again and
again admonishes: “Gentlemen, you must get to the point where every woman is
repellent to you from the start”, Peter finds this admonishment self-evident.
Peter Schaedl knows that his mother and his two sisters are pious souls who
complacently love God and God’s children through blessed mercy. Aside from them,
he also knows other pious women from whom a young theologian has nothing to
fear. But the majority of this gender is not to be trusted, and beauty is from
the start one of Satan’s means to blind!
Based on this knowledge crammed into him, Peter wages
a defense struggle full of pride and fanaticism against all human thoughts and
feelings that want to arise in him from time to time.
2.
What scholastic philosophy, what exegesis, morality
and dogma all cram into the young brain in the course of study cannot be fully
digested by the brain. Many doubts, much vagueness and many questions arise
again and again in the student’s mind. But Peter now has no time to ponder the
questions more closely. Regulations demand from him the taking of so many exams
that the theology student must always only strive to get good test grades and
thereby assure himself a shining priest career.
At the same time, he is also aware from religion class
that any doubt on the truth revealed by God, church and Bible is a serious
offense and nothing else than an evil temptation by the devil.
And finally, the spiritual guide, an elderly Jesuit
Father, stresses that all the doubts that try to arise during the years of study
will fade away by themselves and be solved in the fulfillment of the priest
profession and in the blessed work of priest life. Hence Peter Schaedl as well
victoriously casts off all the doubts that want to arise in him against the
often right hard to grasp doctrine of the church.
He believes he has finally won the battle with
confession and communion, with prayer and work and with the “weapons of the holy
spirit”, when the young man in him tries to stand up against the young
theologian.
Occasionally, admittedly, when he takes a walk in the
park at dawn, when he is especially entranced by a work of art, when he reads a
classical book or if he goes too far in conversations with others and expresses
the problems that interest him, then he is depressed that at the age of twenty
he piously walks around in the serious theology robe. Then he is gripped by the
yearning to be able to be free and proud, full of energy and gaiety, and many
times he thinks he must throw away the rosary, prayer book and all theology in
order to do something great. He wants to plunge into a struggle and fight for
victory and laurels.
3.
The spiritual guide in the priest seminary has often
said that for every young theologian the time comes when he strays from the
church’s doctrine, when an inner emptiness arises within him and lack of faith
seizes him. Peter Schaedl has gradually come to feel so secure in his profession
that he believes he will certainly be spared from this condition.
Logically, this day does indeed come one day.
Suddenly, he can no longer pray, he can no longer
believe. His inside seems to him completely empty, as if burned out. Through
years of work, he has killed the human being within him, and the theologian in
him seems to totally collapse.
In the rosary, which he has slid through his fingers
many thousands of times, he sees only a senseless, mechanical prayer cord.
The tabernacle, before which he has knelt with so much
reverence, because according to the church’s doctrine the true God resides
within it in the form of the consecrated wafer, now seems to him nonsense and
swindle.
Daily communion, which was previously for him the
enjoyment of the true body of Christ, the son of God, fills him with mockery and
aversion.
The belief in God the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost and the miraculous conception is for him suddenly idol worship like the
faith of any heathen folk.
All Christ’s miracles, all dogmas of the church, all
secrets of the Bible repel him. In the middle of the most sacred ceremonies he
could laugh aloud with mockery and despising. His whole previous world has
collapsed. He knows that he is now godless, without reverence and without faith.
But he no longer has the strength to again resurrect his faith. He now wishes to
plunge into life and enjoy all earthly desires that he previously only knew from
the pedantically precise portrayals of moral theology.
Everything that was previously sacred and sublime to
the young theologian is for him now only the object of mockery, contempt, hatred
and repugnance.
He no longer sees any path into the future other than
just desire and pleasure in order to then find a fast and beautiful death.
In this state, he must outwardly still endure all the
pious exercises of the priest seminary, for he still cannot bring himself to
make a decision for his life.
Quite mechanically, he goes along to confession and
portrays his condition like a patient who has long since accepted his illness.
The priest hearing the confession talks about the devil’s great temptation and
threatens hell.
Peter Schaedl laughs inside. Why should he fear evil
and hell, both of which no longer exist for him.
A few days later, the priest in training Schaedl
decides to go to confession to a different priest. This one treats the matter
medically and describes Peter’s condition as a nervous manifestation and result
of overwork at study and prayer.
Later he confesses to still another cleric. This one
refers him to Christ, who himself on the cross as the son of God experienced the
same condition of inner emptiness and abandonment by God.
Peter has no understanding for this pitiful son of
God, he shows him no salvation. Weeks pass without the slightest change in the
condition of the godless theologian. Finally, he decides to seek out his actual
spiritual guide from the Jesuit order.
While the previous listeners to the confession seemed
somewhat shocked by the theologian’s condition, the Jesuit takes Peter’s account
lightly and with a smile like something self-evident. He explains that this
condition of godlessness and inner emptiness is a natural reaction with every
theologian who devotes himself sincerely and deeply with great zeal to study. He
advises the young man not to think anymore about it, to let a few weeks or
months pass and then come to him again. The visit goes like a medical
consultation. A few tame jokes about politics end the conversation, which gets
Peter to again lock away his already written request for dismissal from the
priest seminary.
Following the Jesuit’s advice, Peter spends the next
weeks with light activity. But his condition does not change.
One evening, it is semester break, Peter hikes alone
up a small hill that rises at the edge of the big city. He looks across the many
church towers, and all his hatred and contempt toward God and religion begin to
eat his heart again.
Spread out before him lies the city’s sea of houses.
Shining golden in the light of the evening sun, the river meanders past the
mighty buildings. With eternally fresh energy, it springs from the mighty
mountains, whose outline becomes clear on the horizon. Peter Schaedl looks for
the mountains before which his homeland is located. He cannot help but to think
about the creek, the forests and fields that belonged to the world of his
childhood.
Gradually, his eye finds rest in the green of the
trees and meadows than cover the hill’s slope. But then Peter’s gaze is
entranced by the setting evening sun. Glowing red, it has again concentrated its
brightness before disappearing. Peter watches this sunny furnace amazed. He
feels like he did as a small boy gazing into the fire of the huge fire and so
clearly sensing God’s greatness and power. Again, he is entranced by this blaze
of light. Never before has he experienced the sun so powerfully. Peter is
completely captivated by the sight, and he is as solemn as at the most sacred
church ceremonies. Suddenly, Peter feels happy and free.
The sun proclaims to him that there must be a final,
highest, divine power behind every force of nature.
The young theology student Peter Schaedl has again
found the faith in the divine, in a higher power, and with that he also happily
absorbs all the church’s doctrines, for if there is a God, then for him that can
only be the God of the Catholic church. In the following days, when he again
devotes himself with enthusiasm to study, he meets a circle of radical young
theologians who want to reform the priesthood in genuine natural piety and to
protect it against any despotism. They want to become the elite troop in the
world clergy under the leadership of exceptional Jesuits. They hold their
meetings in old castles; on hikes through Tyrol, Hess, Bavarian and Silesia they
are chained to each other under the leadership of their guardians from the
Jesuit Order. The romanticism of the hiking youth movement is directed into
church lines.
Peter has joined this circle. He experiences beautiful
hours on the vacation trips after the efforts and struggles of the semester. He
feels overjoyed in this union of religion and nature.
In the course of this period the young theologian
Schaedl achieves the highest position of honor in the priest seminary. He is
named General Prefect and simultaneously becomes the confidant of the seminary’s
student council. The student is aware than he must set a good example in every
way. He seeks by all means to live accordingly. In the official address that he
must now occasionally deliver, he seeks to preach high ideals in order to lead
the seminary’s students as humans being as well to the most radiant heights and
the priests in training to final perfection.
Peter works and administers wherever he can, he feels
overjoyed in his new comprehensive and great activity.
But time passes faster than he could ever measure it,
and then there are only a few days before the so-called higher consecrations,
which then should bring for him the irrevocable priest oath, the obligation to
the closest bond with the church for all eternity.
Peter shuns this step, and again he faces the collapse
of his priest career.
He goes to the elderly Jesuit Father who is
responsible for all matters of spiritual guidance. The young theology student
greatly admires the Jesuit, for he possesses exceptional characteristics as a
human being; he comes from a noble family of the most ancient origin, and he
enjoys world fame as a scientist.
“Father, Sir, I cannot go through with the
consecrations”, Peter declares. “I no longer feel called upon for the
priesthood. I cannot fully agree with all the church doctrines inwardly. I feel
unsuited, although I cannot define it in detail.” This admission is terribly
difficult for the young theologian: he, who enjoys the unlimited trust of his
superiors, who has the place of honor among all theologians of the seminary,
must now cause such difficulties.”
But Peter has hardly spoken the words when the elder
suddenly kneels on the ground; he grips the hand of the doubting theologian,
kisses it and speaks: “My son, if you are not worthy to step to the altar, then
nobody is worthy. You are, after all, an angel! You can hear God’s voice in my
voice and calmly and unconcerned accept the consecration.”
Peter is hot and cold at the same time. The world
famous Jesuit Father, before whom he has so often knelt in reverence at
confession, this Jesuit now kneels at his feet. Inexperienced Peter does not for
a moment doubt the words of the Jesuit, and all his reservations are smashed
with one blow, and he is ready to take the consecrations.
4.
Priest in training Schaedl devotes himself completely
to the tasks of the week of preparation. Mental drills, feasting and prayer fill
them.
The exercise lectures at the start deal with the
nature of God Almighty.
They continue with the concept of God’s son Christ,
his suffering and his resurrection.
The ugliness of sin and the wretchedness of man
contrast sharply to the divine greatness. The image of hell is shockingly
portrayed in a dramatic highpoint.
The church as the sole path out of this darkness is
the motif that forms the radiant introduction to the second part: the priest as
medium between God and man appears as the most sublime ideal of human effort.
Rights and duties of the priesthood form the conclusion of this ideal, vivid and
desired.
The whole huge building of the priest seminary is
filled with serious silence during the solemn week.
Several times a day all the theologians of the house
pray for the consecration candidates out of inner solidarity.
The fasting promotes the psychological susceptibility
for the coming days.
Call to joint prayer hour after hour, one of the must
diverse melodies of the Gregorian chorus – the “Attende domine”, which
proclaims sin and repentance in solemn melancholy – resounds daily in a dual
chorus between consecration candidates and the younger theologians.
The decisive hour has arrived. The priest seminary and
its surroundings radiate in the most beautiful decoration of flowers and flags.
The cathedral’s bells ring full and mighty over the city. Two hundred young
theologians between the ages of 18 and 24 walk serious and measured in black
robe and white chorus shirt through the church toward the high altar. At the end
of the column walk the consecration candidates with lowered head and with a
countenance glowing ascetically from fasting and emotion, holding their garments
and insignia in crossed arms.
The councils of the house follow, priests from near
and far, the prelates and dignitaries of the cathedral chapter and finally the
bishop himself with his closer entourage.
The places of honor orthe cathedral, however, are
filled with the closest relatives and family members of the consecration
candidates.
Peter Schaedl knows that this is the happiest day in
his mother’s life, that she was capable of any sacrifice for this hour, and that
she thinks she now has heaven in hand for her son and for herself.
After the bishop has began mass, the consecration
candidates are called by name one after the other and each answers with
“Adsum” (I am here) and steps forward.
The bishop speaks a final admonishment. “Since you,
dearest son, are supposed to be elevated to the sacred consecration of the
subdiocese, you must again and again reflect what a burden you want to
voluntarily assume today! Until now, you are still free and could if desired
cross over to the earthly side. But once you have received this consecration,
you can no longer take back your decision, rather must always serve God, whom to
serve is to rule. You must hold to chastity and always remain obligated to serve
the church. Consider that as long as there is still time, and if you want to
remain with your sacred decision, then step forward in the name of the Lord!”
None of the candidates steps back. All are moved and
spellbound by the experience of the hour, and none dares to become weak before
the public, before his God, before the priests and the bishop.
The chorus begins to sing the Most Holy litany, and
the candidates throw themselves to the ground, stretched out long. They bury
their Dices in their hands and remain lying on the ground, in silent prayer,
while the litany resounds over them...Take pity upon us...take pity upon
us...hear us...request for us, request for us...spare us...save us...take pity
on us...
These cries for help penetrate into the hearts of the
young priest candidates like mighty blows.
Whatever bonds to homeland, family and parental home,
to folk and world were still left in them, now fall away from these men as they
lie as sinners on the ground in order to then again arise with burning
enthusiasm, to step before the bishop, and to receive from his hands the
insignia of their new dignity as God’s representatives.
Months pass. For Peter Schaedl, they are like a dream.
Then the priest consecration itself comes. It is even more solemn than the
higher consecrations. And afterward they travel to the homeland for the
“primiz”, i.e. the celebration of the first sacred mass of a just consecrated
priest.
Peter would have gladly spent that day at the place of
his childhood, but his mother has been living for years already in another town.
And now that town claims the right to the festival.
Peter is received at the train station by the whole
community. He must quickly put on the priest robes in the waiting room, and then
he joins the triumphant procession through the town. First, little girls recite
poems and give him flowers. Right and left of the roads, the many various church
clubs have gathered with their banners and flags. Women’s federation and
mother’s club, young girls federation and male youth, voluntary fire department,
veterans association and even the gymnastics club take pride in marching along
in the procession. The brass band of the town plays, and they proceed through
arches of triumph and along streets decorated with garlands, past houses
festively decorated with many flags to the church. There, the new priest must
himself deliver a short sermon after the address of greeting by the local
priest. Then he bestows sacred blessings for the first time, which counts a
hundred-fold to the pious people, coming from these freshly salved and newly
consecrated hands.
At home, however, mother and siblings kneel before
their “honorable” son and brother, and now, since the young priest is supposed
to bestow blessings on his mother, his hands tremble and his eyes become moist.
It seems almost impossible to him to bestow this blessing as confidently as he
delivered his first sermon and as flawlessly as his first public appearance
went.
Peter must visit all relatives, all acquaintances and
parish members during these days in order to give the new priest blessing. He
repeats the blessing formula a hundred times: “By the placing of my hands and
the summoning of all the saints, you are blessed by Almighty God, the Father,
the Son, the Holy Ghost.” He places his hands on elders and blossoming young
people who kneel before him during these words. A handshake and the words “Peace
be with you” always conclude the blessing. Many people, young and old, use the
opportunity in order to pour their heart out to the young priest, in order to
ask his advice and in order to ask for his prayer. Richly laden with gifts, he
returns home each day. The day of the first mass itself was similarly festive as
his arrival. The town’s priest had made a lot of effort to make everything as
splendid as possible. People have been coming from the surroundings for hours.
All the official offices are represented, and all the relatives have put in an
appearance. 200 close and distant relatives are counted this day, cousins and
aunts and uncles alone. The 24 year old priest is celebrated like a great
celebrity.
According to the long custom, a delicate little girl
is also supposed to be selected for Peter’s first mass as a little bride. In
white dress, with wreath and veil, she is supposed to stand at the side of the
priest, who swore to remain unmarried. To the great dismay of the many small
candidates, Peter Schaedl has rejected this custom. Since he has already
renounced a real bride in his life in the form of his oath, he also wants
nothing to do with this symbolic little bride. Pious aunts admittedly
immediately became fearful and whispered softly that such disrespect for custom
could not turn out well.
The day of the first mass does not bring great
emotional experiences for the young priest, to his great disappointment. Given
the great hubbub of the day they could not emerge in any manner. And so the
festival has only an outward impression for him. But for the young priest it
means the last close gathering with family and relations; after the closing of
the festival he leaves them all and then belongs solely to the church.
5.
Peter Schaedl’s first position is in a factory town.
He is an industry chaplain. The dry priest, his superior, who is much respected
among his colleagues, takes him in like a father.
“Chaplain, sir, on the Bahnhofstrasse 78, on the fifth
floor, a man lies dying; he has not confessed for forty years; try your luck. He
is an old communist. But the wife will probably throw you out; I’ve already been
brushed off.” That is the first spiritual assignment that the young chaplain
gets from his superior.
Peter goes to work with apostolic zeal. He acquires
the necessary insignia, buys a bottle of wine and climbs - a prayer on his lips
– with pounding heart up the four stairs.
When the wife opens the door, she immediately says:
“My husband can die without a priest. We are not criminals and have nothing to
fear.”
“I just wanted to ask about your husband’s condition
and drop off this bottle of wine.”
“Well then, come in”, the wife replies to Peter’s
words. As the chaplain converses with the sick man, he immediately declares that
he will die in five days; the doctor told him that and he feels it as well.
The young priest wants to ask about his earlier life,
since he is new in town.
The gravely ill man describes his simple life, his
little joy, his work and his mistakes, “Now you have made a little confession,
after all”, the young chaplain says when the man has finished his story. “Now we
can also formalize this confession.” The priest pulls his stole from this
pocket, puts it around his neck as a symbol of his power.
“For all I care, if it is so simple and if it’s fun
for you”, the sick man consents.
The next day Chaplain Schaedl gives the dying man
communion, salves him with the sacrament of the rosary and is witness for the
first time to a human being silently and calmly departing this life. He
naturally counts this as a success of his priestly effectiveness.
For years, the young priest stands at a death bed two
or three times a week. Each of these fates, each death is a great hour for him.
The formulas of church acts recede behind the
impression, the experiences of the moment.
In the background of each of these dying people, Peter
sees his father struggle with death. Admittedly, he was not present, but he can
nonetheless form a precise picture of his father’s death.
He knows that his father, weakened in body and soul by
the long illness, was greatly tormented in the last minutes of his life by his
most bitter enemy. The town priest had come back then and spoken to the father
about heaven, hell and final Judgement Day in order to then force confession
from the man.
Peter knows that the last minutes were the most
painful of his life for his father, and that he had to endure them only because
was no longer in full possession of his physical energies, which would have been
needed against this his blackmailer.
This memory is seen by the heart of the young chaplain
so much each time that he can never torment the dying people with confessions of
sin and he is not able to threaten them with hell and purgatory. He seeks to
help them with a few words, tells them about life in the beyond, of the great,
kind and understanding God and that nobody of good will needs to tremble before
death.
When then the life of the one has gone out, Peters
also always knows how to give comfort and good advice to the other members of
the family, and so he is often more generous toward the people than is allowed
him by formal church law.
After the completion of this and similar proceedings
assigned to him, Peter always feels an inner satisfaction. And he also feels
this satisfaction at his other work.
When he sits almost every Saturday from early
afternoon until late’ in the evening in the confession booth, then he has the
happy feeling that he can assist human hearts tormented by doubt and distress
with advice and deed, and, above all, as God’s representative, through
absolution of sins, lift from them the burden of sin, to reconcile them with God
again, and to be able to again open to them the path to heaven.
When the young chaplain stands at the pulpit and
gradually notes that the visitors of his sermons become ever more numerous, when
he stands and senses how people of every age and position listen to his words
full of reverence and are uplifted by his words, this gives his work new
impetus.
Daily mass forms the center of his priest activity.
Following church doctrine with blind faith, the young chaplain remembers each
day the inconceivable miracle that he himself has the grace and the authority to
perform. He can daily with a few words transform a peace of bread, the sacred
wafer, and the little wine in his goblet into the genuine body and the genuine
blood of Christ. Christ, however, is genuine God. The Almighty has hence put
himself in the hands of the priest in order to save as many people as possible
from the eternal death owed to sin.
At each of this sacred acts, Peter Schaedl is filled
with the sublime awareness that at whatever hour of the day somewhere on the
broad globe this same sacred secret is celebrated by hundreds of Catholic
priests. The presentation of mass sacrifice around the globe hence takes place
in an endless chain day after day and year after year and bonds the priests of
the whole world into a great totality, which –across the borders of countries
and folks – is based in the beyond. He senses the same powerful energy and
strength at eternal worship or at breviary prayer. He is happy in the awareness
that in each diocese, according to a precisely set plan, every day and every
night, in churches or in cloister chapels, in uninterrupted mutual relief, the
“Most Holy” is honored in the “displayed monstrance” in the same “eternal
worship”. He considers it more a work of grace than a natural concentration of
energies, if at breviary prayer his feelings soar, because several hundred
thousand priests pray daily for two hours long xactly the same words in the same
Latin language.
One of Peter’s daily duties is also religion class at
the secondary school. The only difficulty that exists for the young chaplain in
this work appears to be giving instruction to the little ones. But he knows all
the better how to be a good teacher and guide to the older pupils in matters of
faith and life.
But the chaplain understands especially well how to
deal with the poor, the sick and everyone needing help. He has turned many
parish children - who were totally alienated form the church – into pious
church-goers again, he has again reconciled many people with the church.
Despite all his work, Peter Schaedl has not neglected
to think about the health of his soul, to correct his own mistakes and to do
penance for his own sins.
Despite all mistakes and weaknesses, he can proudly
maintain one thing about himself, that in the first years of his priesthood he
was a priest with honest enthusiasm, honest intention and struggle, and that he
endeavored to live and act in accordance to doctrine and law of the Catholic
church.
Part Four
If a world falls into ruin, then that is not proof
that it was worthless from the start, rather only that it has fulfilled its
world historical meaning in the eternal providence plan of the creator.
To leave this broken world and to work along on the
building of a new world is not betrayal, rather obedience to God’s law.
1.
Peter Schaedl has advanced swiftly in his church
career in just a few years. He has quickly advanced from big city chaplain to
religion teacher at a school of higher learning.
Years of zealous fulfillment of duty have passed. The
days and years of the first priestly enthusiasm have long faded and made way for
tenacious work. At the same time, the doubts, struggles and distress of the
student period have followed the young religion teacher into his priest life.
Old puzzles pop up again, eternal questions of
humanity move the young priest always anew. The laws of life put their demands
on Peter Schaedl almost every day. But he endeavors incessantly to bring God’s
natural laws into harmony with the doctrines of the church, he seeks to stand in
life and at the same time to be able to remain in the church, he wants to be
life-affirming and bound to the church in the same way.
But there is so much that could make him doubt the
validity of his profession and his world, but also so much that holds him firm
and reinforces him on his old path. Peter Schaedl wants to undertake exercises
for his emotional solidity according to church regulations.
He has selected the Bavarian resort Altotting for
this.
Heavy wooden crosses in all sizes lean on the hall of
pillars that leads around the chapel of grace. Men and women load them on their
shoulders in order to, praying with the rosary, hobble around the church on
their knees.
The young priest sees such a group of hand-worked
countrywomen at this drill. During his earlier, frequent pilgrimages he had
never thought it at all strange. But this fleeting sight stays with him, and he
now sees and observes many things that he had not noticed earlier.
He imagines that these women, who now, bent under the
burden of the crosses, sob upward toward their Lord God, were blossoming,
upright, young German children of man not all that many years ago.
He hardly dares to imagine that he could ever see his
mother and sisters kneeling on the ground so miserably and pitifully.
After Peter Schaedl has been observing this sight for
a long time, it suddenly comes to him that he has never seen a priest among
these cross-bearers. And when he then thinks of himself, he knows that he would
never participate in this exercise.
The priest is shocked when the countrywomen tell him
after conclusion of the prayer: Their walk to Altotting took ten hours. Dry
bread, warm soup and a glass of beer was supposed to fortify them for the return
trip, which they wanted to start during the coming night. The previous week,
hail had destroyed the harvest of their small fields. That is why they had paid
for masses in Altotting with their meager savings and done penance on their
knees for their own sins and those of their family members, and implored heaven
to help them through the next winter.
The drill lectures of the capuchin monk are no longer
able to extinguish this experience in the priest. Again and again, he sees with
his mental eye the humbled people crawling with the wooden cross. But when on
the second drill day he reads in the drill book by the founder of the Jesuit
Order: “I observe all the decay and ugliness of my body; I view myself as a
festering wound and a boil from which so many sins and evils and such an ugly
poison break out”, he finds a connection between these subjugated women and the
doctrines of the church. When the Father then speaks of original sin, with whose
curse all human beings are burdened, of hell and its torments, the young priest
can no longer comprehend how a great God should find pleasure in so debasing his
most sublime creature, man, to subjugate and torment him such as he experiences
and feels during these days.
The church view of man as a pitiful, guilt-ridden
earthworm has totally collapsed within him due to his observations during these
days.
Peter further reads in his drill book: “I see with the
eyes of my power of imagination the length, breadth, height and depth of hell, I
see those mighty blazes and the souls as if enclosed in burning bodies; I hear
with my ears the crying, howling and screaming; I smell with my sense of smell
the smoke, sulphur, garbage and decaying things; I taste with my sense of taste
bitter things; I feel with my sense of touch how the flames engulf and burn the
souls.”
No, fear of hell should in the future no longer
influence Peter’s moral action.
He wants to follow the voice of his conscience. He
wants to fulfill clod’s law, but he must inwardly reject the church’s law.
At the bottom of his heart he feels that he has over
the course of time become a heretic; but his oath binds him to the church, and
hence he must outwardly subordinate himself to it and obey.
2.
Peter’s oldest sister wants to marry. The very
honorable brother is, upposed to perform the marriage. The ceremony takes place
in the clean, clear church reminiscent of antiquity.
The brother speaks to the sister and her husband and
to all the relatives about spring and its joy, about summer and its
oppressiveness and heat, about life’s autumn with it harvest and its fruits.
Then he tells them about God, who guides our path in sunshine and rain.
Peter himself is just as moved as his family members.
He may consecrate his sister for a path that he closed to himself. He senses how
beautiful it must be, if two people continue God’s work of creation; mod join in
order to carry the bloodstream of our ancestors into the distant future.
The young priest Schaedl speaks the Latin formulas and
prayers of the marriage ceremony. But suddenly, he stops in the middle of his
words in order to quickly read a few lines farther in the ritual “... Sit
amabilis viro suo ut Rachel; sapiens ut Rebeca; longaeva et fidelus ut Sara... “
Peter Schaedl’s face turns red. He had already giving the blessing for their
life bond to dozens of young, blossoming people, but only now, when he reads the
blessing formula in front of his sister, does he become conscious of the
terrible meaning of these words. “... she should be dear to her husband, like
Rachel; wise like Rebecca; long-lived and loyal like Sara.” The three Old
Testament Jewesses Rachel, Rebecca and Sarah are supposed to be examples for his
sister?
Peter remembers precisely the places in the Bible
where these women are discussed. Rachel, whom Isaac’s son Jacob purchased for
good money aside from his other wives, and Rebecca as well as Sarah, who were
both presented by their husbands Isaac and Abraham as their sisters to other men
in the hope for great profit, these Jewesses are supposed to be an ideal for
every Catholic woman?
Any German woman would have to be ashamed to be named
with these Jewesses in the same breath, and the church recommends precisely them
at the marriage ceremony as example. Peter knows that history and literature
offer so many glorious testaments to German womanhood that it seems puzzling to
him what this debasement with Jewish ideals is supposed to mean. He no longer
understands why the more than 20,000 Catholic priests do not rebel against so
much degradation of German blood. But he knows that he himself, after all, has
gone along with it; he has often enough read aloud the same church prescribed
text and afterward pocked a nice payment for it.
For a long time Peter ponders and contemplates this
problem! He feels ever more distinctly a tension between his folk, into which he
has been born, and whose son he wants to view himself for his whole life, and
the church to which he is bound. During all his deliberations, Peter must always
think about one of the ugliest experiences of his priesthood. He had to baptize
the syphilitic child of a baptized Jewish couple shortly before it died. It was
buried like a little angle with all the honors of the church. But at the same
time, German men who had sacrificed their life in many political fights for
their folk were buried outside church-consecrated ground, without church
blessing, in the criminal section of a cemetery.
Precisely this event was suited to make Peter Schaedl
reflect most deeply.
Almost daily, this fondness for his folk, his
admiration and enthusiasm for its history brings him into conflict with the
demands of the world church. It becomes ever more clear to him that in the
doctrine of the church the folk is an empty, unreal concept.
3.
Peter Schaedl kneels at the sacrament altar of the
glorious baroque church. He has just ended his mass. It is just seven in the
morning, but he rests his head on his hands, heavy and tired, and tries to pray.
Twenty years have passed since Peter Schaedl, hardly
more than a child, came to a cloister school; he has been a priest for five
years now.
He hardly stands in the middle of life and all of
manhood with his productive energy lies before him. But Peter Schaedl is tired.
His priesthood has not solved the puzzles that his youth and study period put
upon him. For five years he has worked, prayed, hoped and waited, but the doubts
and difficulties, the struggles and puzzles have become every bigger after the
first years of priestly idealism.
He now feels like a prisoner, chained to his
profession, to consecration and his oath.
Like so often before, he now kneels before the
tabernacle in order to pray. But the longer he is a priest, the less does he
want to believe that the Almighty is supposed to be in this little wooden house,
that he lets himself be locked into this tabernacle. He cannot comprehend that
human hands can banish the Lord God in a piece of bread, the sacred wafer, and
that this miracle is in its turn dependent on whether or not the sacred meal is
baked with pure wheat flour. And are all the hundreds of rubric regulations of
the liturgy supposed to influence the transformation of the sacred wafer into
the body of Christ?
God is supposed to have sacrificed his son and through
his martyrdom saved men?
The devil had therefore gained so much power over
earth through sin that the master of heaven and earth had to have his son
crucified as a tribute to the devil in order to assure for man a life goal in
the beyond?
And this same son of God is supposed, day after day,
to be reviled and violated in the sacred wafer, day after day, by irreverent
people? And this God is so often lonely and abandoned in the tabernacle! And
when the sacred wafer in the monstrance has become old and dry and is about to
decompose, then a doubting, tormented priest must consume this body of the Lord
so that it is not dishonored by decomposition.
Peter Schaedl is supposed to believe all that not just
full of reverence and passion, rather is also supposed to convey that full of
conviction to a coming generation as clear truth.
The young priest does not spend a single day anymore
with calm and satisfaction. He cannot perform his duties for a single day
anymore with certainty and self- confidence.
Every hour, every location seems to bring with them a
new conflict. The doubts and questions add up into infinity. Even if Peter tries
to combat everything, he is pursued daily by unrest and helplessness.
Peter Schaedl can no longer bear the candlelight and
scent of incense despite all the splendor of the baroque architecture. For the
sun shines outside, and fresh nature begins a new early summer day.
He goes outside in order to once more review in his
head the lesson for the next school class. But everything that he has put
together from books and pamphlets for this day slips his memory. He knows that
this time he can only talk about one thing in class: About God’s working and
ruling in glorious nature, about the beauty of the flowers and grasses, about
the manifoldness of plants and animals, about the greatness of the sun and
stars, about the laws that all nature obeys, and about the Almighty who stands
over everything.
It goes like that then ever more frequently for the
young religion teacher and pulpit speaker. He is supposed to talk about whatever
dogmatic doctrine of the church, and he no longer finds his own way through
theology.
He is thereby compelled either to be dishonest by
presenting with great pathos something in which he himself does not totally
believe; or he must return to the fundamental, basic truth of natural belief in
God and preach general truths that go beyond church and Bible.
In this condition, Peter feels more and more than
within the great circle of the church he represents a loner, a straying person.
Once he was close to coming to terms with all the
existing facts. He almost got to the point of giving up all pondering and
researching. Once he was ready to accept the church, the Bible, his profession
and his present life as unchangeable facts, simply to teach what was in the
books, to live life according to the guidelines of Catholic morality and to
strike to the ground all doubts as well as inner stirrings.
Peter knows how quickly he would have soon reconciled
himself with this condition, how he would have unnoticeably become satisfied and
peaceful, and how easy it would have been to be pious.
Back then, it was his young Catholic circle of friends
and an essay written by him against satiation and laziness which again and again
shook him out of his slackness and again pulled him into the inescapable
struggle.
For years, the young priest has been praying, day
after day, Hebrew psalms in the Latin language, stories and poems from Jewish
literature, wise judgement by Salomon, terrible and amazing legends from early
Christianity and the Middle
Ages, between them invocations and rogations. And this
is how he is supposed to spend his whole hour, two hours each day, with prayers
with foreign content and in foreign language?
According to the letters of the law, all that is
required for the validity of the breviary prayer is that it is prayed with the
lips; inner participation is not formally demanded. Many colleagues satisfy in
this manner the paragraphs of the law in one hour. But Peter Schaedl also knows
of conscientious priests who torment themselves daily for four or five hours
with the content of the breviary.
Day after day, the young priest Peter Schaedl prays
for the spread of the Catholic religion, for the conversion of the heathen, for
the humiliation and destruction of all enemies of the Catholic church. He prays
that all nations and folks should bow before the throne of the sole
representative of God on earth, before the Holy Father in Rome.
While Peter so asks his God to subjugate his folk, the
German folk, as well to the power of the Pope, this folk is at the same time
subjugated and hated by other likewise Christian folks. And the Catholic priests
and statesmen are at the top of the government and are themselves even the
forerunners of the enemies of his folk. But the father of Christianity is silent
about this.
4.
Peter Schaedl sees a new breed develop in his folk, he
sees around him people, young and older, possessed by a faith in and a great
love for their homeland and their fatherland, people who are full of reverence
for their soil and their blood, and who are ready to fight full of passion for
their great ideals.
The church excommunicates these idealists, and the
political bailiffs of the church create in the radiant fighters martyrs of a new
movement.
Often, Peter would like – instead of his Latin
breviary prayer – to jubilantly join in with the German fighting songs that
again and again reach his ear from the street. But he fears he will never be
able to do it, he will never in his life have an opportunity to be able to stand
among the people of this new breed, for the church, after all, has condemned the
idea that shapes these songs as heresy. He fears that for his whole life he
will, with tied hands, have to observe his folk’s development on the sidelines
of all events and hence neither inwardly nor outwardly be allowed to participate
in the new growth.
In the residence of his superior, Peter meets the
mother of one of his pupils just as a troop of boys marches through the street
proud and happy. Peter silently stands at the window and looks at the boys, when
the spiritual superior proclaims with great pathos “Poor misled youth!” as he
again closes the window curtain in front of Peter.
Hardly has be spoken the words when the woman breaks
out in tears, for her child belongs to this youth, which she knows is not
recognized by the church.
Peter would like to now intervene, to speak a manly
word for this youth and thereby perhaps comfort the woman. But as a priest, he
may not, after all, he cannot take the side of this heresy.
Peter’s fellow brothers and superiors apparently
gradually notice his silent sympathy for the people and the movement that
created the new idea, for they miss no opportunity to issue blows, to prick and
to throw stones; everything is done in order to make the good cause bad. This
behavior by his colleagues, however, only makes the young priest ponder even
more deeply, drives him to become better acquainted with the ideas, the leaders
and the members of this movement.
What he here hears and sees, what he reads, has such a
familiar tone to it, seems to him so natural, self-evident and enlightening.
Peter believes he sees his own thoughts in all the thinking, and in everything
that he hearts, feels and experiences, he thinks he feels a piece of himself, of
his life. A new ray of hope, a new goal has hereby come into Peter’s daily life
and work, into his contemplation and striving. Now he believes it must be an
easy matter to inwardly refresh the church and to purify it from the slag of its
former politics, so that it can then form a union with the new spirit and both
can fight jointly for the final goal of the Almighty.
Some time still passes with Peter genuinely believing
in his view. But then he must experience that the church does not want to
concede its claim to infiltration and domination of public life and does not
want to share it with anybody. The new movement, however, also raises the claim
to want to reform all of public life based on the new spirit.
5.
At his place of work, the searching young priest one
day talks with a fellow brother who has the reputation of special piety.
“You are a very pious priest”, he tells him in the
course of the conversation, “but you lack joy in the church.”
These words suffice for Peter Schaedl, he does not ask
anything more, these words alone make everything clear to him. It almost fills
him with inner defiance and bestows upon him a combative pride. So now he
prefers to be pious and to do without joy in the church.
From this point in time onward, Peter Schaedl examines
all measures, institutions and doctrines of the church with the sharpest
criticism. Now Peter closely examines everything in his daily life. Almost like
lightning bolts, ever new realizations reveal themselves to him. Everywhere he
encounters vagueness, discord, dishonesty, tears and breeches in the world of
the church.
More and more, the confession stool becomes his
greatest torment. He is deeply ashamed when gray-haired men confess their most
hidden thoughts, when married women tell him the most intimate things from their
marriage and uncorrupted youth constructs a sin from their natural stirrings.
With a Latin formula, he, as God’s representative, is supposed to absolve them
of all real and imagined sins!
All the miracles of church history, which were
previously the full truth to him, sink down into unreal legends. He feels it a
deception of pious people when several bodies and numerous heads of the saints
and the most impossible relics are revered.
He finds the hypocrisy of church morality ever more
repugnant.
The dogmatism with its hair-splitting dissection of
God’s essence seems to him a lack of reverence toward the Almighty.
Day by day, step by step, in hundreds of diverse
forms, the priest encounters the senselessness, mistakes and shortcomings of the
world in which he had previously lived. Piece by piece, his belief system, his
views, peal away. Blow by blow, everything that was previously for him truth,
genuineness and sacred collapses, down to the basic foundation of his faith, the
firm belief in a higher power.
But one thing appears to the young priest as the
pinnacle of the arrogance and the strongest proof against the inner genuineness
of the church.
When Peter Schaedl often gazes at the stars in the
night sky, admires their greatness and at the same time ponders the endless
worlds that seem so tiny in the sky and are yet so infinitely larger than the
broad lands and seas spanning the globe, or if he in daytime looks up at the
shining chain of visible mountains, then he is full of reverence and admiration
for the great God who created nature and gave his eternal laws to everything on
the earth.
Peter is deeply ashamed, when he thinks that he puts
on colorful clothes and presents himself as representative of this his mighty
God and professionally, for good money, dispenses to the people the grace of
this great, eternal God. In such moments he feels himself a swindler, a
deceiver, a con man toward God and people.
6.
The decision of life comes fatefully. Straight and
rigid, hard and defiant, Peter Schaedl runs into this fate.
He rebels against a spiritual superior who is ready to
stomp on the honor of his folk, because the church stands above his folk for
him.
The church court sentences Peter to cloister arrest
for his unpriestly behavior. Peter Schaedl refuses obedience.
The church suspends and excommunicates him.
Peter Schaedl’s priest life is over. For fifteen years
he has prepared himself for this priesthood. For five years he has honestly
tried to live it, and the world in which he had lived for twenty years has
finally collapsed in ruin. What was so dear to him, what he had fought, suffered
and prayed for so long, what had become his most sacred ideal, what he over the
course of time put his whole heart into, what seemed sacred and inviolable to
him, that has now collapsed, that no longer exists in his life. Now he is no
longer God’s representative, no longer venerable, rather the quite ordinary
Peter Schaedl.
Since the church’s verdict has been issued, since the
priest has been expelled form the community of the sole grace-dispensing church,
he is suddenly seized by a strange feeling of loneliness. Shaken, Peter looks
behind the ruins of his former life and his ideals, and front of him he sees a
void, a chaos, a darkness and terrible abandonment.
In the following period, Peter constantly wanders
about, hunted and pursued. Many of the fellow brothers and other pious Christian
feel obligated to mock and ridicule him from the pulpit and in letters as a
traitor or Judas. Numerous anonymous letters threaten him with revenge, shame,
distress and misery. Yes, even his imminent murder is threatened. The end and
the meaning of all these threats and defamation is always the same: Peter
Schaedl should himself get a rope and hang himself on the next tree like Judas
in order to escape an even worse death and to fulfill his fate as quickly as
possible.
For Peter’s family members, his step is the most
severe blow. They cannot understand him. For them, he has now fallen to the
devil forever. Peter’s former fellow brothers, the priests of the church, do
their part in order to portray the priest’s fall as contemptibly as possible to
the family members. “It was probably a frivolous woman”, they declare, boosting.
The pious mother wishes her son were dead; she would prefer that over
experiencing this shame and to have to call a fallen priest her son. Day and
night, the woman cries her eyes red and does not know what to do. She no longer
ever dares to go onto the street, because she is ashamed to show herself there.
Peter Schaedl knows this, and it pains him more than many other things.
Despised, cast off, hated and scorned, at most still
pitied a little by the people who were previously dear to him, who stood close
to him, with whom he had walked for 20 years of his life, now he stands before
an unknown fate and is compelled at first to look around for a little bread and
work. He knows that many a former priest must sell newspaper or shoelaces on
street corners, beg a living as travelling salesmen without any experience,
spend their lives as miners and helpers in factories and at construction sites.
That will now become his fate as well.
7.
Day and night, Peter Schaedl is tormented by unrest
and worry, and they often drive him close to desperation. One cold winter night
he wanders, again starving and freezing, along the bank of the broad river. He
continues on the street that leads between the water and the train tracks.
Off to the side, a few hours distant, lies the
cloister that was supposed to serve his recovery. Only mechanically does he
still put one foot in front of the other. Is not his whole life blown? Is he not
on the wrong track, from which there is no return to the right path? Would it
not be best to get rid of himself, now, since his whole life has become
meaningless?
Peter is gripped by a terrible temptation: To now
plunge himself into the sweeping river and leave everything behind him; or
should he even go over to the train tracks, perhaps that is a faster death?
Or should he penitently knock on the nearby cloister
door and, in silent peace, lead his young life to a perhaps no longer distant
death? –Peter Schaedl stops on the lonely road, for his reason and his heart do
not want to go on given all the confusion and desperation.
But then he gains clarity. Now that he stands at the
lowest point in his life, his conscience tells him quite clearly that he must
not become cowardly now. He would do the greatest favor for the world he has
escaped, if he would now give up the fight. He must dare the path into the
future, as unclear and vague as it may be. He feels that this path must
somewhere and someday lead into the new time, whose traces he previously more
surmised than recognized.
With the firm decision to fight on, his
self-confidence also grows.
Meanwhile, Peter Schaedl has asked himself during the
past weeks, whether he is not indeed that unworthy, despicable Judas as such he
has been reviled and hated. But then he must again and again think about his
former fellow brothers, and he reflects again on how they put up with their
priesthood in reality.
8.
Peter Schaedl remembers his fellow brother Alois
Pfandl, the upright chaplain. Since the time when he, as a little Latin pupil in
the cloister school, became acquainted with him, he has always remained equally
dry and calm, equally immobile and well-behaved. During his student period he
had to work hard, but thanks to his diligence he had it to the Abitur
examination. But in the theological college, his piety was valued more highly
than his test scores. Whatever he found in the learned theological books, he
always memorized without any deliberation and further reflection. He always told
himself: More intelligent people have written that, it will be true, even if I
do not understand it. So he did not have any doubts in his faith. As a priest he
can present all the church’s doctrines without second thought in sermons and
classes to children and adults full of conviction. Natural stirrings and
feelings are not very strong in him, so priestly chastity does not cause him any
difficulties, and he feels as little bound to folk and homeland as to any
individual human being. Peter Schaedl knows that his former fellow brother is an
honest, pious, good priest, but has little understanding for a struggle such as
his own, just as he cannot envy him for his peaceful priestly happiness.
Peter also remembers his former classmate Bonifaz
Seldbauer, who in school actually always possessed the most knowledge and who
simultaneously also combined his reason with artistic tendencies. He composed
flowery verses and played first violin in the school orchestra. Among the
singers, he was the soloist, and he received instruction from the school’s best
piano teacher. He spent at least half of his free periods in the house chapel in
prayer, confessed weekly and took communion every day.
But even the smallest Latin pupils talked mockingly
about the temptations of pious Seldbauer. One time the religion teacher said
that if one has such unchaste thoughts, one should say a silent prayer and
caress one’s face and eyes with the hand, and then the temptations would go
away. Since then, one saw Seldbauer for weeks with a bitter expression at every
occasion, in games and eating, at prayer or study, caressing his eyes with his
hand, until the superiors finally became aware due to the general laughter of
the boys and enlightened the thirteen year old boy.
The present city priest Bonifaz Seldbauer has not
changed. The human being within him is in a bitter struggle with the priest. He
wrestles day after day with doubts in faith arising from his reason, he tortures
himself in order to be able to honestly proclaim the truth from the pulpit, and
believes after every sermon again that he cannot face his conscience.
In many a conversation with Peter Schad’, he revealed
his innermost to his friend of back then, and confessed that German blood and
natural feeling also lived within him. But the young preacher cannot and will
not betray the great supra- governmental idea to which he has sworn an oath, and
so he consumes and torments himself in inner conflict and discord, destroys
himself body and soul, and forces the souls entrusted to him into the same inner
distortion and servitude.
The ascetic city preacher is much admired, and few
days pass without a greeting or attention from young girls and women who seek to
express their admiration for him.
Again and again, the young priest feels spellbound by
the pious female souls and feels drawn to them as human beings, just to again
appear to himself afterward as a base, unworthy cleric slain by the devil.
Peter Schaedl knows that this priest, his former
friend, will now swing between understanding and hatred toward him as well. But
he still only has deep regret for this poor, restless priest.
Peter thinks back to a shocking experience that he had
with auxiliary cleric Huber from the neighboring parish of his homeland.
It was on the day when Peter returned home from his
worker-student period sunburned. The young theology student had described his
peat-cutting job to the twenty years older spiritual guide. During that
conversation, he had replied: “Still, it’s a nicer job than our pigsty work as
priests.” At first, the young student had taken this for a bad joke, and the
auxiliary cleric had explained: “I have been a priest for fifteen years now.
Back then, I did not know otherwise, when I had myself consecrated as a priest.
But then I quickly became acquainted with the swindle. And then one simply
cannot get away. Then it is too late. One has given one’s sacred oath, and as a
sacrifice of the great God, one gradually lands daily in deception and swindle
and in incessant filthiness. You are still young; you can still escape this
misery; if you find no other occupation, then remain a navvy, and you will be
happier for your whole life than you could ever be as priest or bishop!”
Peter was deeply shocked back then. But his superiors
managed to interpret the priest’s words to him as the talk of a sick man.
Since this time, Peter Schaedl has become acquainted
with several similar priests, who – suffering or laughing – have accepted that
their future life is a swindle, that they must in their life and work deceive
both themselves as well as the faithful. He knows many a theologian who speaks
of poverty and simultaneously enriches himself through usury, theft and
deception, who preaches chastity and secretly gives in to the vice, who gives
the appearance of humility, but is a tyrant in reality. In his memory, Peter
Schaedl has all his former fellow brothers pass before him, and his thoughts
remain on one of the last, Alfons Pfeil, his roommate at the university.
He had never concerned himself much with religious
problems and dogmatic issues. And his piety was not exactly exemplary. For him,
the church was the great religious power to which he had prescribed and for
whose political and world- view goals he blindly and fanatically fought.
Personal ambition and action for his idea – as so often for cold, rational
people – flowed together in one current. So Alfons Pfeil became a skilled and
well-known diplomat of his church already at an early age, so did many others
become equally fanatical professors, editors, club leaders or organizers in
priest robes or even bishop.
All of them are somehow similar to these types,
without one doing them an injustice, all, with whom Peter Schaedl had once been
a priest.
He certainly did not have to be ashamed before God and
himself, before a naturally thinking world and posterity, because he has broken
out of their ranks.
9.
There are still difficult months that Peter must
overcome, months of worry about himself and his family members, months of inner
loneliness and abandonment, of searching and wrestling. His health has been
severely impaired by the past years of emotional struggles. Now that the inner
decision been made and the emotional tensions have dissolved, the body does not
want to hold out. He is very ill for a long time.
The church leaves him to his distress.
After months, he finally receives an admonishment from
the General Vicar to repent.
He does not answer the letter.
Another admonishment follows with a reference to the
punishment of hell, to which he is condemned until Judgement Day. His former
superiors believe that he had meanwhile become tired enough due to distress and
misery and stands at the abyss so that he is again susceptible to church
influence.
But after his difficult struggle, Peter no longer has
any fear of hell. A new, serious letter from the church officials comes, in
which he is admonished to think of the tears of his mother and sisters.
Peter thinks more intensely than at any other time,
almost hourly, about home and his mother; he suffers more from her tears than
any bishop can imagine.
Nonetheless, the church does not give up the attempt
to win back the apostate. It promises merciful forgiveness and reinstatement in
his profession, it offers the prospect of the most tempting positions, it takes
many other paths in order to re- conquer for itself the fallen away priest in
whom it had placed the greatest hope, or at last to neutralize him for all time.
Among many other letters, which are more or less
meaningless to the young, former priest, he receives a letter from his former
religion teacher, who up until recently might have been able to still say and to
mean something important to him, but which – in these, his inwardly most
victorious days – only touch him as a human being.
The priest writes: “Dear Young Fried, I write you,
trembling, from my death bed. I was operated on a few days ago and my condition
is hopeless. According to the doctor’s opinion, my life will end in a few days.
I hence already half stand in the beyond. Take my words as a greeting from the
other world. In the forty years of my work, you were one of my very best pupils.
Your knowledge, your piety and your sunny nature made be expect for you a
glorious career in the service of our sacred mother, the church. My death hour,
however, is now darkened, because precisely you have taken a false path. You
could transfigure my death through your repentance. Standing with one foot in
the grave, I ask you for that.”
Peter Schaedl wants to forget the church. He has,
admittedly, not yet completely overcome it, but everything drives him away from
it. He wants to build a new world for himself and begin a new life.
Part Five
The laws of nature are the laws of God. To live
according to them, is service to God and highest obligation at the same time.
To celebrate the marriages of nature is the holiest
celebration.
1.
Everything that the hatred of an intolerant priest
caste can think up has been tasted by Peter Schaedl, the former priest.
Distress, misery, defamation, outlawing, mockery, scorn, contempt – all that he
has had to experience and endure daily in new form again and again.
If he had not rescued his faith in God from the ruins
of his collapsed world, he would have probably perished body and soul.
Peter now feels much closer to this God than at the
most solemn times of his former life. Now he does not need to take a detour via
church and sacraments and no mediation via bishops and Pope, if he wants to know
that his relationship with the Almighty is in order; he is no longer separated
from him by cannon and rubric regulations.
For him, God is the essence of everything great,
mighty, beautiful, sublime and good. Whether this God is portrayed personally or
impersonally, whether one defines him so or differently, any dogmatic
formulation or theological determination of the highest power no longer touches
him today, him, who a decade ago debated the most subtle dogmatic debates with
such zeal.
Peter understands that a folk that is strong and
mighty due to its great historical past, and that lives in closest bond with
mighty nature and possesses the deepest, personal values, can also only have the
very greatest concept of God.
Many representatives of other churches woe Peter
Schaedl in this period and ask him to build a great movement of the fallen away
within the Catholic clergy. But he is just as little interested in another
church as he knows a hatred against the Catholic church.
In the beginning, since he was still under the
influence of his impending annihilation, he often believed that he would have to
hate and curse the church and all its represents for his whole life, because he
had been robbed of his youth and his ideals.
But now the church is so distant for him; he feels so
free of it that he no longer needs to hate it. He views it as a historical
event.
For about a thousand years, the church had served
broad circles of the German folk as a substitute for the natural belief in God
and played a mediator role between people and their Lord God. Great Germans have
expressed their wisdom and their artistic energies in the church’s language of
forms. Full of reverence, he observes the works created on church commission;
but at the same time, he feels the painful wounds that the church has inflicted
on the German folk during the long centuries.
But Peter now sees a time dawning in which the priests
must step back behind the true God himself, in which the church must step into
the background from its previous position, because Germans again hear,
understand and speak God’s voice, the voice of their blood, within themselves.
Peter now sees in the church only a transitory tool of
the creator that has fulfilled its task and now, relieved by a new era, is
silently set aside.
During this time Peter receives a letter from his
mother that is filled with a question that is constantly tormenting her: “Is it
true, what they say, that you want to erect a new faith and a new religion?”
He can clearly give his mother the liberating answer:
“No, my heart belongs to the one, old, indestructible belief in God, which every
German carries in his heart in one form or another. This God has set down his
laws in the laws of life. They are sacred to me and will obligate me for my
whole life.”
Peter Schaedl immerses himself ever deeper into these
laws of life; into those that were valid millennia ago and will be valid in
millennia. He meets those fighters for whom during his priesthood he could
summon up only a silent, deep admiration. But now he joins the ranks of these
men, who victoriously carry the difficult struggle into the foremost ranks of
the German folk, in order to then make it proud, free, happy and mighty again
before the whole world.
Peter finds the completion of his thoughts in the
words of these people; in their deeds he sees the most glorious fulfillment of
his life.
Peter experiences that fathers and mothers are the
most natural mediums to God for their children, he notices that those men who
are the leaders of their folk simultaneously feel responsible for this folk
before God. Peter himself feels that the celebrations of the annual cycle and
the great historical days of remembrance are simultaneously hours of celebration
close to God, and that the sunny festive places of people are simultaneously
their sacred sites.
It required a truly difficult and long path before
Peter gained this view. Whoever has walked for twenty years through the school
of the church, as priest or monk, carries the seal of that world burned deep
into body and soul, even if he has long since set aide cowl and tonsure.
At first, Peter had to fight against a wall of
distrust. Often he thought he would never be able to find his way back into the
life of the folk; then he believed that nature had totally expelled and cursed
him, because he had acted against its laws for so long.
When he frequently encountered, joyful, happy,
laughing youth, he was totally demoralized in view of the bitter feeling that in
twenty years so much had been destroyed for him. Because he took his profession
so sincerely and seriously, he had to fight against all naturalness. His
original tendencies had been stomped into the ground. He had to renounce his
fresh youthful nature in order to become an eternally serious, reserved, young
oldster always pouring over problems.
Only gradually did Peter find the path to his folk.
This is harder for him that he had experienced, and a lot of time passes before
he has found it fully and with all its consequences. Previously, the church was
the closest and highest thing for him, and feeling for another energy, a bond
with anything else, was not allowed to exist.
That was the first great thing that Peter had to
learn, that God first put him into his folk, that he shares the same blood with
each member, that the same talents and burdens bind him to this folk, and that
he must stand by it always.
He had to comprehend that the highest law is the
obligation toward the German folk, with which the chain of his ancestors binds
him, and that all moral responsibility results from it.
Within his priest activity, Peter had become
acquainted with many people who know nothing about an obligation, people who –
totally imprisoned in an oriental world – ignore all order, all laws, all human
honor, right and life.
The great time and its people however, now make it
easy for him to absorb the new basic laws into his affirmation of faith and of
life. They show him noble, straight, honest and kind people, who give him firm
support and a mighty certainly, so that he no longer needs to search for
evidence for the correctness of his path.
So the former Catholic priest Peter gradually builds a
new world for himself. He works and produces. It is a silent, little work, which
he is allowed to perform somewhere in the life of his folk, hidden and yet
within the framework of the totality as a great work.
It is this work that step by step leads him back into
real life and lets him stride ever more straight and genuine upon the tracks of
naturalness and life joy.
Through this tenacious, silent work at his modest
place, Peter again becomes a living member of his folk.
He feels joyful, free and happy, happier than ever
before in his life. Unambiguous and clear, he again sees everything that is
great, beautiful and good in the world, and, above all, he feels so close to the
working of the great God.
2.
Like at the shore of the infinite sea, a rustling and
surging goes through the hundreds of thousands of people who stand under the
night sky on the great meadow, assembled in columns four abreast.
German forest surrounds the broad square, and on one
side the glistening of the great dike is visible between the trees, in which the
moon and the stars are reflected. In the distance one sees the lights of the
city. The front of the broad meadow is formed by a mighty pillared building.
Almost like a mighty altar, it juts gigantic into the dark sky.
Then the monumental building suddenly radiates
blinding white in shining light, and - above the great meadow and the people - a
cathedral is created by countless beams of light. After many hundreds of meters,
this canopy of cathedral light is united with the stars of the sky.
Devout silence lies over the broad field; hundreds of
thousands hold their breath. The symbols of the folk, symbols of faith and life,
are carried ahead. The blood red flags sweep like wandering blazes along the
infinite rows of people.
The hundreds of thousands sing a song. This song is
simultaneously jubilation, gratitude and prayer.
What the man of the folk says, that is what each one
of the vast crowd of people also wants to feel and say at this moment.
They stand there close together, peasants, workers,
soldiers, officials, scholars, men, women and children from all classes and of
every age. Every eye glistens with emotion, and each feels that since a folk has
come together again, no one stands alone anymore, rather each belongs to the
next, even if he does not know him. Each feels within himself the blood current
of his folk, for this short hour leads each of these people millennia back and
millennia forward.
Hundreds of thousands experience this hour like Peter
Schaedl. All feel the same that an old era has collapsed, that a folk has burst
its chains and assembles free, happy and devout for the march into new
millennia, obeying God’s law!
