Priest Power

by Albert Hartl

 

Publisher’s Introduction

 

Priest Power is translated from the Third Reich original Priestermacht by Anton Holzner (Anton Holzner was the pseudonym used by SS-Sturmbannführer Albert Hartl.)

 

Holzner here describes and condemns the methods, both political and psychological, used by the most diverse priesthoods for their own purposes as well as the unnaturalness of some religious doctrines.

 

The Emergence of Priest Power in Germany

 

For millennia the German tribes lived according to the laws God’s order of creation showed them. They shaped their life in the close bond to great and glorious nature, with the stars in the sky, with the endless sea and the deep forests. Their greatest pride was to always act honestly toward friends and foes, true to the hereditary nobility of their blood.

 

That a God ruled in and over the world was self-evident to our ancestors. Nature, life and history showed them day by day the traces of the divine. They felt especially close to the Almighty during the festivals of the annual cycle, at summer and winter solstice, and spring and autumn harvest, on the holidays of the clan, at happy events and in the serious and difficult hours. The oldest clan members and the tribal chiefs also represented the community entrusted to them before God.

 

The holy places of nature and of the festival grounds of the folk were simultaneously also the places for their plain, natural religious service. Long, formal prayers and unnatural cult ceremonies were alien to them. They expressed their relationship with their Lord God with a few words and natural symbols. They did not feel like slaves toward him, after all. For them, he was much more their great, good friend. But they also knew that they could not force his help with magical means, rather that they could only then expect God’s help, if they themselves concentrated all their energy.

 

But much has slackened over the course of the millennia in this natural life- structure of the Germanic world. Much that was clear has become dull and much that was fresh has become rotten.

 

In the period of the fourth to the fourteenth century A.D. - through the church – a foreign world penetrated our folk’s life and permeated it more and more with its spirit.

 

Under the influence of the New Testament doctrine of Jesus, the church separated itself from Old Testament Jewry. The church began its special life as a Jewish sect. Its apostles and priests originally still celebrated the cult festivals with their believers in the synagogues in harmony with the Jews.

 

Back then, influences – in part still intertwined today – of other oriental doctrines flowed together with the flood of North African spiritual bearing into the structure of doctrine of the so-called church fathers, with the world of faith of Christianity gradually assuming its independent, firm forms.

 

The actual scientific foundation for the oriental-African world was then supplied by Greek philosophy. Plato and Aristotle, as different as both are, became the chief witnesses of the new church theology and have remained so to this day.

 

If the church wanted to conquer the world of that time, it had to go to Rome. Certainly, at first the Christians could only lead an illegal existence as burial and funeral associations. But the few centuries of their illegal existence in Rome was for the church simultaneously the most fruitful learning years in its whole history. The church took the whole apparatus of its own hierarchy and communal order from the radiant juristic structure and the excellent organization of the Roman world.

 

The church embarked on its campaigns of conquest in the world of that time with this mixture of Asia Minor’s and North Africa’s view of life and of the beyond, of Greece’s philosophical teachings and the strength of the organization of the Roman world empire.

 

The doctrine of the salvation of people from the world’s sinful, valley of woe to a better beyond had to form the foundation for the erection of a priest rule precisely over this world.

 

The North African Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, supplied with his publication “De civitate dei” (“Of the God-State”) the most important building-blocks for this priest empire and simultaneously showed in his publication “De doctrina christiana” (“Of the Christian Doctrine”) the best methods for the propaganda of this God-State. It took almost a millennium until the church had the Germanic world almost totally under its external power. It worked toward that with the most manifold methods. But it has never succeeded in the total inner Christianization of Germans. Nonetheless, it will always have to be acknowledged in the history of the German folk that the German tribes found external union in a Reich under the firm bond of a strict church organization placed by the church over the Reich of Karl the Great [aka Charlemagne]

 

The contrasts between Germanic and church world led to the centuries lasting conflict between German Kaiserdom and the Roman Popedom, between kings and priests. In these conflicts, the church made use of the most important forgeries in world history, which have become known under the name pseudo- Isidorian decretals and Constantinian donations. The papal church in the whole Middle Ages built its claims for rule toward Kaiserdom, above all, on the Constantinian donation. According to this falsified document, Kaiser Constantine was supposed to have bestowed all rule over the cities and lands of the occident to the Pope in the fourth century and limited himself to power in the orient. Today even the most zealous and talented church scientists must admit the fact of these forgeries.

 

Although numerous schisms had taken place in the orient, although, above all, a large occidental church had separated from the Roman church, protests against clerical priest rule became ever louder especially in the Germanic region. They finally took place in the Reformation, which through its depth is separated by a whole world from oriental sectarianism and from the great eastern religious schism.

 

This Germanic protest against the Roman Church also did not, admittedly, bring the return to God’s natural laws. But it showed the way to a further decline of priest power. Today it is splintered in hundreds of sects and church groups. The ground is again free for the life-order prepared by Providence, for the healthy further development of God’s work of creation.

 

In the life of folks, millennia often play a tiny role. Seen from this view, denominationalism resembles a healing poison that clots the forces of decay in the Germanic world and stimulates the natural forces of the blood to new work and development. Germans can now put aside this poison with gratitude toward Providence. It has fulfilled its task and again brought recovery; further use could lead to death.

 

The Political Doctrine of Denominationalism

 

At this time, two large churches and about 300 small sects exist in Germany. All these denominations have their central in Rome, Oxford, Boston or somewhere else outside the Reich.

 

All members of the respective denominations are brothers among themselves, regardless, whether they are by race Jews, Negroes, Slays or Chinese. The race problem is solved for the church through baptism. Through the water of baptism, the Jew and Negro can become brothers with any church-faithful Nordic or other race person.

 

The person living totally by the laws of the order of creations feels himself, on the other hand, obligated first of all to his folk comrades.

 

He knows that God has placed him in a specific folk, with which he is, inwardly and outwardly, totally and unconditionally bound. The natural, folkish world thereby clearly and distinctly contrasts to the churchly, universalistic, supra- governmental world. One can best visualize the whole, unbridgeable chasm, which separates both these views from each other, if one considers that for a believing Catholic a syphilitic Negro child, if it has been baptized, must be worth much more than a – racially in every way highly valuable – child, that has not had the water of baptism poured over it.

 

For the church believers, the laws of the church are the highest norms and mean the most sacred obligation for them. Any other law is only valid insofar as it does not stand in contradiction to the laws of the church. Any oath is only binding, if it can be reconciled with the regulations of church morality.

 

The violation of state regulations can hence, from the standpoint of the folkish state, be a crime, and from the standpoint of the church a pleasing to God, yes, even a sacred obligation.

 

The preacher who agitates against state regulations from his pulpit, the monks and nuns who damage the public wealth by millions through their currency smuggling, feel themselves in their conscience completely free of guilt. They have performed a service to the church through their actions. And if they receive the punishment due them according to the state laws, they feel themselves as martyrs of the church and not as pests of the folk.

 

According to the Reich concordat of July 20, 1933, the bishops swear an oath of loyalty to the Reich before the representative of the state. At the same time, they swear in the hand of the Pope’s representative the so-called bishop’s oath, through which they obligate themselves to promote and increase the Pope’s power, and to the best of their ability to persecute and combat all false doctrines, heretics, all who resist the Pope’s power.

 

They swear both oaths with a clear conscience, because the oath of loyalty toward their folk only obligates them, after all, insofar as it does not stand in contradiction to the oath of loyalty toward the Pope. According to the church view, the official, the lawyer, the soldier and the worker – in his whole bearing and his manner of action – is ultimately bound to the regulations of his church morality. For the folkish person, there can be only one obligation, which is placed upon him by the law of his blood, the obligation toward his folk.

 

A Catholic customs official, for example, who is inwardly a convinced follower of his doctrine, must come into an inner conflict, if he is supposed to hinder a Catholic nun from currency smuggling. A police official, who may be convinced of the doctrine of a Bible researcher, must try to protect and cover the anti-state activity of this sect by every means.

 

Even state leadership itself is, according to the church view, bound to church morality in all its measures.

 

A state leadership that does not totally submit to the doctrines of Catholicism, the Protestant front of faith, the Adventists or some other religious community, will be rejected and combatted by the representatives of this church or sect.

 

So the Catholic Church fundamentally claims for itself the right to depose heads of state who stand in opposition to the church, and down to the present time it has also achieved this claim several times.

 

The churches and sects raise the claim that they must permeate and fill with their spirit all spheres of public life, of economic, cultural and political life. They raise a claim of totality in all spheres of life.

 

The churches and sects claim that ultimately the decision must belong to them, which publications may be made public, which creations of art are reconcilable with their moral bearing and are hence acceptable for the public, which films and radio programs are desirable and allowed.

 

The most diverse church leaderships have hence employed their own commissions and work groups for censorship of press and magazines, for work  in film and radio programs, for the arts. In the same manner, according to the church view, all spheres of science stand under the strict censorship of the church hierarchy.

 

The churches raise the same claim in the economic sphere. Pope Leo XIII., for example, and Pope Pius XI have issued explicit guidelines to the faithful about the ordering of economic life from the Catholic perspective. Ultimately, according to these demands, every economic order must be somehow adapted to God’s kingdom, which, according to view of the respective priesthood, is realized in their church.

 

The churches demand that the youth in the schools are not only given religious instructions in the church doctrines; they also demand that the youth – in history class, homeland class, German class –should become acquainted with German nature, German history and German homeland from the Catholic, Evangelic, Baptist or whatever perspective.

 

From the standpoint of the folkish worldview, the whole shaping of all life spheres should primarily consider the well-being of the folk, must therefore above all be guided by the natural laws of blood and not by the norms of a supra- governmental power.

 

The deep chasm between denominational life and folkish life then expresses itself in the different view of the individual manifestations and things of this life.

 

According to the church view, this life is a valley of woe from which man is supposed to save himself in a better beyond.

 

Every Catholic priest, for example, must after every mass recite a prayer, in which it is stated: “To you we cry, we miserable children of Eve, to you we sob, mourning and crying in this valley of tears.”

 

The naturally thinking person is pleased with this life, stubbornly clings tight to it and puts himself with both feet in this life. When he wanders through God’s wonderful creation and experiences the mountains and forests and lakes of his homeland, he is proud of this homeland, which is sacred ground to him. Then he stands silent full of admiration before the omnipotence of the divine, then he is happy and glad, and does not have the feeling that he strides through a valley of woe.

 

Work, according to the church view, is a result of the original sin of the first human beings, Adam and Eve. It weighs like a curse on the human being.

 

For a German there can be nothing more beautiful and nothing more great than to be allowed to employ the whole strength of his personality in tenacious   work for his family, his folk and his homeland. If he creates something great, then he is far from the thought that he has carried out this work under the curse of original sin.

 

From the hereditary nobility of his blood, Nordic man comes to the special emphasis of honor in his moral bearing. The concept of honor is one of the most important aspects of life-formation. Therefore, the honor of fellow man also means a lot to him. It is hence a basic trait of human leadership among Nordic men that they likewise seek to make those entrusted to their leadership proud, free, honor- conscious members of the folk community.

 

The church world works in the exact opposite direction. With the help of original sin and fear of hell, with the help of confession and sermon, people are kept small and base and cowed by the priesthood. The feeling is bred in people by every means that they are pitiful, inferior and guilt-laden earthworms.

 

The contrast between the church and folkish word shows itself in a similar manner in all spheres, in the attitude toward joy and life, in the position on woman, in the position on family and marriage, war and peace etc..

 

The church claims the shaping of private and public life, in every area, based on its bearing.

 

German man guides himself in everything according to the life-laws given him by God. For him the divine is thereby a component of his life-view. He advances no doctrines and dogmas about the beyond, because nobody can pronounce sure facts about it. But he also contests the right claimed by the church servants that they possess special jurisdiction and special knowledge about the beyond. Hence there is no debate doctrines of the beyond for him. All the more clearly and distinct can he replace the political-worldview doctrines of the church will his own worldview corresponding to the laws of creation.

 

The Power System of Catholicism

 

The various churches and sects possess an organization tested in centuries, which they have to the greatest part taken over from the old Roman Imperium and expanded into a mighty system of power.

 

This system of power is without doubt most dense and effective in the Catholic Church.

 

At the head of the world power stands the Pope. He is the ruler over the whole church. He presents himself to his believers as God’s sole representative on earth and claims for himself infallibility in all matters of faith and morality. Since practically all things in life can somehow be brought into connection with faith and morality, his infallibility thus extends into all spheres of life.

 

The first great net of the Pope’s coworkers, which runs through the world, is the thick net of the church hierarchy, the church priesthood. Basically, only bachelors can belong to the federation of priests.

 

Individually, the church distinguishes between a consecration hierarchy and a government hierarchy. The consecration hierarchy contains four lower grades, an intermediate grade and three higher grades. Through certain ceremonies - for example, cutting off the hair cluster on the back of the head by a bishop - one is accepted into this consecration hierarchy. Over the course of their history, the four lower grades have lost their original special significance. They only have a formal character and are called Ostiarait (Office of the Door-Closer), Lektorat (Office of the Reciter), Akolythat (Office of the Candle Carrier) and Exoszistat (Office of the Devil Conjurer).

 

The Subdiakonat then leads over to the three higher consecration grades, the Diakonat (Diakonen Office), Presbyterat (Priest Office) and Episkopat (Bishop Office). The members of this consecration hierarchy have the right to carry out the respective authority of consecration owed them (bestowing the various sacraments).

 

Much more important for the churchly system of power, however, is the churchly government hierarchy. For a certain portion of the members of this government hierarchy, membership in certain grades of the consecration hierarchy is a prerequisite. The government hierarchy is divided into the participants of the papal authority, namely the holders of a jurisdiction derived from the Pope. To this first class of the churchly government or administrative hierarchy belong the cardinals, legates, primates, archbishops, apostolic vicars and prefects and apostolic administrators.

 

The participants in the bishopric government authority are, above all, the members of the bishopric hierarchy and cathedral capital, the diocese-consultors, deans, priests, priest-vicars and church rectors.

 

For the direction and administration of the whole church, an extensive administrative apparatus in the papal authority stands at the Pope’s side. The whole churchly power of the whole Catholic world church is brought together here in the Vatican in the papal authority.

 

From here, the corresponding guidelines in all spheres of life are sent out to the world church. The most important problems are processed in twelve Vatican ministries, the so-called cardinal congregations.

 

The faith police or the Inquisition Ministry has the greatest importance and the greatest prestige inside this churchly administration, in churchly terminology called Holy Office.

 

All questions of church doctrine and moral issues belong to the jurisdiction of this ministry.

 

One of the main tasks of these faith police is the churchly book censorship (index) and the observation and punishment of heretics.

 

The papal consistorial congregation concerns itself with the establishment and assignment of archbishoprics, free abbeys and prelatures in those lands where the regular church organization has already been carried out. At the same time, this church ministry is the personnel department for the selection, checking and naming of the bishops in those lands in which the bishop appointment must not be negotiated with the respective government on the basis of concordat agreements.

 

The entire supervision of all bishops of the Latin rite and the checking of their five- year reports also fall to this central church office. In these five-year reports the bishops must – following a detailed question scheme – report about the entire life, about the economic situation, about the general conditions of the folk life etc. in their bishoprics. They hence provide the sovereign of a foreign power important material for the evaluation of the general political conditions in their homeland.

 

The Vatican Eastern Ministry, the so-called oriental congregation, concerns itself with the affairs of the oriental church communities united with Rome. It is especially the task of this Eastern Department of the Vatican to prepare the reunification of the separated eastern churches with Rome. All efforts, publications, assemblies, congresses, education institutes that serve this purpose stand under the direction of this oriental congregation.

 

The sacraments congregation decides in all sacramental questions, it especially issues freedom from marriage hindrances.

 

The council congregation checks the files of the plenary and provincial councils and of the diocese synods. At the same time, the supervision of the office management and life conduct of the lower clergy falls under it.

 

The order congregation must perform the central direction of all order communities of the world. What the head of this Vatican Order Ministry commands, is hence binding for the monks and nuns of the individual lands of the world. Not what their natural, blood-determined feeling, not what the well-being of their folk demands from them, rather what this supra-governmental, Vatican Missionary Ministry demands from them, is for them a sacred obligation.

 

The Vatican Propaganda Ministry or the congregation of faiths cares for the dissemination of church doctrine in the individual missionary lands of the world. The activity of this office is shown by the fact that in the years 1922 through 1935 alone 170 missionary bishoprics were newly founded. The head of the Vatican Propaganda Ministry is considered one of the most powerful personalities in the papal authority. In the popular vernacular he is called the “Red Pope”.

 

The papal rite congregation is responsible for the shaping of church liturgy. Aside from that, it functions as the court for the proceedings of pronouncing blessed and sacred. If one considers that a proceeding of pronouncing sacred costs a few hundred thousand marks, and that at the present time alone about 500 such proceedings are underway, then one also simultaneously grasps the financial significance of this congregation.

 

The ceremony congregation is charged with the regulation of etiquette at the papal court.

 

The congregation of extraordinary churchly affairs processes the most important church-political matters in the closest cooperation with the papal state secretary. The papal Education Ministry represents the congregation for seminaries and universities. It concerns itself with all the study activity for the training of new clerics, with the Catholic colleges, the Catholic cultivation of science and the churchly research institutes.

 

The congregation of the church administration of St. Peter processes all matters connected to the financial and general administration of the central church of Catholicism.

 

Aside from these twelve Vatican ministries, there are still six Vatican special offices and three Vatican courts. Among the special offices, first place is held by the apostolic chancellery, in which the papal edicts and breves are prepared.

 

The apostolic datary is responsible for the bestowal of benefices, which is reserved to the Pope. The apostolic chamber represents the papal financial administration. The head of this office is also charged with the task of taking care of the Pope’s burial and makes the technical arrangements for the election of the Pope.

 

The most important office among these special offices is the papal state secretary, whose head is the cardinal state secretary, who is simultaneously practically the minister-president and foreign minister of the world church. The cardinal state secretary is responsible for all church politics and is simultaneously the Pope’s representative.

 

It is hence characteristic for the structure of the church authority that the Pope’s representative is not the cardinal responsible for means of mercy or religious instruction, rather the head of Vatican politics.

 

The state secretariat is divided into three sections: the first section concerns itself with actual church politics, above all with the conclusion of concordats.

 

The second section is responsible for the bestowal of papal titles and decorations. The third section takes care of the delivery of important papal documents.

 

The press organ of the state secretary is the “Osservatore Romano”, the Vatican daily newspaper.

 

The last of the six Vatican special offices are the secretariat of breves to the rulers and the secretariat of Latin letters.

 

Three papal courts head the supreme church judiciary. The apostolic on lessor grants or refuses reversal of excommunications reserved to the Pope and administers the church dispensations.

 

The apostolic signature is the highest church court, which above all decides formal questions about the conduct of proceedings.

 

The “Rota Romana” is the actual papal court for marital matters.

 

There are also a series of commissions at the Vatican for certain matters. For example, the commission for Russia, the commission for the interpretation of the church law book, the commission for the codification of oriental church law, the Bulgata commission, the Bible commission, the archeological commission, the papal central commission for church art in Italy, the commission for the art treasures of the Holy Seat, the crest commission and the papal finance commission.

 

An extensive administrative apparatus hence serves the whole church of the world at the papal authority of the central government. The structure of this authority proves that the church does not merely occupy itself with purely religious questions, rather that it aims at the conquest of the whole world.

 

Its own papal nuncios are established at the state governments as the papal seat’s officially responsible representatives. They are the Vaticans diplomatic representatives and have the same rights as the emissaries of whatever worldly states.

 

At this time such papal nuncios exist at about thirty national governments, namely in Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, San Domingo, Chile, Columbia, Costa-Rica / Nicaragua, Cuba, Germany, Estonia, France, Haiti, Honduras-San Salvador, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary and Venezuela.

 

In the countries where the Vatican has not yet been able to achieve open diplomatic representatives, so-called apostolic delegations are often set up as the Pope’s internal church emissaries. Such delegations are found in England, Canada, the Philippines, Mexico, the United States of North America, Egypt, Bulgaria, Greece, Iraq, Persia, Syria, Turkey, Central Africa, Australia, China, Japan, Indo-China, East India, the South African Union and in the Congo colony.

 

Inside the individual countries the church is divided into church provinces and bishoprics. At the head of each church province stands the archbishop. At the head of the bishopric or diocese stands the bishop.

 

Today, the archbishops basically only have an honorary advantage over the bishops. In governmental powers, aside from the leadership of the provincial councils, they are just entitled to the performance of certain official bishop actions, if the diocese bishop does not perform the duties of his office. The courts of the archbishop authority function as courts, the second appeal aside from the bishop court.

 

The bishops are the Pope’s representatives for their office region. The bishops owe accountability for their work to the Pope. They swear an oath to him. His orders are higher for them than the orders of any state leadership. The duties toward the Pope are more important to them than the duties toward their folk community.

 

Their own administrative apparatus stands at the disposal of the bishops, which are designated as bishop authority or bishop ordinary. The representative of the bishop in the performance of consecration authority is the consecration bishop, in the performance of governmental authority the general vicar and in the performance of the judiciary the bishop ecclesiastical official.

 

His own official experts (usually cathedral capitularies and cathedral vicars) are entrusted with the individual work areas. There exist in the individual ordinaries their own officials for youth work, influencing males, spiritual care for women, churchly finances, the church’s cultural work, the church press, church rallies and assemblies, church educational work and exercises etc.. His own bishop chancellery, diocese archive and a bishop secret archive, a bishop finance chamber, a bishop literature commission and similar institutions complete the official administrative apparatus of a bishop.

 

The next agent of the bishop inside the diocese is the dean, dean or archpriest. He is the bishop’s eyes and ears, to whom falls the whole observation and monitoring of life in his area. Fifteen to thirty parishes are united under one dean.

 

The parish represents the outpost of the church priest apparatus. In larger parishes, the priest again has at his disposal his own assistant priests, chaplains, cooperators, preachers and catechists. The election of the Pope falls to the cardinal council. General or world councils make important decisions in questions of faith and morals, provincial and diocese synods bring important contemporary events to discussion.

 

The Fulda bishop’s conference was created to assure a unified political of the whole German episcopate. The Fulda bishop’s conference has no juristic powers. It is simply about uniformly aligning all the German bishops and to consider common tactical action in certain questions.

 

Numerous laymen stand as valuable coworkers at the side of the priest hierarchy, who are simultaneously the holders of whatever papal honors and decorations. Every country is covered with a net of papal secret chamberlains and  honorary chamberlains, who are usually big industrialists, nobles, important politicians or otherwise influential personalities of public life. Priests who have served the Vatican especially well receive the honorary title of protonotar, papal house prelates or monsignor.

 

In times when the Vatican turns a special eye to a certain folk, an especially abundant blessing of orders and a river of papal decorations usually also flows down to that country.

 

Aside from the priesthood, Catholic orders represent the second great net of the churchly power system.

 

While the priesthood is structured similarly among the various denominations, the orders are preserved in this form essentially only in the Catholic Church, where it has, above all, found entry from African tnonkhood. Only insignificant attempts for the introduction of its own orders exist in the Protestant church.

 

The supreme leadership of all orders lies in the hand of the papal Eastern Ministry. Aside from that, each order has its own general chief as the representative of the order at the papal seat. The characteristics of the essence of Catholicism find expression in a very special way in the Catholic orders. The orders are also supposed to be, after all, in a very special way the assault troops of the church for the conquest of the whole world.

 

The order societies bring the church’s supra-government bearing most clearly to expression. All blood ties to the relatives, all love for homeland and fatherland must be cast off by the order members and make way for the love of the supra- governmental order society. In I art, they devote themselves more to the education of the youth, like school brothers and school sisters, in part they try, by means of medical care, to win people for the church, like the Merciful Brothers and Merciful Sisters. Other order societies concern themselves more with the conquest of the rural people, like the capuchin monks, for folk missions, like the Nedemptorians, for the nurturing of general cultural lite, like the Benedictine friars, or the influencing of important personalities, like the Jesuits.

 

Extensive economic enterprises, breweries and liquor factories, sawmills, workshops, electric works, bakeries, shoemaker shops, tailor shops, slaughterhouses, mills, large agricultural holdings etc. are often the property of the most diverse cloisters. The monks and nuns are active in all areas of public life, in art and culture, science and literature, school and education.

 

Through their special three-fold oath, the order members are bound to the churchly supreme leadership in a very special way. In the Greater German Reich over a hundred thousand monks and nuns form a battle troop for the power efforts of the church.

 

As an additional thick net in the intricate power system of Catholicism, extensive church clubs cover the whole world. Thousands of diverse denominational clubs seek to encompass and influence the masses of the folk, to win them for the church or to keep them for the church.

 

In the cultural area there are their own churchly film and radio associations, denominational artist and art organizations, economic associations of the church, educational associations, clubs for press and literature, for artists and jurists, in short, for everything in the cultural area. In the same way, the church has organized its own professional clubs in the various countries for workers and merchants, for officials and clerks, for journeymen and master craftsmen, for sailors, hotel employees, automobile drivers and airplane pilots.

 

The church has always especially turned its eye toward its denominational youth organizations. Aside from that, there exist the church’s own charitable and its own economic associations. Next to these clubs likewise serving the conquest of the whole of public life, the purely religious prayer clubs and churchly brotherhoods, are very secondary.

 

But in various countries the church has had, for tactical reasons, to again and again resort to downsizing, camouflaging or temporarily eliminating this great apparatus of ultimately political clubs.

 

The Catholic Action with its laymen apostolate was then built up as a substitute for the churchly clubs, which especially in recent years declined ever more.

 

This Catholic Action does not have the rigid character of a club with firm membership. It is instead a loose union of the most active fighters for the church’s supremacy. All Catholics – who somewhere at an exposed spot exert themselves for the church’s interests – are carriers of this Catholic Action and participate as lay apostles in the priesthood’s hierarchical apostolate.

 

The Evangelic church and various sects have created parallel battle troops in their community helpers and similar organizations.

 

With this dense power system the church has previously managed to gain great influence over the masses. In previous centuries, a person could hardly escape this churchly net of human influence. From the cradle to the grave, a human being was exposed to this churchly influence. Whatever threads led from all life situations and occupational groups to this church system. This dense net reached into the smallest towns, and even in the largest cities, the poorest neighborhoods and the most prominent houses were not safe against the tentacles of this power. Like a great spider web, this church power sat over the folks and carefully watched out so that no human being should escape its net.

 

The Church’s Political Methods of Conquest

 

All methods that whatever political power applied in whatever time for the influencing and conquest of human beings and folks, were also adopted and administered by the church as well over the course of history. It has proven in every century that in its methods it differs in no way from the general political powers.

 

Wherever the church was in possession of power, it has in every time used the methods of brutal force. In Verden on the Aller and in Cannstadt, in Stedingen or at the time of the various religious wars, in missionary work among the most diverse folks and in the most diverse centuries – millions of people have fallen victim to the church. In the medieval witch trials, hundreds of thousands of German women and girls, as the carriers of German blood and German worldview, were burned by the church as witnesses and executed. Hundreds of thousands of other people were often destroyed humanly and psychologically through the applications of the most brutal means, the most horrible economic boycotts and psychological subjugation.

 

Wherever the church was in possession of power, in has in every time also worked through open politics, it has always dropped its religious cloak and openly shown itself to the world as political power. One does not just have to remember medieval church politics, one can also just remember the church’s political parties before 1933. The Catholic prelates of the church sat as delegates of the political parties – Prelate Las and Ulitzka, Linneborn and Schreiber, Schofer and Leicht, Scharnagel, Wohlmuth, Eggersdorfer, Lohr etc. – and often waged their fight against National Social together with the Marxist parties.

 

Today as well, the Vatican very distinctly shows itself as a political power that has its representatives in the most diverse countries of the world, and that the Pope’s first representative is the head of Vatican politics.

 

Wherever the church is in possession of power, it sometimes goes over to active resistance against state authority. Repeatedly, Popes and bishops have deposed kings and rulers and released their subjects from the oath of obedience toward the state authorities. Repeatedly, the church’s representatives have incited to active resistance against the state authority.

 

Wherever the church did not feel itself in possession of power, it naturally applies more sly methods for the achievement of its goals.

 

The church shows itself especially skillful in the execution of passive resistance, regardless, whether it shows itself in economic sabotage, in moral boycott or in some other form. Frequently, the church’s passive resistance is hard to get a hold of juristically. It is often very difficult to prove that the Catholic chaplain beat the “Pimpf’ [Hitler Youth boy] merely because he is in the “Jungvolk”; one usually cannot prove that the Catholic teacher suddenly gave bad marks to a girl merely because she is in the “BDM” [Federation of German Girls]. But a hundred such similar experiences show that this here is practically silent sabotage on a small scale. In the political struggle, one suddenly stands as if before a cold wind that is almost insurmountable. One often encounters icy rejection and only at closer examination determines that here passive resistance instigated by the church is being practiced. Many a political fighter has been economically ruined by this passive resistance, by this silent sabotage work by church circles, many an honest man has become a social outcast through moralistic battue-beating under the church’s influence.

 

Another method with which the church works is the method of camouflage. The Jesuits have developed into masters of camouflage over the course of history. They are often camouflaged outwardly. In their order rule it is stated that the Jesuits should wear whatever clothing is especially conducive to the execution of a special task. If it is especially conducive to the execution of a given task, the Jesuit goes about like a fine gentleman in tuxedo and cylinder, as merchant or as sports-man or in whatever uniform. Hundreds of examples from past and produce can be produced for this.

 

When the Pope once formulated the plan to subjugate China to his power, it sent a whole detachment of Jesuits there. They appeared in the colorful garb of the Chinese mandarins, as mathematicians, as engineers, and reformed the Chinese calendar and taught the Chinese how to forge canon. When the Pope formulated the plan to make Queen Christine of Sweden Catholic, he sent two Jesuits to Sweden, who officially visited Sweden as Italian nobles for the purpose of study. The Jesuit Possevino travelled disguised as a noble, dagger at his side, double-pointed hat under arm, on secret papal assignment, and the Jesuit Abraham de Georgiis presented himself as an Armenian merchant.

 

Under a thousand masks, in all the disguises one can image, Jesuits have been active in every time. The newer order societies have learned this method of camouflage from them. The women of the house of Nazareth, for example, have their members – after taking the triple order oath – turn up days as factory workers or as clerical workers in offices in order to gain the corresponding influence  over  their work  comrades  and  over  public  life.  Today  one can see monks and nuns in civilian clothes walking the cities’ streets on whatever church assignment.

 

But the church does not just work in the personnel camouflage, it puts much more effort in the hypothetical camouflage of its actual goals. Today it often tries to conceal its political intentions and supra-governmental goals behind Christian humanitarianism, behind social caregiving or concern for ethnicity [folkdom], behind promotion of the economy and of cultural life etc..

 

The church has displayed very special skill in the camouflage of its organizations and its financial apparatus. Under harmless, general designations are often hidden mighty church enterprises and powerful church positions.

 

Another method of church politics is the method of adaptation, which in the theological vernacular is called the accommodation method. The church here bases itself on the words of the Apostle Paul, who in one of his letters said: “I have become everything to every-body.” By this method of clever adaption, the church overcame ancient Greece, by this method it annexed the Germanic Middle Ages. It simply took over old German custom and then gradually gave it a different, a churchly, meaning.

 

In this method as well, above all the Jesuits have displayed special skill. They have even gone so far that in the now famous accommodation conflict the Franciscans and the Dominicans appeared as the Jesuits most bitter opponents and accused them of treason against the church. The conflict between the supporters and opponents of churchly accommodation went back and forth for almost 200 years, until finally a Pope rejected the Jesuit accommodation method. Only in the most recent time has the church, after an official decision of the papal propaganda congregation, against resorted to this method.

 

After 1933, the representatives of the church have often tried to outwardly adapt to National Socialist ideas and National Socialist concepts. One could suddenly read proclamations to join the bodyguard of Christ and the prayer companies of the Catholic Action. Its own membership cards were printed for prayer company X of the Kolping family in Cologne. In sermons, heavenly hereditary farmsteads, heavenly work service and heavenly work front were suddenly mentioned. In a foreword to pious songs it was written: “May these songs give you all strength and joy”. Whereas previously the church’s saints were only portrayed as patient souls and sacrificial souls, one suddenly presented them as heroic people and heroic figures. Whereas one previously could hear about the crying women along Christ’s way of the Cross, suddenly the mothers of heroes were mentioned as Christ’s battle comrades. The leadership concept was suddenly applied to the bishops and soldierly language suddenly became the language of the church clubs.

 

This church adaption went especially far in church celebrations. Over the course of the last years, choruses, battle songs and oath ceremonies have been integrated into these celebrations, so that church events practically became political demonstrations. In part, one even went so far as to outwardly adapt in terms of ideas as well. One suddenly says that the church also represents a positive race doctrine, a positive anti-Semitism etc..

 

The church works with the method of decomposition in a very special way. It endeavors to get its confidants, its laymen apostles or community helpers in all important positions of public life. The goal of the church efforts is to get to the point where there is a layman apostle or community helper of the church in every house block, in every plant, in every office, who must there learn everything that happens in this house block, in this plant, in this office. If a new family moves into a house block, this layman apostle or community helper must ascertain this family’s attitude toward the church, whether a young, newly moved in married couple got married in church, which organizations it belongs to, which newspapers it reads, which circle of acquaintances it has, which possibilities of influence it is open to. All this information is then evaluated for the parish card index, so that the parish can immediately see at a glance at his parish card index what the external church situation looks like on a certain street, in a certain part of the town.

 

In the plants and offices of public life, these laymen apostles must observe which officials or important personalities of this area are open to the church’s work and which reject the church. They must ascertain the mood among the workers and clerks and special events. If then difficult conditions someday emerge somewhere and as a result the morale has temporarily fallen somewhat, then the churches know immediately that they can exploit this situation for themselves, that now the people are especially receptive to their whispers.

 

In part, these community helpers and layman apostles behave 300% state-loyal and folk-bound. They participate in every assembly, never miss roll-call, punctually pay their dues, are everywhere found in the foremost ranks at every rally, but always just have their eyes and ears wide open in order to learn as much as possible, to experience as much as possible, in order to then be able to inform their church positions. One often counters people who are correct to the extreme on the job, of whom one cannot prove the slightest outward offense, but with whom one always has an unpleasant feeling, of whom one senses that something is not right with them, that somehow the inner bond with them is lacking.

 

But there are always people who constantly just complain and criticize, who everywhere only see the negative and dark side, upon whom an impression is only made by whatever is not completely in order, whatever has not yet achieved its ideal condition. In every person and every institution they see the dark side; only in the church do they see light and goodness. These people seek to influence their fellow human beings, that they should only entrust their children to the church, because there alone the salvation of their soul and their moral purity is assured. They seek to influence their work colleagues to only take their vacation trips with church travel associations, that they pay their charitable donations solely to church charitable institutions, that they only read the church press, because one only finds the truth there. These people try by all means to alienate their fellow human beings from the folk community and lead them to the church. Everywhere, they are collection points of decomposition, complaining and dissatisfaction, they are pests against the folk.

 

Another political method of the church is the method of encirclement. In domestic politics and in foreign affairs, the church has tried again and again to throttle the German folk and encircle it with a block of opponents. In the years 1919-1933, the church’s political delegates tried by every means, with the help of Marxists and democrats, to prevent the German folk’s folkish awakening and to suffocate the folkish forces in the German folk. But especially since 1933, the church strives to work with the most diverse other state enemies in order to form a unified block against the National Socialist worldview.

 

The church works with Jewry. After all, due to its fundamental position toward Jewry, a close bond between church and Jewry is clear from the start. The founder of the Jesuit Order, Ignatius von Loyola, expressed this bond with these words: “I would consider myself lucky, if I were a Jew, for I would then, after all, be a blood brother of Jesus Christ and of the holy virgin Mary.”

 

Close personnel entanglements exist in all countries between Church and Jewry. Important Jesuits and leading personalities of the church were in the most diverse times pure-blood Jews, and even today priests and pastors who are pure-blood Jews are active on both the Catholic and the Evangelic side.

 

A specific publication for the hypothetical cooperation between church and Jewry was founded in the years after 1933 under the protectorate of Viennese Cardinal Innitzer, which has the pretty title “The Fulfillment”, and whose circle of coworker consists of Catholics, Protestants and Jews. No less close is the economic cooperation between church and Jewry. On both the Catholic and the Evangelical side, a special assistance committee for needy non-Aryans was founded, and the German and the American episcopate have untied into an especially close work association for the support of poor non-Aryans.

 

Freemasonry as well was used by the church for its political work. Numerous influential pastors were – up to 1933 – members of what-ever Freemason lodges, numerous pastors were even high-level Free-masons. But the Catholic Church as well created a communications line to Freemasonry through the Congress of Aachen.

 

For the achievement of its political goals, the church does not shun the coworkers of Marxism. The trial against the Dusseldorf Catholic Chaplain Rossaint produced proof that in part the very closest communication existed between Church organizations and Marxist circles. Visa-versa, readiness for cooperation with the church in the struggle against the folkish movement also revealed itself on the Marxist side.

 

A unified front is often formed by the church emigrants and the other Marxist or Jewish emigrants. The Protestant theology professor Barth, the Catholic Jesuit priest-monk Friedrich Muckermann, the Catholic emigrant Dietrich von Hildebrandt and the most diverse other church emigrants have in recent years, in the vileness and depravity of their agitation against Germany, in no way stood behind the worst Jewish filth.

 

The churches have managed to harness for their purposes even mutually opposing political directions. They work with Marxist elements in the same way as with reactionary and monarchist circles.

 

The church endeavors just as much for Germany’s world-political encirclement. It was one of the successes of Vatican diplomacy that the French-Russian alliance against Germany came about as a preparation for the World War. And especially after 1933, the Vatican has striven to forge France, England, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States and the Balkan states into a firm ring against Germany. World Protestantism, however, has – from England and America – stirred up the agitation against Germany and thereby worked hand in hand with the Third Reich’s international opponents.

 

So one could list all other methods that were ever employed by a political power in the political struggle and simultaneously prove the utilization of each of these methods by the church. A religious power, which presents itself as a purely religious movement, but seeks to achieve its goal primarily with political methods, can no longer be viewed as a purely religious community. Just as the church wages the fight against the folkish state and against the folkish worldview with all political methods, so must the folkish state defend itself against these attacks with all political means.

 

The church has tried to then interpret this as religious persecution and persecution of faith and publicly brand it as such. There are only a few people who still fall for this lamentation of the church. Today the eyes of the world, and especially of folkish-thinking people, have been opened, they know the church’s political battle methods. An opponent whose battle methods are known is only half as dangerous; a church that has lost its appearance of holiness, and whose political methods are clearly recognized, is completely disarmed. One no longer believes it that it’s about religion, it is evaluated objectively and soberly and treated like a political power.

 

The Psychological Means of Human Influence by the Priesthood

 

Due to their almost 2000 years of experience, the churches possess tremendous skill in influencing people. All the laws of individual psychology and of mass psychology are known to the priesthood. In a long, 14 year training, the priests are systematically introduced to the secrets of handling people.

 

One of the principles of psychology is that man is not a rational being of reason, rather he simultaneously has a spirit, a mood, a feeling. A person hence also wants to see, hear, experience something and to himself act. Parades and pilgrimages, church buildings and church liturgy are built upon this viewpoint. For the simple country woman from the Eifel or Bavarian-Austria, who during the whole week only knows work and effort and who is hard at work from earliest morning until late in the evening, the Sunday religious service forms an inner change of scenery in her life. The pretty church building with the rich stucco and the colorful paintings, the altar with the gold and silver decoration and the burning candles, the priest’s mass robes with the pretty points and gold-braid, the scent of incense, the organ music and the choir song, the priest’s sermon, all that works together in order to portray a psychological experience in her work week. That is especially true for the solemn Easter service, the Corpus Christi procession or the Christmas service.

 

Many people only know church life, know no other celebration, no other recreation, know no film and no radio, no theater and no big folk festival. Many people especially know no natural holiday joy and are hence totally under the spell of this church liturgy.

 

Another law of psychology is that human life does not play out in a straight line, rather in a constant up and down of happy times and serious hours, in a constant rhythm. The natural cycle of seasons, the alteration of spring, summer, autumn and winter, the summer solstice and the winter solstice, the celebrations of name- giving and marriage and funerals, as well as the celebration of the folk’s historical days of remembrance, represent the natural rhythm of life. The church has opposed this natural cycle of celebrations with the artificial cycle of its church year. Over the course of centuries it has managed to turn the Christmas holiday and the Easter holiday, Lent and Advent, the up and down of church holidays and the serious church times into the life rhythm of the folk. Through this artificial life rhythm, an alien, largely orient derived world is brought into the folk’s life, the folk’s life rhythm is filled with oriental content.

 

As much as the church has subjugated the nation, as much as the church seeks to impose the curse of original sin upon nature, just as much does it seek, on the other hand, to also exploit peoples’ invincible joy in nature for its human influence. Field crosses and forest chapels, valley processions and forest religious services, herb blessing, horse blessing, cattle blessing, fire consecration and flower decoration, all that ultimately only serves the goal to lead people along this detour to the church’s power and the church’s influence.

 

Another experience of psychology is that people are especially easy to influence, if they are relaxed and excited by whatever great joy or great suffering. At a marriage or baptism, the priest can get a lot across to people at the baptism feast or the wedding feast, which he would otherwise never manage. At a burial, he can extract from the deeply moved family members many a promise about religious education of children or funding of masses and similar things. When somebody has become tired in a long illness, and his psychological and physical strength is exhausted, it is often very easy for a tender nun, as a nurse, to assert her psychological influence and to lead the ill person to the church.

 

Another common human experience is that the drowning man grasps at anything that could save him. This is also true of psychological distresses. The priesthood hence often seeks to systematically bring people into psychological conflicts and psychological distress in order to make them dependent on them in this way.

 

The most valuable German youth is systematically ruined psychologically in this manner. Hundreds of thousands of German women and girls in confession are driven into conflicts in order to be chained to the power hungry priesthood.

 

Over centuries of systematic influence, man has been inoculated with a yearning for miracles and a belief in miracles. Many people no longer rely on the natural forces of life and no longer trust in God’s natural laws, they always expect supernatural, extraordinary and miraculous interventions by the creator. This faith in miracles and this yearning for miracles by people is systemically nurtured and again and again stimulated anew in countless pilgrimage locations, in the honoring of impossible relics, in the sale of frocks, medallions and other souvenirs with allegedly miraculous powers; the people are in this way led again and again to the church’s sites of mercy.

 

Nordic man loves the heroic, loves struggle and resistance against an opponent. This inner bearing is promoted by the church especially among young people. The martyrdom disposition and the heroic attitude against the state – which is presented to them as opponent – is systematically called forth. In sermons and religious   services,   at   church   assemblies   and   pilgrimages,   this  martyrdom disposition is artificially produced with intricate psychological skill, the heroic ideal of German man is hence put on a false track.

 

Much unnaturalness, anti-naturalness and hence inferiority is produced among diverse people by the churches through the fight against the sterilization law, through celibacy, through hysterical manifestations among stigmatics on the Catholic side as well as among the most diverse sects. But people who are not self-aware, who constantly live with feelings of inferiority, who always feel like pitiful, guilt-laden earth worms, can be influenced especially easily.

 

Numerous other ways could be listed by which the churches, through utilization of all the laws of psychology, seek to make people dependent upon them. Religious secrets lose their wonderful veil, the means of mercy their supernatural power, if one reveals the priesthood’s natural means of human influence. They are the means that a sly politician or skilled businessman masters and applies in his profession just like the priest makes use of them to earn his bread and for his power politics. What could otherwise appear to someone as miraculous means of divine mercy and Providence, reveal themselves here as simply sly psychological or demagogic tactics. The person who knows these means is already protected against the dangers of this human influence by the priesthood. God’s laws, after all, then mean more to him than the trickery of a skillful priesthood.

 

The Political Battle Methods of the Church

 

In its doctrines and its methods, the church shows itself as a political power. Political, however, are also the methods with which it works. All means that any other political power puts into the service of its propaganda and in the service of its human conquest are also utilized by the church for itself. The most important means for any external power is the financial foundation. The church possesses the most manifold sources of income in abundance. In many countries it receives state support for its activity, state funds. In many countries it can levy church taxes or church dues among its faithful and thereby assure itself a large portion of its material and personnel requirements from these means. The priests also have certain sources of income from their cult acts, from burials and marriages, from baptisms and sacraments, yes, often the performance of routine prayers.

 

Certain taxes are to be paid for the bestowal of churchly honors, titles and offices. Fees are to be paid for granting whatever churchly dispensations.

 

Aided from that, the churches have their own sources of income in independent enterprises, which are admittedly usually camouflaged on the outside. They are often stockholders in large enterprises, banks and industrial concerns. Their schools and hospitals, their welfare institutes and orphanages, are frequently only outwardly splendid works of Christian charity, but in reality very often simultaneously quite splendid sources of income. Often huge sums flow to the priesthood from their own agricultural operations, breweries, liquor factories, electricity works, industrial enterprises and artisan shops.

 

Countless believers donate substantial sums to the church at assemblies. Many people leave inheritances and donations to the church.

 

The net of the church’s sources of income are as intricate and diverse as the net of the church’s power system is intricate and dense. Corresponding to its nature, one denominational organization possesses more of this, and the other more of that funding possibility.

 

Another means for the conquest of power is the splendid organization. For centuries no power on earth could match the intricately branched web of the church organization. The Pope’s church here, too, stands at the top of its sister churches and other denominational communities. Its system has therefore already been portrayed. The church was especially careful to not only build up a splendid administrative apparatus and a firm organization of the priesthood, rather also, above all, to ensnare the masses with a manifold system of institutions, welfare offices, clubs etc.. Only in the face of the large mass movements of the present has the church organization gradually proven itself outdated, slack and powerless.

 

The priesthood makes use, above all, of cultural means for the conquest and assertion of power. The church seeks to utilize for itself as well all the cultural forces that have ever stood at the disposal of whatever political power in its struggle.

 

Extensive book publication promotes, deepens and defends the church doctrines. Among the most diverse folks, denominational literature had a monopoly position for centuries. Through the papal index and manifold church book censorships, all non-church literature was kept away from the public. All life spheres were conveyed to the folk in church literature solely from the denominational viewpoint. Wherever a certain church possessed the prerogative of sole rule, the picture of the world of the respective folk was in this way shaped one-sidedly, supra- ethnically and universalistic. Wherever several denominations feuded among themselves in a sibling quarrel or indeed native folkish ideas stirred, the respective folk was torn by worldview discord and thereby lost inner and outer strength.

 

Aside from book literature, the church possesses extensive brochures, leaflets and fliers. Here, contemporary ideas spread among the masses in an edition of many millions or hostile attacks are fended off. Modern sects like the Bible researches, the Salvation Army, Christian Science or the Adventists make use of these political means of power just as skillfully as the larger churches.

 

Among the rural populace, the church is often active and very successful with a tremendous calendar literature. Over the whole course of the year, denominational propaganda penetrates the folk through calendar stories, daily slogans, daily saints, patrons and exemplary church figures. Simultaneously, these folk calendars often also represent a substantial source of income.

 

The effect of this literature is deepened and expanded through countless church periodicals. In 1933, there were in Germany alone over 400 Catholic periodicals. They also occupy themselves with all spheres of life. There are denominational publications for art and the sciences, film and radio, fashion, sports and technology, folklore and holidays, general entertainment, religious instruction and denominational edification.

 

In a planned out system of institutes and clubs, of cultural concentrations, societies and assemblies, it is attempted to influence and to dominate the whole of folk educational. From small child to oldster, the human being is supposed – through a multitude of institutions – to be totally integrated into the denominational world of ideas and held firm in it.

 

Orphanages, nursery schools and kindergartens, denominational schools, girls and boys boarding schools, home economics and occupational schools, folk education clubs, reading halls and folk libraries, denominational theater, church amateur theater companies, church choir and orchestra associations, film slide-show presentations, poetry evenings and lecture circuits, denomination hiking trips and travel associations, denominational sporting events and homeland weeks, free-time camps and rural school homes, museum excursions and folk colleges, college weeks, assemblies and congresses, in short, everything that was sometime and somewhere thought up and employed as a means of human influence and folk education, is used by the priesthood for the conquest of human beings.

 

The promotion of art and science as well is, in the hands of the priesthood, only a means for the conquest of power. With the help of scientific research institutes, libraries, church universities and colleges, with the help of scientific collections and individual investigations, of scientific meetings and congress - all areas of science are supposed to be made dependent on the church and then, on their part, again provide the building blocks for the priesthood’s further plans for the conquest of the world and of human beings.

 

The churches have been especially successful in putting art in their service. Music and painting, sculpture and architecture, literature and theater stood for centuries totally in the service of the priesthood. On roads and public squares, on country paths and on mountains, in public buildings and private residences - the testaments of denominational art introduced people to the churchly world and held them firmly under its spell.

 

The church very soon also integrated into the great apparatus of its power the newest achievements of human researcher spirit. When film technology was invented and had as a result the creation of film art, the faithful were admittedly at first warned against the visit to movie theaters in numerous shepherd’s letters and sermons. Films were branded as the devil’s work. But the priesthood very soon recognized that one could also very effectively use this work of Satan for the conquest of the world.

 

Their own church film organizations, film production companies, film loan enterprises, film theaters and film periodicals were created in order to put this modern means of propaganda into the service of church work. The priesthood also established its own radio transmitters, or leased radio transmitters for special events, it has sought to influence radio programs, organized church morning celebrations and striven to fill the entirety of radio programs with its spirit.

 

The church has simply adopted all the other means of modern propaganda as well. Mass demonstrations and choruses, huge marches and rallies – the priesthood has copied all means of modern advertising from, above all, the large mass movements of the present.

 

The priesthood stresses again and again the purely religious character of its churches and sects. But it proves again and again that it cannot bring its ideas to victory by purely religious means. It again and again confirms the fact that it requires all political power in order to conquer people and to assert its power position. It thereby again and again admits the political character of its power.

 

The so-called Religious means of the Priestly Human Influence

 

Aside from all the political means of struggle that also stand at the disposal of any other political power, the priesthood also possesses quite special, so-called religious means for human influence. According to church doctrine, man – as a result of original sin, or the influence of demonic powers – is only conditionally educatable and only partially influenceable. In order to be able to nonetheless reach a goal in the beyond, man hence requires so-called supernatural, religious means. The natural means of human influence do not suffice for the education to the beyond, according to priestly doctrine.

 

All these religious means already work on the priests’ faithful with magical power from the start, because they see in the priest who employs these means God’s authorized representative and ascribe to these means themselves supernatural, divine powers. The so-called religious means of human influence are hence elevated for the priests’ followers from the common psychological sphere of effect into a magical, mystical sphere.

 

Among the religious means used in the same way among all priesthoods is the sermon. It differs in several ways from the normal propaganda and educational lectures of general public life. The sermon is, firstly, usually held in the half-dark of cult rooms. It is as a rule ac-companied by whatever cult acts and ceremonies. The priests of all religions claim of themselves that in their sermons they proclaim God’s direct words. According to the corresponding churchly regulations, an especially ingratiating tone should distinguish the sermons. The faithful also do not receive the sermons with liveliness, with applause or rejection, like common lectures, rather let the sermons flow over them with reverence.

 

In their own theological discipline, in the Homiletik [the teaching of the sermon and its history], the priests are thoroughly trained in the technical requirements of the sermon. In years of practice, they are introduced practically to the mastery of this means of human influence. So the sermon often becomes a very notable means of power for the church, above all, among women. The figure of the preacher, his personal manner, his appearance and his acting abilities play a great role, as is known from experience.

 

A means of churchly human influence employed with the sermon is so-called religious class or catechism. All denominational groups endeavor, for understandable reasons, to introduce the youth already at the earliest age to the spirit of their churchly world. Given the folk-alien nature of many religions and sects,

 

the priests must usually limit themselves to carrying out this religion class similarly to the sermons in churches, other cult buildings or church-owned rooms. Occasionally, larger religious communities have also managed to harness the whole state power apparatus, the public schools and public education for the special purposes of the priestly religion class. Since the taught content of this denominational instruction does not grow out of natural faith in God, rather consists of rigid church dogmas and so-called direct divine revelations, the usual psychological laws for processing the material to be learned do not apply to religion class. But the priests do indeed try, usually by very natural means, to deepen and to simplify the understanding of the so-called divine truths with vivid pictures, figuration portrayals, punishments, rewards etc..

 

Extraordinary educational events as well are given a religious framework and supplied with a religious character by the priesthood. They serve to deepen church influence or to introduce certain people and groups of people to a special task of the churchly power system. These events carry designations such as silent hours, religious free-times, days of reflection, exercises, folk missions and the like. They are organized for children and adults, workers and academics, soldiers, officials and teachers, businessmen and clerks, engaged couples and married people, in short, for all social strata, ages and life conditions. Their visit is frequently tied to special religious decorations, bestowing of mercy, dispensations and promises of special divine assistance.

 

Especially effective means of human influence are the cult buildings of the priesthood itself. They differ from the festival and celebration halls of the natural communities. Mystical half-darkness, lavish pictorial and figurative decoration with religious motifs, especially extensive use of secretive and foreign symbols, incense scent and candlelight and much more bestow a unique influence on the cult buildings of all churches and sects. The denominational cult buildings receive their special stamp, because according to the priesthood’s doctrine God himself has taken up residence in the cult buildings. A secretive awe hence passes from the cult rooms to the people believing in the priests. If they seek strength or help, if their innerness drives them to atonement for an injustice, if they suffer distress or pain, they seek out the cult building in order to find peace and help there in God’s immediate vicinity. The prerequisite, however, is naturally, as always, complete trust in the priesthood’s doctrines and words.

 

Their own cult community events are then carried out in the cult rooms, ceremonies performed, liturgical prayers spoken and sacrifices of the most diverse kinds made in order to thereby – according to the respective Christian doctrine – pay the tribute owed to the respective God. The priests function as

 

God’s representatives and receive for this representation a corresponding payment or voluntary donations from the faithful.

 

All natural festivals and celebrations, all important occasions in human life are surrounded with cult acts and ceremonies by the priesthood. After birth, the child is immediately accepted into the denominational community through a unique cult act and only then receives, according to the priests’ doctrine, actual life value. At the transition of people from childhood to adolescence or from adolescence to maturity, unique cult ceremonies are frequently carried out. Marriage first receives its actual validity and its blessing through a cult act before the priest. Before death and at burial, unique denomination ceremonies take place. A refusal of this church burial is presented as a great shame and is often of great political effectiveness. All these ritualistic acts serve to keep people dependent on the church or sect from cradle to grave. These cult acts are supposed to represent special means of mercy, are supposed to tie people to God in a special way, but in reality chain them to the priesthood.

 

According to the doctrine of numerous priest federations, devils or demons can gain full power over individual people. Amidst manifold and often very strange ceremonies, the priests then perform exorcisms on these people. In the Catholic Church, such exorcisms are performed with great ceremony according to the regulations of the Ritus Romanum. In a more simple form, exorcisms are performed by the Catholic priesthood on all newborn children at baptism, and are performed on animals and objects. Through these cult exorcisms and devil conjurations, the prestige of the priesthood is surrounded with a secretive magic and awe. They are attested power over the most dangerous enemies of man, devils and demons.

 

Various churches and sect communities have introduced their own ceremonies of forgiveness for the mistakes and transgressions of men. They are usually connected with certain prayers, little penitence exercises or sacrificial gifts. Priest federations whose striving for power is especially pronounced tie demands for public or secret confession of guilt to the ceremonies of forgiveness, such as, for example, the Catholic Church. Through confession the priests learn the most secret things in their sphere of activity, which usually remain hidden from all other people. With shameless questions they penetrate into the most personal affairs of people, into the most intimate matters of marital and family life, especially among young women. With incredible brutality they bring countless young people into the most difficult psychological conflicts at confession. Many a marriage is shaken in this way, much youthful happiness destroyed. In this inner distress people then often become, through confession, submissive tools of the priesthood. At confession they receive their regulations and rules of conduct for all questions of private and public life. Since the secret of the confession is only meant for the personal protection of the person confessing, and the priests can evaluate the knowledge won from the confession for the direction of the church at any time, confession simultaneously gains tremendous political importance for this reason as well.

 

People, animals and objects are consecrated by the priesthood with special blessings. They are supposed to thereby be removed from the influence of demons, sanctified for God’s service and equipped with special luck. According to the rituals of the most diverse priesthoods, there are blessings for children and adults, blessings in the morning, at noon and in the evening, blessings before a trip, a war or work and before a storm, blessings for women before birth and purification ceremonies with blessings after birth, blessings for ill and dying, blessings for animals and stalls, for horses and automobiles, ships and airplanes, blessings for houses and residences, for the bedroom and workplace, for plants, grain and fruit, for wine and water, clothes and shoes, fields and grain, in sort, there are blessings for people in all life situations and blessings for everything with which people somehow come into contact. Man’s whole environment is thereby supposed to receive a sanctified and consecrated character. But the great, wise man who can do and does do all that, who – utilizing often downright secretive ceremonies – blesses everything and destroys all evil forces, is the priest.

 

Blessed or consecrated objects are established by the priests’ faithful as cures and good luck charms, for protection against harmful influences and to convey divine blessing, in residences and stalls, in silos and on fields, or carried by the people themselves at work, on trips, in danger, while sleeping, during illnesses etc., worn around neck or arm or sewed into clothing. Religion-scientific collections and ethnological museums often display a colorful jumble of such means of magic, good luck charms, means of mercy and objects of reverence. These things often represent very splendid financial sources of income on the side.

 

People who are somehow supposed to be consecrated in the service of the divinity in a splendid manner are consecrated among the most diverse priesthoods with anointments, complicated ceremonies and long prayer formulas. Temple virgins and nuns, monks, priests and priestesses of the most diverse grades and ranks are introduced into their hierarchy through their own cult act. They thereby take on the character of inviolable people, elevated from the folk, designated for something higher, somehow belonging to the court of God himself. These consecrations thereby again become a unique means for the elevation of the priests’ reputation and power.

 

Beyond that, there also exist among various churches numerous other, so-called religious means. They may indeed take on different forms among the various religions, but they display the same foundations among all priest federations.

 

Finally, prayer should be mentioned. The natural God-believing man thinks about the divinity out of his innermost on the most diverse occasions in free, unforced form. Through the priesthood, prayers are reshaped into rigid formulas, long prayer texts and litanies. With the assistance of prayer bells, prayer belts and prayer mills, the same prayers are recited often for hours. Long prayers are read off from certain formula books. This manages to submerge the faithful again and again into the church’s world of ideas. This often manages to simultaneously concentrate the whole psychological energy of millions of church-faithful on the same prayer contents, so that millions of people are filled with the same requests and wishes and inwardly and outwardly are totally aimed along the same line. What significance this has for mass influence is known by anybody who knows the laws of psychology. For many people prayer is furthermore a means for inner calming, for release from this life, for steering toward the beyond. But through the priesthood, supernatural successes and mercy are attributed to prayer, but only the natural, psychological effects are addressed. Prayer as well thereby becomes, like all other so-called religious means, a magical instrument of the priesthood and a means for their power politics. Aside from these common religious means, in special cases extraordinary religious means as well are employed for human influence by the priest federations, such as visions, stigmatizations and alleged miracles of the most diverse kind.

 

Many things that manifest themselves with these so-called religious means of the priesthood can also be found among the basic elements of natural faith in God. But the priests have expanded this religious basic elements into an elaborate net of institutions, events, acts, ceremonies etc. and misuse them as tools for their power. They have torn many religious things from the natural sphere of the life laws and built them into the artificial organism of their power system. Whoever wants to know the priesthood’s political means of power, must therefore not bypass these so-called religious means of the priestly human influence.

 

The Psychology of the Priesthood

 

For centuries, people have trembled before the power of the priests. They have seen in the priesthood an internally solid, sworn, unified power. The sober look at reality, however, shows that the priesthood is indeed chained together by a firm outer band, that the priesthood’s power system is indeed close knit and splendidly organized, but that the priesthood itself largely lacks inner unity. One can indeed see a general priest type, which in all churches and sects displays certain uniform characteristics, but one must admit tremendous differences of inner bearing within this priesthood.

 

There are plain, simple, modest priests who led a calm, patriarchal life in their community. They have become priests, because the father was also a pastor, or because it was the mother’s most ardent wish that the son become a priest. They see that many church regulations and doctrines do not fully agree with life, but they don’t feel repealed by them, they hold more to life than to dogma. They see their task in functioning as their community’s fatherly advisor, to soothe psychological conflicts and suffering of every kind insofar as it is within their power, they give the people courage and comfort, when they need that, and are silently pleased with the people about their successes and their happiness. They are no fighters and no combatants, they also have no desire to rise to great deeds or to fill their faithful community with great ideas. A commonplace, bourgeois life is the world in which they feel comfortable, which they also do not transcend. They are not big shots in the church, but also not great enemies of state or folk. Only as links in the great chain that holds the priesthood together do they have significance. They must be judged not just as human beings, rather as outposts of the church’s power system.

 

There are priests who are intellectually talented and physically vibrant. They have chained themselves to their profession, but with their natural abilities and insights they again and again come into conflict with church dogmas and regulations. The human being within them is in constant conflict with the priest. They are tormented by doubts in their own doctrine and in these conflicts nonetheless cling again and again – half full with trust and half full with desperation – to these doctrines. They experience the contradictions between the laws of life and the norms of their church or sect. Life draws them to itself, and again and again they seek to flee from life into their artificial, priestly world. From their nature and their countenance one sees that they live in constant conflict with themselves, that they are constantly tormented by conflicts, that they are inwardly totally divided. They are unfortunate people, who have become victims of their profession, because their faith in their denominational doctrines was so great that they no longer found their way back to life. Sometimes they seek to suffocate their psychological conflicts through horrible bodily self-mutilations with lashings, penitence belts, penitence shirts and other unnatural tools of torture. Often they torture themselves for so long until they perish bodily and psychologically. But the special tragedy of their inner bearing is that they can no longer do otherwise than to push the people entrusted to them, especially women and youths, into the same inner distortion, into the same unnaturalness and opposition to nature. Millions of the most valuable people have over the course of millennia been psychologically and bodily ruined in this manner.

 

There are priests who see in their idea a great religious-political power. They are honestly convinced that precisely the doctrine of their church or sect is suited to bring happiness and peace to mankind. They hence fight for this idea with fanaticism and enthusiasm. Their goal is to shape all public life on the basis of this denominational spirit. They openly admit that their goal is not a purely religious one, rather encompassed all spheres of life. They feel themselves as teachers of the politicians and rulers and as the God ordained directors of the fates of individual people and of folks. The religious program usually does not stand in the foreground with them, yes, it often recedes far behind the claims of worldview and political power. These combative and active priests are the great organizers and church rulers, the great writers and journalists, the great diplomats and politicians of the churches. They are often talented and pliable, schooled and well-educated, and familiar with all life situations. They also know how to conduct diplomatic negotiations, how to represent. They can act sovereign and condescending or self-aware and reserved, just as the circumstances and political necessities require. Various churches with an old tradition possess their own educational system for the political new recruits of their priesthood. Various churches have over the course of centuries developed their own political tradition and own diplomatic style. One often designates the Jesuits as the elite of priestly diplomacy. The course of world history in the last five millennia has often been substantially influenced by this kind of priest. They belong to the most important bearers of priest power.

 

There are other priests who come to the priesthood, because nature has given them a soft, sentimental inclination and a petty vanity. They feel drawn to the priesthood, because they like to parade around in long coats and colorful clothing, because they take pleasure in the theatrical ceremonies of many cult acts, in the scent of incense and flickering candles, in mystic half-darkness and melodic church song. They are often harmless natures who would like best to play around all day with their liturgical ceremonies and show themselves to the folk in luxurious garments. Their inner greatness is so tiny that this vanity and softness is able to completely fill them. Their sermons, like their other religious advice,   drips with sentimentality and shallow babble. They have no backbone and no strength inside. They are hence also only able to draw people just as weak into their orbit. There are still other priests who may have still joined their priesthood with a certain idealism. But they have then – amid the dangers, which precisely priesthood brings with it for weak character – slid down to sensuousness and the slavery of the lowest instincts. The moral history of all millennia reports - precisely of the priesthood – of especially base behavior, repulsive perversions and cruelties. With effort they uphold the reputation of their profession outwardly, but inside they are totally given to the vice. Outwardly they preach of pretty virtues, but whoever really comes close to them, they seek to drag into their own mud. Occasionally, these totally fallen priests also vent their cruelty and base instincts in horrible atrocities and inhuman harassment against their underlings. They have a desire to torment and to pain their fellow human beings and frequently select quite special victims for their passionate cruelty. In the medieval witch trials this priestly sub- humanity became a downright public plague. Hundreds of thousands of people, above all women and girls, fell victim to these derailed priest instincts. Hundreds of thousands of people were ruined psychologically by this brutality.

 

Another group of priests leads a frivolous double-life. It has become clear to them that an unbridgeable chasm exists between their priesthood and life. But they have accepted that they have landed in this profession. Out of comfort they draw no consequences from their inner conflict, rather simply seek to skip over this conflict. They preach full of enthusiasm about whatever church doctrine and do not believe their words themselves. They admonish their faithful to whatever virtue, but they themselves do not think of seeking this virtue. They warn their community against whatever vice, but unscrupulously give in to this vice themselves. They apply all religious means of mercy among the faithful, but they themselves do not believe in the effectiveness of these means. They have their own personal sphere, which stands in total opposition to what they preach to their followers. They have not inwardly grown together with their priesthood, they only wear it superficially in public, just as they temporarily put on their robe for their cult acts. Their whole life is trickery, a theater, a great deception. Their priesthood is usually just a way to earn a living. Inner strength cannot flow from them.

 

There are also isolated so-called holy priests. They are filled with whatever virtue and merge into this virtue. Many of them have chosen for themselves the oath and meekness as ideal. They see their whole life from this viewpoint. They endure all suffering, abuse and persecution with a downright fanatical patience and devoted meekness. Any difficult conflicts between priesthood and life cannot arise in them, because they concentrate their whole life energy in the practice of meekness and patience. They become one-sided in their so-called heroism, but they at least have a set goal to which they are totally devoted. For many people, this degree of virtue has something wonderful and attracting. They become the enthusiastic followers of these so-called holy men. Many priests also devote themselves with complete self-sacrifice to charity. In the history of human charity, many priests of the most diverse churches and sects have a great name. They have not concerned themselves with dogma conflict and church discipline, they have simply devoted themselves in a selfless manner to the soothing of distress in the most diverse form. With glowing fanaticism, they have consumed themselves in their works of charity. They were so filled with this charity that whatever inner conflicts could no longer find space inside them. Whole churches and sects have been nourished by the deeds of their idealists for centuries, a single so-called holy priest had to again and again give thousands of other priests their justification for existence.

 

Occasionally, one also encounters pronounced cynics among the priesthood. They are usually priests whose former idealism was totally destroyed by some very bitter experience, by some severe blow. They are inwardly totally burned out and no longer capable of a new beginning. They still perform their priestly functions, but they are inwardly no longer touched in any way. They do not practice superficial trickery, rather they systematically tear down with conscious cynicism any positive values among everybody with whom they come into contact. With diabolical openness they destroy any idealism, and they seek to drag everything that is good, beautiful and noble in the dirt. One can seldom encounter greater cynics than among this kind of priest.

 

For another group of priests their profession is solely a trade or a business going well. But in the process they are not always good businessmen with an orderly business operation. In their church office they frequently have disorganized records and no real business methods. Their enterprise is often based on deception and swindle. They themselves are deceitful swindlers. With miracle herbs and means of magic they often ensnare a large following and earn huge sums with their acts of magic. From the naiveness of their followers they often draw tremendous profits. But like all swindlers, they know how to blind externally and make a lasting impression on many people.

 

Many priests totally collapse under the conflicts which the doctrine and the moral bearing of their church or sect bring with it. They do not have the necessary physical energy in order to again recover from their psychological collapse. Mechanically, they still perform the priestly activities falling to them. Their energy no longer suffices for their own activity, their own stirrings of the mind or of the soul. Physically as well, they are usually hard hit by their psychological collapse. The little energy still remaining for them they must use to laboriously care for their body. In their community they often arouse compassion and with the compassion a lot of sympathy as well. Therein then also lie the sole possibilities for their priestly effectiveness. They are poor, unfortunate people, who have completely fallen victim to their profession.

 

In all the centuries apostates have also existed among the priesthood. They are priests who experienced the conflicts between priest power and God’s laws and then still possessed so much strength that they rebelled against this priest power, to which they themselves belonged. They are then immediately expelled from their communities as traitors and Judas souls. They are outlawed and defamed by all conceivable means. The priesthoods and their faithful seek to annihilate these apostates, to make them morally impossible, to deliver them to distress and abandonment, to brand them for their whole life as lepers.

 

A portion of these apostates consumes itself in senseless, subjective, one-sidedly hateful, furious fighting against the priesthood. Another portion of these apostates soon gives up the fight and devotes itself to a bourgeois profession, without – as a result of the years of one-sided education to be priest – having gained the inner satisfaction and inner freedom characteristic of natural human beings. In all times priests of all churches have also – after long inner fighting and changes – again totally found their way back to the natural laws of life. The outward return to the natural folk community went hand in hand with their inner separation from the priest power. They have again journeyed back to God’s natural work of creation and have found their life joy in living according to these natural laws of God and working with holy enthusiasm for this order of creation.

 

One could still find many other small groups within the priesthood, and one observes many overhangs from one group to another. But the basic traits of these groups will be identified again and again among all the priest powers of this world. What is true of the priests, is also true in the same way of the priestesses, of the monks and nuns. Certainly, the priest power loses a large portion of its magic and majesty under an objective and sober examination. The guilt for this certainly does not lie above all in the method of observation, rather in the priesthood itself.

 

Religious Service and  Priesthood

 

The natural, God-believing human being stands with both feet firm in life. He sees his world from this life. To this world, however, also belong the divine force that rules in and over nature. This God faces man like a mighty and simultaneously kind friend. All of daily life and festive life brings him again and again in close contact with his Lord God. His relationship to the Almighty is direct and immediate. When he faces him, he needs no mediator. But when a family, a clan or a folk wants – with a great request or full of deep gratitude – to turn to Providence, then the head of the family, the clan elder or the leader of the folk are the natural mediators between God and human beings. Great cult acts are not required for this. Work, joy in nature, effort for folk, care for the works and gifts of the creator, in short, the fulfillment of the human life goal and the observation of the natural life laws, is simultaneously the best and most beautiful religious service. This religious service is so infinitely sublime over all the unnatural cult constructions, because it corresponds to the laws of the order of creation and grows out of God’s laws.

 

The priesthood has pushed itself between God and human beings. All priest federations of the world claim for themselves that God himself bestowed precisely upon them his representation on earth. Every priesthood of the world sees in the thousands of other priest guilds heretics and teachers of false doctrines, heathen priests and magicians. Every priesthood traces precisely its institutions and cult means to direct divine investiture and wants to preserve precisely its doctrine as direct, divine revelation.

 

The belief in God and God’s laws must – among churches and sects – all too often step behind the belief in the church and behind the laws of the church. Churchly striving for power again and again overgrows the naturally belief in God. Throughout all the centuries of church history, religion was again and again misused by the priesthood for power political purposes. So-called holy shrines again and again become churchly agitation centrals, priestly houses of business and sites of human subjugation. The priests had themselves called God’s servants, but they were usually just church servants or church officials.

 

Whoever did not bow to the power of churches and sects was branded as godless, as materialist or atheist and made despicable. Today the natural laws of life have again made a breakthrough. Man by man and folk by folk again find their way back to these eternally old and eternally new laws of the order of creation. Free and happy, proud and devout, full of confident certainty, more and more people affirm this very great idealism, this natural belief in God, this honest religious bearing.

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Source Literature

 

Of the extensive literature used, only the most important publications are named here.

 

The Emergence of Priest Power in Germany

 

Dr.B. Kummer, Midgards Untergang, 3. Aufl. 1937. Dr. M. Ziegler, Illusion und Wirklichkeit, 1938.

 

Dr. Fr. Murawski, Die politischen Kirchen und ihre biblischen Urkun-den, 5. u. 6. Aufl. 1938.

 

Dr. Carl Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstums und des Romis-chen Katholizismus, 5. Aufl. 1934.

 

Hugo Koch, Rosenberg und die Bibel 1935.

 

Wilhelm Kammeier, Dogmenchristentum und Geschichtsfaschung, 1938. Dr. Seppelt, Papstgeschichte, 1938 (kath.).

 

Dr. Fr. Banner, Konige und Priester, 1939.

 

H. Wolf, Angewandte Kirchengeschichte.

 

The Political Doctrine of Denominationalism

 

Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des XX. Jahrhunderts. Alfred Rosenberg, Blut und Ehre.

 

Alfred Rosenberg, Gestaltung der Idee.

 

Buchberger, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 1931 ff, (kath.).

 

Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 1927 ff. (prot. Kirchen-lexikon). Ernst Kaempfer, Der politische Katholizismus, 3. Aufl. 1938.

 

Rainer Volk, Die katholische Aktion in deutscher Sicht, 1937. Kurt Eggers, Rom gegen Reich, 2. Aufl. 1936.

 

The Power System of Catholicism

 

Dr. E. Eichmann, Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, 4. Aufl. 1934 (kath.).

 

J. Sägmüller, Lehrbuch des kathol. Kirchenrechts, 1925 ff. (kath.). Staatslexikon der Görres-Gesellschaft, 1926 ff. (kath.).

 

Dr. Erwin R. von Kienitz, Die Gestalt der Kirche, 1937 (kath.). Adam, Das Wesen des Katholizismus, 7. Aufl. 1934 (kath.).

 

Franz Xaver Kother, Vom Geheimnis der Papstkirche, 2. Aufl. 1935 (kath.). Josef Bernhart, Der Vatikan als Thron der Welt.

 

The Church’s Political Methods of Conquest Hoensbroech, Der Jesuitenorden, 1928. Joh. Haller, Das Papstum.

 

Adamow, Die Diplomatie des Vatikans zur Zeit des Imperialismus.

 

Dr. Konr. Algermissen, Konfessionskunde, 1939 (kath.). Anwander, Die Religionen der Menschheit, 1927 (kath.).

 

R. Hendrich, Wandlungen des weltanschaulichen Kampfes, 1937. Siehe dazu vor allem die Literatur zum 2. Absatz.

 

The Priesthood’s Psychological Means of Human Influence Schüch-Plz, Handbuch der Pastoraltheologie, 1925 (kath.).

 

Hans grunewald, Die pädagogischen Grundsätze der Benediktinerre-gel, 1939.

 

von Dunin Borkowski, Miniaturen erzieherischer Kunst, 1929 (kath.). Rud. Allers, Das Werden der sittl. Persönlichkeit, 1935 (kath.).

 

Anton Holzner, Das Gesetz Cortes, 2. u. 3. Aufl. 1939.

 

The Political Battle Methods of the Church

 

See the previous literature.

 

The so-called Religious Means of Priestly Human Influence Eisenhofer, Handbuch der katholischen Liturgik, 1932 f. Heiler, Das Gebet (prot.).

 

The Psychology of the Priesthood Hoensbroech, 14 Jahre Jesuit. Lintl, Flucht aus dem Kloster.

 

Rugel, Ein Trappist bricht das Schweigen.

 

Paul Maria Baumgarten, Ordenszucht und Ordensstrafrecht, 1932 (kath.). Also see the numerous priest novels of world literature.

 

Religious Service and Priest Power

 

Alfred Miller, Völkerentartung unter dem Kreuz, 1933.

 

Gottfr. Hager, Warum sind wir Christen die Bluthunde der Menschheit? 1933. Alf. Vierkandt, Naturvolker und Kulturvölker, 1896.

 

Bernth. Kummer, Mission als Sittenwechsel.

 

Mathes Ziegler, Kirche und Reich im Ringen der jungen Nation, 1933. Bernth. Kummer, Die germanische Weltanschauung nach altnordis-cher Überlieferung.

 

Siehe welter dazu ds wichtigste gottglaubige Schrifttum