This morning we got to Mass early and I had a few minutes to read Anthony Esolen's article in Magnificat on Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a great Catholic political figure of the mid 20th century. One incident in Adenauer's life occurred in 1933 after he was removed as mayor of Cologne by the Nazis. He applied to an abbey for prayer and rest. Adenauer, a critic of the rising German Reich and Hitler listened to the abbot, a friend, say, "Many of our monks disagree with you about Herr Hitler. German soil, German blood."
This was not a unique position among German clerics as Dietrich von Hildebrand relates in his great work, My Battle against Hitler. Sadly, many men in roman collars and other German Catholics defended the tyrant long after his evil plan was clear.
Adenauer wasn't one of them. He replied to the abbot, "We are Catholics first, Germans second."
