Pope Pius XI

“WHILE it is true that the race or the people, the State or a particular form of government, the representatives of the civil power, or other fundamental elements of human society have an essential and honorable place in the natural order, nevertheless, if anyone detaches them from this scale of earthly values and exalts them as the supreme norm and standard of all things, even of religious values, deifying them with idolatrous worship, he perverts and falsifies the order of things created and constituted by God, and is far from true faith in God and from a conception of life in conformity therewith … our God, is the personal God, transcendent, almighty, infinitely perfect, One in the Trinity of Persons and Three in the Unity of the Divine Essence, Creator of the Universe, Lord, King and ultimate purpose of the history of the world, Who does not suffer and can never suffer any other divinity beside Him … only superficial minds can fall into the error of speaking of a national God of a national religion, of foolishly attempting to restrict within the narrow confines of a single race, that God, Who is the Creator of the world, the King and Lawgiver of all peoples, before Whose greatness the nations are as small as drops of water in a bucket.” [bold added.]

This profound and truthful statement was made by Pope Pius XI in his 1937 Encyclical, On the Condition of the Church in Germany, in which he condemned the racial idolatry of Nazism.

Pius XI’s statement is important for those of us today because he not only warns against deification of race, but he clarifies the important truth that love of one’s own race is natural and good.

Interestingly, the political phenomenon of multiculturalism suffers from both extremes essentially warned against by the Pontiff.

Multiculturalism causes Westerners to disparage excessively and to a neurotic degree their own race, therefore eliminating the “essential and honorable place” race has in the natural order. At the same time it perversely causes them to idolize other races, creating a “national God” of race … and “foolishly attempting to restrict within the narrow confines of race” that Supreme God.

White nationalism which makes the white race a God is deeply wrong and should be avoided at all costs. But then so should a mystique of race applied to non-whites, with the constant suggestion that they can do no wrong and are untainted by original sin.

Christian Zionism is another example of racial idolatry today.

— Comments —

Ingemar writes:

Very interesting post and quote from Pius XI. He highlighted the reason I believe the alt-right is/was doomed to fail.

If any races could claim supremacy over any other in Europe, it would be the Germans. Yet for all of their vaunted racial advantages, they were not enough to overcome Hitler’s obsessive stupidity. The same goes for the Pharisees of Jesus’s time. Genetics is not a substitute for faithfulness towards God.

Laura writes:

Thanks.

Here’s a good quote:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, in and through the Catholic Church, aims at showing forth to the world the resplendent qualities of the English, French, Irish, German, America, etc., members of Christ. Catholic saints are all convinced that the highest life is not their national life — in fact their lives are a striking proof of the contrary — but they all know and teach that any act of subordination of the legitimate interests of the nation of which they are members to those of any other nation would be a sin and a failure in their duty to the Supernatural Messias. [bold added]

— Rev. Denis Fahey, The Rulers of Russia, 1938 (imprimatur 1939); pp 77-78

The encyclical by Pope Pius XI is also discussed in this pamphlet.
 

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