Foreign News: Madman Hitler

In Munich two Sundays ago, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, Germany’s No. 1 anti-Nazi prelate, preached in his cathedral on “The God-Given Rights of Personality,” to the accompaniment of rude whistles (which he ignored) from Nazis in his congregation. Last week, at the height of Germany’s pogroms, Cardinal Faulhaber asked for police protection for the Catholic clergy. Instead he received, from District Leader Adolf Wagner, a snarl: “If Faulhaber mends his ways, he will be protected better than the police can protect him.” Thereupon a Nazi mob ganged up to the Cardinal’s palace, smashed all the windows within stone’s throw.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore encouraged his Austrian colleagues and excoriated their Nazi enemies from a Washington pulpit in a way no German bishop would dare. “The madman Hitler and the cripple-minded Goebbels,” he cried, “cannot silence the gentle and humble and courageous Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, nor can they silence the brave Innitzer [Archbishop of Vienna]. . . . No decent person can condone the actions of the madman Hitler and the cripple-minded Goebbels. . . . If Hitler does not like what I say about him and his cripple-minded Minister of Propaganda, let him take up the matter with Secretary of State Hull.”