The Silence of the Shepherds, by Gene Thomas Gomulka

By Gene Thomas Gomulka, Church Militant, November 13, 2021

Failure to condemn evil

In pre-World War II Germany, most Protestant and Catholic Church leaders remained silent and failed to speak out against the truly non-Christian policies implemented by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Denouncing these fellow ministers and priests as vendors of “cheap grace,” German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer helped to found the Confessing Church, whose adherents refused to compromise their Christian beliefs even under threat of persecution and martyrdom.

Even though Adolf Hitler was baptized Catholic, he was honest enough to recognize that the policies he promoted clearly placed him outside the Church. Nowhere is it recorded that he presented himself as an adult for Communion. However, had he done so, it is safe to say there probably would have been German bishops and priests who would have administered the Eucharist to him. While Germany’s bishops conference was forced to admit some 85 years later the embarrassment of their predecessors’ complicity with evil, it appears the lessons of the past have not been learned by Rome and the U.S. episcopate. …

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