Charles Davidson: When a Cardinal Capitulates before Trump as a Pope Did before Hitler

ON JANUARY 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany’s Third Reich. Six months later, on July 20, Pope Pius XI, represented by Cardinal Pacelli who six years later became Pope Pius XII, entered into a Faustian pact with the Nazi Führer.

Known as the “Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich” (Reichskonkordat),it stipulated that the Roman Catholic Church would be assured of non-state interference in its practice of religion and the education of its youth. The agreement was made in exchange for dissolving Germany’s Catholic Center political party during the period of violent repression of Catholic leaders, organizations, newspapers, and journalists by Nazi stormtroopers in early 1933. 

As an act of appeasement in the interest of seeking to spare further reprisal against Catholic individuals and organizations, the concordat had the reverse effect of granting instant credibility to the Nazi regime. It pledged that the Catholic magisterium would not engage in any politics designed to counteract or obstruct Hitler’s reign. While disdained by the rank and file of German Catholic bishops and priests, the concordat nevertheless became law.    

Article 16 of the concordat stated that, prior to a bishop’s assumption of leadership of his diocese, he was to declare himself loyal either to the local state’s governor (Reichsstatthalter) or to the president of the Reich, which Hitler became by plebiscite on August 19, 1934.

Every bishop was to take the following official oath:

“Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise, as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the state of _______. I swear and promise to honor the legally constituted government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it. In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interests of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it.”^[i]

By contrast, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explicitly instructed his disciples against taking oaths.

You have heard it said that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool. . . . And do not swear by your head for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:33–37, NRSV).

Tragically, Pope Pius XI did not say “No, No” to Hitler. Instead of forthrightly saying either “Yes, Yes” or “No, No” to him, he sought to have it both ways by making a draconian deal with the Führer that amounted to an ecclesial default by saying, as it were, “I surrender my obedience to Hitler rather than to God when it comes to matters of church and state.”

A similar act of apostasy has befallen many American Christians in 2024, just as it did the majority of German Christians in 1934.

As in various historical instances when Christians or non-Christians have pledged their allegiance to autocrats and dictators, the grand deed of complete surrender comes about as one small act of submission is added to another and to yet another until eventually an entire nation is trapped in a state of collective psychosis because fascist leaders, and others who are complicit, propagandize and seduce the masses to wear blinders about what is actually happening to them and to the surrounding populations and institutions.

Take as an example Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. 

The National Catholic Reporter posted an editorial in which it castigated the cardinal for his “unctuous” relationship to Donald Trump. Regarding the cardinal’s decision to invite Trump to the annual Al Smith charity dinner, the editorial was nothing short of blunt.

“The real scandal is that the good Catholic cardinal of the great city of New York would not have the courage to say, this year, that the current Republican candidate is a walking example of so much the Catholic Church finds repugnant in today’s politics that he would suspend the normal invitations.

“The real controversy is that an event that touts its history of raising funds for society’s most needy is going to host someone who is one of the culture’s greatest threats to that kind of caring. The real outrage is that Trump, given the public nature and extent of his repulsive record, should be invited to a fundraiser for an organization, Catholic Charities, that has long worked in the trenches to save and transform lives on society’s farthest margins. It is tragic that the guest of honor this year will be someone whose personal example and policy wishes are in a collision course with the principles of Catholic social teaching.

“We are triply disappointed, Cardinal Dolan, that in the name of the church and its witness to the wider culture, you did not suspend the norm this year and invite someone worthy of the event’s cause. We are disappointed you didn’t have the courage to stand up to Trump, a looming threat to the democratic ideals that allow the church to host such a high-profile public gathering.”^[ii]

One can be thankful that the editors of the National Catholic Reporter and many conscientious Catholic, as well as Protestant, leaders have refused to genuflect before the debauched, derogatory, and dictatorial Mr. Trump and his minions who, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and J.D. Vance, have bowed the knee and surrendered their souls to the flagrant lies, foul deeds, and malevolent intentions that continue to define the former president’s persona and his party’s politics.

The National Catholic Reporter got it right by declaring that Mr. Trump and his policies are on a “collision course” with Catholic social teaching. And, I would add, they are on a collision course with the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Often, for Christians, the distinction between “Yes, Yes” and “No, No” becomes crystal clear, without obfuscation or equivocation.

As is the case now. 

When a person is genuinely guided by, and committed to, the teachings of Jesus Christ, then to say “Yes, Yes” to Jesus is to say “No, No” to Trump. For to say “Yes, Yes” to Trump is to say “No, No” to Jesus.

Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24, NRSV).

It simply isn’t possible in the name of Jesus to be a servant of Truth and simultaneously a servant of the ubiquitous Trumpian Lie. The one is mutually exclusive of the other.

Popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, pastors, deacons, and any Christians with their eyes fixed upon the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospels know this to be so. 

The failure to serve the Truth by appeasing, enabling, supporting, and voting for the lies and treachery of Donald Trump is the present apostasy of those Christians who in self-deception believe they can devote themselves to two masters, Jesus and Trump. But it simply isn’t possible. For the life and teachings of Jesus are on a direct “collision course” with the machinations of Donald Trump. Truth and falsehood never equate.

There is an important footnote to this.

When the National Catholic Reporter addressed Cardinal Dolan directly, saying, “We are disappointed you didn’t have the courage to stand up to Trump,” the word “courage” leapt out. 

For it is the failure of courage that constitutes the cardinal sin of those who say Yes, Yes to persons in positions of power when they should say No, No.

In C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, the devilishly insightful Screwtape, knowing all too well how God views the fragility of human courage when the chips are down and dictators are in charge, put it like this to his understudy, Wormwood: 

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”^[iii]

What then might Cardinal Dolan say to his friend Donald Trump, should Mr. Trump become the president who orders the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Border Patrol, the military, and “all hands on deck” to separate, arrest, incarcerate, and deport millions of immigrant human beings from all across this nation?  

Would the cardinal stand face-to-face to Mr. Trump and declare, “No! No! Sir, you will not do this to these, God’s beloved children!”?

And would the Cardinal ask all of his bishops and priests and congregants to follow suit? 

Or would the magnitude of such saving courage, for the sake of divine mercy, be too “risky” for any Christian to undertake before Pilate in the name of Jesus Christ? 

The central pastoral question is this: Will the chief diocesan shepherd “Look after my sheep” (John 21:16, TJB) as Jesus commanded, or will the unctuous cardinal open the sheepgate to let the wolf into the sheepfold?

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^[i] Robert G. Moeller, The Nazi State and German Society: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010), 62.

^[ii] Editorial, “Cardinal Dolan’s ‘Al Smith dinner’ disappointment is misdirected,” National Catholic Reporter, October 7, 2024. https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/editorial/editorial-cardinal-dolans-al-smith-dinner-disappointment-misdirected?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

^[iii] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 161–62.

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Charles Davidson is a retired Presbyterian (PCUSA) pastor, psychotherapist, and professor of pastoral theology, care, and counseling. He is the editor of George Buttrick’s Guide to Preaching the Gospel (Abingdon Press) and the author of Bone, Dead and Rising: Vincent van Gogh and the Self Before God (Cascade Books).

Copyright © 2024 Charles Davidson. All Rights Reserved.