Нацистік Германия мен Ватикан арасындағы Рейхсконкордат шарты

Treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany

The Reichskonkordat ("Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich") is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, on behalf of Pope Pius XI and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of President Paul von Hindenburg and the German government. It was ratified 10 September 1933 and it has been in force from that date onward. The treaty guarantees the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. When bishops take office Article 16 states they are required to take an oath of loyalty to the Governor or President of the German Reich established according to the constitution. The treaty also requires all clergy to abstain from working in and for political parties. Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed and intensified afterwards leading to protest from the Church including in the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge encyclical of Pope Pius XI. The Nazis planned to eliminate the Church's influence by restricting its organizations to purely religious activities. The Reichskonkordat is the most controversial of several concordats that the Vatican negotiated during the pontificate of Pius XI. It is frequently discussed in works that deal with the rise of Hitler in the early 1930s and the Holocaust. The concordat has been described by some as giving moral legitimacy to the Nazi regime soon after Hitler had acquired quasi dictatorial powers through the Enabling Act of 1933, an Act itself facilitated through the support of the Catholic Centre Party. The treaty places constraints on the political activity of German clergy of the Catholic Church. With passage of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, for example, a policy of nonintervention was followed. The majority of the German church hierarchy regarded the treaty as a symbol of peace between church and state. From a Catholic Church perspective it has been argued that the Concordat prevented even greater evils being unleashed against the Church. Though some German bishops were unenthusiastic, and the Allies at the end of World War II felt it inappropriate, Pope Pius XII successfully argued to keep the concordat in force. It is still in force today.

The 'Reichskonkordat' between Germany and the Holy See was signed on 20 July 1933 and ratified in 10 September of that year. The treaty was an extension of existing concordats already signed with Prussia and Bavaria

Accounts of 20th century diplomatic relations between Germany and the Vatican commonly take as their starting point the political scene in the late 19th century. German Chancellor Bismarck's Kulturkampf ("Battle for Culture") of 1871–78 saw an attempt to assert a Protestant vision of nationalism over the new German Empire, and fused anticlericalism with suspicion of the Catholic population, whose loyalty was presumed to lie with Austria and France. The Catholic Centre Party had formed in 1870, initially to represent the religious interests of Catholics and Protestants, but was transformed by the Kulturkampf into the "political voice of Catholics". Bismarck's Culture Struggle was largely a failure. Bismarck sought to restrict the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. He regarded the Roman Church as "the enemy within". His Kulturkampf included the disbanding of Catholic organizations, confiscation of church property, banishment or imprisonment of clergy, and an ongoing feud with the Vatican. According to novelist James Carroll, the end of Kulturkampf signaled "that the Church had successfully resisted to his face the man [Bismarck] who, according to an admiring Henry Kissinger, was 'outmaneuvered' by nobody." The Catholic Church's firm resistance to Bismarck and Kulturkampf, including passive resistance by the Church in general and the excommunication of collaborating priests, has been used as benchmark for assessing the Church's response to the Nazis from the early 1930s through World War II.

A formal realignment of Church and state relationships was considered desirable in the aftermath of the political instability of 1918 and the adoption of the Weimar constitution for the Reich along with the new constitutions in the German states in 1919. Key issues that the Church hoped to resolve related to state subsidies to the Church, support for Catholic schools, the appointment of bishops and the legal position of the clergy. The Reich government, in turn, wished for reasons of foreign policy to have friendly relations with the Holy See. Also, Germany wanted to prevent new diocesan boundaries from being established which would dilute Germany's ties to ceded German territories in the east such as Danzig and Upper Silesia. Negotiations relating to specific points, rather than a general concordat, took place between 1919 and 1922. But even after subsequent feelers were put out between the two parties the negotiations failed, primarily because both the Reichstag and Reichsrat were dominated by non Catholic majorities who, for a variety of reasons, did not want a formal pact with the Vatican. In the absence of an agreement relating to particular areas of concern with the Reich, the Holy See concluded more wide ranging concordats with three German states where Catholics were concentrated: Bavaria (1924), Prussia (1929), and Baden (1932).

Pius XI was elected Pope in 1922. His pontificate coincided with the early aftermath of the First World War. The old European monarchies had been largely swept away and a new and precarious order formed across the continent. In the East, the Soviet Union arose. In Italy, the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took power, while in Germany, the fragile Weimar Republic collapsed with the Nazi seizure of power. Pope Pius's major diplomatic approach was to make concordats. However, wrote Hebblethwaite, these concordats did not prove "durable or creditable" and "wholly failed in their aim of safeguarding the institutional rights of the Church" for "Europe was entering a period in which such agreements were regarded as mere scraps of paper". In 1929, Pius signed the Lateran Treaty and a concordat with Italy, confirming the existence of an independent Vatican City state, in return for recognition of the Kingdom of Italy and an undertaking for the papacy to be neutral in world conflicts. Other major concordats included those signed with Germany (1933), Austria (1935), Yugoslavia (1935), and Latvia (1938). In October 1929, General Groener pushed the German Foreign Ministry to resolve an issue with the Vatican regarding military chaplains who lacked the ability to administer the sacraments of baptism or matrimony without first obtaining the permission of the local priest or bishop. Groener wanted the military to have their own bishop rather than rely on local ordinaries and it was this particular issue that was to mark an important step in the discussions that would ultimately be realized in the concordat with the Vatican. In March 1930, the new Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli, gave indications that the Vatican would be interested in a concordat with the Reich in the event of any reforms of the Reich's constitution having an adverse effect on the validity of the concordats already agreed between the German states and the Vatican. Discussions between the two parties took place between 1931 and 1932 and at one point representatives of the Reich pointed out that Italy had an army Archbishop with Cardinal Pacelli indicating that was because Italy had signed a comprehensive concordat with the Vatican. The German negotiators continued to discuss solely on the basis of particular points rather than a general concordat during 1931 but even these were felt to be unlikely to be passed by the Reichstag or the Reichsrat, no matter their political or theological leanings.

Pius XII put a high priority on preserving the concordat from the Nazi era, although the bishops were unenthusiastic about it and the Allies considered the request inappropriate. After the war, the concordat remained in place and the Catholic Church was restored to its previous position. When Lower Saxony passed a new school law, the Holy See complained that it violated the terms of the concordat. The federal government called upon the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) for clarification. In its ruling of 26 March 1957, the court decided that the circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the concordat did not invalidate it. Declaring its lack of jurisdiction in matters of public international law and considering the fact that the German constitution grants authority in school matters to the state governments, the Constitutional Court ruled that the federal government had no authority to intervene. So while the federal government was obligated by the concordat, the court could not enforce its application in all areas because said court lacks legal authority to do so. The Weimar constitution (some of whose regulations, namely articles 136–139 and 141 were re enacted in article 140 of the current German constitution) does not speak of a "separation", but rather rules out any state religion while protecting religious freedom, religious holidays and leaving open the possibility of cooperation. However, there was a continual conflict between article 18 of the concordat and article 138 of the Weimar constitution.

Anthony Rhodes regarded Hitler's desire for a concordat with the Vatican as being driven principally by the prestige and respectability it brought to his regime abroad whilst at the same time eliminating the opposition of the Centre Party. Rhodes took the view that if the survival of Catholic education and youth organisations was taken to be the principal aim of papal diplomacy during this period then the signing of the concordat to prevent greater evils was justified. Many of the Centre Party deputies were priests who had not been afraid to raise their voices in the past and would almost certainly have voted against Hitler's assumption of dictatorial powers. The voluntary dissolution of the Centre Party removed that obstacle and Hitler now had absolute power and brought respectability to the state: "Within six months of its birth, the Third Reich had been given full approval by the highest spiritual power on earth". Ian Kershaw considered the role of the Centre Party in Hitler's removal of almost all constitutional restraints as "particularly ignominious." John Cornwell views Cardinal Pacelli as being an example of a "fellow traveller" of the Nazis who, through the concordat, was willing to accept the generosity of Hitler in the educational sphere (more schools, teachers and student slots), so long as the Church withdrew from the social and political sphere, at the same time as Jews were being dismissed from universities and Jewish student slots were being reduced. He argues that the Catholic Centre Party vote was decisive in the adoption of dictatorial powers by Hitler and that the party's subsequent dissolution was at Pacelli's prompting. Michael Phayer is of the opinion that the concordat conditioned German bishops to avoid speaking out against anything that was not strictly related to church matters, leading to a muted response to the attacks on Mosaic Jews. Carlo Falconi described the concordat as "The Devil's Pact with Hitler". Albert Einstein in private conversation relating to the concordat said "Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time?" Daniel Goldhagen recalled how Hitler had said: "To attain our aim we should stop at nothing even if we must join forces with the devil," and that, in Goldhagen's view, is what Hitler did in agreeing the concordat with the church. Gordon Zahn felt that though the signing of the concordat was distasteful for Cardinal Pacelli it had spared the church in Germany from greater hardship and persecution.