Russian Orthodox Church

Patriarch Kirill and Russian Orthodoxy Deserve Respect Not Insults: An Open Letter to George Weigel*

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by Fr. Alexander F. C. Webster, James George Jatras, and Fr. Victor Potapov

I. Introduction

As longtime friendly colleagues in the pursuit of a faithful Christian public moral witness in America, we are profoundly saddened and shocked at your unfounded, insulting accusations against the moral integrity of the senior leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church since the Ukrainian crisis erupted in February 2014.

The initial broadside appeared in your column in the Denver Catholic Register on March 18, 2014, when you dismissed Patriarch Kirill of Moscow as “duplicitous” and Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfayev), chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, as “mendacious.” We take increased umbrage at the steady escalation of your Szechuan ad hominem prose since then:

“These [Ukrainian Greek Catholic] bishops, like other western Christians, have not been duped by the extraordinary campaign of lies that has issued from the Kremlin these past seven months, but…all of us who cherish the spiritual patrimony of Russian Orthodoxy…are deeply saddened when you and Metropolitan Hilarion, your chief ecumenical officer, amplify the falsehoods of President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov.” [June 17, 2014]
“Russian Orthodoxy’s leadership today functions as a Kremlin mouthpiece in matters Ukrainian, even as it lies about the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s role in the current crisis and betrays its ecumenical commitments in doing so…[February 17, 2015]
“Serious ecumenical theological dialogue is impossible with men who are acting in the world as agents of Russian state power. Pretending otherwise emboldens the Russian Orthodox leadership.” [August 4, 2015]

The condescending, hubristic tone of those comments is surpassed in offensiveness only by your resort to uncharitable epithets—liars, mouthpieces, and dupes—which hardly constitute a reasoned argument. It is well-nigh impossible in this “open letter” to defend Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Hilarion from your omniscient pretense to know their hearts and minds. However, we shall attempt here to set the record straight by accurately citing and explaining their public positions on the Ukrainian crisis.

II. Symphonia—Not “Separation”—of Church & State

Far from a throwback to Soviet-era practices—as you have suggested, both in your own words and though uncritical quotation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s (UGCC) Major-Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk (“Ukraine Rising,” National Review, Nov. 10, 2014), the close cooperation between Church and state in Russia today is more reminiscent of the pre-1917 symphonia, the Orthodox standard throughout our history since the time of Byzantine Emperor Theodosios I in the late fourth century. That organic instead of adversarial understanding of the sacerdotium and the imperium united, harmoniously albeit with some tension, in a single Christian commonwealth is obviously antithetical to the neo-Jeffersonian principle of strict “separation” of church and state, now political dogma in virtually all Western countries imbued with the notion of secular liberal democracy.

In the restored symbiosis in post-Soviet Russia it is hardly clear that the Church is the junior partner dutifully “amplifying” state policy. To the contrary, as Professor Nicolai N. Petro of the University of Rhode Island pointed out (“Russia’s Orthodox Soft Power,” Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, March 23, 2015), Kremlin policies “are popular precisely because they have the blessing of the Russian Orthodox Church.” Grounded in a religio-cultural vision of Russky mir—the “Russian World” descended from ancient Kievan Rus’ and embracing the people in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and perhaps Kazakhstan—the balance in the contemporary Russian neo-symphonia, as it were, depends on the respective priorities of Patriarch Kirill and the Putin government. As Petro astutely observed, Russky mir is, for the state, “a political or a cultural concept” by which the Russian Orthodox Church “can be a useful tool” for Russia’s domestic and international advancement. But Russky mir is, for the Church, “a religious concept” by which the national governments can be “tools” for the “second Christianization” of the historic lands of Kievan Rus.’

We would argue that, since AD 2000, the Russian neo-symphonia has begun to tip in favor of the Church, not the state, and praise God the Holy Trinity for that! The comprehensive document titled, Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, produced by the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate under the leadership of Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfayev)—whose moral character you have besmirched—is the gold standard of contemporary, yet very traditional, Orthodox social ethics. Other ecclesial initiatives have provided the main impetus for recent Russian laws—decried, alas, by Western liberals—to curb propagandizing and proselytizing of young Russians by “gay rights” advocates, reduce the enormity of abortions in post-Soviet Russia, and protect the sanctity of religious temples from unwanted intrusions by miscreant groups like “Pussy Riot.” In addition, the Russian Church has established a profound inter-confessional collaboration with U.S. evangelicals to promote strong families and traditional marriage between one man and one woman alone.

None of those accomplishments was possible throughout most of the twentieth century. As each of the co-authors of this open letter have acknowledged often in print, Russian Orthodoxy had to endure the godless Soviets for 74 years, including the shameless betrayal of faithful confessors and martyrs by Orthodox hierarchical collaborators with that regime. For you to compare that horrific era to the miraculous re-emergence and moral integrity of the Church since 1991 is shameless.

Whatever criticisms one might have of the symphonia model, blanket condemnation is hardly appropriate as we witness the trend in our own country, where Christianity is increasingly marginalized, moral vices are officially promoted as virtues, and abortion “rights” and homosexual “rights,” in particular, are now key components of U.S. foreign policy—a trend we are sure you deplore no less than we.

III. The Russian Church—a Rival, Not an “Enemy”

Patriarch Kirill, Metropolitan Hilarion, and other prelates of the Russian Orthodox Church have been consistent on two points with respect to Ukraine. First, they voice support for Russia’s policies. Second, they call for restraint in what they see as a deplorable, fratricidal conflict, which pits the Russky Mir against itself.

You need not accept their point of view. Perhaps based on your own religious heritage, you may prefer to believe that the UGCC is “a safe-deposit box of Ukrainian national culture and identity,” despite the mere 15%, at most, of Ukraine’s population who identify as Catholics (Latin or Eastern rite). Underlying the current conflict are some sharp as yet unanswered questions: What exactly is Ukraine (“Borderland”) and who are Ukrainians? Are they an aspiring part of (an increasingly godless and libertine) “Europe” defined in Brussels or an integral part of the Russky Mir? Who was on the “right” or “wrong” side of World War II? Ukrainians themselves are at odds on these questions, largely along regional and confessional lines.

When Ukraine became an independent republic in 1991, those questions lay dormant under a deceptively calm surface. But they remained a fatal weakness in the very fiber of the new state, along with an unbelievable level of oligarchic corruption. The unconstitutional unseating of the flawed but democratically elected government in February 2014 shattered what was already a fragile unity. That, not some mythical Russian aggression, has torn Ukraine apart.

Worse, the overturn of the legal government would not have succeeded without violence or the participation of extreme nationalist elements. You write that Ukraine “rose up against post-Communist corruption and stagnation,” and that Archbishop Shevchuk’s “Church played a central role in the Maidan Revolution of Dignity,’ its bishops and priests dodging Russian bullets to tend to those demonstrating nonviolently for freedom and justice.” However:

Surely you are aware of the leaked phone call between the EU’s Catherine Ashton and Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, indicating the true source of sniping on the Maidan.
Surely you know that “those demonstrating nonviolently” included members of violent radical groups like Right Sector, using spiked clubs, Molotov cocktails, and even guns against riot police to seize government buildings—behavior that, in Washington, would be put down immediately with deadly force.
Surely you know of the May 2014 massacre in Odessa of dozens of anti-Euromaidan demonstrators—or maybe that was just more nonviolent struggle for “freedom and justice”?
Surely you know of the new law criminalizing criticism of the wartime Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), sinister fascists guilty of participation in massacres of Jews and of slaughtering tens of thousands of Roman Catholic Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Perhaps that’s an example of the “Revolution of Dignity”?
Surely you know that only two days after the President Viktor Yanukovich fled from Kiev in February 2014 the Ukraine parliament repealed by an 86% majority a 2012 law ensuring, among other things, the official use of Russian as a second language in the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine, where the civil war has since proved most violent. Was that punitive, provocative measure indicative of Ukrainian “freedom and justice”?
Surely you know that the Ukrainian military’s Azov Brigade engaged in combat in the Donbass region includes self-proclaimed neo-Nazis, perhaps as much as 20% of the unit (according to USA Today, March 10, 2015), complete with swastikas, as well as the infamous “SS” runes and an inverted version of the Wolfsangel symbol used widely during World War II by Nazi German Waffen-SS divisions. Are German broadcaster ZDF and Norwegian broadcaster TV2, which filmed the latter, and NBC News (who reported the incidents online on September 9, 2014), also “dupes” and “mouthpieces” of the Kremlin?

Your trumpeting of a single Ukrainian national will may fit in well with a “good vs. evil” Manichaean narrative to depict the Ukraine conflict as one of West vs. East, democracy vs. tyranny, Ukraine vs. Russia, and, by implication, Catholic vs. Orthodox. It may be great fare for readers of the Denver Catholic Register, National Review, and other publications who may be unaware of past and present complexities. But it is not conducive to a peaceful and just resolution of the Ukraine crisis or averting an even broader conflict that would imperil Europe and the world, including the U.S. Nor is it an excuse to hurl verbal Molotov cocktails at honorable Christian pastors who happen to disagree with you.

*George Weigel is a distinguished lay Roman Catholic theologian and author of the magisterial Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II (Harper Perennial: 2004 [updated edition].

Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD, is a retired U.S. Army Chaplain (Colonel), author of four books on Orthodox social ethics, and rector of St. Herman of Alaska Russian Orthodox Church in Stafford, Virginia. James George Jatras, Esq., is Deputy Director of the American Institute in Ukraine, former foreign policy adviser to the U.S. Senate Republican leadership, and a Greek Orthodox layman. Mitred Archpriest Victor Potapov is the dean of St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Washington, DC, and a retired Russian language broadcaster for the Voice of America.

Met. Hilarion of Volokolamsk: Church and State in Russia

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Met. Hilarion of Volokolamsk is the Chairman of the of the Department for External Church Relations Moscow Patriarchate.

Key quote:

“We remain strongly convinced that the secular nature of the state does not presuppose the ousting of the Church from the public space or her marginalization and placement in a “ghetto”. The Russian Orthodox Church is not only a social institution that has played a tremendous historical role in the development of Russian statehood and formation of the Russian people’s Christian spirit, but also an important part of the modern civil society. By virtue of this fact the Church has a right to expect that her voice is heard. And now, at a time of relative wellbeing of the Church, relevant are the words of St. Tikhon, the Holy Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, who said not long before his death, “Looking at the future ways of holy Orthodoxy without fear, we call upon you, our beloved children, do God’s cause and may the sons of lawlessness never succeed”.”

Your Eminence, Venerable Cardinal Schönborn,

Distinguished Participants in the Seminar:

We have assembled to discuss such topical issues as relations between Church and State, dialogue of Churches in the context of global migration processes, the place of religion in societal life and social service of the Church.

The subjects proposed by the organizers of the seminar for us to discuss have a direct bearing on the service of the Russian Orthodox Church today. I would like to speak in more detail about church-state relations in Russia since this theme has been heatedly debated in recent times both inside and outside Russia.

For over millennium-long history of the Russian State, relations between the Church and the secular power have developed in different ways. During almost a thousand years beginning from the Baptism of Old Russia in 988 to the 1917 Revolution, the church-state relations in Russia shaped up differently. The form and content of these relations depended to a large extent on the historical context and the personalities of supreme hierarchs and state rulers. For instance, in the period from 988 to the autocephaly gained by the Russian Church in 1488, the state promoted the propagation of Orthodox faith without interfering in internal church affairs. In the subsequent period known as the Moscow Period (from 1448 to 1589), the princely government would often violate the established balance of relations and the principle of mutual non-interference by replacing an annoying head of the Church for a more loyal one. According to the church historian Anton Kartashev, “Russian metropolitans would soon see the overpowering authority of the Moscow Prince who would appropriate the title of tsar and the ensuing Byzantine idea of patronage over all the Orthodox Christians. At the same time, the installation and fate of metropolitans themselves would begin to depend equally strongly on the personal will of Moscow princes, as was the case in ruined Constantinople”. [1]

In 1589, the Moscow Council chaired by Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople installed the first Russian Patriarch Job. The model of relations between the Church and the secular power in the first patriarchal period proved to be a reproduction of church-state relations as were established in the Byzantine Empire in the form of the so-called symphony of church and state power. The introduction of patriarchal office became a logical continuation of the historical development of Eastern Christianity as the Orthodox patriarchates in the East, which were under the authority of Muslims, in the 16^th century looked to the Russian Church and Russian monarchs for support and protection. The election of a Patriarch gave a special status not only to the Church but also to the supreme power of the state which finally became aware of itself as the successor of Byzantine baseliuses.

Peter I abolished the patriarchal office and initiated the so-called Synodal Period in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. The abolishment of patriarchal office and the establishment of a Sacred Governing Synod in 1721 as in fact a ministry in the structure of governmental bodies headed by a secular person, the Chief Procurator, initiated a period of secularization and subjection of the Church to the state. It sometimes happened so that emperors would appoint as Chief Procurators persons, to put it mildly, not quite blameless not only in their morals but also in their religious views. The secularization continued under Catherine II who secularized monastery lands thus undermining their subsistence.

The year 1917 became a turning point for both the Russian Church and the whole Russian Empire as it marked the beginning of the chaos and terror of civil war of all against all. Russia saw the perfect fulfilment of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of Me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved (Mt. 10:21-22).

The Local Council of 1917-1918, which was held against a backdrop of the collapse of the entire state and social order, restored once abolished patriarchal office in the Church. In 1918 the Soviet power issued a Decree on the Freedom of Conscience and the Church and Religious Societies. It asserted the principle of the Church’s separation from the state and school. Religious organizations were deprived of the status of legal entity, the right to own property and to collect donations. The first Soviet Constitution of 1918 defined the clergy and monastics as nonworking elements and denied them electoral rights. The children of the clergy were deprived of the right to enter higher education institutions. The authority in the person of Lenin and later Stalin who replaced him initiated repressions against their own people on an unprecedented scale with the toll of millions victims. The Church was almost completely crushed as bishops and priests were executed without investigation and trial, churches were blown up, monasteries and theological schools closed.

The decrees “On the Separation of the Church from the State and the School from the Church” and “On Religious Associations” adopted in 1929 put the Russian Orthodox Church outside the law. The persecutions against the clergy and faithful sometimes abated and sometimes broke out with a new force as was the case in the pre-war period and the period after World War II. The number of martyrs for faith in the Russian Orthodox Church exceeds many a time the multitude of Christian martyrs who suffered in the first centuries of persecution carried out by the heathen Roman Empire.

The political processes in the late 20^th century in the USSR led to the collapse of the Soviet state. In 1990, Russia adopted “The Law on the Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Organizations”, which actually abolished the legal basis for exterminating the Church. The Council for Religious Affairs was liquidated and religious organizations recovered the legal basis for their work and the status of legal entity. The Church was given the right to own property, to engage in economic activity, to establish educational institutions for children and adults and to freely distribute religious books.

The present law “On the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” was adopted in 1997 to reflect the profound changes which took place in the political and socio-economic domains of society. This law fixes a number of fundamental provisions in the field of cooperation between the state and religious communities. An analysis of the legal novels in this law shows that Russia has chosen for relations between the state and religious organizations a model different from that of “Established Church” prevailing in the world. The law has developed the basic principles of church-state relations fixed in the 1993 Russian Constitution.

In 2000, the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted an important document, “The Russian Orthodox Church’s Basic Social Concept”, which, among other things, contains results of a theological reflection on church-state relations in the past and the present. I will dot down the key statements, which make it possible to come to a better understanding of the Church’s stance on this issue.

First, the Church recognized that the state is a necessary element of life in the world corrupted by sin, where both the individual and society need to be safeguarded against dangerous manifestations of sin. The state, however, is not an end in itself or an independent value but rather an instrument for restricting the domination of sin in the world. The Old and New Testaments call those in power to use the power of the state to restrict evil and to support good as the apparent moral sense of the state’s existance (for instance, Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 13-16). We know from church history that the apostles taught Christians to obey the authorities (cf. Tim. 2:2), although at that time the Church was persecuted by both the local Jewish authorities and the Roman Empire. The Church keeps loyal to the state, but to stand above the requirement of loyalty is God’s commandment to do the work of people’s salvation in any conditions and circumstances.

Secondly, Christians should avoid absolutizing power and understand its limits. They should recognize its earthly and temporal value called forth because of the existence of sin in the world and the need to contain it. The authority that drives God away from its conscience is prone to abuses and even the deification of rulers themselves as numerous historical examples have shown.

Thirdly, the nature of the state and that of the Church differ. The Church is founded directly by God Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ; while the divine institution of state authority is revealed in historical process only indirectly. While the goal of the Church is salvation of people for eternal life, the aim of state is to ensure their welfare on earth here and now. The state is an immanent part of “this world”, while the Kingdom of God where Christ will be “all and in all” (Col. 3:11) has no room for coercion, opposition between the human being and God and, accordingly, no need for the institution of state.

Fourthly, the church consciousness asserts that temporal wellbeing is unthinkable without respect for certain moral norms. For this reason, the tasks and work of the Church and state may coincide in this area. The state is capable of either giving the Church an opportunity for carrying out her mission or restricting this opportunity up to open persecution. The authority thus judges itself in face of the Truth and ultimately foretells its own fate.

Fifthly, from the Church’s perspective, the secular nature of a state does not have to mean the need to expel religions from every sphere of societal life, to remove the Church from participation in solving socially significant problems or to deprive her of the right to give her assessment of actions taken by the authority. The Church is an important institution of the civil society and she has a right to expect that her voice is sounded and heard. In particular, the Church has a right “to point out to the state that it is inadmissible to propagate such convictions or actions which may result in total control over a person’s life, convictions and relations with other people, as well as erosion in personal, family or public morality, insult of religious feelings, damage to the cultural and spiritual identity of the people and threats to the sacred gift of life”.[2] The principle of church-state separation in today’s situation presupposes only the division of terms of reference between the Church and the authorities and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Sixthly, the Church should not take upon herself the functions inherent in the state, namely, to oppose sin by violence, to make use of temporal powers and to assume restrictive or coercive functions of the state power. At the same time, the Church can request or appeal to the authority to use these functions of the state in particular cases.

Finally, in carrying out her social, charitable, educational and other socially significant projects, the Church expects assistance and promotion from the state. The areas of cooperation between church and state are vast and include, among other things, support for the institution of family, motherhood and childhood, religious-ethical and patriotic education and formation, social work, service in prisons, humanitarian studies, work in the field of culture and art and peacemaking on international and national levels.

The above provisions enable the Russian Orthodox Church to carry out her service in today’s society and to develop dialogue with the state power.

Today, members of the Russian Church are actively involved in various projects carried out by the Church both on her own and jointly with societal and public structures in various fields. The Church and the governmental institutes constructively work and consider debatable problems together. The Church has an opportunity to bear witness to the Gospel’s truth before both the people and the authorities and to express her position on socially significant issues standing on both Russian and global agenda.

As an example of dialogue between church, society and state in education, I can cite the project for teaching the Basics of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics discipline in all Russian regions. In our country there is a legal provision for teaching in public schools the disciplines devoted to the study of moral principles and historical and cultural traditions of Orthodoxy and other world religions or, alternatively, for teaching secular ethics. Parents are given the right to chose one of these disciplines within this course.

The first practical steps have been made to revive the army clergy. At present, there are 240 vacancies for staff priests, and 814 non-staff priests serve in the Russian Army Forces. [3]

The Russian Church is actively involved in social service. Orthodox church asylums and orphanages are established; aid to old people, the disabled and homeless is given; assistance is given in the treatment and rehabilitation of those dependent on alcohol and drugs and in restoration of their social relations and work skills.

Almost in all the dioceses of our Church, their ruling bishops have appointed clergy to take pastoral care of inmates of penitentiaries. Today, 905 priests serve in them.

The Russian Church is active in presenting her position on topical issues of today in the UN, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other international organizations. She attaches a special importance to the strengthening of relations with governmental bodies and the civil society in other countries (including through contacts with the diplomatic corps accredited in Moscow). The aim of these efforts is to inform people in other countries of the Church’s position on burning issues having the ethical dimension. Among them the problems of euthanasia, abortion, legalization of same-sex unions and trafficking of people.

The revival of the Church and the expansion of her work, her growing authority in society and cooperation with the state in diverse areas have provoked displeasure in certain social circles. There are censures in the mass media for the Church’s “interpenetration with the state”, “clericalization of society”, and the like. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, in his address to the Bishops’ Council in 2013, reminded the public once again that “the Church does not interfere in the affairs of state governance, and the state does not interfere in the affairs of the Church but both work together for people’s benefit”. [4]

We remain strongly convinced that the secular nature of the state does not presuppose the ousting of the Church from the public space or her marginalization and placement in a “ghetto”. The Russian Orthodox Church is not only a social institution that has played a tremendous historical role in the development of Russian statehood and formation of the Russian people’s Christian spirit, but also an important part of the modern civil society. By virtue of this fact the Church has a right to expect that her voice is heard. And now, at a time of relative wellbeing of the Church, relevant are the words of St. Tikhon, the Holy Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, who said not long before his death, “Looking at the future ways of holy Orthodoxy without fear, we call upon you, our beloved children, do God’s cause and may the sons of lawlessness never succeed”.

Author’s notes:

[1] Kartashev A. V. Essays on the History of the Russian Church. Sretensky Monastery, 2009, v. 1, p. 394 (Russian)

[2] Bases of Social Concept. https://mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/iii/

[3] Report by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill to the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (2 February, 2013), p. 58. http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/2770923.html.

[4] Ibid. p. 47.

Russian Orthodox Church Canonizes New Martyr Who Died at the Hands of the Nazis

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– Source: Orthodox Cognate

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has canonized Russian national Alexander Schmorell, a native of Orenburg, who was executed by the Nazi regime in 1943 for organizing an anti-fascist student group called the White Rose, the Church Bulletin publication reported.

The ceremony to glorify St. Alexander of Munich, who was 25 yeas old when he died, ended in Germany this past weekend. He became the first new martyr glorified after canonical communion between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) was restored in 2007 following 80 years of separation.

[…]

Schmorell, born in 1917, was the son of a German who moved to Russia in the 19th century. His mother was the daughter of an Orthodox Christian priest. In 1921 the family decided to return to Germany and moved to Munich, where Schmorell became a parishioner of a Russian Orthodox church.

After returning from the front in 1942 following years of service in the German army as a military doctor, Schmorell organized, together with his colleagues Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christophe Probst, the White Rose movement and started distributing anti-Hitler leaflets. They were guillotined the following year.

The White Rose Movement: Conscience in Silent Nazi Germany

Source: Student Pulse | September 09, 2010 | By Ryan A Piccirillo

The morality of every person dictates the innate wrongness of genocide, and yet the world stood by as the Nazis sent millions to the gas chambers during the Holocaust. Historians and social scientists often attribute this moral failure to the blissfully feigned ignorance of the German people, enveloped in a blanket of fear propagated by the Nazi regime, and the indifference and prejudice of other nations. Total inaction was a remarkable failure of the human conscience, but a few brave college students in Munich proved to the world that conscientiousness still existed in the Fatherland. It is for their willingness to die to end the silence that The White Rose has become legendary.

Hans and Sophie Scholl were as typical teenagers during the period of the Third Reich: they enlisted in the Hitler youth organization and put their trust in the man behind its name who vowed to help the “fatherland to achieve greatness, fortune, and prosperity” (Scholl 6). Their sister Inge Scholl recalls that she and her siblings “entered into it with body and soul,” consumed wholly by the “mysterious power which swept [them] along” (Scholl 6). However, Hans quickly realized why his father disapproved of their involvement; he began to feel the stifling effects of fascism and was horrified by the heinous murders he witnessed. His readings of philosophical and theological texts augmented his disdain for the Nazi party. He allied with fellow University of Munich students of similar dispositions and began The White Rose movement to end the Nazi regime. His sister Sophie and Professor Kurt Huber, a philosophy professor at the University, would later join the cause. Dissent was not what made this group extraordinary; thousands of Germans, crippled with fear by Nazi propaganda, felt just as they did. What set the members of The White Rose apart was their unwillingness to remain silent and their selfless decision to act on their intuitions.

The White Rose’s publication and distribution of six leaflets calling for passive resistance against Hitler’s regime would eventually lead to the arrest and execution of its six core members. Although their deaths were followed by a deafening silence from the German people and the revolution they called for would never take place, it cannot be said that they gave their lives in vain; the courage of their actions would echo through history as evidence of conscience within silent Nazi Germany.

Leaflets of The White Rose

The first of the six leaflets produced by The White Rose movement opens, “Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be ‘governed’ by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct” (Scholl 73). The content of the six short pamphlets abounds with this message, appealing to German citizens’ intellect, intuition, and sense of shame. The message of the six leaflets evokes realizations about the evils of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, the moral failure of German indifference and inaction, and calls for an intellectual uprising against the Nazi party. The authors rely heavily on the wisdom of great philosophers and thinkers to validate and reinforce their claims.

Fascism is a form of government which stifles personal expression, oppresses the weak and the different, and indoctrinates its citizens with a dangerous jingoistic spirit of service for the state. The argument against Third-Reich fascism in the first leaflet is supplemented by a passage from German poet and philosopher Freidrich Schiller’s “The Lawgiving of Lycurgus and Solon” which declares:

The state is never an end in itself; it is important only as a condition under which the purpose of mankind can be attained, and this purpose is none other than the development of all man’s powers, his progress and improvement. If a state prevents the development of the capacities which reside in man, then it is reprehensible and injurious, no matter how excellently devised, how perfect in its own way. (Scholl 75)

The authors of the leaflet use this passage to express the maxim that government is meant to serve the people, not the converse. In the third leaflet, the authors state that “according to God’s will, man is intended to pursue his natural goal, his earthly happiness, in self-reliance and self-chosen activity, freely and independently within the community of life and work of the nation” (Scholl 81). Fascism stifles personal growth and expression and stipulates that all members of the state should live solely to serve that state; the Nazi government under Hitler, operating in this fashion, has broken its contract with the people and violated the maxims defined by Schiller and God. Therefore the authors demand that the German people, “must work against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism” (Scholl 74).

The leaflets offer a stern indictment of the German people’s indifference to the atrocities and oppressions of the National Socialist Party, calling on them to face their fears and stand up against the government or be remembered as cowards throughout history. The second leaflet asks, “Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes […] so unworthy of the human race?” (Scholl 78). In that same leaflet, the authors harshly criticize the German people for standing by and even encouraging their fascist leaders to murder thousands. The leaflet argues that any German who stands by silently as atrocities are committed, “is to blame for the fact that [they] came about at all” (Scholl 79). The authors appeal to the guilt felt by every German, despite their attitudes towards the Jewish race, for allowing so many to be senselessly murdered and for allowing their country to be overtaken by fascism through fear. These harsh assertions are not meant to alienate the readers but rather to convince them of the moral necessity for action.

The primary objective of The White Rose movement was to incite fervor for action in the hearts and minds of the German people. The third leaflet boldly welcomes all to the movement, declaring that “everyone is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of this system” (Scholl 82). However, the authors did not focus on the ability of every German to act, but rather on the necessity that every German act. The authors understood that to eradicate National Socialism from Germany required “the cooperation of many convinced, energetic people – people who are agreed to the means they must use to attain their goal.” Without enough people behind the movement, the goal would never be realized. The White Rose did not call for a murderous rebellion but rather for passive resistance, a peaceful sabotage of the Nazi machine – sabotage of publications, armories, and all institutions “in pay of the ‘government’ and that defend its ideology and aid in disseminating the brown lie” (Scholl 83). The White Rose understood that it did not have the weapons or military tact for a violent overthrow. Such an attempt would have resulted in the immediate defeat of the movement.

The fourth leaflet appeals to the religious instincts of the German people with a defiant call to action: “I ask you as a Christian […] Has God not given you the strength, the will to fight? We must attack evil where it is strongest, and it is strongest in the power of Hitler” (Scholl 86). The White Rose did not exist simply to educate the people of Germany about the philosophical and moral transgressions of its government; it existed to incite them to act out against that government so that the country could be saved from a legacy of disgrace.

Justice

Robert Scholl’s final words to his condemned son Hans were, “You will go down in history – there is such a thing as justice in spite of all of this” (Scholl 61). Despite the conclusion of the People’s Court of Germany, Robert’s assertion accurately captures the sentiment of the greatest thinkers on justice.

The charges levied against the members of The White Rose movement by the People’s Court of Germany for which they were convicted and executed included the following: “attempted high treason, namely by force to change the constitution of the Reich […], injuring the war potential of the Reich, and […] having attempted to cripple and weaken the will of the German people to take measures toward their defense and self-determination” (Scholl 105-106). The irony of the third of those charges demonstrates so vividly the warped interpretation of justice held by the People’s Court of Germany. However, the other two charges are accurate; indeed The White Rose was a treasonous group but one must understand that treason against a government which commits treason against humanity is noble. The People’s Court of Germany was the legislative branch of a government whose very foundation was at odds with moral justice; their ruling and sentencing of the members of The White Rose cannot be considered legitimate interpretations of justice. The propagation of truth is never, according to moral law, a punishable offense.

In his work Two Treatises of Government, philosopher John Locke argues “the end of government is the good of mankind,” and questions “which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the properties of their people?” (Locke). Within these words Locke invokes a right of the people to revolt against a government which fails to serve its purpose, namely the preservation of the property of its citizens. The Nazi government betrayed this purpose to the extreme, limiting its citizens’ most sacred property: their lives. Locke would therefore see it as a right of the people of Nazi Germany to resist this government’s rule, for a government which breaks its social contract with its people is illegitimate. This social right proposed by Locke is further evidence that The White Rose movement was fully in accordance with the tenets of justice.

National Socialism under Hitler represented one of the most profound bastardizations of justice throughout history. In a normal society, laws must be followed to maintain order, but Nazi law disregarded the sanctity of human life. Martin Luther King, Jr. offered that “any law that degrades human personality is unjust” (King). By this definition, the entire system of fascism is a mockery of justice. King also demanded that “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” (King). His logic leads one to the undeniable conclusion that the members of The White Rose were among a minority who fulfilled their moral obligation to reject and resist Nazi rule.

Evaluation of Success

The members of The White Rose were unwilling to allow Germany’s history to be tarnished by an “irresponsible clique” (Scholl 73). They discovered through their own philosophical enlightenment that it was their moral duty, and the duty of every German, to stand up to the tyrannical government. In their final leaflet, the authors sum up their call to action with the following charge: “fight against the party!” (Scholl 92). Their goal was an all-encompassing intellectual rebellion in which all Germans would dissociate from the party and overthrow it by virtue of strength in numbers. Tragically, the members were executed before this goal could ever be realized. On the day of her execution, Sophie Scholl said of her impending doom, “What does my death matter if through us thousands of people will be stirred to action and awakened?” (Scholl 56). Unfortunately, Sophie’s hope was in vain for the months following her execution (and the executions of her colleagues) were dominated by the same Nazi fear-machine which kept the populace silent for years prior. No posthumous revolution took place. However, one should hesitate to call the movement a failure, for its significance is not diminished by this fact.

The White Rose movement served a secondary purpose – a purpose its members had hoped would be shared by all of Germany; it demonstrated to the world that within the largely silent populace of Nazi Germany there existed those with a conscience. It recognized the guilt felt by every German and the shared responsibility for the atrocities. In her introduction to Inge Scholl’s book on the movement and the war, author Dorothee Sölle reflects that “sometimes [she] felt that it was just for us, the next generation, that [the members of The White Rose] had died. […] I wonder if they died so that we would know there had been at least a few people in Germany, a few students among hundreds of thousands, with a conscience” (Sölle x). In the Leaflet of the Resistance, the authors recognize the potential disgrace of inaction: “Germans! […] Are we to be forever the nation which is hated and rejected by all mankind?” (Scholl 89). Through their actions, the members of The White Rose evidenced that Germany was not a nation of cruel anti-Semites without consideration for the value of human life. However, German guilt and shame are intensified by the fact that so few chose to act. When Dorothee Sölle reflects on the Holocaust, she feels “choked with shame that there were not more ‘white roses’ in the bleakest hour of [her] country’s history” (Sölle xiv). Though it failed to ignite an uprising momentous enough to topple Hitler and the National Socialist Party, The White Rose movement successfully preserved German dignity for future generations by having the courage to act.

The White Rose movement, like the stories of survival born from the Holocaust, demonstrates the capacity for human courage and morality. In the face of such horrific human-led atrocities, The White Rose movement contrasts the bleakest example of the capacity for evil which exists in humanity. Reflecting on the actions of her brother, sister, and their colleagues, Inge Scholl questions, “Were they heroes? They attempted no superhuman task. They stood up for a simple matter, an elementary principle: the right of the individual to choose his manner of life and to live in freedom” (Scholle 4). It is in fact because of this axiom that the members of The White Rose movement are indeed heroes; they overcame fear in a sea of cowardice and sacrificed their lives for the basic principle of freedom and the preservation of human dignity. Their actions epitomize heroism.

References

King, Jr., Martin Luther. “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” 16 April 1963. Stanford University. 18 October 2009 .

Locke, John. “Two Trestises of Government.” 2003-2009. Lonang Library. 17 October 2009 .

Scholl, Inge. The White Rose. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1983.

Sölle, Dorothee. “Introduction to the Second Edition: The Legacy of The White Rose.” Scholl, Inge. The White Rose. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1983. ix-xiv.

Citation Information

Piccirillo, Ryan A. (2010). The White Rose Movement: Conscience in Silent Nazi Germany. Student Pulse, 2.09. Retrieved from: <http://www.studentpulse.com/a?id=282>