Information about Mit Brennender Sorge

Mit brennender Sorge (German for "With deep anxiety;" literally: "With burning concern.") is an encyclical of Pope Pius XI, published on March 10, 1937 (but bearing a date of Passion Sunday, March 14). The encyclical dealt with the condition of the Roman Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, and criticized Nazism. The encyclical was addressed to German bishops and was read in all parish churches of Germany. Pope Pius XI credited its creation and writing to the Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. There was no pre-announcement of the encyclical, and its distribution was kept secret in an attempt to ensure the unhindered public reading of its contents in all the Catholic Churches of Germany.

Some passages stated:

''"Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community—however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things—whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds"


"This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God."

"None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xl, 15). "

Somewhat unusually, but vitally for symbolic and practical reasons, the encyclical was written in German and not the usual Latin of official Roman Catholic Church documents.

External links

• Mit brennender Sorge in English on Vatican.va
• Mit brennender Sorge in German on StJosef.at