Franziskus Maria Stratmann

A Combatant for Peace

Preacher and Pastor

• Born 1883• inspired by Bonaventura Krotz OP• Student pastor at Berlin University 1914-24

Second Conversion

• Learnt from reaction to his Veritas (1916):

“Only being there, taking part in war, reveals its hideousness.”

• Foerster’s Weltkrieg & Weltgewissen (1918): double morality

Peace between Nations

• “The gospel has not one law of charity for individuals, and another for states and nations, which are indeed but collections of individuals.”

(Pacem Dei, 1920)

• Friedensbund Deutscher Katholiken

Spiritual leader

Occupation of the Ruhr 1923

World Church, World Peace

• Feastday sermon 5 VIII 1923• Weltkirche & Weltfriede 1924

– Thomist/Augustinian “conditions for just war”– Vanderpol’s translation of Molina & Vittoria

• “In view of the awfulness of modern war and it’s consequences, and in view of the fact that the Catholic Church lacks a defined teaching on war, it is surely allowable to advance the severest opinion on the permissibility of war.”

Confonting National Socialism

• Articles in Der Friedenskämpfer

• Carl Schmitt– enemy as ‘other’– Individual nations’ rights

• Emil Ritter– German & Austrian Catholics behind NS

• Pseudo-religious and moral aspects of NS

Total War Unjustified

• Walter Dirks, editor of Der Friedenskämpfer:

“he proved that the war with which we are primarily concerned, the twentieth century ‘total’ war, failed to fulfil several conditions

for just war.”

A Voice for the Jews

• eliminating Catholic political presence:– Bishops’ declaration, exhort to respect authority

• Bernhard Lichtenberg – attempt to publish declaration denouncing persecution

of the Jews

• “this form of nationalist bolshevism is directing its rage not against some verifiably bad act or aspect of sensisbility, but indiscriminately against the Jewish race: an act of blasphemy when we consider that Christ eternally belongs to this race – that Christianity would never have emerged without Judaism.”

Union with the Jews

• Dr Margarete Sommer in Berlin

• Dr Lisamaria Meirowsky in Rome

• planned contemplative congregation to spread “the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.”

• 1937 speech Die Juden & wir Christen

• Vatican II “Jewish Declaration”

Pax Christi

• Return from exile 1947, Kevelaer founding meeting 1948

• Speech at Mainz Catholic congress: Die Verantwortung der Kirche für den Frieden unter den Völkern

• “The responsibility of a state that unleashes total war is increased out of all proportion, because the state it attacks is also driven to total war – that is, to making all its citizens into soldiers, to making a whole country into the setting for war.”

“ensuring that these weapons are not used

involves every citizen,

politically and morally.”