Father Alois Andritzki
Posted on 06/25/2011 1:35:08 PM PDT by NYer
Three Catholic martyrs executed under the Nazi regime were beatified in Germany today, June 25. The event was also noteworthy for its rememberance of their Lutheran companion.
Fathers Hermann Lange, Eduard Müller and Johannes Prassek, along with Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink, were guillotined in a Hamburg prison in November 1943. The Nazi regime found them guilty of “defeatism, malice, favoring the enemy and listening to enemy broadcasts.”
At a ceremony in the northern German city of Lubeck, Cardinal Angelo Amato, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, declared the trio of Catholic clergy to be ‘blessed.’ He also expressed an ‘honorable remembrance’ for the priests’ fellow Christian martyr, Pastor Stellbrink.
“What distinguishes these four also is the fact that in the face of National-Socialist despotism they overcame the divide between the two faiths to find a common path to fight and act together,” says the official history which accompanied the ceremony.
It’s estimated that over 9,000 pilgrims – both Catholic and Protestant – attended today’s ceremony. Twenty Catholic and four Protestant bishops planned to attend.
On June 24 Lutheran Vespers were prayed for the martyrs at Lubeck’s Memorial Church. Former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper, spoke at the ceremony.
The official history recounts that the men would copy and distribute the anti-Nazi sermons of Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of the Catholic Diocese of Munster.
“They felt, like many others, the liberating tone of these sermons, which broke the silence and proclaimed aloud the thoughts many had in their hearts, when the Nazi action for the ‘destruction of unworthy lives’ began, the euthanasia of innocent mentally retarded persons,” the history says.
The men’s last letters, written just hours before their deaths, have been preserved and were put on display this weekend. Father Johannes Prassek wrote his family:
“I am so happy, I can hardly explain how happy. God is so good to have given me several beautiful years in which to be his priest.
“Do not be sad! What is waiting for me is joy and good fortune, with which all the happiness and good fortune here on earth cannot compare.”
Father Eduard Muller wrote to his bishop:
“It gives me great pleasure to be able to write a few lines to you in this, my last hour. Whole-heartedly, I thank you first of all for the greatest gift which you gave me as a successor of the apostles, when you placed you hands on me and ordained me as God’s priest.
“But now we must embark upon this – in human terms difficult- final walk, which is to lead us to Him, whom we served as priests.”
Beatification is public recognition by the Catholic Church that a deceased person has entered Heaven. It is the third of the four steps towards canonization and confers the title “blessed.”
Catholic ping!
They were all very special people. We need more of them.
The Nazi regime found them guilty of “defeatism, malice, favoring the enemy and listening to enemy broadcasts.”Precursor to the Fairness Doctrine and the Net Neutrality Act.
Several Wehrmacht officers were dismissed using that term.
No wonder they lost.
How long before those foul, despicable haters show up on this thread to post images of book covers and condemn all Catholics as being Nazi collaborators. There is a special place in hell reserved for them.
You forgot to mention that those haters are also cowardly, stupid, poorly read, and unwittingly serve Satan.
Blessed Hermann Lange,
Blessed Eduard Müller
and Blessed Johannes Prassek
This is a rare occasion in which I will have to disagree with you, if only partially. I am not so sure they are all unwittingly serving satan. The rest of what you said is spot on.
Brave men with utter faith in Christ
Let's focus on these holy men who endured to the end -- 3 Catholic and 1 Lutheran (in this story -- though there are quite a few else)
We thank the Lord for them, they are heroes for us all
Ping!
Eve of the 481st Anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession--VERY SIGNIFCANT timing!
Lutheran Ping!
Glory to the Holy Trinity!
Since 1978 in the US Lutheran Vespers has included what is essentially the great Litany (Ektenia) from the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, including the petitions for all the faithful departed and the calling to mind of all the saints (although not normally enumerated by name).
“They were all very special people. We need more of them”
Well said. Indeed we do.
We should never forget the number of Lutheran priests who did not follow the direction of society in the 30s and 40s and who were persecuted for their faith like Karl Friedrich Stellbrink, KArl Barth, Max Lackmann etc.
CC
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, igniting the Second World War, a group of German conspirators were already plotting a coup d'état; over the next six years, there were as many as fifteen assassination attempts against Hitler. One of the co-conspirators, a double-agent who smuggled information about the plots to the Allies, was the young German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the late 1930s he wrote about the necessity of "risking" peace and "daring" a loving presence to others – words which seem to fly in the face of his later justification of assassination. But Bonhoeffer formulated his theology and ethics in the crucible of a long and ultimately fatal struggle with the Nazi regime in Germany. His story is a fascinating window onto the dilemmas of twentieth-century ethics and spirituality.
Bonhoeffer's work came to full fruition only after his death. His efforts and his writings on behalf of the international ecumenical movement laid the groundwork for post-war inter-faith dialogue. His insistence on the importance of an active response to Christ's Sermon on the Mount – a call to social justice – inspired many of the world's great civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Vaclav Havel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And finally, his brave and revolutionary concept of a "religionless Christianity" has helped Christian theology turn toward uncertain vistas of the future. It is an idea which exposes the vitality and relevance of faith in a world, as Bonhoeffer put it, "come of age."
http://www.bonhoeffer.com/bon2.htm
Blessed priest-martyrs, pray for us!
Is that still a problem here? I used to be a member a few years ago, and it got to a point that I was just so frustrated with all the over the top Catholic hate that I stopped bothering to visit.
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