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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.”