1
Reflection
given by Dr Ray Towey at the Franz Jägerstätter Commemoration Service,
Westminster
Cathedral Crypt, London. 9 August 2018
Gospel reading: Luke 10: 1-6,17-21
The story is simple, a peasant farmer in Austria is conscripted to fight for Hitler,
refuses claiming being a Catholic and being a soldier in Hitler’s army is
incompatible so they kill him to preserve military morale. In 1943 German
military morale was in serious jeopardy. The battle of Stalingrad had been lost.
The
German state needed men at the eastern front. Franz was isolated in the Church,
in the village, in his country. To his knowledge then no-one had taken a stand
like this. I use the word peasant
farmer purposefully, not so often used now about Franz, to us it has negative
connotations but the Gospel writer is clear about what is a negative:
I
thank you Father Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things
from the wise and learned and have revealed them to children. (Luke ch10: 21)
This Gospel passage is uneasy reading because ever
since I entered formal education I have strived to be someone who is both wise
and learned. To the Gospel writer that comfortable
self-image or illusion was an obstacle that Franz did not have.
In 1982 I returned from 2 years in a mission
hospital in Nigeria. The overwhelming experience of working as a doctor in
Africa is watching helplessly the premature death of scores from diseases
easily preventable by a little money or curable by modest means.
This remains the global injustice of our time, so the
injustice of the Falklands invasion at that
time was minor in comparison and I could see no need for further human
sacrifice. There was enough premature death in the world, more than enough in
Africa alone.
And so, the armada travelled to the South Atlantic
to right the wrong bringing with it a military hospital well equipped and I
thought why not just make a small detour and share a few drugs from the
pharmacy, a few bottles from the blood bank, Nigeria is close by to the east.
We won’t delay you long, but don’t forget Sierra Leone, Ghana, we have friends
there too, and what harm if we do delay you long?
Even a child could see the need but the wise and
learned had other plans.
There was worse to come. The cruise missiles in
Greenham Common were an essential counter to the SS20s of the Soviets and the
Pershing 2s in Europe would give us the superiority we needed to keep our
Christian culture safe and the Church at the highest level then was ambiguous.
What was this doctrine of nuclear deterrence, a necessary
modern moral relativism for the Church or a new heresy, is that too strong a
word and who was for the burning? everyone? and so we asked, where do we stand
and we made a stand and not like Franz, alone,
but we were few. Like Dorothy Day, without seeking permission, we had the nerve
to call ourselves Catholic and thereby Catholic Peace Action. We
were non-violent but did not keep the law and counted jail time as a duty or
was it a spiritual pride in the new indulgences? Were we the orthodox or the
heterodox? Time would tell.
We added our small voice to others in and out of the
Church. We shared with a few of our own bishops but at the time like Franz were
not affirmed and learnt how to be strangers in our communities, our Church and
country which we loved. But let me not forget Bishop Gumbleton from Detroit and
Pax Christi who wrote us a good character witness letter for our bad
disobedient behaviour which we copied for the court, usually to no avail, so
unlike Franz we were not alone but
we were few.
Fr. Daniel Berrigan has a reflection on Franz written
some years before Franz’s beatification:
“As
for Franz he will not go away, he will not go away from the Church that sent
him on his way alone.
His
way, which should have been the way of the Church.
So
he lingers half unwelcome……..”
After the war Franz’s name was added to the memorial
in his parish cemetery of those who had died for Austria but it was secretly
erased. For some in his village his name was most unwelcome.
In his own diocese of Linz 40 priests were sent to
concentration camps and 11 died. In the Archdiocese of Vienna which was twice
the size of Linz 9 priests were sent to concentration camps and 1 died. There
was resistance in the Church to the Nazi regime but it was thin and patchy. One
of his parish priests had been banned from the parish by the regime for
delivering an anti-Nazi sermon and even he advised him accept the conscription,
he saw his bishop who advised the same.
When the wise and learned advised him to fight for Hitler
was he choosing the way of suicide?
This was his terrible deep spiritual anguish.
When he was
transferred to the Berlin prison he met with the prison chaplain who related to
him the case of an Austrian priest Fr.Reinisch who had refused to take the oath
to Hitler and was executed a year before. Fr.Reinisch had been conscripted to the
medical corps but still refused the oath stating that he opposed the Nazi world
view which had resulted in murder, the elimination of the mentally disabled, forced
sterilisation, the illegal annexation of Austria. The chaplain relates that
Franz breathed a sigh of relief and was greatly encouraged and said, “I can’t
be on the wrong path after all, if even a priest has decided the same and has
gone to his death for it then it’s all right for me to do it too”
I think this was the first time he had heard of
anyone refusing conscription for Christian reasons and it suggests that even at
this late stage he was still in need of more support that his stand was correct
and not a suicide.
After the war the search for justice began but there
were to be dispensations, if you had the secrets of the V1 and V2 rockets there
was an amnesty. The learned and the wise needed you, and a new and comfortable life
in the West or the East guaranteed. These wonderous Nazi indiscriminate weapons
of terror had their uses. The V1 became cruise missiles and the V2 ballistic
missiles, just add a nuclear warhead when required.
And so… Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki….we know who won the battles but who won the values?
In 1941 while doing his military service after his
second call up Franz writes, “Ybbs is a beautiful town.. there’s quite a large
mental asylum here, which used to be full of patients but now probably even the
mad have become sane, because there are no longer very many of them in the
asylum. My dear wife there must be some truth in what you told me once about
what’s happening to these people.”
In May 1943 Franziska writes to Franz of the sudden
death of a disabled child who had been put in a home for the disabled. Hundreds
of thousands of disabled children, psychiatric patients, mentally disabled
adults, Downs syndrome children were killed during the war. Bishop von Galen of
Munster was a vociferous opponent of this Action T4 euthanasia programme and was
placed under virtual house arrest in 1941.
In Europe these days Downs syndrome is becoming a rarity.
For them we have developed our own final solution.
And what of us? The state may not need us in uniform
but it still needs our obedience or is it just our silence?
But now it will never be so hard because we have
Franz. Thank you Franz from the bottom of my heart for making my small journey
clearer, less lonely, more loyal, more forgiving and with no place for
bitterness.
