The Lion of Munster: The Bishop Who Roared Against the Nazis by Daniel Utrecht

Author:Daniel Utrecht [Utrecht, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL015000 Religion / Christianity / History
ISBN: 978-1-61890-766-0
Publisher: Bookmasters Group
Published: 2016-09-22T21:00:00+00:00

The next day, Sunday, July 13, 1941, Clemens August Count von Galen, the Bishop of Münster, mounted the pulpit in the nave of the church of St. Lambert, near the cathedral. It had been announced that the bishop would preach in the Lambertikirche, his former parish church, as the cathedral had been damaged by bombs and was unusable. The Catholics of Münster packed the church, eager to hear consoling words after the horrible bombing raids.

He indeed spoke words of fatherly consolation.6 What most of the congregation did not know was that his sermon would not focus on the bombing. In a few moments, he was going to take his life in his hands by making an outspoken protest against the Gestapo, the Nazi secret state police. It was the first of what came to be known as the three great sermons of the summer of 1941.

He began, of course, by speaking of the bombing and expressing his hope that the efforts of the state and municipal authorities, as well as the brotherly love of his listeners and their donations to a special collection on that day, would help those who were most affected by it. Then he hinted that the subject of his sermon would be something else: “I had intended,” he said, “to add a few words about the meaning of divine afflictions: how through them God seeks to call us back to Himself.” The German word for an affliction or a divine visitation is Heimsuchung, built on the word for home, Heim, and the word for a search or a seeking, Suchung. Through the visitation, the Heimsuchung of the bombing raids, the bishop said, “God wants to call Münster back home to Himself.” He recalled that their forefathers in Münster were always at home with God, always at home in His holy Church, in their public life as well as in their family life and in business. “Has it always been the same in our days?” he asked, then repeated, “God wants to call Münster back home to Himself!”

Thus the bishop considered the bombings as a call for repentance. This, he continued, was the subject he had planned to elaborate on in this sermon:

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