An important document vigorously attacking a number of outstanding racial theories has been drafted by the Vatican and will be issued shortly, Georges Goyau, of the French Academy, revealed in an article in the conservative newspaper Le Figard today.
The Vatican statement has been drawn up by the Congregation of Seminaries and Universities and is principally designed to call the attention of Catholic university rectors to racial theories considered “absurd and pernicious” by the Holy See, it was said.
In his article, entitled “A Decisive Move against Racism by the Pope,” Goyau declared the papacy in this document “emphasizes in no uncertain language the divergencies existing between Catholicism and German racial theories.”
“Everybody knows that Mussolini at times would like to hide these differences from his Catholic compatriots,” Goyau commented. “Mussolini himself has too much respect for the liberty of the church to contest its right to call attention on to the racist philosophy and to pass judgment on it — even at the time the her of the ancient Holy Roman Empire (Chancellor Hitler) is crossing the Alps.”
The Vatican document, signed by Mgr. Ernesto Ru## n. secretary of the Congregation, assertedly is designed to defend the truth against the “March of error” and new and “profoundly absurd” dogmas.
“Mgr.Ruffini stresses the despondency which comes over Pope Pius XI when he is confronted by these ‘impudent’ and ‘extremely pernicious’ calumnies which, falsely camouflaged in the name of science, are disseminated everywhere in an effort to pervert the human spirit and uproot the true religion,” the article said.
The document reputedly outlines the Vatican’s opposition to racial concepts as follows:
1– The congregation of Seminaries refuses to recognize the racist doctrine that uncivilized human beings are closer to the animal world than their civilized brothers.
2–It places its veto on the racist theory of blood and on concepts which mould an entire juridical system on the interests and instincts of a race and foster materialist ideologies.
3–It protests the subordination of the religious idea to the law of race, a law born of racist pedagogy which designates the cultivation of the racist spirit as the dominating motif of education.
4–In conclusion it denounces the abolition of human personality by doctrines which stem from a pantheist philosophy stating that “men exist only by the State and for the State.”
This “doctrinal page” will have repercussions in all Christian countries, Goyau added. “Not only in France, opponent of racial exaggerations, not only in England, where the slogan ‘no popery’ today is only an archaism, but also in Italy, in the imperial Rome which cannot ignore the fact it was the cradle of law,” the writer added.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
