Holy See – Germany relations are foreign relations between the Holy See and the Federal Republic of Germany.
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The current Pope Benedict XVI, former Josef, Cardinal Ratzinger is a German (from Bavaria).
Recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her nine page address at the Bavarian Catholic Academy's conference on "Political Action based on Christian Responsibility," noted that Benedict XVI's new encyclical Caritas in Veritate points to the way forward in the current economic crisis.
She was particularly impressed by the passage that read: "The primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity." [1]
As soon as 496, Frankish King Clovis I was baptized together with many members of his household. In contrast to the eastern German tribes, who became Arian Christians, he became a Catholic. Following the example of their king, many Franks were baptized too, but their Catholicism was mixed with pagan rites.[2]
The investiture controversy was the most significant conflict between Church and state in medieval Europe. In the 11th and 12th centuries, a series of popes challenged the authority of European monarchies over control of appointments, or investitures, of church officials such as bishops and abbots.
On September 25, 1555, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and the forces of the Schmalkaldic League signed the Peace of Augsburg to officially end the religious wars between the Catholics and the Protestants. This treaty made legalized the partitioning of the Holy Roman Empire into Catholic and Protestant territories.
Under the treaty, the religion of the ruler (either Lutheranism or Catholicism) determined the religion of his subjects. This policy is widely referred to by the Latin phrase, cuius regio, eius religio ("whose reign, his religion", or "in the prince's land, the prince's religion"). Families were given a period in which they were free to emigrate to regions where their desired religion prevailed.
In the war of the First Coalition, revolutionary France defeated the coalition of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Britain. One result was the cession of the Rhineland to France by the Treaty of Basel in 1795.
Eight years later, in 1803, to compensate the princes of the annexed territories, a set of mediatisations was carried out, which brought about a major redistribution of territorial sovereignty within the Empire. [3][4]
In the mid-19th century, the Catholic Church was also seen as a political power, even in Protestant Prussia, exerting a strong influence on many parts of life. However, from the Catholics' point of view (especially where Catholics were the majority as in the Rhine Province and its Saar area, Alsace and Lorraine, and Silesia), Catholics often felt intimidated by self-consciously Protestant rulers.
The religious make-up at the time was two-thirds Protestant and one third Catholic.[5] Prussia, for example, had a Protestant dynasty, a Protestant state church, and an officer corps with high social status and almost no Catholic members. (Those members of the German Catholic aristocracy who chose a military career, for example, often preferred the Austrian army.)
After the failed "Putsch" (or takeover) to seize control of the Bavarian state in 1923, the nascent Nazi Party (NSDAP), by that time sharing the Bavarian bishops' view about the incompatibility of National Socialism and Christianity, no longer wanted to court Catholics.[6][7]
It wanted to broaden its base. The Party leadership even became anti-Catholic (especially attacking the bishops) and its inherent anti-Semitism became more public. To counter this, the bishops adopted a conditional ban or prohibition in regard to Catholic membership in the Party, which later (as Nazism spread throughout Germany) varied from diocese to diocese.[8]
After World War II, the Catholics in the zone occupied by the Soviet army found themselves under a militantly atheist government. Many parishes were cut off from their dioceses in the western part of Germany. The Soviet zone eventually declared itself a sovereign nation, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The GDR's constitution proclaimed the freedom of religious belief, but in reality the new state tried to abolish religion.