Strøtanker
Man in His Totality
In a retreat talk given to the clergy of Tromsø this week, Sr Pauline Bürling OP reminded us of the example of Fr Alfred Delp, executed by Hitler’s regime in 1945 at the age of 37 for his staunch, active resistance to Nazism. She cited the notorious public prosecutor Roland Freisler, who remarked to Delp’s friend Count von Moltke: ‘Christians and we national socialists have this in common: we make a claim to man in his totality.’ There is a categorical distinction, though. The claim of Christianity liberates, broadening human personhood immeasurably, enabling communion; whereas secular totalitarianisms restrict life, suffocating it in fearful isolation. It is good to be recalled to the stakes involved, to be reminded of courageous exemplars. How striking that so many of the saints of this past century have been women and men alert to an absolute boundary on which they would at no cost trespass, saying ‘Thus far, but no further’, even when it meant laying down their lives.