Selections of Johannes Maria Gföllner’s Pastoral Letter on True and False Nationalism on the Jews

Johannes Evangelist Maria Gföllner (17 December 1867 – 3 June 1941) was a Roman Catholic bishop and the longest-serving Bishop of Linz (1915–1941). He studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, earning doctorates in both philosophy and sacred theology, and was ordained in 1893. He was appointed Bishop of Linz by Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1915 — the last bishop of that diocese to receive an imperial appointment. He completed the great Marian Cathedral of Linz in 1924, convened a Diocesan Synod in 1928, and remained an ardent traditionalist throughout his episcopate.

On 21 January 1933 — nine days before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany — Gföllner issued his famous pastoral letter Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus (Pastoral Letter on True and False Nationalism), distributed in an edition of approximately 35,000 copies throughout his diocese. In this letter he emphatically condemned the racial doctrine of National Socialism as incompatible with Christianity, and later refused to personally receive Hitler when the latter visited Linz Cathedral in 1938. Yet the same letter contains an extensive adversus Judaeos section, distinguishing between “racial” antisemitism (which he rejected) and what he presented as the legitimate Christian duty to combat “the harmful influence of Judaism” on culture, press, politics, and public morals. The Austrian episcopate, alarmed by its anti-Jewish passages, distanced themselves from the letter in December 1933. The city of Linz classified Gföllner in 2022 in the highest category of “most severely implicated persons” for having “publicly and influentially propagated antisemitism,” and renamed the street bearing his name in 2023.

The passages below are drawn exclusively from The Journal of American Reform‘s verified English translation of the complete pastoral letter, published July 10, 2025 — likely the first complete English translation of this document. No word has been altered. All sources are linked in full at the bottom of this page.

I. The Jewish International World-Spirit — Distinct from Jewish Ethnicity and Religion

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus [Pastoral Letter on True and False Nationalism]

Diocese of Linz, January 21, 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“However, the Jewish international world spirit is distinct from Jewish people and the Jewish religion.”

II. The Harmful Influence of Judaism on All Areas of Modern Cultural Life

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Undoubtedly, many God-alienated Jews exert an extremely harmful influence in almost all areas of modern cultural life. Economy and trade, business and competition, legal practice and medical practice, social and political upheavals are often permeated and corrupted by materialistic and liberal principles that primarily originate from Judaism. The press and advertisements, theater and cinema are frequently filled with frivolous and cynical tendencies that poison the Christian soul to its core and are just as predominantly nourished and spread by Judaism.”

III. Degenerate Judaism, World Freemasonry, Mammonistic Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and Bolshevism

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Degenerate Judaism, in alliance with world Freemasonry, is also the primary bearer of Mammonistic capitalism and the primary founders and apostles of socialism and communism, the harbingers and pacesetters of Bolshevism.”

IV. The Strict Duty of Conscience of Every Convinced Christian to Combat and Break the Harmful Influence of Judaism

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Combating and breaking this harmful influence of Judaism is not only a good right, but a strict duty of conscience for every convinced Christian. It is only to be hoped that, on the Aryan and Christian sides, these dangers and harms caused by the Jewish spirit would be more fully appreciated, combated more consistently, and not, openly or covertly, imitated and encouraged.”

V. The Historical Ghetto and the Modern Legislative Dam Against the Intellectual Filth and Immoral Flood From Judaism

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“In earlier times, particularly in Italian cities, the Jewish population was assigned a separate residential area, a so-called ghetto, in order to banish the Jewish spirit and influence as far as possible. Modern times, while not needing to expel Jews from the country, should build a strong dam in legislation and administration against all the intellectual filth and immoral mud that threatens to flood the world, primarily from Judaism.”

VI. Supersessionism — The Jewish People as the Former Bearer of Divine Promises, Now Blinded

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

(Gföllner here quotes the 1928 Holy Office Decree on the Abolishment of the “Amici Israel” to frame the theological relationship between the Church and Jewry. The passage encapsulates the classic supersessionist position — Israel as the bearer of promises “up to Jesus Christ,” after which came their “subsequent blindness.”)

“As recently as in a Roman decree of 1928, it literally states: ‘The Catholic Church has always prayed for the Jewish people, the bearer of the divine promises up to Jesus Christ, despite, indeed precisely because of, their subsequent blindness. Moved by this love, the Apostolic See has protected this people against unjust mistreatment, and just as it deplores all envy and jealousy among nations, it condemns in a special way hatred against the people once chosen by God, namely, that hatred which is commonly designated by the word anti-Semitism.'”

VII. Against Racial Rejection of Jewish Scripture — The Old and New Testaments as a Unity

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“It is also completely incompatible with this position of the Church to reject the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament from an anti-Semitic standpoint; The Old and New Testaments form an inner unity according to the principle of St. Augustine: ‘The New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament, the Old Testament reveals itself in the New Testament.'”

VIII. The Catholic Church as the Strongest Bulwark Against Jewish Atheism

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Does National Socialism therefore only want to promote this intellectual and ethical anti-Semitism in taking up its program, nothing prevents it from doing so; but then National Socialism should not forget that the Catholic Church, above all, is the strongest bulwark against the spiritual onslaught of Jewish atheism, and National Socialism should not stir up racial anti-Semitism through its arrogant idolization of the Aryan race.”

IX. “Jewish-Jesuit Leadership of the Catholic Church” — NS Polemic Quoted in the Letter

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

(Gföllner quotes this charge from official National Socialist literature — the National Socialist Library, Issue 20, p. 10 — in order to refute the NS religious program. Its inclusion in the pastoral letter attests to how deeply the Jewish-Masonic-Jesuit conspiracy theory had penetrated Catholic-NS polemic discourse in January 1933.)

“There is continued babble about ‘Jewish-Jesuit leadership of the Catholic Church.'”

X. Against the Nationalization of Christianity

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Truly, nothing is more repugnant to Catholic Christianity than the nationalization of religion. Such attempts have always ended miserably throughout the history of the Church, usually with a schismatic break-away-from-Rome movement, which is synonymous with complete apostasy from genuine Christianity, beginning with the Greek Orthodox schism and the unfortunate schism under Luther, French Gallicanism and German Febronianism, up to the latest efforts for a German national church, such as is demanded by leaders of National Socialism as a desirable goal.”

XI. The Rejection of Racial Antisemitism — But Not of the Combat Against Jewish Influence

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“The National Socialist racial standpoint is completely incompatible with Christianity and must therefore be decisively rejected. This also applies to the radical racial anti-Semitism preached by National Socialism. To despise, hate, and persecute the Jewish people solely because of their ancestry is inhumane and anti-Christian; the Church has always condemned such ‘pogroms’ and defended the Jewish people against unjust hatred.”

XII. The Final Judgment — It Is Impossible to Be Both a Good Catholic and a True National Socialist

Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus — Pastoral Letter of 21 January 1933

(English translation by The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“National Socialism is internally ill from materialistic racial madness, an un-Christian nationalism — from a nationalistic conception of religion — from mere pseudo-Christianity; we therefore reject its religious program. All convinced Catholics must reject and condemn it; for if, according to the declaration of Pope Pius XI, ‘it is impossible to be both a good Catholic and a true socialist,’ then it is also impossible to be both a good Catholic and a true National Socialist.”

Sources

All passages are drawn exclusively from the following primary source and its verified English translation. No word has been altered.

Primary Source (German original):

  • Johannes Maria Gföllner, Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus [Pastoral Letter on True and False Nationalism], Linz: Katholischer Preßverein, 1933. 28 pp. Digitized original held at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, accessible via the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/hirtenbriefuberw0000gfol/mode/2up

English Translation Used:

  • The Journal of American Reform — “Pastoral Letter on True and False Nationalism — Gföllner, 1933.” First complete English translation of Hirtenbrief über wahren und falschen Nationalismus. Published July 10, 2025. All passages in Sections I–XII are drawn from this translation: https://americanreform.substack.com/p/pastoral-letter-on-true-and-false

Confirmation of Biographical Details and Context: