"Pfui Innitzer!"

Day after day in Vienna last week, Theodor Cardinal Innitzer stayed indoors. Hollow-eyed, bewildered, unhappy, warned by police not to stir outside lest the sight of him "provoke" angry Viennese, he secluded himself in his archiepiscopal palace near St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Vienna's Archbishop was bewildered, and no wonder. After Anschluss he had attempted to temporize with Nazis, had been given the backhanded accolade of "a reasonable man" by the pagan Nazi ideologist, Dr. Alfred Rosenberg. Suddenly, last fortnight, Cardinal Innitzer's palace was sacked by an obviously stage-managed Nazi mob. Last week the Cardinal was, to Viennese Nazis, a "black dog," a "traitor," a "political priest." To the rest of the Catholic world he was a hero. All this was because he had advised Ostmark Catholics to proclaim their faith, and had spoken up for religious marriages, religious education of Catholic youth.

Although 90% of its people are Catholic, the Ostmark is not today a good Catholic land. Vienna's most famed characteristic has long been "Schlamperei" (slackness), and probably no more than 40% of Austrians are practicing Catholics. In Vienna last week, good Catholics worshiped timidly under the eyes of police, who also watched narrowly those who read their church bulletin boards, pasted with posters urging them to marry in the church. In his palace Cardinal Innitzer switched on his radio, listened to an open-air rally at which 100,000 Nazis shouted "Pfui Innitzer!" and "Hang the black dog!" during a furious speech by Nazi Commissioner Josef Buerckel. Calling the Cardinal a friend of Jews, burly Herr Buerckel declared that negotiations with the Catholics to settle the matter of religious schools and seminaries--hitherto kept secret--were definitely off. Cardinal Innitzer switched off his radio, retired to his chapel to pray.

That night the Cardinal could hear the mob gathering again in St. Stephen's Square. He did not look out to see their fireworks or watch them brandish miniature gibbets. But he heard their shouts: "Innitzer to Dachau!"

This week Adolf Hitler's Voelkischer Beobachter (Vienna edition) "exposed" for its readers the Church's wealth, declaring: "In showy palaces and proud strongholds live the earthly managers of Divine property, who draw from their business enterprises rich rewards."

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