Katholische Verbände und moderne Gesellschaft: Organisationsgeschichte und Vereinskultur im Bistum Münster 1918 bis 1945 by Christoph Kösters (review)

496BOOK REVIEWS Katholische Verbände und moderne Gesellschaft: Organisationsgeschichte und Vereinskultur im Bistum Münster 1918 bis 1945. By Christoph Kösters. [VeröffentUchungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Forschungen, Band 68.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1995. Pp. 684. 98 DM.) Christoph Kösters's work, a revised version of his University of Münster dissertation , is a study of the Intersection of the Church, society, and poUtics between 1918 and 1945,"the crisis years of classical modernism" (p. 18). Based on intensive research into primary sources, the book focuses on CathoUc, male youth groups In the Diocese ofMünster,the "CathoUc bulwark ofNorthern Germany " (p. 23).The author's ambitious inteUectual program includes a discussion of CathoUc responses to the social and poUtical crises of the first half of the twentieth century, and also a new evaluation of CathoUc resistance to the Nazi regime in the Ught of his research into the social history of reUgion. Kösters begins with an account of the construction of a network of CathoUc associations in the decades beforeWorldWar I. Such groups, he notes,were part ofa CathoUc subculture, separate from the rest of German society,but internaUy divided by social class. GeneraUy led by the clergy, the associations were nonetheless separate from parish life and diocesan structures. After the war, a growing number of Catholics felt that the old network of associations was no longer appropriate to new social and poUtical circumstances. They sought to break out of their confessional ghetto and create new kinds of organizations ,with distinct simUarities to contemporary non-CathoUc youth groups,that would tear down the barriers between social classes. Adherents of this course were often supporters of the eucharistie and Uturgical movements, that sought a renewal of reUgious Ufe by encouraging a greater and more intensive participation of laypeople In church services (the author detaUs the scandalous occurrences of priests saying Mass whUe facing the congregation), a current of reUgious renewal ultimately culminating in the SecondVatican CouncU. Although the author does not particularly emphasize this point, his own evidence shows that such Initiatives were the work of a distinct minority and met with relatively Uttle success.The new Catholic youth groups formed during the Weimar Republic had a much smaller membership than the older Kolping (journeymen 's) associations or the Marian SodaUties, and this apparently continued to be the case weU into the Nazi era.For aU their claims to overcoming class barriers , the new organizations tended to be as segregated by class as the older ones were. The bulk of the diocesan clergy showed no great enthusiasm for new Uturgical practices. These caveats are important, because Kösters argues against the notion, advanced by other social historians, that the CathoUc confrontation with Nazism was a clash between a traditionaUst religion and a modernizing totaUtarian regime. Instead,he asserts that it was the modernizing, dynamic,initiatives ofreUgious renewal,which provided the faithful in the Diocese ofMünster with the impetus needed to resist the Nazis.The author's detaüed discussion of the dio- BOOK REVIEWS497 cese under Nazi rule does not focus on the usual historical showpiece, Bishop von Galen's celebrated 1941 sermons denouncing the regime's euthanasia program , but on the relationship between the church and the state and party during the 1930's, as initial efforts at cautious co-operation quickly gave way to open hostiUty. WhUe Kösters emphasizes the role of members of the new Catholic associations and adherents of new forms of piety in CathoUc resistance to the Nazis,he downplays the way in which a number ofmembers ofthe new groups went over to the Nazis or the role that the more numerous members of older associations or supporters of older ideas had In opposing the regime. (Women, frequent among these, are not discussed in his book.) Bishop von Galen himself, as the author notes, was no particular friend of the new forms ofpiety. More convincing is the author's observation that the Nazi regime, by persecuting and ultimately prohibiting most Catholic associations, left the field open to the adherents of a parish-based, intensive lay participation in reUgious services .This transition from the old network of...