ABSTRACT
The church in Nazi Germany initially adapted to the Nazi state since both institutions detested bolshevism and democracy, but individual Catholics did not always hew to the ecclesial line. Scholars have tried to diagnose the sociopolitical and cultural dynamics that led to the Shoah and to Christian resistance. Staub, for example, has distinguished between a “prosocial value orientation” that stresses human welfare and a “rule oriented morality” that emphasizes duty and the importance of living by certain principles. He and the Oliners have indicated that rescuers and presumably resisters seemed to feel a prosocial responsibility for others. “Disruptive empathy,” René Girard’s nuanced concept, provides the strength to resist. The foundation of that strength is the act of reaching out to others despite sociopolitical pressures. Things that some may consider unimportant in the greater scheme of things—childrearing, our daily interactions with others—may help produce the foundations needed for the moral courage to help someone and to protest against assaults on human dignity. 1
