Life

Gerry McFlynn: The cost of saying 'no' when society says 'yes'

Franz Jägerstätter's courageous opposition to the Nazis, motivated by his deep Christian faith. On the anniversary of his execution, Fr Gerry McFlynn asks what we can learn from the story of the Austrian martyr

A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, beatified for his moral stand against Nazism. August Diehl plays Jägerstätter in Terrence Malick's acclaimed film, with Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska
A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, beatified for his moral stand against Nazism. August Diehl plays Jägerstätter in Terrence Malick's acclaimed film, with Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, beatified for his moral stand against Nazism. August Diehl plays Jägerstätter in Terrence Malick's acclaimed film, with Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska

IT isn't often that a film on the life of a beatified martyr by one of the world's leading directors makes the news.

However, A Hidden Life, Terrence Malick's account of the life and death of Franz Jägerstätter - an Austrian farmer executed for refusing to fight for the Nazis in the Second World War - won plaudits and glowing reviews at this year's Cannes Film Festival, with one critic describing it as "a work of pure genius".

A Hidden Life tells the story of how Jägerstätter went against his village community and almost the entire nation in order not to serve the evil ideology of Nazism.

Franz Jägerstätter
Franz Jägerstätter Franz Jägerstätter

Jägerstätter's courageous refusal to serve the Nazi cause was arguably the most prominent act of conscientious objection by an Austrian citizen.

He was the sole member of his village community of St Radegund to refuse to vote in the referendum that sealed the Anschluss.

Hitler's annexation of Austria received overwhelming support, with even the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, greeting the Führer.

Drafted in February 1943, Jägerstätter, the father of three young girls, refused to serve because of his strong religious conviction.

As he put it at his trial: "I cannot serve both Hitler and Jesus". His moral stance on the basis of a rudimentary knowledge of the Gospels was an embarrassment to the Church leaders, most of whom favoured some accommodation with the Nazi regime.

Because of his stance, Franz Jägerstätter became something of a pariah figure in his home village.

Indeed, the only person he could count on for support was his wife, the devout Franziska, and even she entertained the hope that he would eventually change his mind.

Every conceivable pressure was brought to bear on him to change his mind, from family and friends and the Church. Even when challenged by his bishop, he stood firm.

Franz was taken to Berlin where the supreme military court also tried to get him to change his mind.

But he wouldn't, and the judge had no choice but to sentence him to death.

Conscience, it seemed, was no defence and Franz was beheaded by guillotine in Brandenburg-Görden prison on August 9 1943, aged 36.

In an extraordinary twist, like something out of a Greek tragedy, the judge who pronounced sentence committed suicide shortly after the trial.

For decades after the war, his widow continued to experience hostility from the villagers who called her husband " a religious fool", while the Austrian government even denied her a widow's pension.

But Franziska was a strong woman and stood by her husband's witness.

A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, beatified for his moral stand against Nazism. August Diehl plays Jägerstätter in Terrence Malick's acclaimed film, with Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska
A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, beatified for his moral stand against Nazism. August Diehl plays Jägerstätter in Terrence Malick's acclaimed film, with Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, beatified for his moral stand against Nazism. August Diehl plays Jägerstätter in Terrence Malick's acclaimed film, with Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska

I had the wonderful privilege many years ago of meeting her when I visited his simple grave beside the village church where he had served as a sacristan.

Franziska died in 2013, aged 100, having lived to see her husband beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on the occasion of his visit to Austria in 2007.

Following the publication in 1964 of a biography, In Solitary Witness, by the American sociologist and pacifist, Gordon Zahn, Jägerstätter's grave at St Radegund has become a place of pilgrimage.

Interestingly, he is now held up as model for Christian conscientious objection by a Church that has always been slow to learn the lessons of war and peace.

So why is his story so important and what lessons does it hold for us today?

I think it reminds us powerfully of the need, indeed duty, to make a stand against the forces of evil in our world.

And it is fitting that we remember his witness this year when we commemorate the sacrifice made by so many against the greatest evil of the 20th century.

Franz Jägerstätter is now held up as model for Christian conscientious objection by a Church that has always been slow to learn the lessons of war and peace

Seventy-five years on, it would appear that we still haven't learned the lessons of history with the new populism resurrecting fears and prejudices against migrants and ethnic groups and so-called strong world leaders tearing holes in the delicate fabric of peace so hard won all those years ago.

Perhaps never before has it been more necessary to call evil by its true names and say 'no' to much of what society today would have us say 'yes' to.

No to militarism, no to discrimination, racial prejudice, exploitation, people trafficking and everything else that militates against the wellbeing of a neighbour.

And this not in a negative but positive sense, worthy of those life-affirming Gospel values which Jägerstätter held so dear and for which he paid such a price.

We surely owe it to future generations to hand on a better and different world. As the late Daniel Berrigan SJ put it: we make the future different by living the present differently.

Fr Gerry McFlynn is a priest of the diocese of Down and Connor and project manager at the Irish Chaplaincy in London. He is a vice president in the UK of Pax Christi, the international Catholic peace movement.

Fr Gerry McFlynn
Fr Gerry McFlynn Fr Gerry McFlynn