Syllabus Against Racism

The syllabus against racism is a historical pre-World War II Vatican document written in order to condemn racism and Nazi ideology.

In April 1938, the Sacred Congregation for seminaries and universities developed at the request of Pius XI a syllabus condemning racist theories to be sent to Catholic schools worldwide. The document was never released.

The preamble states that teachers will apply all means, borrowing from the tools of biology, history, philosophy, apologetics, law and moral, means to refute with strength and skill the following untenable assertions :

  1. The human races, by their natural and immutable characters, are so different from each other that, the humblest of them is further from the highest race than of the highest animal species .
  2. We must by all means, preserve and cultivate strong race and purity of blood, so that all leads to this result is therefore honest and permitted.
  3. It is blood, seat of the characteristics of the race, that all the intellectual and moral qualities of man derive as their main source.
  4. The basic purpose of education is to develop the characters of the race and inflame the minds of a burning love of their own race as the supreme good.
  5. Religion is subject to the law of race and must be adapted to it.
  6. The first source and the supreme rule of law and order is racial instinct.
  7. There exists only the Kosmos or living universe ; all things, including humans, are only various forms growing over the ages of universal life.
  8. Each man exists only by the State and for the State. All that he rightly possesses derives exclusively from a concession to the State.

Famous quotes containing the word racism:

    Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)