Pope Leo says God doesn't listen to the prayers of those who "wage war." Really? History tells a different story. Pope Urban II and Pope Gregory X both called for crusades to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims. And then there is the significance of the Battle of Lepanto that saved Europe from Islam's advance. Had the West not "waged war" we would likely all be answering the Islamic call to prayer today. Yes, blessed are the peacemakers, but sometimes peace has to be won through war.
Is the pope ignorant of history? Who set up the Holy League led by Don Juan of Austria? Pope Pius V. Chesterton's stirring poem about the battle is a testimony to the courage of those who answered the pope's call. Yes, they "waged war" unapologetically. They battled against Islam, a war that continues today in an unbloody way using fertility and migration to overthrow the suicidal families of the West who kill their children.
Chesterton describes the pope's call to war and describes Don Juan as the "last knight of Europe." Listen to the poem and ask yourself if the miracle of the changing wind and the victory of the Holy League shown to Pope Pius V in a vision weren't an answer to the prayers of the warriors and the pope who sent them into battle. Mary interceded for them and the pope established the Feast of the Holy Rosary in thanksgiving.
We are called the Church Militant, not the Church Picnic. Our principle battle takes place within each of us, the battle against sin. But to make such a foolish statement as the pope did is one more head-shaking untruth. Obviously there are unjust wars, but they do not destroy the principle. Jesus said Himself that He came to divide. Sometimes divisions are so serious they end up on the literal battlefield as they often did in the Old Testament and still do today.
But during this Holy Week let us fight the battle within against our sinful nature. Our enemy is Satan and we must be always vigilant against his wiles and devious ways to seduce us. May we have the courage of Don Juan and the wisdom of Pope Pius V as we call on St. Michael to "defend us in battle." And let us pray earnestly for the pope who continues the state of confusion we've suffered under for decades.
May Jesus Christ be praised!
The question of war in general was raised by Saint Augustine in his late 4th century masterwork, ‘City of God’. In this classic, Augustine writes eloquently and passionately against war……he was speaking of the Roman Empire, but we can easily apply to the present war(s)-today;
ReplyDelete“There is one war after another, havoc everywhere, tremendous slaughtering of men…. All this for peace. Yet, when the wars are waged, there are new calamities brewing… that involve even more wretched anxieties for human beings, either shaken by their actual impact, or living in fear of their renewal. Massacres, frequent and sweeping, hardships too dire to endure are but a part of the ravages of war. I am utterly unable to describe them as they are, and as they ought to be described; and even if I should try to begin, where could I end?”
“I know the objection that a good ruler will wage wars only if they are just. But surely, if he will only remember that he is a man, he will begin by bewailing the necessity he is under of waging even just wars. A good man would be under compulsion to wage no wars at all, if there were not such things as just wars.”
St. Augustine wasn’t condemning just wars, which holy Mother Church conditionally accepts and approves. He was merely pointing out how horrific and savage are all wars, even those that are morally permissible…….let us not but lament and bemoan the loss, pain and suffering that warfare imposes on all sides of the conflict, the innocent above all others…….for example; how do we reconcile even a just war with the Beatitudes that say blessed are the meek and the peacemakers??? The Church answers: peace, as well as justice is always the objective in a just war.
Has hypocrisy ever reached such heights as we witness today?
Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson wrote ‘Lord of the World,’ a novel that appeared in 1907. In the novel a weakened English pope confronts an antichrist with the iconic name of Julian Felsenburgh on the plains of Megiddo. In June ‘2006 Pope Benedict XVI announced he was going to Megiddo in ‘2007. Megiddo is another word for Armageddon. The apocalyptic aura of his visit was overshadowed by the apocalyptic nature of the age. George Bush, like Julian the Apostate, was locked in an unwinnable war and threatening to extend it eastward by dropping nuclear weapons on Iran.
ReplyDeleteThe conversion of the Jews did not seem imminent. The Jews had never been more powerful; the Church, the antagonist of the Synagogue for 2000 years, had never been weaker. But appearances can deceive. Benedict XVI, the author of ‘Dominus Iesus,’ had said, even before becoming pope, that he looked forward to the conversion of the Jews. Reversal was in the air.
St. Pope Pius X felt the end times had arrived in 1903, and in a sense he was right. By the time the dust settled after WWI, Europe’s remaining Catholic empires had been toppled, and His enemy was on the throne of Russia’s Christian Czar.
Perhaps, Pope Pius X had a vision of the future when he wrote in October 1903 that:
“Whosoever weighs these things has certainly reason to fear that such perversion of mind may herald the evils announced for the end of time and as it were, the beginning of those calamities and that the son of perdition of whom the Apostle speaks may have already made his appearance here below. So great are the fury and hatred with which religion is everywhere assailed, that it seems to be a determined effort to destroy every vestige of the relation between God and man……..etc., etc.”
……at the end of history, the antichrist will be stronger than ever before, and the Church will be weaker than ever before.