Wish I'd written that: a warning for the future

V
on Tschammer und Osten said that all Roman Catholic and Protestant youth organizations are, like all Jewish organizations, to be expressly forbidden to pursue any sport. As far as the Nazis are concerned, people are going to have to make a choice between religion and sport. The point being that all sports training is to be done under Nazi auspices. He actually said that the Nazis are conducting a cultural war against the church.”

“He said that?”

“Any Catholic or Protestant athletes who don’t join Nazi sports clubs will lose their chance of representing Germany.”

I shrugged. “So let them. Who cares about a few idiots running around a track anyway?”

“You’re missing the point, Gunther. They’ve purged the police. Now they’re purging sports. If they succeed, there will be no aspect of German life in which they won’t be able to exert their authority. In all aspects of German society, Nazis will be preferred. If you want to get on in life, you will have to become a Nazi.”

- Philip Kerr, If the Dead Rise Not

Opera Wednesday - Dialogues of the Carmelites

When we have more time, I'll write at greater length about Francis Poulenc's stirring Dialogues of the Carmelites, which has a tremendous relevance to the post-Christian times in which we now live, but in the meantime here's the dramatic conclusion: the Carmelite sisters, having been condemned by the Satanic French Revolution, make their way, one by one, to the guillotine.

On the coming persecution (II)

There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation and the road is strewn with many dangers.

[M]any of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation.

[…] It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. […]

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. […] I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

[There is] the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged -- will ultimately judge himself -- on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort."

- Robert F. Kennedy, 1966

On the coming persecution (I)

Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion.  The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.”

- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The coming martyrdom?

Esteban Perez Murillo, The Martyrdom of St Andrew

Regular readers know I've spent some time the last month or so writing about various aspects of martyrdom, so it's not surprising I'd notice this sobering piece from Matt Archbold.  Excerpt:

I was looking at my children in Mass yesterday and a horrifying thought occurred to me. If I do my job well as a parent, my children may end up persecuted and/or in jail. That may be the best I can hope for at this point in 21st century America.

I prayed that their faith would be strong enough to resist a pro-death culture, a secular academia, an antagonistic media, and the pressure of a government out to separate faith from action.

Secularism isn’t just on the march, it’s positively doing a jig.

I’m not talking about troubled times ahead for my grandchildren’s children in some possible future.

I’m talking about my kids. So revolutionary have been the recent changes in America that defending life, liberty, and the pursuit of holiness could very well lead to persecution in the very near future.

Now, we don't have children, so I can only imagine the thought that if you were to bring your children up right, you'd be consigning them to persecution, perhaps even death.

I have a friend who for some years has worried about his son, now 20, having to grow up and grow old in this America.  His concerns aren't limited to religious persecution, although that's a not-insignificant part of it; he's also concerned about the loss of freedom in general, economic collapse, and in general the end of America as we have known it for generations.

It is a sad thing to contemplate.  Last July, for the first time I can remember, we declined to take part in any of the Fourth of July celebrations we usually enjoy.  No parades, no fireworks, no 1812 Overture.  No 1776 or The Music Man.  Because it just didn't feel right, somehow.  The Obamacare decision had been handed down by the Supreme Court just a few days prior, and it suddenly felt as if that country, the America created by the Founding Fathers and celebrated for over 200 years, no longer existed.

I doubt that many of you would disagree with the thought that there is no distinct American culture anymore, nothing (other than the Super Bowl) that holds us all together at one specific moment in time.  Its absence is particularly noticeable to me after spending time with my television research; so many things back then were taken for granted, things that required no explanation, were understood by everyone. Sometimes when I see the American flag fly I wonder if this country could really come to stand for the kind of persecution that worries Matt Archbold   Yes, it's possible.  Perhaps likely, I don't know for sure since I'm not a fortuneteller.  

In a way it's good to ponder this today, as we once again enter the Sacred Triduum with Holy Thursday.  At the end of this day Jesus will have been arrested; the process of His martyrdom will begin to be an active fact.  Doubtless many of us wonder - will we be like Christ, who accepted the cup He was given?  Or will we be Peter, who denied Him three times but ultimately returned to lead His Church?  Will we be John, the only one of the disciples who didn't abandon Him?  Or will we be Judas, whose greatest sin was not betrayal but despair, refusing the saving mercy of God?  At some point or another we may well find out?

If all that makes us afraid, we have the supreme consolation - that Jesus, facing His Passion and death, chose not to console Himself by denying the pain and suffering that would accompany the Way of the Cross, in order that we might have a Savior Whom we knew had experienced it, had experienced all of human pain.  And that's why, on Holy Thursday, such thoughts should produce not worry and anxiety, but should help us prepare for whatever lies ahead.   ◙