I have noted a common theme, through various e and snail
mail, skype, phone chats with people: there is a global fear, discouragement,
feeling overwhelmed by the culture of darkness and death.
Most noticeably, faithful Catholics and other Christians
feel, with the incessant demeaning of the Faith by society in general, by laws
in democratic countries, by blood elsewhere, Christianity is undergoing an
intense persecution.
Prior to Ash Wednesday then throughout Lent, with the help
of the Holy Spirit and Our Lady, I try and be attentive to a theme, a focus of
prayer and spiritual reading.
This year it is to reflect upon the deadly poison of
Neo-Nazism of the left!
Flowing from that to pray and fast for the conversion,
especially of ersatz democracies, led by governments so obsessed with
relativism they are arrogant in their hostile disdain for anyone who stands for
the sacredness of life.
How have we come to this?
I find clues, and words of encouragement in an
eighty-year-old papal encyclical.
May the holy time of Lent and Easter, which preaches
interior renovation and penance, turn Christian eyes towards the Cross and the
risen Christ; be for all of you the joyful occasion that will fill your souls
with heroism, patience and victory. [1]
Sometimes explicit, but always implicit in every lie and
deception of satan is erosion of trust in the victory of Christ, crucified and
risen from the dead. Worn down by such evil deception and lies, some people
become angry with God or the Church, and walk away; others pick and choose
among the teachings of Christ and His Church those teachings which allow
compromise with the surrounding culture; some will even cross over to the
anti-Christ, anti-life side.
In so doing they become enemies of their very selves.
To assume neo-Nazism merely refers to right-wing extremists,
who violently oppose anyone they deem not themselves, is a dangerous mistake.
It is fundamentally a satanic deception which has seduced
Christians, and society in general, to be blinded by the flash, deafened by the
noise, of extremists, failing to discern the pervasiveness of those elements of
actual Nazis ideology which have morphed into the stark reality of the current
culture of darkness and death.
The priest's first loving gift to his neighbours is to serve
truth and refute error in any of its forms. [2]
At enormous cost of blood, and treasure, the Allies
eventually defeated the Nazis.
However, much like fighting massive fires in the boreal
forests of Canada, just extinguishing what is visible does not mean the fire
has been eliminated. Boreal forest floors in large areas are composed of peat.
When peat is wet, as is normal, no problem, but if because of lack of a winter
snow cover, or a prolonged period of drought, the peat dries out, it can
ignite. Smouldering peat remains active below the surface, even throughout the
winter, usually unseen until conditions trigger a surface fire and another
major conflagration in the forest.
Neo-Nazi ideology is the smouldering peat, the smoke from
which spreads as the darkness of the culture of death, poisoning every mind,
heart, soul it penetrates.
Our pastoral heart knows no deeper pain, no disappointment
more bitter, than to learn that many are straying from the path of truth. [3]
Any reading of historical accounts of the rise of Nazism,
its visible endurance to the end of the Second World War, shows a mixture of
hatreds using eugenics, racism, lies, distorted revival of Teutonic myths, use of
the occult, relentless propaganda, terror, abortion, euthanasia to wield power
and attempt to reshape civilization, ultimately compromising and corrupting
those who should have, like Gandalf, stood firm and proclaimed “You shall not
pass!”.
True, some religious leaders, secular leaders of various
professions and regular citizens, did stand up, many of them paying the
ultimate price of martyrdom.
In the immediate post-war there was a period from around
1946 to the Second Vatican Council, when foundational Christian values still
held sway, in government and society at large. Then, apparently out of the
blue, everything seemed to come unglued, in the Catholic Church, other mainline
Churches, society in general.
With the legalizing of abortion, the spread of moral
relativism since then: The experiences of these last years have fixed
responsibilities and laid bare intrigues, which from the outset only aimed at a
war of extermination. [4]
This war of extermination continues against pre-born
children, with an ever-expanding list of justifications through judicial
activism, with euthanasia increaseing the murder of human beings, and with the
ever-expanding variety of ‘sexual orientations’, the extermination of authentic
personhood is well underway.
Liberalism’s deceptive propaganda would have society at
large believe Pope Paul VI pulled his teachings on contraception and abortion
out of thin air, when this immutable truth-teaching of the Church, sustaining both Divine Law and
natural law, is rooted in the millennia: Those who use abortifacients commit
homicide~ St. Clement, pope & martyr, AD 88-100; The woman who purposely
destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. The hair-splitting difference
between formed and unformed makes no difference to us.~ St. Basil the Great, AD
330-379.
The original Nazis co-opted a significant portion of the
medical community, the judiciary, and, if not by their action, certainly by
their lack of courageous resistance in word or deed, Catholic and Protestant
clergy.
Neo-Nazis today, hiding under the cover of progressive
liberalism, in government, the judiciary, academia, the media, have utter
disdain for anyone who objects to any immoral law, because they know Catholic
and other resistors pose no real threat.
Why?
When it comes to the weakened influence of the Catholic
Church, upon so-called liberal democracies, so long as the Bishops, in Canada
for example, insist on being agents of the state when it comes to legal
recognition of ‘church’ marriages and insist on government money for schools,
hospitals, church run social programs, etc., they/we, their priests, religious,
laity, are totally compromised.
We know Jesus tells us: "give to Caesar what belongs to
Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God." [Mk.12.17], but He does not
tell us to get Caesar to give us back anything, rather Jesus tells us:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or
drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and
the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or
reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you
not much more valuable than they? …….So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we
eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run
after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But
seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will
worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. [Mt. 6:25-34]
There is an example to consider: The Servant of God,
Catherine Doherty, Foundress of the Madonna House Lay Apostolate, forbid
members to accept any government funding for any of the mission houses and
service to the poor. To this day, some seventy years since their founding, the
community simply begs for all that is needed to sustain the mission houses and
provide for the poor. In a recent begging letter, this line: In many cultures
‘begging’ appears to be something demeaning, but in my heart it is a
‘song’-something of beauty that points ourselves and others toward a total
reliance on the Lord’s providence.
How can we preach to suffering parishioners, urge people to
embrace and live out Humane Vitae, the Gospel of Life, be faithful to the
sacrament of Holy Marriage, comfort parents worried about their teenage
children, truly be, as Pope Francis urges: a poor Church, a field hospital
Church - ever utter words like ‘faith,
trust’, as bishops and priests, if our people see us always at the government
trough, rather than trusting our Heavenly Father will see to our needs?
Are we, Catholics, no longer the: ….Christianity which keeps
a grip on itself, refuses every compromise with the world, takes the commands
of God and the Church seriously, preserves its love of God and of men in all
its freshness, such a Christianity can be, and will be, a model and a guide to
a world which is sick to death and clamors for directions, unless it be
condemned to a catastrophe that would baffle the imagination. [5]
There are Catholic priests, religious, laity -adherents of
other religions too, and people of no religion, who strive to overcome
Neo-Nazism as exemplified by the edicts/laws of government, judicial activism,
erroneous and poisonous teachings, actions of various professions and schools
of thought.
Critical in this defense of truth is supporting families,
which means, we begin with Mothers and Fathers: …. Catholic parents. Their
rights and duties as educators, conferred on them by God, are at present the
stake of a campaign pregnant with consequences…… the violation…. is nigh, and
it will be every one's duty to sever his responsibility from the opposite camp,
and free his conscience from guilty cooperation with such corruption. The more
the enemies attempt to disguise their designs, the more a distrustful vigilance
will be needed, in the light of bitter experience. [6]
Is the great and final catastrophe nigh?
Perhaps.
I do believe there is still time to repent, to be converted
anew, to take a courageous stand for Christ, for truth, for the Gospel of Life.
Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who
must pay so dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the
highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss, there
is but one alternative left, that of heroism. [7]
{Quotes are from: 1-7 paras. 42, 36, 2, 4, 19, 39, 21 of Mit
Brenneder Sorge, encyclical On The Church and the German Reich, Pope Pius XI,
Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937}
