“That’ll Be The Day”

“That’ll be the day”, indeed…

 

You can read here a beautiful article on “Crisis Magazine” on the attitude too often found among Catholics, and about which I have written on several occasions.

You will find the post instructive because it teaches once again how history repeats itself, in the sense that the same errors are made again and again, and with the same consequences.

You’ll find the Churchill quote particularly telling, and I think it fitting to report it in its entirety

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

Still, I do suggest you read the article in its entirety, as it has pretty much everything: the extremely fitting imagined “cartoon” is hilarious but very reflective of today’s reality, and the world war reminiscences of the author’s grandpa are also very, very real, though a stupid generation has already managed to almost forget them.Even the John Wayne citation is beautiful (the movie was, I think, “The Searchers”. DVD purchase highly recommended…).

If there’s a kind of “Catholic” I can’t stand, is the one who think it is enough to “piously abandon post”, clearly out of lack of the will to fight but masquerading it as charitable “respect” for other people’s wishes. They think one can be a Christian without having any conflict with anyone else. Far too easy. Christ came with a sword. The day they die, the Appeasing Catholics will discover the conflicts they have avoided come all back to haunt them.

And no, such an inaction is not being pious. It’s the desire to avoid at all costs those awkward or outright unpleasant conversations, and renounce to speak one’s mind when challenged. (“Do you mean I will go to hell?” – asks the divorced and remarried dissenting cousin – “I mean you certainly are at risk”, you answer. Nuclear conflict follows. Good. You might have given a little contribution to the saving of one soul, besides yours) with relatives and close friends, and showing oneself oh so tolerant, and thus worthy of praise in this heathen world of ours. 

No one of us is required to die in the trenches (for now), though I’d say it’d be a life well spent. But what is required of us is that we speak frankly and do our best to influence the world around us; which doesn’t mean the waffle along the lines of  “look at my joy in being a Christian”. It means telling other people they are utterly and completely wrong, and accept the discussion (or quarrel) that goes with that.

If one is so “respectful” of other people’s “feelings” or “conscience” that he leaves it unchallenged, he is being an accomplice; and if one is not mightily enraged at where the West is heading, I frankly doubt his Christian credentials.

Mundabor