Writing Straight With Crooked Lines

Whatever someone might have told you, Constantine the Great was not a saint. In fact, he appears to have been quite the contrary. Concubines, murders, intrigues of all sorts went on during a good part of his life. The guy who called the Council of Nicaea was, in fact, not baptised yet. The suspicion of heretical sympathies (at least in order to preserve order in the Empire) is strong.

But you see: God writes straight with crooked lines. He does not send a MiniMe Padre Pio to both put a definitive end to persecution of Christians and encourage the diffusion of Christianity all over the Empire. He sends, instead, a ruthless guy like Constantine, and then works on him to unfold His providential plan.

We see this all the time. The (then) atheist Mussolini is the one who gave us the Patti Lateranensi, an absolute milestone in the history of Italy. A quite (cough) “determined” guy like Augusto Pinochet totally eradicated Communism from Chile (and please go elsewhere with your easy moralism, or get to know Communism, before you come here to complain about him). Another guy, who was also very Catholic, like Francisco Franco, needed to give a very robust medicine to his own Country; a bitter, but a salutary one.

For this reason, I am always surprised when I see people criticise Trump, or Putin, for their (real or imaginary) shortcomings. Everyone has shortcomings. What we need to ask ourselves is: “is God writing straight with this particular crooked line”?

In the case of Trump, or Putin, my answer is:

“No shit, Sherlock!”

In addition to this, it is important to put people in their proper context. If we think about financial corruption, we need to recognise that the immaculately clean Trump lives in a Country that is quite different, and affords him quite a different degree of protection, than a country like Russia. You are very naive if you think that Putin can live out of a civil servant wage and retire in his country cottage if he is removed from power.

Putin is, very clearly, smarter than this, and if he is toppled he will make it as difficult as possible to go after him. There is no guarantee, of course, and you should ask Gaddafi or Saddam whether money can always be the solution; but, in these things, money is always a great help.

I can’t say I blame Putin. In fact, I think he is being smart.

Compare this, if you please, with our very own, very Italian crooked line, the personally extremely honest Benito Mussolini (may the Lord have mercy on his soul, and please, in your charity, pray for him today) who, having lived a life in service to his Country without ever stealing a penny or even collecting his wage (like Trump!) could not buy himself a safe passage to Paraguay or Argentina and was, instead, murdered like a drug dealer, and hanged in the public square by the usual commie bastards afterwards.

It pays to be prudent. And it is always smart to put people in their proper context, knowing that God will, in His wisdom, write straight with the crooked lines of wretched sinners, like us.