Syria
The Pope has requested that today, the vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been designated as a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, a request we are sure that all Catholics will willingly comply with – that is, if they managed to hear about it. The Syrian question is undoubtedly complex and the responsibility for the recent chemical weapon attack remains subject to dispute. Those responsible for that mass-murder and for any other deliberate attacks on unarmed civilians will ultimately have to answer to a higher authority than the United States. Civil wars invariably lead to the most horrific atrocities; the legacy of Cain’s sin is indeed severe. But the responsibility for the current war and its atrocities lie not only with those combatants directly engaged in that war, but also weighs more heavily upon those who support the destabilisation of nations to serve their own geo-political aims.
We are not impressed with the American, French or (now-castrated) British expressions of horror at the use of Chemical weapons against civilians, particularly children. A far greater toll of fatalities has arisen from the use of chemical abortifacients in all of these nations, a manner of chemical killing that has been legalised and encouraged by all these States. Also, all these States appear to be completely unconcerned by the fate of the Christian communities in Syria and in the Middle East generally. Indeed their policies invariably seem to ignore the effect upon the Christian population in the region – that too is a civil war in which the Christians of the Middle East are the victims of proxy wars or destabilisation campaigns waged by their so-called “Christian” brothers (in fact liberal masonic regimes) in the West. The jihadists are only too willing to take weapons and military advice from Western sources – the so-called “Crusaders”(or their “allies” in this undertaking) – to use such against the Christians in their midst. How perverse is that!
Disinformation is also a feature of all warfare and, as the Iraq war demonstrated, inconvenient facts cannot be allowed to get in the way of a force already programmed to strike. On a BBC news programme we heard that the phone transcripts which convinced the USA of Assad’s responsibility had been provided by Israel which is hardly a neutral broker in the area.
Criticism of the Pope – The Pope and Abortion etc.
One could not but reflect on reading the Pope’s reply to his Brazilian interlocutor regarding abortion, on the flight back from Brazil, that his reply would have satisfied what we call the Justice and Peace crowd. In an article in Apropos No. 16, 1994, we drew attention to the fact that the Justice and Peace apparatchiks in Scotland seldom if ever attacked abortion etc. In their defence they employed all manner of verbal gymnastics to justify their inactivity in that area – the essence of which was that pro-life issues must be dealt with in the widest context and without duplicating the work already done by other agencies. Exasperation at the Church’s inactivity in this area led to a protest by the veteran pro-lifer, the late Fr James Morrow, who remarked at a clergy meeting that ‘no organ of the Catholic Church in this country was meeting the need [to oppose Planned Parenthood]’, only to be met with what he described as ‘stony silence’. The Pope’s equating of abortion with cheating and lying did not go down particularly well with his Brazilian interviewer. The undernoted article, Descent into Darkness, by James Larson analyzes the Pope’s response in more detail particularly in the light of the pro-abortion and same-sex ‘marriage’ proposals of his recent hosts in Brazil.
Same-Sex Marriage – Tactics all wrong
Fatima – A Sign in the Heavens
The Preliminary Battle
The Preliminary Battle by Jean Vaquié was published originally in the counter-revolutionary journal Lecture et Tradition in 1990 and then in issue 156 of Action Familiale et Scolaire (AFS). It was subsequently issued as a supplement to AFS No. 225, February 2013. It was published in English in Apropos No. 21, Lent 2003. We may consider it as a charter for the current counter-revolutionary struggle. The author outlines there three superimposed battles:
that of maintenance which has as its object the safeguarding the remnant of Christianity which still remains. It is called the lesser battle;
that of supplication called the preliminary battle;
that of the transfer of power allowing the return of Christian social order. It pertains directly to God and is called the greater battle.
The lesser battle and the preliminary battle must be conducted simultaneously and by the same combatants. It is important not to waste our human forces against an enemy who today is all powerful… but also important that we use to the full the spiritual weapons which the enemy lacks. This is the merit of this article which demonstrates this very clearly. Although the article naturally refers to the situation in France, there are lessons for all who are engaged in the counter-revolution because the power of the revolution prevails in all our countries. It has lessons too for the fight against Modernism in the Church.
The Disadvantages of Comfort.
In this short essay, The Disadvantages of Comfort, Dr Robert Hickson counterpoints Newman’s essay on ‘Religious Cowardice’ with Belloc’s essay ‘On Poverty’ to examine the danger of spiritual complacency and the consequences of spiritual cowardice, and the role of true poverty as an antiseptic against the suppurative reactions of the soul.