Pope Francis, Evo Morales and Comrade Jesus

(Photo: L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)

What the hell is going on in this picture?

Bolivian President Evo Morales is handing a crucifix in the form of a hammer and sickle to a smiling Pope Francis, that's what.

Could we be any further down the rabbit hole?

Let the amelioration begin.

**UPDATE**

And so it has:

The German-language Katholisches Medienzentrum is reporting that Pope Francis' initial reaction was "skeptical", but softened once the history behind the bizarre symbol - which also graced the neck-bling given to him moments before - was explained to him. You see, gentle reader, this symbol was very dear to Fr. Luis Espinal, S.J., a Spanish-born Bolivian Jesuit who vociferously promoted a synthesis of Marxism and Catholicism - so vociferously, in fact, that the Bolivian government had him arrested and executed as a political agitator. Never mind that Pope John Paul II denounced the movement as irreconcilable with the Christian conception of man. Never mind that Evo Morales has declared himself a Marxist and a Communist, and has undertaken drastic steps to isolate the Catholic Church - the traditional foe of Communism - in Bolivia. We're dealing with someone who exploited was very close to the poor in order to bring them to the brink of a Socialist revolution the message of the Gospel. Yes, yes, I know it looks like the symbol of the most murderous socio-political theory ever to be vomited upon the earth, but appearances can be deceiving: it's a symbol of liberation and love.

Welcome to Room 101.

**UPDATE**

The amelioration continues:

RomeReports has come out with a partial transcript - consisting of one short statement - of the meeting between President Evo Morales and Pope Francis. The statement in question: "That's not right" - uttered by the Pope as Morales began explaining what the symbol meant.

First, I'd like to read a complete transcript of the exchange.

Second, I'd like to know why, if the Pope knows not only what the sculpture symbolizes but also that it's "not right," does he proceed to smile and accept the hideous thing before the flash of a hundred cameras? If it's wrong, refuse it. Don't give the socialists of the world the very thing they want: a picture of the Catholic Pope accepting a symbol of the perversion of Christianity with a silly grin on his face.

And we thought "Who am I to judge?" was bad. This picture should never have happened, regardless of what the Pope intended to express by accepting the 'gift'.

**UPDATE**

The spin on this story has reached full throttle:

Catholic World News is reporting that Pope Francis "rebuked" President Morales for his gift of the hammer and sickle 'crucifix'.

By smiling and accepting the gift.

Harsh, Pope Francis. Harsh.

Meanwhile, Catholic News Agency is in full damage-control mode:

#PopeFrancis reacts to controversial gift of a crucifix in shape of a hammer&sickel. Translation: "That is not good" https://t.co/BCeCa0GMqI

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) 9. Juli 2015

Who knows? Given the impressive size of that font and the gnat-sized attention span of the average viewer, they might actually be able to get the genie back in the bottle. The way things are looking, however, this seems to be shaping up into a battle of two captioned images:

In any event, when Jimmy Akin finds out about this, we will be sure to get 10 things to know and share about how there is absolutely nothing to see here.

**UPDATE**

Just when it seemed as though the fix was in: enter Holy See press officer Fr. Frederico Lombardi. According to the latest from Catholic News Agency, Fr. Lombardi commented on the encounter by opining that "Pope Francis' remark  likely expressed a sentiment of 'I didn't know' ['No sabía eso'], rather than 'This is not right' ['Non está bien eso']."

How's that for setting the record straight?

On the up-side, it seems that at least one prelate recognized the utter depravity of the object. Bishop Jose Munilla Aguirre of San Sebastián tweeted:

El culmen de la soberbia es manipular a Dios al servicio de ideologías ateas... Hoy, una vez más: #CristoCrucificado pic.twitter.com/uLbPPQDAGj

— Jose Ignacio Munilla (@ObispoMunilla) 9. Juli 2015

The height of arrogance is to manipulate God in the service of atheistic ideologies. Today, once again: #ChristCrucified.

The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Consolidation of Rome

Reading N°23 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

About the year 62, shortly after the martyrdom of St. James the Less, a rude peasant, Jesus, the son of Ananias, began running through the streets of Jerusalem uttering terrible curses upon the city and the Temple. "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds," he cried out; "a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary; [...] a voice against all the people." He kept repeating these threats until, during the siege of the city seven years later (A.D. 70), he was struck in the forehead by a stone and died.^[1]

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem
David Roberts (1796-1864)

Jerusalem was in an unexampled state of excitement. A horrible massacre of three thousand Jews (A. D. 66), ordered by the Roman procurator Gessius Florus, stirred up a general revolt of the city's population against the Roman authority. One of Nero's last acts, in 68, was to send Vespasian to Palestine with instructions to subdue the rebels at all costs. The general was already before the walls of Jerusalem when the acclaim of the Syrian legions brought him to the imperial office, left vacant by the successive deaths of four emperors (Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius), all of whom died within eighteen months. The task of carrying on the war he left to his son Titus. The siege, one of the most sanguinary recorded by history, lasted seven months and ended by Titus gaining possession of Jerusalem. The Temple was destroyed. The survivors of the siege were made prisoners or sold as slaves. The veil of the Holy of Holies, the seven-branched candlestick, the Book of the Law and the Table of the Loaves of Proposition were carried off as trophies to Rome. This was "the abomination of desolation" foretold by the prophets. This was the fulfillment of the Savior's prophecy: "If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee [...] and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee. And they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone; because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation."^[2]

Titus' troops carrying off plunder from the Temple of Jerusalem
Arch of Titus, Rome

The destruction of the Temple had a considerable influence upon the destinies of the Christian Church. Thenceforth, the observance of the Mosaic ceremonies became impossible in its most essential elements. The priesthood of Aaron, the perpetual sacrifice, and the secondary ceremonies dependent on them were now antiquated and ceased. The Christians had not witnessed the final fall of the Holy City. Seeing the Roman standards raised around Jerusalem, they remembered the Master's warning: "When, therefore, you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet [...] then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains."^[3] They withdrew to the city of Pella in Perea, near the left bank of the Jordan. There they lived, poor indeed, on their savings, full of confidence in the immortal vitality of their Church. But when Jerusalem fell, that terrible fall inspired them with a grief like that which a devoted child feels at the death of an unnatural mother. Even toward the Synagogue, deicide and persecutor though it was, a sort of filial reverence existed among these Christians.^[4] Thirty years later, the author ot the Epistle attributed to St. Barnabas^[5] tried to console the Jews who bemoaned the loss of Sion and the end of their ancient observances by showing them that the holocausts of the Old Law merely prefigured a sacrifice that is performed and will ever be performed, and that all the ceremonies of Judaism had a hidden meaning which, on being revealed, abrogated them. "The horror for unclean food survived in the aversion to be practiced with regard to wicked men^[6] ... the brazen serpent and Moses' extended arms were honored in the image of Christ, of whom they were figures.^[7] The Jews, as also the Gentiles, had placed their hopes in a material temple."^[8] The Temple had now been destroyed by their enemies; but those enemies were to take upon themselves to build to God His true temple, a spiritual edifice.^[9]

The providential connection between the Christian Church and its Jewish beginnings was not broken; but the Christian communities became more and more detached from the traditions of the Synagogue, in their hierarchy and also in their ceremonies, and even in the form of their doctrinal teaching.

St. Paul's three pastoral Epistles, written during his last days,^[10] are, as it were, the Apostle's last will and testament. In a few clearly indicated details, they give us the picture of the hierarchical organization of the Church at that period.

At the head is the bishop. He is the "steward of God,"^[11] says St. Paul. He should, therefore, be a model of perfection among the faithful: sober, chaste, kindly, amiable, just, without conceit, hospitable, so that even those outside may bear him a good testimony.^[12]

Deacons should be men of tried virtue: upright, incapable of double-dealing, not self-seeking, keeping the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.^[13] For duties so difficult, a trial is necessary. They are to be ordained only after a preliminary probation, a sort of novitiate.^[14]

At that time devout widows had a special part in the activities of the Church. To them was entrusted the direction of certain works. To these duties were to be admitted only women at least sixty years old, who had been only once married, and who were commendable for their good works, for the way they brought up their children, for their zeal in the exercise of hospitality, in the washing of the feet of the saints.^[15]

As for simple Christians, all their duties are summed up in the Apostle's single advice, that they be faithful to the obligations of their condition and state. Each Christian is a member of the great social body of the Church. Let each one conscientiously perform the duties imposed on him by the place he occupies. Let the old men take care to remain "sound in faith, in love, in patience."^[16] Let the aged women avoid evil-speaking and see that their outward conduct is such as becomes holiness.^[17] Let the young women love their husbands and their children, and remain chaste, circumspect, busied with their home duties, submissive to their husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.^[18] Let servants obey their masters; in all things let them show a perfect docility, that in all things they may honor the doctrine of God, our Savior.^[19]

But this enumeration of duties does not give what is, according to the Apostle, the very soul of the Christian life. This is piety - earnest, faithful piety - devoted above all to the faith received from Christ by the tradition of the Apostles and ancients. The bishop must exercise himself in piety, since piety is profitable to all things.^[20] The widows should continue in supplications and prayers night and day.^[21] This piety must not stray off in private fancies. As there is a hierarchical center of the Church, so there is "a "deposit of faith." "O Timothy," the Apostle writes, "keep that which is committed to thy trust,"^[22] "keep the good thing committed to thy trust."^[23] "Continue thou in those things which thou hast learned, and which have been committed to thee: knowing of whom that hast learned them."^[24] "The things which thou hast heard of me by many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men, who shall be fit to teach others also."^[25] Paul denounces evil teachers, "disobedient, vain talkers," "teaching things which they ought not."^[26] The Church casts forth teachers who betray the salutary doctrine;^[27] for the Church, "the house of God," is "the pillar and ground of the truth."^[28]

Footnotes

[1] Josephus, Jewish War, VI, v, 3.

[2] Luke 19:42-44.

[3] Matt. 24:15 f. The best interpreters explain the "abomination of desolation" as meaning the Roman military ensigns, which Tacitus (Annals, II, 17) calls "the tutelar deities of the legions."

[4] Cf. Champagny, Rome et la Judée, II, 312.

[5] Funk and Bardenhewer judge that the Epistle of Barnabas was written sometime between 96 and 98.

[6] Epistle of Barnabas, 10.

[7] Ibidem, 12.

[8] Ibidem, 16.

[9] Ibidem.

[10] Cf. Prat, La Théologie de saint Paul, I, 465-469.

[11] Θεοῡ οὶκόνομος (Tit. 1:7).

[12] See 1 Tim. 3:1-7. The Epistle speaks of the deacons in the plural, but of the episkopos in the singular. The words episkopos and presbyteros are always used without distinction; but this verbal confusion should not mislead us as to the real distinction between the office of bishop and that of priest.

[13] cf. 1 Tim. 3:8 f.

[14] Ibidem, 3:10.

[15] Ibidem, 5:9 f.

[16] Titus, 2:2.

[17] Ibidem, 2:3.

[18] Ibidem, 2:4 f.

[19] Ibidem, 2:9 f.

[20] Cf. 1 Tim. 4:8.

[21] Ibidem, 5:5.

[22] Ibidem, 6:20.

[23] 2 Tim. 1:14.

[24] Ibidem, 3:14.

[25] Ibidem, 2:2.

[26] Titus 1:10 f.

[27] Cf. 2 Tim. 4:3.

[28] Cf. 1 Tim. 3:15.

***

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Hope

Nineteenth in a Series on Catholic Morality

 by

 Fr. John H. Stapleton

The First Commandment bids us that we hope as well as believe in God. Our trust and confidence in His mercy to give us eternal life and the means to obtain it: this is our hope, founded on our belief that God is what He reveals Himself to us, able and willing to do by us as we would have Him do. Hope is the flower of our faith; faith is the substance of the things we hope for.

To desire and to hope are not one and the same thing. We may long for what is impossible of obtaining, while hope always supposes this possibility, better, a probability, nay, even a moral certitude. This expectation remains hope until it comes to the fruition of the things hoped for.

The desire of general happiness is anchored in the human heart, deep down in the very essence of our being. We all desire to be happy, We may be free in many things; in this we are not free. We must have happiness, greater than the present, happiness of one kind or another, real or apparent. We may have different notions of this happiness; we desire it according to our notions. Life itself is one, long, painful, unsatisfied desire.

When that desire is centered in God and the soul's salvation, it immediately becomes hope, for then we have real beatitude before us, and all may obtain it. It can be true hope only when founded on faith.

Not only is hope easy, natural, necessary, but it is essential to life. It is the mainspring of all activity. It keeps all things moving, and without it life would not be worth living. If men did not think they could get what they are striving after, they would sit down, fold their arms, let the world move, but they wouldn't.

Especially is Christian hope absolutely necessary for the leading of a Christian life, and no man would take upon himself that burden, if he did not confidently expect a crown of glory beyond, sufficient to repay him for all the things endured here below for conscience's sake. Hope is a star that beckons us on to renewed effort, a vision of the goal that animates and invigorates us; it is also a soothing balm to the wounds we receive in the struggle.

To be without this hope is the lowest level to which man may descend. St. Paul uses the term "men without hope" as the most stinging reproach he could inflict upon the dissolute pagans.

To have abandoned hope is a terrible misfortune: despair. This must not be confounded with an involuntary perturbation, a mere instinctive dread, a phantasmagoric illusion that involves no part of the will. It is not even an excessive fear that goes by the name of pusillanimity. It is a cool judgment like that of Cain: "My sin is too great that I should expect forgiveness."

He who despairs, loses sight of God's mercy and sees only His stern, rigorous justice. After hatred of God, this is perhaps the greatest injury man can do to his Master, who is Love. There has always been more of mercy than of justice in His dealings with men. We might say of Him that He is all mercy in this world, to be all justice in the next. Therefore while there is life, there is hope.

The next abomination is to hope, but to place our supreme happiness in that which should not be the object of our hope. Men live for pleasures, riches, and honors, as though these things were worthy of our highest aspirations, as though they could satisfy the unappeasable appetite of man for happiness. Greater folly than this can no man be guilty of. He takes the dross for the pure gold, the phantom for the reality. Few men theoretically belong to this class; practically it has the vast majority.

The presumptuous are those who hope to obtain the prize and do nothing to deserve it. He who would hope to fly without wings, to walk without feet, to live without air or food would be less a fool than he who hopes to save his soul without fulfilling the conditions laid down by Him who made us. There is no wages without service, no reward without merit, no crown without a cross.

This fellow's mistake is to bank too much on God's mercy, leaving His justice out of the bargain altogether. Yet God is one as well as the other, and both equally. The offense to God consists in making Him a being without any backbone, so to speak, a soft, incapable judge, whose pity degenerates into weakness. And certainly it is a serious offense.

No, hope should be sensible and reasonable. It must keep the middle between two extremes. The measure of our hope should reasonably be the measure of our efforts, for he who wishes the end wishes the means. Of course, God will make due allowances for our frailties, but that is His business, not ours; and we have no right to say just how far that mercy will go. Even though we lead the lives of saints, we shall stand in need of much mercy. Prudence tells us to do all things as though it all depended upon us alone; then God will make up for the deficiencies.

The Satisfaction for Sin

Seventeenth Conference on the Most Sacred Heart

 by

 Fr. Henry Brinkmeyer

The malice of sin is objectively infinite, illimitable; and as we advance with our studies, we realize in fuller measure what a fearful injury is done to God by every mortal offense. How appalling is the revelation that sin is without bounds, without limits, indeed infinite. The question then arises: How can the sinner ever obtain his forgiveness, how can he ever undo the evil he has wrought? When the angels committed their first sin, they were probably hurled at once into the abyss of hell without a moment's time for repentance. Man pollutes his soul with mortal sin, with many sins, sins that cry to heaven for vengeance, and he still lives, because God wishes to spare him and therefore gives him time for repentance. Here many questions present themselves for solution.

Why did not the Most High spare the angels? Why does He spare man? Could He have immediately abandoned the human race after the fall of Adam? Could He have eternally punished the race because of the guilt consequent upon the first sin? Could He forgive sin absolutely without demanding any reparation, and inflicting any punishment? Or could He forgive sin without requiring full satisfaction? For example, could He have pardoned the sinner after the sinner had cancelled only a part of the debt contracted? In other words, was it absolutely required that sin be fully atoned for, before God could pardon it?

These questions are deeply interesting, and, in all ages, have offered a broad field of inquiry to the Catholic philosopher and theologian. For our present purpose it is needless to discuss these points. The fact is that God did not abandon the human race, nor does He forgive sin without satisfaction, nay, He requires ample satisfaction. Saint Thomas explains why it is more becoming that God should not forgive sin without having received due satisfaction for it. It is evident that His infinite justice is manifested pre-eminently by demanding reparation and restitution. His infinite mercy is manifested more strikingly, because to pardon without reparation is not so honorable to the sinner as to pardon him after he has paid his debt. His infinite wisdom is also manifested, in a higher degree, because to pardon man only after fitting reparation has been made is more humiliating to Satan who first lured man into sin, and whose forfeited place man is to occupy. The divine justice, mercy and wisdom all render it more becoming that sin should not be pardoned, unless the malice of sin, the injury done to God by sin, is fully repaired.

But how is this to be accomplished? Can man ever undo an infinite injury? Man's life is like a flower that blooms for awhile, then withers and falls to the dust. He lives today, tomorrow he is seen no more. And his mind is so feeble, his will so fickle, his heart so frail, his powers so finite; can the finite ever propitiate the Infinite?

Evidently, man can never - singly or collectively - give adequate satisfaction for even one grievous sin. If man cannot, no creature as mere creature can, for every creature is finite. Consequently, only a being equal to God can repair completely the injury of sin. But on the one hand, God alone is infinite; He alone is equal to Himself. There is none like to Him: all things are before Him as if they were not, all things are absolutely His, there is nothing that was not made by Him. And on the other hand, God cannot apologize to Himself, He cannot suffer, He cannot change; as He was from eternity, so He always is; He cannot deny His own sovereign, infinite majesty, yet He is the one offended. Apparently, therefore, an adequate reparation for sin seems impossible. Yet God's justice, mercy and wisdom fitly require complete satisfaction for sin: moreover, He has signified that without this complete satisfaction He is unwilling to forgive.

There was only one thing possible in this overwhelming difficulty. If the offended God demanded full satisfaction, it was necessary that He Himself should become a creature, that He should remain God, and at the same time assume in His personality a created nature, that in His created nature He should render the Godhead honor, praise and obedience, and thus atone for His creature's guilt. And therefore "The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." He was bruised for our sins and wounded for our iniquities; He was as a worm trodden under foot, the outcast of His own people, the lamb who opened not His mouth when He was led to the slaughter. By His wounds we are healed, by His bruises we are saved, by His blood we are ransomed from eternal perdition. And in heaven all the multitude which no man can number, the angels and the saints, the ancients and prophets, standing before the throne and in sight of the Lamb, clothed in white robes and with palms in their hands, all cry aloud:

To Him that sitteth on the throne and to the Lamb, benediction and honor and glory and power forever and ever because Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God in Thy blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Here again many questions might be raised and many difficulties proposed. One reason why the satisfaction of our Lord was so perfect is because it was so entirely free. All His sufferings were voluntarily borne, His death voluntarily embraced, because His whole human nature and all the laws that governed it were entirely under His command. It is true, the martyr's sufferings are also voluntary, but, as has been frequently stated, while the martyr is being tortured, he cannot help feeling the pain that fire and sword inflict upon him: the wounds are made, the members are cut, the nerves and bones laid bare. But at any moment our Lord could have suspended the pain, removed the nails from His hands and feet, and descended from the wood of the cross. Hence, as was said before, His sufferings and death were doubly meritorious because so absolutely free.

I lay down My life. No man taketh it away from Me: but I lay it down of Myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again.

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter because He willed it. Yet that very freedom of His atonement offers a striking difficulty. The eternal Father commands His Son to suffer. Jesus Himself said: "This commandment I have received from My Father." It was necessary, then, for our Lord to obey: had He disobeyed the mandate, sin would have been committed. But an obedience which is necessary appears to lose much of meritoriousness; it can furnish satispassion, can it offer satisfaction? For satisfaction, an act must be free. Here is a difficulty. Thank God, as Cardinal Newman has so luminously remarked, difficulties and doubts are not correlative: a thousand difficulties do not authorize one doubt.

But the question before us does present a difficulty. How is it answered? Theologians offer various solutions, but the best answer is apparently this simple one. The will is not free because it has the power to commit sin. God is free, yet He can never be unholy; the Blessed in heaven are free, still they have not the power of again yielding to temptation, they are confirmed in their love of God. The possibility of doing wrong is, as philosophers express it, a defect of liberty, a defect which is essential to every free creature while in a probationary state. Our Lord assumed our human nature, but not this defect, since it is a blemish incompatible with His holiness as Man-God. He was free then, absolutely free, but His sanctity and His love of His Father would never permit Him to go counter to that will. Propterea exaltavit ilium Deus, "for this reason did God lift Him up," factus est, obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis, "because He was obedient unto death, even unto the death of the cross."

Another reason why the satisfaction made by our Lord was so perfect is found in the intense, universal and peculiar sufferings He endured. First, in the intensity of His sufferings. Saint Thomas gives four reasons for maintaining that the pains our Lord endured in body and soul were the most acute that man can suffer on earth. They can be summed up perhaps in this one reason as signed by St. Bonaventure, that our Lord's body and soul were divinely framed for suffering, and that He permitted each power to act and endure independent of every other; it was because of this, we know, that He refused to take the wine and gall offered Him on the cross: He wished to die naturally in the full consciousness of all His excruciating torments.

Secondly, His sufferings were quasi universal. Saint Thomas shows how our Lord suffered at the hands of prince and pauper, priest and Levite, Jew and Gentile, man and woman; how He suffered in all His members and in all His senses; how, finally, He died struck by His Father, by men spit upon, mocked, bereft of His very clothing: the outcast of His people, as a worm trodden under foot.

Thirdly, His death was peculiarly shameful and accursed. The Mosaic Scriptures even had said: "He is accursed of God that hangeth on a tree!" By the fruit of the tree sin had come into the world: He was to make restitution for sin, and therefore had Himself suspended to the tree of the cross, restoring what had been robbed; according to these words of the Psalmist, "Then did I pay that which I took not away."

Can we marvel that the saints call the crucifix the book which they never weary of studying and from which they learn all wisdom? Jesus dead upon the cross is the measure of the malice of sin, of our personal sin. That blood-shedding, that agony, that fearful death: all is truly, really our work. Oh, if His Passion had never been repeated since the consummatum est on Calvary's Mount! It is renewed each time a soul yields to mortal sin. Yet the arms of Jesus are ever open to embrace us, His head is ever inclined to give us the kiss of peace, His ear is ever ready to hearken to our woes. When we weep, His loving Heart becomes our blessed retreat, when we tell Him of our guilt, His gentle voice breathes in the calm, "Go, penitent hearts, and sin no more."

Ah, loving Saviour! How merciful is Thy heart for us. Standing beside Thy cross, we ask: What may we do to prove our love for Thee? Heart ever-tender and compassionate! Filled with infinite love, broken by our ingratitude and pierced by our sins, accept the full oblation that we now make to Thee. Take us, Lord, with all our hopes, our joys, our griefs; draw us ever nearer to Thy wounded side and teach us all Thy blessed ways.

The Burning of Rome and the Neronian Persecution

Reading N°22 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Nero watching the burning of Rome
Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939)

On July 19, A. D. 64, a fire started in the shops surrounding the Circus Maximus and, fanned by a strong wind, destroyed, one after the other, the sections of the Palatine, the Forum, the Caelian hill, the Aventine, and the Esquiline. This conflagration lasted six days. More than half of old Rome was burned. The people for the most part were able to save their lives by fleeing to the Campus Martius, where they had temporary shelter; but they saw themselves reduced to utter destitution by this disaster. As usually happens in such cases, they at once asked who was the person responsible for the calamity. On every tongue was one name - that of the Emperor.^[1]

Not long before, Nero had revealed his cruel, vain, and whimsical nature. Three years earlier, to avenge the murder of Pedanius Secundus, prefect of Rome, he had ordered the victim's four hundred slaves put to death. Popular indignation expressed itself by an uprising, which the police had difficulty in curbing.^[2] Since then, the tyrant's crimes had increased. Burrus was dead, and public opinion accused Nero of putting him out of the way. Octavia, overwhelmed with shame, had likewise disappeared. Seneca, in retirement, was hourly expecting a decree of death or torture. The terrible Tigellinus ruled. The Emperor, elated by the base flattery of his courtiers, curiously mingled his bloody cruelties with visions of literary glory and, it was said, lulled his remorse (if the monster was capable of that feeling) by reciting poetry. Word spread that some one had seen Nero, in actor's costume, contemplating the conflagration from the top of a tower, while he sang the destruction of Troy.

An idea, possibly suggested by one of the many Jews at court,^[3] entered the despot's mind. To accuse the Christians of the outrage would deflect the unpleasant gossip from his own person and at the same time give occasion for those mass executions which his notion of beauty transformed into horrible festivity. But the investigation which was begun soon brought to light the existence of a "vast multitude"^[4] of Christians. To hold them all responsible for the fire would be too open a defiance of likelihood. A pretext was at hand for condemning them en masse: were they not, as a whole, "enemies of mankind," that is, of Roman civilization? Tacitus says they "were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of hating the human race."^[5] This same historian continues:

In their deaths they were also made the subjects of sport, for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs or nailed to crosses or set fire to and, when day declined, burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero offered his own gardens for that spectacle and exhibited a Circensian game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the habit of a charioteer.^[6]

Nero's Torches
Henryk Siemiradzki (1843-1902)

A passage in St. Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians adds a few details to Tacitus' account. It seems that Nero, whose depraved taste set all decency at nought, had introduced the custom of making those condemned to death impersonate certain characters of mythology. The people would be treated to the sight of Hercules painfully tearing from his body a burning garment made of pitch, or of Orpheus torn to pieces by a bear, or of Daedalus tumbling from the sky. Christian women were forced to impersonate the Danaides or Dirce. In the former case, before dying, they had to go through a series of tortures which we can only surmise; in the latter case they were fastened to the horns of wild bulls and dragged about the amphitheater.^[7] These horrible executions were the signal for a persecution that extended into the provinces and lasted at Rome until Nero's death in 68.^[8]

The most illustrious victims of this persecution were the Apostles Peter and Paul. Tradition fixes the year of their martyrdom as 67. In the first and second centuries, St. John, St. Clement of Rome, and St. Dionysius of Corinth speak of St. Peter's martyrdom without mentioning the manner of it; but in the next century, Origen says that the head of the Roman Church was crucified head downwards.^[9] Thus was fulfilled a prophecy spoken by the Savior when He said to Peter:

Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not.^[10]

The Martyrdom of St. Peter
Caravaggio (1571-1610)

St. Paul was beheaded. This was the form of execution reserved for Roman citizens.^[11]

The Beheading of St. Paul
Alessandro Algardi (1598-1654)

Footnotes

[1] Tacitus, Annals, XV, 44; cf. Annals, XV, 67; Suetonius, Nero, 38; Pliny, Natural History, XVII, I.

[2] Tacitus, Annals, XIV, 42 ff.

[3] St. Clement of Rome, alluding to the slaughter of Christians by Nero's orders, attributes it to jealousy (First Epistle, 5). Moreover, we know that Nero was surrounded by Jews (Josephus, Antiquities, XVIII, XIX, XX). It is noteworthy that the Jews, ordinarily confused with the Christians in the legal measures of this period (Tacitus, Annals, XV, 44; History, V, 5), were clearly distinguished from them in Nero's persecutions. Carlo Pascal (L'Incendio di Roma e i primi cristiani) and Bouché-Leclercq (L'Intolérance religieuse et la politique) blame the burning of Rome upon the fanaticism of a few Christians, whose criminal exaltation was made use of by Nero and his court for the accomplishment of a hateful scheme. Di Crescenzo in his reply (Un difensore di Nerone) and Semeria (Il primo sangue cristiano) have little difficulty in refuting this thesis, so contradictory to the texts of Suetonius, Pliny, Tacitus, and Dio. Renan and Havet hardly ventured to insinuate a similar accusation. Renan, The Anti-Christ, chap. 13; Havet, Le Christianisme et ses origines, IV, 228.

[4] "Multitudo ingens" (Tacitus, Annals, XV, 44).

[5] "Haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio generis humani convicti sunt" (Tacitus, loco cit.). Tertullian attributes to Nero a decree which may be summed up in these words: "Christiani non sint, Let there be no Christians." Tertullian (Apol., 5; To the Nations, I, 7) calls this decree "institutum neronianum." The word institutum in Roman law does not necessarily mean "edict" or "decree." In itself, Tertullian's expression might signify only that Nero inaugurated the period of cruelty against the Christians (Cezard, Histoire juridique des persécutions, p. 18); but a comparison of this text with that of Sulpicius Severus (II, 41) and the early Christian writers' general way of speaking leads us to suppose that Tertullian had in mind a special undertaking by Nero against the Christians as such.

[6] Tacitus, loco cit. According to the old Roman law, the punishment for the crime of arson was death by fire or in the games of the circus. See the law of the Twelve Tables; Gaius, in the Digest, XLVII, IX, 9; Callistratus, in the Digest, XLVIII, XIX, 28; Paul, Sent., V, 20. Cf. Cezard, op. cit., p. 13.

[7] Clement, First Epistle, 6. A Pompeian text and fresco seem to prove that this last named punishment was often inflicted on women who had been condemned to death.

[8] See the reasons advanced by Tillemont, Ruinart, and De Rossi. They may be found in Allard, Hist. des pers., I, 58-76.

[9] In Eusebius, III, I. This form of capital punishment was not unprecedented. See Seneca, Consolation to Marcia, 20.

[10] "This He said, signifying by what death he [Peter] should glorify God." (John 21:18 f.) 

[11] A tradition, recorded by St. Jerome, places St. Paul's martyrdom on the same day as that of St. Peter. Another tradition, represented by St. Augustine, places a year's interval between the two deaths. Dionysius of Cornith, Tertullian, and the priest Caius merely associate the two Apostles in their martyrdom. (See Eusebius, II, XXV.) The most reliable tradition places St. Peter's martyrdom on the Vatican hill; the tradition placing it on the Janiculum did not arise until the Middle Ages. (See Marucchi, Elements d'archéologie chrétienne, I, II.)

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How To Subvert A Nation: An Insider Explains

Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov
1939-1993

Below, I present a transcript of the first 10 minutes of a lecture delivered by one Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, also known as Tomas D. Schuman, a KGB-trained informant who defected to the West in 1970 and brought with him his detailed understanding of the system of socio-political manipulation employed by the U.S.S.R. known as subversion. The lecture was given sometime in the early 1980's in Los Angeles, but it has lost nothing of its actuality. In fact, many of the statements made by Mr. Bezmenov border on the prophetic in light of the sweeping changes currently taking place in western nations - especially in the United States.

I strongly recommend to all my readers that they watch the complete presentation. Twice, in fact, though perhaps not in one sitting. The first time you watch it, ask yourself how the tactics of subversion are being employed to shape politics and culture in both the secular and the religious sphere today. Useful reflections are to be had on, for example, the revelations of Bella Dodd, the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath, the 2015 Synod, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on sodomite "marriage", just to name a few issues of great interest to Catholics. The second time you watch it, ask yourself how we can effectively counteract these measures without breaking the law and without resorting to violence. The social conservatives of the world have been one step behind the ultra-progressives for the last 50 years because they have failed to understand the tactics of subversion, let alone to formulate effective responses. To react with hatred and/or violence, beyond being contrary to the Gospel, actually helps the opposition, as it enables them present themselves as the oppressed victims of unfair discrimination.

If you're feeling particularly plucky, share this information with your homosexual associates, should you have any. As Mr. Bezmenov explains, homosexuals, after being openly promoted during the subversion process, are often among the first victims once the new regime takes power. These are what subverters refer to as "useful idiots". To take a page from Soviet history: While homosexuality was legalized at the start of the Soviet Revolution under Lenin, it was re-criminalized under Stalin with severe penalties, which not infrequently ended in a Siberian gulag.

I don't normally ask my readers to share content, but I'm making an exception here. Please share this video with everyone you know. Start discussions on how to counteract the tactics of subversion peacefully and legally. Call out subverters by name. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by what are strategically superficial issues. Regardless of what you think the 'Errors of Russia' are in detail - Communism, Socialism, Materialism, Evolutionism, Atheism - the method of subversion discussed below is most certainly the delivery system.

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Subversion is a term - if you look in a dictionary or the criminal code, for that matter - usually explained as a part of an activity to destroy things like religion, a government system, the political or economical system of a country, and usually it's linked to espionage and such romantic things as blowing up bridges, derailing trains, cloak-and-dagger activity in Hollywood style. What I'm going to talk about now has absolutely nothing to do with the cliché of espionage, i.e. the KGB activity of collecting information.

Not subversion. Or is it? Discuss.

The greatest mistake, or misconception, I think, is that, whenever we are talking about the KGB, for some strange reason, starting from Hollywood movie makers to professors of political science and "experts" on Soviet Affairs - Kremlinologists, as they call themselves - they think that the most desirable thing for [Yuri] Andropov and the whole KGB is to steal the blueprint of some supersonic jet, bring it back to the Soviet Union and sell it to the Soviet Military Industrial Complex. This is only partly true.

If we take the whole time, money and manpower that the Soviet Union, and the KGB in particular, spends outside of the borders of the U.S.S.R., we will discover - of course, there are no official statistics, unlike with the CIA or FBI - that espionage as such occupies only 10-15% of the time, money and manpower. 15% of the activity of the KGB. The remaining 85% is always subversion. And unlike in dictionary - Oxford dictionary - English, subversion in Soviet terminology always means a destructive, aggressive activity aimed at destroying the nation, country or geographical area of your enemy. So, there's no romantics in there. Absolutely no blowing up bridges, no microfilm in Coca-Cola cans - nothing of that sort. No James Bond nonsense. Most of this activity is overt, legitimate and easily observable if you take the time and trouble to observe it. But, according to the law and law enforcement systems of the western civilizations, it's not a crime! Exactly because of misconceptions and the manipulation of terms. We think that a subverter is a person who is going to blow up our beautiful bridges. No! A subverter is an exchange student, a diplomat, an actor, an artist, a journalist like myself - as I was 10 years ago.

Now, subversion is an activity which requires two-way traffic. You cannot subvert an enemy which does not want to be subverted. If you know the history of Japan, for example, before the 20th century, Japan was a closed society. The moment a foreign boat came to the shores of Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army came to politely tell them to get lost. And if an American salesman came to the shores of Japan - say, 60 or 70 years ago - and said, "Oh, I have a very beautiful vacuum cleaner for you! And with good financing!" he was told, "Please leave, as we do not need your vacuum cleaner." If he didn't leave, they shot him, to preserve their culture, ideology, traditions and values intact. You were not able to subvert Japan.

You cannot subvert the Soviet Union, because the borders are closed, the media is censored by the government, the population is controlled by the KGB and internal police. With all the beautiful glossy pictures in Time magazine and the magazine America, which is published by the American Embassy in Moscow, you cannot subvert Soviet citizens because the magazine never reaches Soviet citizens; it's collected from the newsstands and thrown into the garbage can.

Subversion can only be successful when the initiator, the actor, the agent of subversion has a responsive target. It's two-way traffic. The United States is a receptive target of subversion. But there is no response similar to that one from the United States to the Soviet Union. It stops halfway somewhere; it never reaches its target.

Sun-Tzu
ca. 534-453 B.C.

The theory of subversion goes all the way back to 2,500 years ago. The first human being who formulated the tactics of subversion was a Chinese philosopher by the name of Sun-Tzu, ca. 500 B.C. He was an adviser to several imperial courts in ancient China. And he said, after long meditation, that, to implement state policy in a war-like manner, it's the most counterproductive, barbaric and inefficient to fight on a battlefield. You know that war is a continuation of state policy, right? So if you want to successfully implement your state policy, and you start fighting, this is the most idiotic way to do it. The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy, until such time that the perception of reality by your enemy is screwed up to such an extent that he does not perceive you as an enemy, and that your system, your civilization and your ambitions look, to your enemy, as an alternative - if not desirable, then, at least, feasible. "Better red than dead." That is the ultimate purpose, the final stage of subversion, after which you can simply take your enemy without a single shot being fired, if the subversion is successful. This is, basically, what subversion is. As you can see, not a single mention of blowing up bridges. Of course, Sun-Tzu didn't know about blowing up bridges; maybe there were not that many bridges at that time.

The basics of subversion are being taught to every student in KGB schools in the U.S.S.R. and to the officers of military academies. I'm not sure if the same author is included in the list of reading for American officers, to say nothing about ordinary students of political science. I had difficulty to find a translation of Sun-Tzu in the library of the University of Toronto and later on here, in Los Angeles. It's a book which is not available to, but rather forced on every student in the U.S.S.R. - every student who is taught to be looking further in his future career with foreigners. [...]

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For the entire presentation, which includes an incredible amount of useful information, such as a detailed explanation of the four classic stages of subversion, please watch the video below:

BONUS

After watching this video, you will never look at an image such as the following, which shows Russian President and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin engaged in a Judo throw, in the same way. Why are these events always so heavily publicized? Why Judo? Mr. Bezmenov explains it all, without even having lived long enough to see it himself, as he was killed in a mysterious car crash in 1993.

A clear signal to everyone who knows what it means.

How Faith May Be Lost

Eighteenth in a Series on Catholic Morality

 by

 Fr. John H. Stapleton

It is part of our belief that no man can lose his faith without mortal sin. The conscious rejection of all or any religious truth once embraced and forming a part of Christian belief, or the deliberate questioning of a single article thereof, is a sin, a sin against God's light and God's grace. It is a deliberate turning away from God. The moral culpability of such an act is great in the extreme, while its consequences cannot be weighed or measured by any human norm or rule.

No faith was ever wrecked in a day; it takes time to come to such a pass; it is by easy stages of infidelity, by a slow process of half-denials, a constant fostering of habits of ignorance, that one undermines, little by little, one's spiritual constitution. Taking advantage of this state of debility, the microbe of unbelief creeps in, eats its way to the soul and finally sucks out the very vitals of faith. Nor is this growth of evil an unconscious one; and there lies the malice and guilt. Ignorant pride, neglect of prayer and religious worship, disorders, etc. - these are evils the culprit knows of and wills. He cannot help feeling the ravages being wrought in his soul; he cannot help knowing that these are deadly perils to his treasure of faith. He complacently allows them to run their course; and he wakes up one fine morning to find his faith gone, lost, dead - and a chasm yawning between him and his God that only a miracle can bridge over.

We mentioned ignorance: this it is that attacks the underpinning of faith, its rational basis, by which it is made intelligent and reasonable, without which there can be no faith.

Ignorance is, of course, a relative term. There are different degrees and different kinds. An ignorant man is not an unlettered or uncultured one, but one who does not know what his religion means, what he believes or is supposed to believe, and has no reason to give for his belief. He may know a great many other things, may be chock full of worldly learning, but if he ignores these matters that pertain to the soul, we shall label him an ignoramus, for the elementary truths of human knowledge are, always have been, and always shall be, the solution of the problems of the why, the whence and the whither of life here below. Great learning frequently goes hand in hand with dense ignorance. The Sunday-school child knows better than the atheist philosopher the answer to these important questions. There is more wisdom in the first page of the Catechism than in all the learned books of skeptics and infidels.

Knowledge, of course, a thorough knowledge of all theological science, will not make faith any more than wheels will make a cart. But a certain knowledge is essential, and its absence is fatal to faith. There are the simple ignorant who have forgotten their Catechism and leave the church before the instruction, for fear they might learn something; who never read anything pertaining to religion, who would be ashamed to be detected with a religious book or paper in their hands. Then there are the learned ignorant, such as our public schools turn out in great numbers each year; who either are above mere religious knowledge-seeking and disdain all that smacks of church and faith; or, knowing little or nothing at all, imagine they possess a world of theological lore and know all that is knowable. These latter are the more to be pitied, their ignorance doubling back upon itself, as it were. When a man does not realize his own ignorance, his case is well nigh hopeless.

If learning cannot give faith, neither can it alone preserve it. Learned men, pillars of the Church, have fallen away. Pride, you will say. Yes, of course, pride is the cause of all evil. But we have all our share of it. If it works less havoc in some than in others, that is because pride is or is not kept within bounds. It is necessarily fatal to faith only when it is not controlled by prayer and the helps of practical religion. God alone can preserve our faith. He will do it only at our solicitation.

If, therefore, some have not succeeded in keeping the demon of pride under restraint, it is because they refused to consider their faith a pure gift of God that cannot be safely guarded without God's grace; or they forgot that God's grace is assured to no man who does not pray. The man who thinks he is all-sufficient unto himself in matters of religion, as in all other matters, is in danger of being brought to a sense of his own nothingness in a manner not calculated to be agreeable. No man who practiced humble prayer ever lost his faith, or ever can; for to him grace is assured.

And since faith is nothing if not practical, since it is a habit, it follows that irreligion, neglect to practice what we believe will destroy that habit. People who neglect their duty often complain that they have no taste for religion, cannot get interested, find no consolation therein. This justifies further neglect. They make a pretense to seek the cause. The cause is lack of faith; the fires of God's grace are burning low in their souls. They will soon go out unless they are furnished with fuel in the shape of good, solid, practical religion. That is their only salvation. Ignorance, supplemented by lack of prayer and practice, goes a long way in the destruction of faith in any soul, for two essentials are deficient.

Disorder, too, is responsible for the loss of much faith. Luther and Henry might have retained their faith in spite of their pride, but they were lewd and avaricious; and there is small indulgence for such within the Church. Not but that we are all human, and sinners are the objects of the Church's greatest solicitude; but within her pale no man, be he king or genius, can sit down and feast his passions and expect her to wink at it and call it by another name than its own. The law of God and of the Church is a thorn in the flesh of the vicious man. The authority of the Church is a sword of Damocles held perpetually over his head - until it is removed. Many a one denies God in a moment of sin in order to take the sting of remorse out of it. One gets tired of the importunities of religion that tell us not to sin, or to confess if we do sin.

When you meet a pervert who, with a glib tongue, protests that his conscience drove him from the Church, that his enslaved intelligence needed deliverance, search him and you will find a skeleton in his closet; and if you do not find it, it is there just the same. A renegade priest some years ago held forth before a gaping audience, at great length, on the reasons of his leaving the Church. A farmer sitting on the last bench listened patiently to his profound argumentation. When the lecturer was in the middle of his twelfth point, the other arose and shouted to him across the hall: "Cut it short, and say you wanted a wife." The heart has reasons which the reason does not understand.

Not always, but frequently, ignorance, neglect and vice come to this. The young, the weak and the proud have to guard themselves against these dangers, as they work slowly, imperceptibly, but surely. Two things increase the peril and tend to precipitate matters; reading and companionship. The ignorant are often anxious to know the other side, when they do not know their own. The consequence is that they will not understand fully the question; and if they do, will not be able to resolve the difficulty. They are handicapped by their ignorance and can only make a mess out of it. The result is that they are caught by sophistries like a fly in a web.

The company of those who believe differently, or not at all, is also pernicious to unenlightened and weak faith. The example in itself is potent for evil. The Catholic is usually not a persona grata as a Catholic but for some quality he possesses. Consequently, he must hide his religion under the bushel for fear of offending. Then a sneer, a gibe, a taunt are unpleasant things, and will be avoided even at the price of what at other times would look like being ashamed of one's faith. If ignorant, he will be silent; if he has not prayed, he will be weak; if vicious, he will be predisposed to fall.

If we would guard the precious deposit of faith secure against any possible emergency, we must enlighten it, we must strengthen it, we must live up to it.