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“As Christians,” Fr. Madigan wonders, “how do we begin to work toward the way of peace?”

Certainly not by starting with lies. Peace is built upon truth, not lies.

The first truths to admit concern the source and goals of the attack. The truth is there whether people admit it or not. If I say that 2 + 2 = 5, that does not make it true; meanwhile, 2 + 2 = 4 is still out there, true as ever and I can't do anything to change that.

The 9/11 attack was a battle conducted by one group in a century-long war being waged on the forces of good by an alliance of various forces of evil. This war continues without the forces of good acknowledging and declaring war. The mooselimb brotherhood was founded about 80 years ago and has sought isslamic dominance of the world since then. Communism, being at war with God, the concept of personal property and the right of people to the fruits of their own labor and to self-determine was active before that, with the modern incarnation of it's theories being developed over 100 years ago. The theories of communism directly defy the sovereignty of God, in that they refuse to admit that the success and failure of each man proceeds, as all things do, according to the sovereign will of God. Those who espouse communist theories think that man has devised a more fair way of determining the outcomes of men's lives than subjecting them to the will of God; in essence, communism is a modern-day tower of Babel. Another "dark force" group is broadly labeled "anarchists", which have probably always been around somewhere; they simply want to destroy things because they're idiots. There are atheists who may not feel strongly about those ideas but who are vehemently opposed to all things religious. All of these forces consist of a motley collection of groups that have formed sundry collaborations throughout this long war with coordination ranging from none to formal strategic alliances. Much (but not all) of the strategy of these "dark" forces has turned to avoiding direct military conflict in favor of becoming embedded within their enemies - the free nations of the world - and toppling them by using their own liberal (in the classical sense) principles against them.

This modern day war traces it's political roots to the end of the last great monarchies, brought about by the "great experiment" of implementing representative government, or government by the people. The model for these was classical Greece and Rome, of course, and the great tumult of the birth pangs of trying these again, but in Christian civilizations instead of pagan, rose in the development of the modern British Parliament. If one reads British history, one sees the questions of executive versus legislative power flogged about in a most dramatic way and yielding hard-won knowledge of the fundamental principles of self-government.

The Biblical scholar can not help but think back to the Israelites asking for a king, thus ushering in the age of legitimate monarchy in the Judeo-Christian world and ending it's reliance on government solely by prophets and judges of the Lord's choosing. They wanted kings like other nations had. Thus in Britain, after milennia of experiencing difficulty in having absolute monarchies that could be incompetent and cruel, the Christian world took it's first steps towards the next request, that men should govern themselves, according to the classical Greco-Roman model. So Britain and then America set up a civil government model based on Christian moral law and implemented using the classical representative forms. But as the monarchies faded in the 19th century, another alternative besides representative government was forming in the minds of over-educated intelligentsia: the communal model, where the monarch is replaced by, in essence, a committee with absolute power. Various parts of this theory contradict Scripture, so it is necessarily accompanied by a rejection of God, which implies a rejection of truth and therefore an embrace of lies and deception. And thus the stage is set for the two governmental theories to be at war: statism versus true representative government with it's law grounded in Biblical moral law. Statism is really absolute state control without the legitimacy of both a) the aim of Scriptural conformance of the monarch and his government and laws and b) the inheritance of the throne whereby the interests of the monarch and nation have at least some alignment and the selection of the monarch is at least by design intended to prevent control of the nation to be wrested by power alone.

Those who advocate the forces of good employing "nation-building" techniques and the "spread of democracy" have not analyzed history along the lines of comparing wars between nation states within a culture as opposed to wars between different cultures. The two types of wars are entirely different in their purpose, scope and resolution. IMHO.

I want to re-read your post later, because I think you are laying out some very important principles that need to be in the forefront of our minds - all the time.

If Christians do not PRAY for mercy, the war...the coming war...will be one of genocide and not a religious war.

Nobody is really trying to spread democracy...nobody. What they are spreading is turmoil and regime change. The reason is to topple current leaders who oppose giving power to the one world government.

For biblical scholars, prophecy sure is being ignored, huh?!

Soon the nations whose leadership was overturned in the name of “freedom” will be under the thumbs of leaders who will be much worse then their previous oppressors.

If Christians and, indeed, all of the world’s population, do not PRAY for mercy, the war...the coming war...will be one of genocide and not a religious war - get it?!