Posted on 07/05/2020 6:53:47 PM PDT by ebb tide
Stalin, killer of at least 20 million people, said “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” In mid-nineteenth-century China, the civil war known as the Taiping Rebellion cost upwards of 30 million lives.
The feast of Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions, on July 9, is a reminder that the persecution of Christian missionaries and native Chinese, begun in the mid-17th century, continues into our time. Augustine had been a soldier assigned as a prison guard for the French missionary bishop, Louis Gabriel Dufresse, whose martyrdom in Chengdu moved Augustine to request baptism, after which he became a priest and was tortured and killed in 1815. Later, in the Boxer Rebellion, 30,000 Christians would be slaughtered.
There are magnificent witnesses in China today, among whose champions is Cardinal Zen, indomitable at the age of eighty-eight. The insouciance with which some timorous Western ecclesiastics have cast a blind eye to the persecution of the Catholics in China, will be remembered as a dark blot on the history of our time.
Mao killed at least 40 million. His “Cultural Revolution,” which executed upwards of 3 million, excited mobs of youths as agents of government repression. Monuments of ancient culture were destroyed. These included nearly 7,000 priceless works of art in the Temple of Confucius alone as part of the frenzied attack on the Four Olds: Old Customs, Old Habits, Old Culture, and Old Ideas.
In our own country, the debutantish radicalism of hysterical youths whose misguided idealism makes a venomous brew when mixed with poor education, is exploited by more sinister strategists. James Madison described such mobs as: “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
Young people eager to condemn the immorality of forebears, while exulting in their own undisciplined lives, recently pulled down a statue of Saint Junípero Serra. It evoked the attack on the Franciscan mission in Alta California on November 4, 1775, when 600 native warriors pierced the friar Father Luis Jayme with eighteen arrows as he called to them: “Love God, my children!”
Staff Sergeant David Bellavia, the one Iraqi combatant to receive the Medal of Honor, has said that our universities are turning out “Peter Pan” adolescents who would profit better if they joined the Army where they would be taught how to be men and women.
After the destruction of the statue of Saint Junípero Serra, the wise Archbishop of San Francisco did not engage in polemics. He simply went to the site of the vandalism and said the exorcism prayer of Saint Michael. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Father George W. Rutler
7.4.20
Ping
...except for their own...
He’s not kidding about the Peter Pan thing. Immaturity and entitled, but don’t most little kids think this?
Fr. Rutler is always wise.
““Peter Pan” adolescents “
I’ve been able to keep my oldest kid semi-conservative. He got a B.S., a PhD. Stayed pretty middle of the road, more conservative than lib.
Then he moved to Silicon Valley. He’s morphing into a goose-stepper.
Lordy, that is so hard to watch. Someone you love so much be so stupid.
Gonna fight like crazy on this one.
I've been to a number of Fr Rutler's services. He is one of the best homilists ever, has an immense vocabulary, pulls no punches, and I assure you he is not just full of our Lord's love but JUSTICE.
If Fr Rutler's blessed Trump, I can assure you Trump has changed his ways. And from this article, it sounds like our President's stance on things remain in synch with that of Fr Rutler.
God bless and keep safe both of these men.
Father Rutler... a treasure..... Good to see it.... the Positive...
I think it’s that they’re convinced by someone in academia a professor or so tgat trump is not tge legitimate president. It is so difficult to get them to think right.
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