Next week.
New Prolife Group in Cork University
In December 2021, a group of UCC students came together and held a social with the simple goal of defending the preborn and promoting a culture of life in society.
Students for Life exists to support students on campus to be activists for life, educating fellow students about the fundamental human right to life and to support pregnant students and parents on campus, as we believe that no student should have to choose between having a baby and continuing their education! Students for Life is one of the largest pro-life organisations worldwide and is setting an example for the entire movement showing the power of young people’s voices in turning the tide in our generation.
We are the pro- life generation!
If you are a UCC student or want to start a Students for Life group on your college campus, email hello@studentsforlife.ie
Russia, Ukraine to be Consecrated Next Week in Vatican, Fatima
Belfast Schoolchildren Indoctrinated Into Anti Catholicism
Islamic Extremists and Bisexual Sentenced for Hamel Slaughter
In the summer of 2016, the world was shocked to hear of the brutal slaughtering of the martyred priest Father Jacques Hamel.
As he said Mass on the morning of the 26th of July 2016, a two terrorists entered his church seeking to behead him. Abdel Malik Petitjean and Adel Kermiche were both under police surveillance and even wearing an electronic tag when they stormed Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray church in Normandy. The two perverts then produced a knife, instructing a nun to record their decapitation of the elderly priest. Father Hamel shouted ‘Begone Satan’ at the two freaks, with one of them asking a nun if she was afraid, becoming incensed when she stated that she was not as Jesus was with her. The follower of Muhammad then stated that ‘Jesus is only a man’.
Both terrorists were members of Islamic terror group ISIS and were killed by French security services as they left the church.
Despite their deaths, French security services have managed to bring to justice those who aided them.
Four men were convicted of having done so, one of them being ‘French’ rapper Rachid Kassim who recruited drug addicted convicts to ISIS for missions in the Middle East. He received the harshest sentence but is believed to have been killed in Iraq in 2019. Interestingly, he had planned an attack on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which allegedly spontaneously combusted in 2019 in the midst of the worst wave of arson attacks against French churches in history.
One of those convicted had been an ardent supporter of the slaughter of Father Hamel and was a cousin of one of the attackers. Farid Khelil is a self professed irreligious bisexual.
The cause for the canonisation of the martyred Father Hamel is currently opened.
Mothers of Priests Walk Paris To Rome For Latin Mass
Legion of Mary Event to feature Music, Art and Adoration
Following the success of their recent Men’s Conferences, the Legion of Mary’s centenary celebrations continue with a new event showcasing the creative arts.
Entitled ‘Shadows on the Wall’, the Legion of Mary have stated that it will:
This night is planned to take the arts back from the nihilists. We are hosting an eclectic night of faith, arts and adoration focusing on God’s creativity in a world that wants to shut Him down.
Catholics need to create their own culture, so we invite everyone to come and join the growing Catholic underground.
The event begins at 7 with adoration and music and arts presentations until 9, followed by tea and time for socialising.
Admission is free and the Legion especially extends an invite to lapsed Catholics and those curious about the faith and looking for something different.
Ireland's Rosary Rally Revolution
Despite efforts at smearing by pro austerity politicians in anti Irish political party Labour and pro Orange Order party Sinn Fein, the Men’s Rosary Rally continues to grow from strength to strength across Ireland, North and South.
Beginning in the Autumn of 2021, the Rosary Rallies were inspired by the efforts of Polish Catholics, who took advantage of lockdown to create a worldwide movement of men displaying public acts of devotion to Our Lady. Taking place in public areas of prominent cities, the Rosaries were designed to follow the examples of St. Louis Marie De Montfort and others who espoused the importance of public prayer.
Beginning in Northern Ireland, the events have since moved to the South where they have attended large crowds of men praying in reparation for the sins of men in Ireland.
One event this week took place in Cork City.
Another large group attended at the Rally in Magherafelt.
As the church ponders its next move, in a dispirited culture and wider Irish society that has lost its sense of purpose, these rallies have provided a confident and renewable framework for reasserting Irish Catholic identity.
Men's Rosary Takes Place This Weekend
The Irish Men’s Rosary takes place again this first Saturday of the month, March 5th. The wildly successful event will occur in a number of locations across the country. Visit www.mensrosaryireland.com for more details.
The organisers of the initiative have stated the following:
Just a small update to the different men's Rosary groups to let you all know that the men's Rosary on the street is going from strength to strength and has spread to many parts of Ireland and around the world. In the North of Ireland it has been in Derry, Newry, Belfast, Armagh, Omagh and tomorrow in Magherafelt and in the next months Ballymena, Newcastle, Lisburn and Enniskillen with crowds of 200 men turning up, many with their wives in support on the periphery.
The Men's Rosary has really taken off in the Republic of Ireland with Sligo planned for April and Carlingford for the summer and Rosaries already happening in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Tralee, Athlone, Abbeyleix, several sites in Donegal including Letterkenny and Carndonagh and many other areas.
The Men's Rosary started in Poland where every first Saturday there are over 25 towns and cities involved with crowds of men up to one thousand at some of the meetings. It spread from Poland to Ireland and from Ireland around the world. England Scotland and Wales are involved as is the USA, Mexico and Ecuador as well as starting in Sydney, Malta and Gibraltar.
There is interest from India and Africa and mixed groups of people saying the Rosary have started all over Europe with over 800 sites in France alone where the Rosary is said publicly every Wednesday evening. We should never underestimate the power of the Rosary as Fr Donald H Calloway MIC book 26 Champions of the Rosary demonstrates. Our Lady said to St Dominic..
Whoever propagates my Rosary will never be lost.. And this applies to all of us! In the book Servant of God Fr Joseph Kentenich is quoted as saying that the Rosary is far more superior to all the weapons of modern warfare in overcoming the enemy of God.
Finally we should not forget how Fr Petrus Pavlicek set up public Rosaries in Austria after WW 2 to make the Russian communists leave and in 1955 they suddenly upped and left and no reason was ever given. I am convinced that if enough men say the Rosary on the street on their knees in public that we can completely change the world to a much better and happier place.
There will also be another event on St. Patrick’s Day.
Irish Priest Throws Paint on Russian Embassy (AUDIO)
With Pope Francis leading the way on dignified and prayerful responses to the current crisis in Ukraine, some priests have chosen to take a different route.
On a day where the Russian Ambassador appeared on Russian state media Russia 24 to claim that Ireland was the most overtly anti Russian nation in the West, an Irish priest was appearing on his own country’s state media to broadcast himself throwing paint onto the gates of the building.
Father Fergal MacDonagh previously hit the headlines after allowing an Imam to pray to Allah, invoking the names of Moses, Jesus, Mohammad and all the prophets on the altar of a Catholic church.
Now, he appeared on Liveline with Joe Duffy, a popular talk show on Irish state media. The audio is below, where he douses the gates in red paint, sets off an alarm, discusses the building being destroyed by arson and finally gets approached by a Garda.
It is as surreal as it sounds.
The stunt coincided with the Russian Ambassador Yuriy Filatov appearing on Russian media and stating that the relationship between Ireland and Russia had deteriorated:
Naturally the general political situation is simply hostile towards Russia and everything Russia.
A very negative role, of course, is being played by mass media that shows an absolutely tendentious picture of the events happening in Ukraine at the political level, but Ireland is in the forefront in the European Union and wider with regards to various anti-Russian events.
In this regard, it is probably hardly possible to talk now about any relations between Russia and Ireland. We are mainly supporting a channel of communication with the Irish.
“There is probably a certain sense in this because even in these difficult periods there is need in them.”
As our minister, Sergey Lavrov, said in the interview maybe they will stop going crazy in the West and will understand where, what and how in reality, but for now we are dealing with what we have.
May the Eucharist Be a Light to You in Dark Places
EUCHARIST and EUCATASTROPHE
‘May the Eucharist be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.’
On Thursday, 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin inflicted the ‘ancient Chinese curse’ of May you live in interesting times onto the world. The Russian army invaded Ukraine.
All rational people fear this could be a prelude to World War III. Many will have nightmares of being evaporated in a mushroom-cloud, at the flick of Putin’s little finger.
The Ancient Chinese Curse
The curse “May you live in interesting times” is neither ancient, or Chinese! This saying was probably penned by Neville Chamberlain’s father or brother.
Neville Chamberlain was the Prime Minister of England who negotiated ‘peace’ with Adolph Hitler. Hitler is universally understood to be the most loathsome, malignant narcissist of all time. Chamberlain triumphantly returned to London, naïvely waving the Munich Agreement aloft, claiming “Peace For Our Time!”
Within a year, Hitler had invaded Poland and Britain declared war — World War II.
History is packed with malignant narcissists and psychopaths. The list spans Caligula to Genghis Khan, and includes Ivan the Terrible; Pol Pot; Stalin & Mao Zedong, to name just a few. The one Ireland knows more intimately is Oliver Cromwell. These monsters brutally killed millions, upon millions of innocent human beings.
Dictators hold their power over little people because they can easily kill one person, or a family: demolish a home or even a whole community. In olden days, a knight might cleave his way through the village. Nowadays, a remorseless invader can drive a tank over innocent people, or just bomb them from afar.
The exact circumstances of this video are unknown. Some reports say it was a Russian tank while one report suggests it was a Ukrainian Strela-10 Rocket Launcher stolen by Pro-Russian saboteurs. It is unclear if the driver just lost control of the machine or whether he deliberately ran over the non-combatant elderly man passing-by in his car.
What is more important is what happened after the car was run over. Despite the ongoing invasion, a group of people worked to extricate the old man from his badly crushed vehicle. Such selfless behaviour never makes it into the history books — but this is exactly what makes humans, truly human!
Gentle folk
“Even the smallest person, can change the course of the future.” [JRR Tolkien]
Many of the powerless people in the world are the kindest folk. Days gone-by, some would be serfs or indentured servants, toiling long and hard to provide for family and community. Often, such people do not seek power or vast wealth because they already have riches beyond compare. Each of us knows some of these “Hobbits” in our lives.
After 2 long years of the COVID pandemic, these people are still a ray of hope with their kind words. Some might be more surly and not say much, but always show up to help in times of need! Through the voice of Samwise Gamgee, Tolkien reminds us: “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
“Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here”
In Dante’s epic poem, Inferno, this proverb is inscribed above the gates of Hell.
For a Christian, one of the most serious sins is to despair – to give up all Hope. (To clarify: I believe that our Loving Father has infinite forgiveness for this sort of despair arising out of a severe depression.)
The idea of Hope in such dire circumstances led Tolkien to coin a new word: “Eucatastrophe.” Tolkien defined Eucatastrophe as a “good catastrophe, the sudden joyous turn…” This notion obviously arose from Tolkien’s devout Catholicism and traumatic experiences during World War I.
Tolkien may have deliberately coined this word to have similarity between EUCatastrophe and the EUCharist. As Katie Marquette noted, “it is important to understand the felix culpa narrative, the fortunate fall, the reality that ‘All Things can be Made Right Again.’ There is nothing that will not be rectified, though much of earthly life is experienced as “the long defeat.” As a Roman Catholic, Tolkien understood the Eucatastrophe of the Cross - Humiliation, Suffering, Death - turned into the Triumph of the Resurrection.”
So, what can we do to help?
Two suggestions:
First: pray harder! This includes praying for peace; praying for the innocent victims; praying for the conversion of the perpetrator and especially praying that this conflict does not escalate to nuclear war.
A devotion which Catholics should consider is the Holy Rosary. Through the Rosary, we ask our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to intercede on our behalf with her Son, Jesus Christ.
For anyone who is a tad rusty on the Rosary, there are links below to Catholic Arena articles on how to learn the Rosary in English and Irish.
The link to the Rosary ‘as Gaeilge’!
Learn the Rosary in Irish — Catholic Arena
Secondly, we need to be very generous with humanitarian aid & financial support. There will be many refugees & injured / homeless people inside Ukraine. Please do not forget that Russian civilians are also going to suffer through the financial sanctions being placed on their motherland — thanks to Putin and his cronies.
Photo: Gregory Gresko, Lviv, Ukraine.
The Lord of the Rings is an allegory for how regular people cope with catastrophe. The phrase said by Galadriel was: “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.” Tolkien was a devout Catholic so perhaps his true message was:
“May the Eucharist be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”
Dr. Kevin Hay
RTE Times 'Documentary' to Attack Lent
By Thomas Hegarty
Irish Catholics warned to brace themselves as Lent approaches. It is now customary for RTE and the government on the run up to Catholic liturgical dates, to broadcast documentaries and release reports that attempt to portray Catholics in a poor light. When Catherine Zappone was in the Irish government, her department would always release an interim report on the mother and baby commission on Easter week.
This practice stopped after the commission found no evidence of babies being “dumbed in septic tanks in Tuam or no evidence that babies were ever sold to rich US couples by nuns.
This year, at the start of Lent, RTE will broadcast a documentary on the women in the Magdalene Laundries. We’ll soon see how RTE approach this difficult story.
The timing of its release has us wondering if it will be fair to Catholics, the Irish State and Irish Society in general.
For the women who were in these laundries, they deserve to have their voices heard and their stories told. But is RTE capable of presenting the topic in an unbiased way? We will have to wait and see. Their track record is poor in this regard.
Note for overseas readers: RTE is the propaganda arm of the anti Catholic Irish government
Ukraine Bishops Call for Consecration of Russia
The following letter is from the Episcopate of Ukraine to the Holy Father
Holy Father!
In these hours of immeasurable pain and terrible trial for our people, we, the bishops of the Conference of the Episcopate of Ukraine, become spokesmen of the relentless and heartfelt plea supported by our priests and consecrated persons, which comes to us from the entire Christian people, so that Your Holiness will dedicate our Motherland and Russia to the Most Holy Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Responding to this plea, we humbly implore your Holiness to publicly carry out an act of dedication to the Most Holy Immaculate Heart of Mary of Ukraine and Russia, as requested by the Most Holy Virgin in Fatima.
May the Mother of God, Queen of Peace, accept our pleas: Regina pacis, ora pro nobis!
Muslims SPITS in French Priest's FACE
With a Presidential Election looming, the persecution of Christians in France is becoming a hot topic.
In a literal sense, with the arson attacks on countless Catholic churches, including Notre Dame Cathedral but also with other forms of violence including the beheading of priests and lay people during Mass.
A shocking video from Bordeaux today highlights the daily plight of Christians in the Globalist country, which is quickly approaching the persecution to be found in the worst parts of the third world.
In this video, a PRIEST is blessing people when a Muslim man SPITS IN HIS FACE.
The Diocese have refused to press charges so far, an act that is admirable in one way in terms of forgiveness but in another way negligent of their civic and religious duties to play a part in ending these unjust persecutions of French Catholics. Recently, another priest was threatened with being beheaded during a procession, this is not a once off event and action needs to be taken.
So far, President Macron has failed to condemn the act.
Father Edward Daly and Republican Revisionism
By Thomas Hegarty
During the civil war (or as RTE and BBC prefer to call it “The Troubles”) in the North of Ireland there was a road sign on the way into Derry marking the city limits. It Read; Welcome to the Historic City of Londonderry.
But Derry people being Derry people and with a mix of gallows humour, the sign received a slight modification. Welcome to the “Hysteric” City of xxxxxxDerry.
That road sign summed up exactly what Derry was like to visitors. But to Derry people, it was business as usual. We laughed through the smoke and the smell to quote Phil Coulter.
Having marked the 50th Anniversary of bloody Sunday, the camera crews and politicians have left the Maiden City. It’s a good time to reflect on the role of Catholic leadership in Derry on Bloody Sunday and the years afterwards.
Some social media comments on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday last month were used to attack Catholic leadership at the time. One social media post was written by a Catholic priest who also posted a photo of the iconic mural of Fr. Edward Daly with a victim of Bloody Sunday. Here are some responses to the priests post;
One armchair social warrior posted:
“the priests with a few notable exceptions condemned republicans and refused to leave in coffins with flags on them into churches while giving every comfort to British soldiers who fully supported the (South African) apartheid regime…we had no Desmond tutus standing up for nationalists”
Another wrote:
“(Catholic) leadership ignored them (Bloody Sunday victims) in their campaign for justice for 40 years”
Then there’s this post:
“very easy for the priest to pontificate and preach forgiveness , whilst deliberately ignoring the pleas of the parachute regiment / Westminster victims and their families quest for justice.”
All of these commentators chose to completely ignore the fact that a Catholic priest was down in the Bogside in the middle of a massacre, giving the last rites to the dead and dying and trying to get critically injured men and boys to safety.
Revisionists should never be allowed to rewrite history to suit their secular anti-Catholic narrative.
It’s an inconvenient truth for these revisionist republicans that Fr. Edward Daly, a Catholic priest was helping his parishioners in their darkest day during a battle that included heavy duty armoured vehicles, tear gas, rubber bullets, and live dum dum bullets.
But Fr. Daly was there in the thick of it. FEARLESS. PRESENT. SHOCKED. BUT STILL FEARLESS. A HERO.
Derry people were proud of their priest and were delighted when he became Bishop.
Later, the Catholic leadership took a lot of criticism for not allowing the IRA drape Irish Tricolours on IRA coffins entering Catholic churches. This was an unpopular move and it was not received well. However, Northern Irish Catholics knew it was a prudent move by the Catholic leadership. By not allowing any political emblems into a church, the Catholic leadership could quietly act as trusted negotiators and go-between a for peace in the North.
Bishop Edward Daly led an exemplary holy, devout life. Derry and the world mourned when he passed away. Pope Francis sent a message of condolence to the Diocese.
"The Holy Father was saddened to learn of the death of the Most Reverend Edward Kevin Daly, Bishop Emeritus of Derry, and he sends heartfelt condolences to his family and to the clergy, religious and lay faithful of the Diocese. Recalling Bishop Daly’s generous and dedicated episcopal ministry in the service of peace and justice, His Holiness joins you in prayerful thanksgiving for his life and in commending his soul to the merciful love of God Our Father. To all who mourn the late Bishop’s passing, Pope Francis cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of hope and consolation in our Lord Jesus Christ."
Unlike todays social justice warriors who hide behind their keyboards to attack Catholic leadership from afar and often anonymously, Bishop Edward Daly led publicly and from the front. He served his hysteric Maiden City as a brave Christian leader. He never apologised for his Catholic approach to bloody violence on both sides. He guided Derry Catholics on a very difficult journey at a very difficult time in history.
Bishop Edward Daly was truly Legenderry.
Catholics Pray After TikTok User Desecrates Church
In the same week that an individual burst into a church and screamed Allah Akbar, a far more disgusting scene took place in another church in France.
Social media user Benjamin Ledig performed a disgusting degenerate dance inside a church, in front of an altar.
He has been allowed to get away with this hate crime by Macron’s government, who have also been loose with punishments for those beheading Catholics at Mass and setting their churches on fire.
The bigoted thug has since made unsubstantiated claims that he has been treated poorly since the anti Catholic hate crime, with one left wing French outlet defending his bigoted actions and trying to paint him as the victim, writing:
Since the publication of a video where he dances in a church, a young man has been the subject of calls for violence and homophobic insults online emanating from the fachosphere. He was beaten in a nightclub this weekend.
The crazed anti Catholic bigot then released a second video in which he pretended to apologise while twerking again in a Catholic church.
According to one French outlet, he has much support from those airheaded young people who get their History from TikTok, with one outlet writing that his supporters:
believe that the young man is a victim of "practices of inquisitors of the Middle Ages".
The same outlet points out that others have accused the crazed bigot’s actions of destroying efforts at acceptance as it:
"spits in the mouth of people who do extraordinary work to change mentalities about LGBT people and to change rights. It is going to be used by the right-wing media who are going to say, 'Look at what LGBT people are doing in the church, look at how they desecrate our churches.'"
For the record, he has since admitted that his claims to be performing the bigoted act because of ‘homophobia’ were completely fabricated. On French TV show Touche, he said:
I came alone to be as sincere as possible. In fact, I didn’t make this video to fight homophobia, as I said last Friday. I was simply asked to say that to explain why I did that. And then I told this story of homophobia but it’s not true
Rather than meet hate with hate, Catholics have taken the high road by organising a prayer rally outside their desecrated church.
At the church of Saint Paul Saint Louis in Paris, 100 hundred young Catholics knelt in solemn prayer last night, singing beautifully for all to see and hear as they did when Notre Dame was set on fire three years ago.
Appearing on television last night, Ledig refused to apologise for his hate crime.
With an election looming, the hatred shown towards Catholics, either by beheading them or torching their churches or desecrating their churches must become a pivotal issue, especially for those considering voting for Emmanuel Macron who has failed to act time and again.
Colombia Celebrate Murders of Children
There were disgusting scenes on the streets of Colombia last night as the world’s largest producer of cocaine celebrated another way to sacrifice humans for pleasure, by legalising abortion up to 24 weeks.
While some media outlets tried to claim that ‘Catholic Colombia’ had taken the violent and gruesome decision to allow barbaric late term abortions, the country has grown increasingly Protestant in recent years. This is for a number of reasons, but one of them relates to locals abandoning experimental proto Synodal Catholicism which has been practised there for the past few decades, much of Liberation Theology being a creation of US Intelligence Agencies during the Cold War as they sought to keep Catholics from the clutches of Communists. For many, Evangelicalism has just been a stopgap on the road to conversion to Judaism, suggesting that the nation is experiencing a cultural identity crisis at large, not merely related to Catholicism.
In horrific scenes evocative of those in Ireland in 2018, Colombian pro aborts frothed at the mouth as they celebrated the news that they would now be allowed to murder their child up to the 24th week of pregnancy. After two years of being told to ‘follow the science’ and to save the most vulnerable, the face of evil has shown that it was never concerned about either of those.
Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez was delighted at the prospect of children being aborted and said:
After the right to suffrage, this is the most important historic achievement, for the life, autonomy and full and equal realization of women
The birth rate in Colombia has decline by almost 2% per year for the past 5 years, this puts them on the same timeline as Ireland, where birth rates completely collapsed within a decade, with the government dressing up abortion as a blessing to cover for the inability of the country to provide for families.
As in Ireland, only the most delusional could present an incompetent government killing one’s baby as a victory for human rights.
Colombia is a state that, like Ireland, is completely on the wrong track spiritually and materially.
As in Ireland, those who stand up for what is right number the few, but their example still stands. These Catholics prayed in public, only yards from where the anti baby shrieking celebrated killing the unborn.
New Documentary DESTROYS Pro Abortion Claims
A powerful hour long video from journalist Cathal McCarthy has completely DESTROYED efforts by a cabal of London born and raised politicians to sideline prolifers and Catholics in Limerick.
In a stunning and comprehensive video, McCarthy points out the obvious absurdity of claims by Londoner Paul Gavan of Sinn Fein and other London raised micro party minor politicians based in Limerick.
In one part of the video, Senator Ronan Mullen calls out Gavan for making untrue claims, which drives Sinn Fein into a rage.
The video also debunks ridiculous claims recently made in the Irish Independent that have since been retracted.
Together for Lies is a must watch and a reminder that the abortion industry in Ireland, and its anti Catholic and Anglo Supremacist cheerleaders, are not quite so certain of success if they have to resort to such desperation.
The safety that they are seeking seems to be for their own careers and for their own rotten ideologies, if prolife groups and Catholics committed to life stay organised and determined then victory is not so distant as some would have us believe.
Some Stay Catholic For The Money - Cardinal Muller
By Thomas Hegarty
Oxymoron (noun)
two words or phrases used together that have, or seem to have, opposite meanings
The term “liberal catholic” is an excellent example of an oxymoron and its used worldwide to describe people who believe they are practicing Catholics whilst supporting and promoting the liberal ideologies of aborting unborn children and various gay lifestyles.
Let’s not get into the whole judgement debate here, suffice to say that Catholic teaching which is laid down over many centuries is very clear on these ideologies.
But we can face facts.
It’s not uncommon in human nature to lie to ourselves.
Liberal catholicism is used by liberals as a way to live with their choices that go against their Catholic religion.
According to the European Conservative, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, the body responsible for safeguarding the Church’s doctrine on faith and morals, has warned against the Church’s increasingly firm embrace of the Left’s secular progressivism and ‘wokism.’
The Cardinal explained that many high-ranking members of the clergy—as well as deacons, priests and bishops—who are pushing for liberal reforms within the Church, are “secularised people” themselves.
They (the liberal Catholic clergy) prefer to “keep the name ‘Catholic’
to stay in the institution and take the money” despite refusing to accept the “word of God.”
Cardinal Müller
“They relativize the Catholic faith, but remain with their titles: cardinals, bishops, theology professors—but in reality they don’t believe what the Church is saying”
said the Cardinal in response to a Synodal Assembly, which concluded with votes favouring draft texts calling for same-sex blessings and pro-LGBT redefinition of homosexuality in teaching materials.
Subscribe to the Friends of the Parish Substack
How Should Catholics Feel About Russia-Ukraine Situation?
On January 25th 2022, America Magazine ran with a headline to an article by John Davenport which read:
Just war theory and Ukraine: Why military action against Russia is justifiable
Davenport proposes six reasons as to why this is the case, citing Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, criticising Russia’s ‘invasion of Crimea and the eastern half of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces’ and claiming that ‘wars of conquest are illegal’.
This is the same John Davenport who has called the United States of America’s illegal invasion of Iraq a ‘liberation’ and who has lamented the failures of the US Army to properly subdue Syria, Libya and other places that fell victim to the bloodthirst of Samantha Power and other neocons. A 2016 article by Davenport expounds his foreign policy, it is without doubt one of the most superficial and naive pieces on foreign policy that one could ever read. He accuses Putin of lying, of self interest, of having covert support for various military groups. Pot, kettle, black.
Regarding his six claims of justified military conflict by the Americans in Ukraine, firstly NATO is no normal ‘alliance’. It is also no guarantee of peace, rather it can be the opposite. Take for example the conflict in Armenia last year with Turkey. As the Turks desecrated the Hagia Sophia, they embarked on another Holy War against Christians in Armenia, brutally torturing and beheading Christian soldiers and desecrating churches, getting away with because they were in NATO. If you want to know how pervasive support for NATO is, even Donald Trump was supportive of the Turkish efforts to ethnically cleanse the region of Armenian Christians. Turkey, knowing that they had NATO backing, proceeded to attack their neighbour viciously and without mercy. It was left to Russia to back Christian Armenia and it has been Russia who have been recently trying to reach a peace agreement between the two countries.
Secondly, he states: ‘just war theory allows legitimate governments and their alliances to respond militarily if negotiation fails to reverse unjust aggressions, such as Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the eastern half of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces’. Not to minimise the experiences of people in Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, but the overwhelming majority of ethnicities across the three regions are Russians. The Colour Revolution of 2004 and crisis of 2014 had openly American influences on the ground. Why?
Thirdly, Davenport calls ‘wars of conquest’ illegal. What was his country doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya? ‘Liberating’ people? Only someone who has endured conditioning like Sirhan Sirhan could believe Orwellian doublespeak such as this. Yet Davenport regards all of these as legitimate, even necessary, conflicts. As mentioned above, the ethnic makeup of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk casts doubt on the idea that this would be a ‘war of conquest, since these areas are already predominantly Russian.
Fourthly, ‘secession is legitimate only as a last resort to end oppression of the seceding region or minority group. Fomenting civil war without such a just cause, as Mr. Putin has done with separatists in eastern Ukraine, is another crime of aggression’. Again, it must be stated, that Mr. Davenport has a much lower threshold when it comes to American led wars. The Russians will argue that ethnic Russians in those three regions are in danger, whether one agrees or not, it is not as black and white as suggested.
Fifthly, ‘just war theory tells us that while the need to rescue people from atrocities such as ethnic cleansing can be just grounds for military intervention, the fact that a minority group in a given nation no longer controls the national government cannot be used by another nation as a pretext for “rescue.” That was Hitler’s pretext for seizing the majority-German Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and Mr. Putin has employed it in his attempts to control parts of Georgia and eastern Ukraine’. Again, the United States simply cannot be trusted on this. From staging attacks allegedly by Assad in Syria to falsely claiming Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, the USA specialises in pretending that anyone that it does not like is a reincarnation of Hitler in 1939. To play down the seriousness of the possibility of ethnic cleansing seems to completely contradict Davenport’s other claims.
Sixth, ‘Russia’s repeated cyberattacks on Ukraine from 2014 through 2022, which have cost billions and caused collateral damage in other nations, count as military aggression. A proportionate response from NATO to such attacks need not be only cyber; it could include reprisals that destroy equipment and infrastructure’. This vague assertion of ‘proportionate response’ seems more reasonably on the surface, but it is highly unlikely that any NATO incursion would result simply in infrastructural damage rather than the deaths of individuals.
What is really occurring here is that the aptly named America Magazine is cloaking American jingoism in Catholic dressing.
Some of Davenport’s other comments in this article are simply American propaganda:
To let another Russian tyrant reoccupy any nation in eastern Europe would be a retreat and a betrayal.
Mr. Putin’s clear motive for wanting to invade Ukraine is that its people freed themselves from Russian domination and thus have encouraged other liberation movements. Since 2014, Mr. Putin and his foreign puppets have mounted attacks on democratic movements in Venezuela, Moldova, Syria, Belarus, Kazakhstan and of course within Russia itself. Sanctions cannot deter Mr. Putin because he believes his own regime is in danger if democracy spreads.
Trying to appease Mr. Putin any further would endanger more of eastern Europe and encourage him to escalate his assault on democracy.
Peace, as the aim of just wars, should not be the false peace of life under tyranny. After years of trying to placate Mr. Putin while he tries to rebuild a Russian empire, and watching him poison his enemies, lock up his political opponents and assassinate journalists, it is time to stand up to his aggressions.
This disingenous presupposition that Russia is poised to recreate an Empire implicitly suggests that suggests that Americans are simply liberators and not in fact trying to create and empire of their own. The ‘pro Democracy’ fighters that Davenport lauds in Syria include Islamic fundamentalists, those hostile to Christians. This is something that we saw in Iraq, where 81% of Christians were expelled or killed after what Davenport calls their ‘liberation’. Likewise, the domino effect that the USA uses to destablise regions in the name of democracy could lead to the violence spreading the nearby countries, such as Poland. Just because we are European and Christian does not mean that we are any less expendable to the American Empire, just ask the Armenians or the Iraqi and Syrian Christians.
In 2014, the Washington Post published an article which stated: ‘War may well be the worst way imaginable to create larger, more peaceful societies, but the depressing fact is that it is pretty much the only way’. This apocalyptic perspective is that of a nation which has never seen a major conflict on its own shores, hence their eagerness to take them to other people’s.
When pro Iraq War Joe Biden took office in January 2021, we published the following:
In recent months, there has been a barbaric rapidity once again. The extremist elements amongst the Globalists such as Samantha Power, have made foreboding noises that contained veiled threats about treating Poland and Hungary as they once did Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi.
If you want an insight into what could potentially be on the horizon, you simply need to observe the hyenas speaking about their fellow Americans in the same breath as they once spoke about the Iraqis, they are even now drawing parallels so as to justify the two of them.
The hysterical Russian phobia which surrounded criticisms of the Presidency of Donald Trump was actually eclipsed by that which surrounded the 2018 World Cup, with Russia’s relative pivot back towards Christianity being seen by many Western Liberals as a great tragedy. Russia was seen as homophobic, anti woman and excessively Christian by Westerners, a myth quickly shattered by those who travelled to the tournament in huge numbers and who were welcomed with open arms.
Much of the rhetoric about Russia is echoed by other sentiments aimed at their Eastern European neighbours, including Poland and Hungary. Both countries have been bombarded with Globalist propaganda, aimed at reducing their birth rates, increasing abortions and decreasing religiosity and nationalist sentiments. In Poland, the West has had some success, with German asto turf abortion groups helping to organise terror attacks on Catholic churches and large demonstrations in favour of abortion, but in Hungary this has not been the case, with birth rates rising, the recent success of the Eucharistic Congress and GDP continuing to increase.
In short, this is not as simple as America Magazine claims.
People will die, Christians will suffer, non combatant countries (such as Ireland) will have to deal with the after shocks of refugees and spiralling energy prices. Hollywood rhetoric clamouring for bloodshed is no solution to the urgency of this crisis.
This article seems like a serious misjudgement from America and a departure from previous editorial opposition to wars in Iraq and elsewhere.
For the record, lest there be any confusion, our criticism of America Magazine is not a defence of Russia. It is, however, a criticism of Catholic Americans who are carelessly wishing for violence in Europe, evidently putting NATO on the same pedestal that allowed it to watch Turkey destroy churches in Armenia recently (which Joe Biden actually criticised, though perhaps to get at Trump moreso than for the sake of Christians).
A more subtle approach has been taken by at least one Catholic priest, in an episode of The Brendan Option podcast where Fr. Brendan Kilcoyne discusses the lack of comprehensive coverage from Western Media outlets, who (like America Magazine) are merely echoes of the pro war elements of American foreign policy.
He stated:
I’m asking you to inform yourself…Catholics should revere knowledge, it is one of the many faces of God.
The discourse is naive and we’re being peddled a discourse that doesn’t tally. …deal with reputable non biased news agencies. This is too important to allow jingoism to rule the debate.
It is a reasonable video and a reminder to Catholics to avoid getting caught up in the world’s affairs too much, Pope John Paul II bravely reminded us of this with opposition to the USA’s illegal wars of the early 2000s.
Pope John Paul II wrote:
When terrorist organizations use their own followers as weapons to be launched against defenceless and unsuspecting people they show clearly the death-wish that feeds them. Terrorism springs from hatred, and it generates isolation, mistrust and closure. Violence is added to violence in a tragic sequence that exasperates successive generations, each one inheriting the hatred which divided those that went before. Terrorism is built on contempt for human life. For this reason, not only does it commit intolerable crimes, but because it resorts to terror as a political and military means it is itself a true crime against humanity.
Featured
