The Catholic Thing

By Robert Royal But first A confession from Robert Royal: I am enthusiastic, perhaps too enthusiastic, about this whole line of thought and life because it's precisely what we have been trying to do for almost two decades here at The Catholic Thing. And in my own stumbling, piecemeal fashion, I'd earlier made my way towards these truths despite countervailing winds at various educational institutions. The need is only more urgent now. I'm convinced enough of its critical importance at this moment in history – indeed, in every age – that I feel justified in coming to you, our dear TCT readers, just a few times a year to ask for your financial support. And it's that time again. The coming year is going to be marked by various kinds of public chaos – all the more reason that we strive to construct every bit of personal and social order that we can, each of us, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. Only the Catholic thing, the fullness of our tradition, is up to the task. TCT will be here, every morning, 365 days a year, for you, bringing you the best opinion and commentary, in a readable format, of which we're capable. As I always say during our funding campaigns, I know you readers understand why we're here, why you're here, and why your support is so vital. So please, do what you always do. Give generously – in whatever way is best for you – to The Catholic Thing. Now for today's column... Rome is often rainy and cold in November, but the past few days it's been mostly sunny and warm. The pope may be in Latin America, but the Eternal City continues to draw huge crowds, even in his absence – to judge by the masses in every public and private space – comparable with those he's drawing (as I write) in Uruguay and Argentina. It's a somewhat reassuring thought that whoever is running things at any given moment, the Catholic barque sails on – in Rome and the whole world. But there are also dangerous shoals below the surface. One of the more surprising things I've seen in Rome this trip is a whole series of one-person tents set up at night between the pillars of the colonnades at St. Peter's. This is new to me. No doubt the people who organized this mean well. But like the people who distribute "clean" drug paraphernalia in American cities, they're enabling the very behavior that they want to remedy. In a civilized society, or a Church that truly cares for the poor, institutions are set up – and funds found – so that people (most of whom need drug and psychological counseling) don't live on the street, to their detriment and ours. I'm in Rome this week for publication of the Italian translation of my book on The Martyrs of the New Millennium, but also to participate in a conference sponsored by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on "Classical Foundations and Moral Authority." The two events are not unrelated, or unrelated to social and Church reform. Without clear foundations and principles, our moral efforts – as we see all around us these days, not least in piazza San Pietro – decay into mere niceness and incoherence. And without people willing to sacrifice, suffer, even die for the truth, even the loftiest intellectual and ethical principles remain mere ideas. We just celebrated the feast of St. Charles Borromeo. If anyone was a Catholic Reformer, he was. He took on the lazy, the time-servers, the corrupt, and the decadent in Rome and Milan (his archdiocese); helped organize the final session of the Council of Trent; and took a major role in producing the Tridentine Catechism, which was aimed at forming priests, who in his view, were then poorly educated and, therefore unprepared, to deal with people's deepest needs. Though heir to the fortune of one of the noblest and richest families in Renaissance Italy, he lived simply and wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. When the plague struck Milan in 1576, he remained in the city and organized relief efforts for tens of thousands of people, often paying for ...

By Luis E. Lugo In his recent video message to participants at the World Day of Prayer for Peace held in Assisi, Italy, Pope Leo strongly condemned religious justifications for war. As he stated, "War can never be waged in the name of God," which is why, he explained, "there is no such thing as a holy war." The pope left unclear at whom he was directing his remarks. Was it Muslim jihadists, who, following the example of the prophet Mohammed, view war as a legitimate means of extending the boundaries of Islam? Or perhaps Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church's assertion that "from the spiritual and moral point of view, the Special Military Operation [the Kremlin's preferred euphemism for its invasion of Ukraine] is a Holy War"? Be that as it may, some will be inclined to see the pope's remarks as an indirect swipe at the just war tradition. That would be in keeping with the way some put a pacifist gloss on the pope's statement in Magnifica humanitas that the just war tradition is "outdated." That reading is very misleading, as I have argued before in this space. One would think that Pope Leo laid to rest such speculations with his address to the delegation of the Military Ordinariate of Portugal, which he delivered just two months after issuing his encyclical. On that occasion, the pope praised the military's "noble mission" of defending the sovereignty of their homeland and ensuring the security of their fellow citizens. Referencing Jesus's encounter with the Roman centurion in Capernaum, he offered high praise for the values of military service: obedience, discipline, renunciation, loyalty, comradeship, dedication, responsibility, and courage. Nevertheless, some concerns along these lines are not entirely unfounded. At times Pope Leo has made statements that lend themselves to a pacifist interpretation. Moreover, the views of his predecessor on this issue cast a long shadow on the current pontificate and continue to engender suspicion. A fair assessment of Pope Francis's words and actions strongly suggests that he intended to move the Church in a pacifist direction. In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, for example, he wrote that given the brutality of modern combat, it had now become "very difficult" for countries to invoke just war principles to justify engaging in violent conflict. Then, in a March 2022 video call with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill to discuss the war in Ukraine, the Holy Father went from "very difficult" to outright denying the possibility of a just war. As he affirmed during the call, "there was a time, even in our Churches, when people spoke of a holy war or a just war. Today we cannot speak in this manner." As if to leave no doubt about his meaning, Pope Francis emphatically declared that "wars are always unjust. . . .War is never the way." Any impartial observer would have to conclude that the pope had come to espouse a functional, if not yet a principled, pacifist position. It is instructive to note how Pope Francis juxtaposed the terms holy wars and just wars in the above quotation. It is generally understood that holy wars are undertaken on religious grounds and for explicitly religious purposes. By contrast, just wars follow the requirements of the natural law and aim at the more modest goal of ensuring the well-ordered peace of the temporal city, its tranquillitas ordinis, in St. Augustine's famous formulation. Is the idea of a just war to be rejected because it is holy war "adjacent," to borrow a phrase from woke ideology? We see an analogous situation today in the way some people use the words proselytizing and evangelizing interchangeably. By so conflating them, they subtly impute the coercive, manipulative connotations of the former to the latter's entirely legitimate (and God-ordained) efforts at conversion. It's also worth recalling the context in which Pope Francis uttered those words – a Russian invasion of Ukraine that the pope himself described as a clear-cut case of ...

By Randall Smith Although I will be referring to a comment made by a political candidate, my point is religious, not political. For this reason, I delayed submitting this article until after the election. Senator-elect James Talarico has made, in the name of his "Christianity," any number of comments that would be offensive to orthodox Catholics and many other Christians. But to be fair, so do many other politicians. Misrepresenting Christian teaching for one's own political ends is almost as common as political attack ads. And most of what candidate Talarico has said about his brand of Christianity has been reported widely and is, by now, well-trodden ground. So allow me to draw our attention instead to something he said that, at least at first glance, seems much less offensive. As we will see, however, appearances can be deceiving. And the statement is worthy of comment because the sentiment is more common. In one interview, Mr. Talarico mentioned that he thinks of all the religions as forming a circle around a central something. Each one sees that something in its own way, but they aren't always aware that they are all looking at the same thing. What Mr. Talarico and those who share his view don't seem to understand is how presumptuous and offensive this is to each one of the devoted religious believers in that circle – not just Christians, but Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Confucians, and all the rest. As usual, G.K. Chesterton identified the problem. In Orthodoxy, he notes: "There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: 'the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach.' It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach." Almost every great religion, points out Chesterton, works with "priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods. . . .They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught." To update Chesterton's example, saying that all religions teach the same thing would be like saying Fox News and CNN have the same viewpoint because both have news anchors behind a desk. The claim that all religions are essentially the same ignores what each faith actually asserts to be true about God, human nature, history, and salvation. In short, it is a view based on ignorance. And yet, plenty of people are ignorant about religious traditions they do not share. This, in itself, is not offensive. What is offensive is to be told that one is blinded from seeing the whole truth because of one's religious tradition by someone offering a view "from above" all religions. Because it is only "from above" that one could presume to look down upon "the circle" in which all religious believers sit and from that "higher perspective" lecture them on the unity they fail to see. Such a person is saying, in effect, "I can see what all you people below me in your individual religions fail to see. You have a partial view; whereas I have a view of the whole." Since each religious tradition claims to have a holistic vision, the claim that there is a higher, more inclusive perspective that relativizes each religion cannot help but offend the devoted adherents of all of them. Those of us who have devoted our lives to a religious tradition can look at each other and understand the devotion other religious believers show in a way that those who lack that kind of devotion will never really understand or respect. As a Christian, I can respect Jews or Muslims or Confucians for the things in their religious traditions that overlap with mine. Similarly, a Jewish rabbi might look at me and say, "Well, at least he is devoted to the one God and to keeping the Ten Commandments." I admire Confucians for the same reason I admire Stoics: because they commit themselves to living in accord with the cosmic ord...

By Anthony Esolen The other day I saw a photo of some homework a schoolboy did, marked wrong by the teacher. The question asked, "Which is greater, 0.2 or 0.14?" The boy correctly said it was 0.2. But the teacher wrote, "0.14 has more digits! Please study." I hardly know where to begin. A schoolteacher who does not know what decimals mean? I suppose she would have thought that 0.20 was greater than 0.2, and 0.2000 much greater than both! I also had occasion to write about the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, "Hurrahing in Harvest," and because I'm away from home and my books, I had to look it up online. The first site that came up featured a brief analysis, under copyright. It was the work of AI, clotted with stupidity and incoherence. But how can an algorithm know what it is like to behold the clouds in a bright and windy autumn sky, much less to know what it is like to think or to praise God? The work of the human manager of the site, introducing Hopkins, was no better. I fear that though Western man may no longer heed the loving command in Genesis, "Increase and multiply," stupidity does, and will continue to do so in those who have no real education to shield them from it. Then I happened on a clip of the podcaster Ben Shapiro interviewing the popular promoter of science and despiser of religion, Neil deGrasse Tyson. The subject was liberty, and the apparently insoluble conundrum – insoluble only if you deny reality – of men pretending to be female and barging in on women's sports. "It's a free country," said Tyson, concluding that that means you should be permitted to do whatever you like sexually, because freedom, as he saw it, was a mere negative: barring obvious material harm, no one may prohibit you from your favorite source of pleasure. I remarked that not one of the ancient pagan philosophers, not even Epicurus, would have agreed with him. They all understood the difference between liberty and license. They all warned that license enslaves. Christians agreed. Here is the archangel Michael, replying to Adam in Paradise Lost, after Adam has expressed his displeasure to hear that one of his descendants, Nimrod, will be the first tyrant, a "mighty hunter": Yet know withal, Since thy original lapse true liberty Is lost, which always with right reason dwells Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being. Reason in man obscured or not obeyed, Immediately inordinate desires And upstart passions catch the government From reason, and to servitude reduce Man till then free. Since therefore he permits Within himself unworthy powers to reign Over free reason, God in judgment just Submits him from without to violent lords Who oft as undeservedly enthrall His outward freedom: tyranny must be, Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse. A licentious nation is also a stupid one. Its enthrallment is inevitable. So too for all human groups – churches and schools are by no means immune – and for individual persons. You will notice that I used for examples three things I found online. I am wary of it, because I feel the mighty pull to swim in that lagoon of information and deformation, where passions are kept ever simmering, to raise a constant dermatitis of the soul. You may also notice that I possessed in each case a counterweight, some means to judge what I saw, or to break free of the magnetic force. But it is wearying both ways. And if I find it so, how much more will it be for young people who do not have Hopkins or Milton at their fingertips or in their hearts, or even the simplest facts of arithmetic? Older generations could not be so distracted, because the means was lacking; nor could they be so stupid, because the near and pressing demands of life forbade it. For confirmation, I happened to open at random an old book on the nightstand while I lay sick in bed, and there read a speech delivered in the Senate by John Sherman, the younger brother of the celebrated general William Sherman, on gold and silver currency, their relative val...

By Auguste Meyrat To the dismay and disappointment of writers and English teachers, the habit of reading is falling by the wayside across the developed world. Study after study shows that fewer people read books and even most Ivy League students can no longer make it through a classic novel without intense struggle. In place of the written word, people increasingly rely on screens to occupy their thoughts. Although most people appreciate this problem, it's not clear how it will affect us. Will the decline in verbal literacy simply give way to a rise in a kind of digital literacy? Will a certain class of literati exercise the Benedict Option and break away from the mainstream to preserve a culture of reading? Or are we facing a new Dark Age in which mankind embraces superstition, tyranny, and tribalism again? London Times columnist James Marriott argues in The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society, that it will probably be the last. In Marriott's view, the emergence of mass literacy accounted for many, if not most, of the goods that modern Westerners enjoy, specifically scientific advancement and a stable order. But when the practice of reading slips away, this complex system will inevitably unravel: "As the age of print gives way to the age of the screen, the world we once knew is vanishing." Marriott concedes just how unnatural the act of reading actually is. Reading was not a mere facet of human evolution that manifested itself in humans without any prompting. It was a revolutionary cognitive system that enabled whole civilizations to emerge. The intellectual act of converting symbols into ideas, however, requires enormous mental expenditure, constant practice, and the presence of actual reading material. The earliest texts were mostly handwritten or chiseled into stone, so only a small group of people could actually read and write, while the masses mostly remained illiterate. Marriott's secular liberal bias starts to show when he tends to dismiss the progress made during the millennia preceding mass literacy. He admits that advances were made in all areas of life, but he believes, falsely, that there were no complex government systems, scientific revolutions, or best-selling literary works. As he puts it, "Society is a better and more rational place thanks to the advancement of reading." Reading alone does not make a person better, as Marriott knows, but he still wants us to believe that reading makes people more empathetic, charitable, logical, productive, smart, and generally happy. In his view, it wasn't Christianity that led to the abolition of slavery, the establishment of human rights, and the creation of countless social welfare programs (including those that taught people how to read). It was "the rise of reading." Tellingly, Marriott skips the gruesome chapters in the history of certain hyper-literate societies (e.g., interwar Germany) slipping into brutal fascist and communist autocracies and committing genocide against their own people. In recent decades, the culture of literacy has given way to the culture of the screen. This began with television. Nearly every hard-earned extra hour of leisure after the middle of the twentieth century went toward watching TV. This led to the sad reversal of "many rich and highly educated people [being] much less well read than many members of the least privileged classes. . .in the middle of the twentieth century." This problem only worsened when televisions developed into pocket-sized devices equipped with high-speed Internet access. Not only did the smartphone eliminate all remaining opportunities for reading, but it also addicted users to screens. In Marriott's opinion, this was the final blow to the culture of literacy. So what does that mean for society at large? This is where Marriott's own political and philosophical prejudices detract from an otherwise well-written and well-argued book. In a later chapter, he recounts how his ...

By Francis X. Maier Su-ann, my beautiful bride of 56 years, has a radiant smile. She uses it every time I tell a particular story, which goes like this. A year or two ago, I began to notice a decline in my hearing. I put this down to age; for a man in his 70s, it's a routine issue. But it seemed especially pronounced around the house. Suann would say something – something clearly important, given her tone – and I'd hear it as muffled or garbled. This did not please her, even when I explained the complex physics involved. Sound waves have trouble penetrating walls, ceilings, and floors (like ours). The 90-degree angles so common in a modern home (also like ours) pose another pesky acoustics problem. Unsatisfied, she suggested instead that I see a doctor. Which I did. I had a full battery of tests from a capable young female specialist who, in the end, informed me that "your hearing is excellent, Mr. Maier; your listening needs work." Assuming one has healthy ear canals, hearing the many sound waves from a beloved spouse, for example, happens whether we admit it or not. Ignoring garbled requests or instructions might seem temptingly reasonable, but can end badly. To listen, by contrast, involves intention, attention, and understanding. Homer's two great epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, have more than 12,000 lines each. Ancient Greek bards recited them from memory, hours at a time. And Greek audiences listened – hours at a time. They experienced the recitals orally, because the words weren't written down as formal texts until late in the poems' development. Yet the crowds were enraptured, because listening to a well-voiced story or poem has an electric effect on the imagination; an effect that no screen can rival, and even reading a great novel or play can't quite replicate. All of which is a preamble for what follows. November is a kind of vestibule month. It's a place on the calendar where we pause to pray for the faithful departed, but also to take honest stock of our own lives. We're meant to reflect, in these fading autumn days, on the four last things – death, judgement, Heaven, and Hell – before we enter into Advent and a new Church year. Death comes for all of us. November is a time to remember that. Our lives, our choices, and our actions matter. And consequences will follow in the next life. In his book Things Worth Dying For, Charles Chaput notes that even with a firm faith in God as the Author of beauty and love, the thought of being judged after death by Someone "who knows us better than we know ourselves" can be deeply unsettling. In that encounter, we'll see with intense clarity "who we really are and what we've become," and we'll likely serve as "our own toughest prosecuting attorneys." Thus he notes: The most frightening thing about death is not that God, when we meet him face to face, will be a "hanging judge" with a ledger of our crimes. Jesus repeatedly describes God as a loving Father. And no such Father will allow the destruction of his child unless the child actively prevents him from averting it. If a soul has an ember of love and kindness left from its earthly sojourn, God will seek to breathe it back to life. So the really terrifying thought about the afterlife is not that God may damn us. It's that we may freely damn ourselves. We may choose Hell because we've made ourselves into the kind of creatures who prefer it. Alas, here's the problem we face in reflecting on eternal things and our personal place in them, given our current American moment. We live in a ferociously materialist culture of 24/7 noise, toxic opinion, and commerce that obscures any horizon beyond itself. It's also an increasingly post-literate bubble thanks to a decline in reading skills, the frenzied pace of modern life, and the addictive distractions of TV and web. We may want to someday read Dante's Divine Comedy, but good luck finding the time and silence to do it. And that brings us back, in a roundabout way, to the valu...

By Michael Pakaluk After Bill Clinton's re-election, which he much lamented, Judge Bork wrote a famous essay on the martini ("How to Forget the Election"), offering an excellent method as to the best available consolation. In the same spirit, then, and seeking what consolations we need, I propose that we commemorate that fine judge and his estimable drink by declaring that henceforth the "Fifth" of November – in accordance with the word's ordinary public meaning – should mean gin, not Guy Fawkes's plot, nor the bonfires on which Englishmen once burned the pope in effigy. The wise judge counseled: "Just the right amount of alcohol taken at the right time will. . .enable you to see the humor in America's having a Banana Republic government, and to fall asleep congratulating yourself on having risen above despair." Plus ça change. He would allow no "alcoholic relativism." There was, he held, an objective truth as to the best drink: "Just as there are spiritual truths, so there are spiritous truths." Originalist though Bork was, and wary of natural-law jurisprudence, here he reasoned like a Thomist, or nearly so: there is a natural law of spirits, and the martini is that law, distilled. If the martini is objectively the best drink, then its fortunes are a fair index of the health of at least part of our culture. Here the judge would be heartened, were he with us; I suspect he is heartened. "The awful truth," he wrote in 1996, "is that the martini was on the verge of extinction. Just a few years back, no one under the age of forty drank it." He claimed a modest share in its revival. He had taught his clerks the ideal recipe, and they took to ordering "Judge Bork martinis" in Washington bars. "This," he confessed, "gave a somewhat false picture of life in my chambers." (Note the wry "somewhat.") Have his efforts borne fruit? Perhaps so. The margarita remains America's favorite cocktail, but it has slipped. According to NielsenIQ, the number of drinkers aged 21 to 34 who regularly order one has fallen 28 percent in two years. Meanwhile, the martini's sales per bar rose 29 percent at the end of last year. At the world's best bars, the dry martini now ranks fourth, behind only the margarita, the Negroni, and the Old Fashioned. "True law is right reason in agreement with nature, spread among all men, constant and everlasting. It summons to duty by its commands and deters from wrongdoing by its prohibitions," Cicero wrote in De Re Publica (III.33). "It is not lawful to amend this law, nor to repeal any part of it, nor can it be abolished entirely; neither senate nor people can release us from it. . . .There will not be one law at Rome and another at Athens, one now and another hereafter. One law, everlasting and unchangeable, will bind all nations at all times. There will be one common master and ruler of all, God, the author, interpreter, and enactor of this law." And so it is with the law which is Bork's ideal recipe. Despite an explosion of boutique gins – and a wider availability of vermouths from France, Italy, and even Japan – the natural law of the martini, in its "genus," remains the same, although it may be "specified" in different ways. Historical studies of the martini have not unsettled it. But here is a step that Bork missed. He never articulated the ideal. He dismissed and ruled out, but he did not say why. "A martini means gin." Why does it mean gin? "The martini must be straight up." Melting ice dilutes it, to be sure, but why is that bad? And what is the proper ratio? "[Lowell] Edmunds says the proportion of gin to vermouth may range from 4:1 to 8:1." But why? The first readers of that essay loved it in part for its strong-mindedness, its dogmatic defense of sensed high standards. But where do these standards come from? Remember: no "alcoholic relativism." As St. Thomas teaches, the natural law is articulated through a grasp of an inclinatio based in nature. An Aristotelian might call it an ideal type. We want, for i...

By Richard A. Spinello The amorphous doctrine of the "consistent ethic of life" continues to inspire some Catholics while disturbing others. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago introduced this principle in a speech at Fordham University in 1983 – and proclaimed it zealously until his death in 1996. Most recently it has been revived by his successor, Cardinal Blase Cupich, who traveled to Fiera di Primierio, the ancestral home of Cardinal Bernardin's parents, to deliver a speech paying homage to the Cardinal and his famous theory. According to Cardinal Cupich, this moral framework is a useful corrective to our polarized political and social climate. In his estimation, Cardinal Bernardin's idea continues to be one of the most influential frameworks in modern American Catholic social thought. Cardinal Cupich goes on to declare that his predecessor's framework anticipated the holistic moral vision proposed by Pope John Paul II in his landmark encyclical Evangelium vitae: "John Paul II validated Bernardin's broader synthesis by explicitly placing the direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, alongside broader structural threats to human life, including war, poverty, and ecological degradation." These remarks invite us to consider two key questions: what does the "consistent ethic of life" really mean, and did John Paul II validate this theory? The first question is not easily answered, since Bernardin's theory can be interpreted in several different ways. Stripped of nuances, it suggests that Catholics must develop a comprehensive and balanced moral outlook on abortion, euthanasia, unjust war, capital punishment, poverty, environmental degradation, and so on. They should not defend human life in one context while being indifferent to threats to life in others. The framework is designed to challenge pro-lifers who are passionate about abortion but are divided over other life-related issues. At the same time, it challenges those who care about poverty and the environment but are lukewarm and noncommittal about abortion. Catholics are called to promote and champion the dignity and quality of life of every person across a whole spectrum of threats. Accordingly, following the lead of Cardinal Bernardin, Cardinal Cupich argues that those who defend the right to life of the unborn must be equally visible and vocal in confronting other life-and-death issues such as health care, the "scourge of racial injustice," and the ominous threat of climate change. He also cites Pope Leo XIV who observed that "one cannot consider themselves pro-life because they oppose abortion and yet are for the death penalty or not opposed to the inhumane treatment of migrants." For Bernardin as for Cupich, this "quality-of-life posture" translates into specific political and economic positions on various social welfare policies, health care, and the environment. The major flaw with this theory, however, is that it obscures the crucial distinction between intrinsically evil acts and prudential moral issues, between moral absolutes and affirmative responsibilities. For example, there is a clear asymmetry between issues like abortion and infanticide on the one hand, and environmental degradation on the other. As philosopher John Finnis points out, moral absolutes such as "it is always wrong to take innocent human life" are immediately applicable and therefore directly translate into unambiguous social policies. But affirmative responsibilities like "protect the environment" allow for exceptions and qualifications and different approaches to social and economic policies. Several norms and prudential considerations come into play. Corporations, for example, must balance the valid moral and social demands for environmental integrity with value creation. Therefore, we cannot equate moral absolutes with affirmative responsibilities since these obligations have a different moral structure and cannot be directly converted into social polic...

By Elizabeth Edwards Spalding As America goes to the voting booths, it is good to remember a heroic instance of resistance to tyrannical socialism. In 1956, for almost two weeks, a Communist regime was overthrown behind the Iron Curtain. Hope and resolve began on October 23, ending in anger and pain on November 4 – exactly 70 years ago tomorrow. Soviet tanks and infantry crushed the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The West stood by and watched – a sad reminder of what happens when good people do nothing in the face of evil. Time's January 7, 1957, issue named the Hungarian Freedom Fighter as 1956's "Man of the Year." "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," goes the saying. But moral equivalence has no place when it comes to freedom fighters against a dictatorial regime. In 1956, resistance began as roughly 20,000 students protested – in part supporting a preceding workers' uprising in Poland – and expanded to some 200,000 Hungarians marching through the capital city and gathering outside the Hungarian Parliament and the Magyar Radio buildings (about a mile and a half apart). They peacefully protested the one-party Communist state that was imposed by Kremlin overlords and implemented by the Hungarian Working People's Party, the secret police (AVH), and the Hungarian People's Army. The AVH responded by opening fire on the peaceful protestors outside the Magyar Radio building. One of their demands was the dismantling of a large monument to Joseph Stalin, at the edge of Budapest's main park. Communist Hungary built the memorial as its official gift for Stalin's 70th birthday celebration in 1949. It took 100,000 Freedom Fighters – including engineering students and welders with tools and trucks – to take down, deface, and disassemble the statue. They left behind its boots. That was but the first day. As the uprising continued and grew, some Hungarian military units defected, and the Freedom Fighters acquired rifles beyond what they had seized on their own and exercised the right to bear arms against a tyrannical regime. Over 25,000 civilians (including many of Budapest's 15,000 industrial workers) and 2,000 military personnel fought with the resistance. From a previously secret arms factory, workers distributed at least 1,000 rifles. A ceasefire was announced on October 28, and Soviet military units began withdrawing from the capital on October 30. According to moral equivalence, the justification for an armed uprising is a matter of opinion. But as Americans would say, by the laws of nature and of nature's God, this was a just uprising. Hungary was not governed according to the rule of law and fundamental rights that are a priori guaranteed rather than granted by the state. The one-party Communist state imposed ideological, totalitarian, and thus unconstitutional rule. It was unjust in its unfreedom. The very first freedom – religious liberty – was central to the Hungarian Revolution and undergirded its constitutional goals and the just nature of the armed uprising. During the heady days between two rounds of active fighting against Soviet tanks and troops, when Hungarians dared to dream that they were winning, about 8,000 political prisoners were released. Most notable was Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, who had led his people in resisting both fascism and communism. During World War II, Mindszenty was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. Several years later, at the hands of the Communist party, he was tortured and given a life sentence in a 1949 show trial. When Mindszenty was released, jubilant crowds in villages and towns welcomed him along the way to Budapest. Cardinal Mindszenty was the highest moral, spiritual, and even political leader of the Hungarian Revolution. Endorsing the armed resistance and blessing and meeting with its leaders, he believed that the course of the revolution – and Hungary's future – must be set by the Freedom Fighters rather than the Communist reform government. His public and pr...

By Fr. Benedict Kiely I'm not sure whether Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the Archbishop of Algiers, has read the satirical poem "Absolute and Abitofhell" by Monsignor Ronald Knox. The poem describes the Oxford dons and clergymen of his day, who were enamored of theological liberalism, the kind of churchmen that, St. John Henry Newman said, he had spent his life combatting. The lines from that poem that come to mind about our man in Algiers are as sharp as vinegar: "When suave politeness, temp'ring bigot zeal / Corrected 'I believe,' to 'One does feel.' " Cardinal Vesco has recently said several things that were more than merely polite to his Muslim neighbors. His initial statement condemned "proselytism," which he described as "poison" – and has been challenged by Bishop Robert Barron, who knows a bit about evangelization. Something of an internet storm has now erupted, with the usual suspects, the Knoxian dons, as one might call them, condemning Bishop Barron and reminding the world that the Cardinal ministers in a difficult situation – i.e., among Muslims. The usual apparatchiks of syncretism claimed that the words of the Cardinal had been misunderstood: he was not denying the "Great Commission" to preach the Gospel to all nations, nor the call to conversion. Cardinal Vesco has attempted to clarify his earlier statements but has dug an even bigger hole. The Church, he said, is "not there to convert," and has "better things to do" than seek converts from what he called the other "monotheistic religions." The Church in any country where Islam is dominant is, indeed, in a difficult situation. Where is the great See of Hippo today, or the town of Thagaste where St. Augustine was born? Its ancient Christian population is gone, attacked first by barbarian hordes, and then finished off forever under Islam. It is difficult to proclaim Christ in conditions of hostility, as I know only too well from more than ten years helping persecuted Christians across the Middle East. So, the question arises: If it's not the job of the Church to convert, for what does She exist? For the first three centuries of Christian history, all Church members, hierarchy and people, were in overwhelmingly hostile situations. Ten of the twelve Apostles died for the Faith: Judas committed suicide, and only St. John lived to a ripe old age. Martyrs – men, women, and children – witnessed to the truth of the Christian faith. They believed, along with St. Paul, that there is "no other name under heaven by which we can be saved, than by the name of Jesus." Today, in the lands where my charity works, families are killed and priests are martyred in an overwhelmingly hostile place. They are forced from their homes, they leave all their possessions, their businesses are destroyed, because they believe the words of the One who proclaimed Himself to be the "Way, the Truth, and the Life." I have met people who have faced death because of their conversion from Islam. One lady, threatened by her own family, said that it did not matter now, because "she knew Christ." Interreligious dialogue is immensely difficult when someone wishes to cut your head off because of what you believe. This might even suggest that "dialogue" of this kind is pointless. Some say the Cardinal only meant to condemn proselytism, a word which has taken on a modern connotation that makes it unfashionable. The modern understanding involves more than persuasion; it suggests some kind of coercion. Contra Cardinal Vesco, the idea that there can be the slightest possibility of coerced or forced conversions in a Muslim country is fanciful. Rather than forced conversion, the Cardinal quite clearly means the very act of conversion itself. Yet the origin of the word proselytism, as was understood for centuries, comes from the Greek meaning "one who has arrived" – a proselyte. Followers of Jesus Christ claimed, in great humility, that they had "arrived" at the truth. The "job" of the one who had arrived at the tr...