Random Thoughts – Vol. 6

Death as Witness. The heroic martyrs of the early Church were willing to die for the Faith – often in horrible, painful and public spectacles. Their witness inspired many to join the Church at the cost of their own lives, and the record contains more than a few examples of executioners or those assisting with the execution of a martyr joining the Church and dying alongside those whom they were appointed to kill. Contrast that willingness to die with the motivation and drive of the proponents of Islam. Their early founders were motivated by religious zeal as well. Mohammed’s initial focus was the destruction of idols erected by pagans. But the principal difference is that the early Muslims were not chiefly willing to die for their faith, they were driven to kill for their faith. Does this obvious distinction not suggest a difference in the spiritual origin of the two religions? Even today, apostasy from Islam is punishable by death whereas apostasy from Christianity has no earthly consequence – only a spiritual punishment.
Canonizing Heretics? The canonizations of Pope Paul VI (authorized the Novus Ordo Mass), Pope John XXIII (convened Vatican Council II) and Archbishop Oscar Romero (proponent of Liberation Theology), are noteworthy if for no other reason than that they were revolutionaries within the Church and heroes of the Left. But they’re also interesting because according to Warren Carroll’s History of Christendom, heretical antipopes of the past have a history of canonizing their revolutionary heroes. When you consider the “miracles” attributable to Paul VI are rather unexceptional, the canonization of John XXIII went through by waiving a miracle, and the canonization of Oscar Romero involved no miracles because he was suddenly declared a martyr, you have to wonder whether the past is repeating itself with modernist heretics at the helm.
Pushovers. When the Muslim heretics swept through the Christian territories of the Levant, North Africa and even into Europe, many towns and cities fell before them without a fight. The Persian Zoroastrians put up a better resistance than the old Roman outposts manned by Christians. Local populations subjected to the threat of the Mohammedan advance often converted almost entirely to Islam, and so they remain today with the sole exception of Spain. Apparently, the threat of death for apostasy has the same motivation to stay Muslim as did the threat of death for resistance during the conquest. The West faces a similar scourge today and Christian adherents are bowing down to the new gods of materialism and relativism without a fight. The threat of disapproval for taking a stand against the radical environmental agenda or perhaps losing a job for resistance to the homosexual agenda, is too much to bear for modern man – even a modern pope. It won’t be long before the churches are closed or are converted into coffee houses and condominiums, like the glorious churches of the East were converted into mosques. But despite the conquests of the past, God preserved a faithful remnant, and out of that remnant grew Catholic Spain, her reconquista and her conversion of the New World. He will do it again. And until then, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).