A
Ani_Ibi
Guest
I’ve written everyone I can. I phoned my member of parliament this morning. This afternoon, I even phoned the nearest Conservative member of parliament who ended up being in Oshawa: Colin Carrie. Apparently last summer he had a run in with Rebick’s website. They were trashmouthing him for being a Catholic and having been a Knight of Columbus. They dealt with the individual to their satisfaction.
I dunno. I think I know what it was like to live in Nazi Germany, seeing what I see, knowing what I know, feeling what I feel, believing what I believe and looking at the world going to Hell in a handbasket. At least Schindler was able to do something.
I’ve been reading this by Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic.
archtoronto.org/sec/people.htm
"Never Cowed by the Threats of the Wicked"
April 1993
I have often asked myself what it is that makes a martyr suffer most. There is physical suffering of course, torture or imprisonment, isolation, questioning, humiliation and, eventually, death. It does not require much imagination, however, to sense the enemy within the martyr’s own heart and mind: he or she is helpless and powerless, feeling entirely alone. The perceived public opinion scoffs at the martyr and at the reasons for his acceptance of suffering, for persecutors hold power not only over the martyr but also over the public square, intimidating people into compliance or silence. The martyr is thus sorely tempted to look upon himself as both a loser and a fool: a more “reasonable” stance would save him a lot of trouble; many of his friends and acquaintances have chosen to be “sensible”, and they are being allowed to live in relative freedom.
Death is the ultimate defeat: whatever the justice of the martyr’s cause, and in spite of his conviction that in the long run that cause will be seen to be just, he will not be alive to see its triumph or justification, while his enemies are surviving and triumphing, imagining their victory to show their cause to be right. The martyr’s ability to overcome the inner temptations may well demand greater heroism than the strength to withstand physical torture and deprivation. We know for instance that Franz Jägerstätter, waiting for his execution because of his refusal to serve in Hitler’s army, was very happy to hear of another man condemned to death for the same reason. Seeing martyrs long after their death in the glow of their recognized heroism, we tend to forget that there was no applause accompanying their forlorn and lonely execution.
We can safely claim that our own century has seen more martyrs than any of the nineteen centuries before it. Their death has been inescapably lonely and outwardly humiliating, often unrecognized even by fellow-Christians. Examples of this lack of recognition abound: we can think of the American priest posing for pictures in the Hanoi Cathedral, imagining himself to be a pacifist hero, while hundreds and thousands of his fellow-priests were doing “corrective labour” in concentration camps. During the worst excesses of the Chinese cultural revolution some among us “courageously” examined the conscience of a Church which was being battered to death. It is equally sad to see how quickly some are willing to suspect as Marxist the people struggling for social justice in Latin America. Who might be closest to martyrdom in our own situation? Would it be those who struggle for the life of the unborn? They may at times be carried away in their zeal appearing to claim that “it is either their way or no way”. If it were not for them, however, our Church would be as mealy-mouthingly ineffective on pro-life issues as is many another Christian community. Our pro-life people are not daunted by the haughty disdain of the media, nor are they afraid of being branded as zealots. We may be tempted to seize upon one or another tactic of theirs as an excuse for not speaking out more often, failing to consider the possibility that our silence is forcing them to be more vocal. We ought to ask ourselves whether our “reasonableness” might be due to our fear of public opinion. Were it not for our sisters and brothers in the pro-life trenches, we, the “sensible ones”, would become the object of attack – if our politically correct media should think us worth attacking.
