A Birthday in Heaven

Tonight, as I happen to be watching A Man for All Seasons, I have been reminded that, although St. Thomas More's feast is June 22d on the new calendar, the anniversary of his martyrdom is today, July 6th.

St. Thomas, who gave his life to vindicate the rights of St. Peter, died on the Utas of St. Peter -- the eighth day after the feast of Peter.  His headless body was buried in a mass grave in the church of St. Peter ad Vincula -- St. Peter in Chains.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

I come home tonight, a little queasy from the greasy popcorn that was my dinner, after seeing For Greater Glory.  I hereby mount the bandwagon of bloggers who think every Catholic ought to see this movie -- including the credits, all the way to the end.  I saw For Greater Glory in a theater that I shared with about six other people, illustrating the need to promote by word of mouth this independently-made film that enjoys the backing of no major studios in post-Christian Hollywood.

For Greater Glory is about the 1926-1929 Cristero War in Mexico, a rebellion against Plutarco Calles' brutal persecution of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic forces made mistakes and had plenty of sinners in their ranks, including priests who actually took up arms, thereby excluding themselves, if not from heaven, at least from potential causes for canonization.  Indeed, the most unlikely people found their way into the ranks of the Cristeros, especially Enrique Gorostieta (played by Andy Garcia), the retired liberal atheist general who turned the rebels into an army.   The war did not result in the overthrow of Plutarco Calles, or in total restoration of liberty for the Church; but it did produce many saints and martyrs, including the boy martyr Jose Sanchez del Rio (played by Mauricio Kuri), who was beatified by Pope Benedict during the first year of his reign.  Bl. Miguel Pro, perhaps one of the best-known figures of the war, is not mentioned by name in this film, but there is a scene instantly recognizable as a re-enactment of his martyrdom.

Why is For Greater Glory worth promoting?  Despite liberties taken with the history for the sake of drama, it is a worthy film in every respect.  There is certainly violence, resulting in an R rating, but the violence does not attain to levels of gratuitousness.  There is no sex, no nudity (in one brief scene, female Cristeros are seen in their underwear, secreting on their persons ammunition for smuggling to the troops), no blue language.  And, for once, Catholics are the good guys, and priests are not shown as perverts -- not even Fr. Reyes Vega, who was known not only for his brilliant soldiery but also for his cruelty and his less-than-strict adherence to his priestly obligations.  There are a number of scenes showing the Cristeros at worship.  The Tridentine Mass has a particularly compelling, edgy beauty  when celebrated on the battlefield, or amid ruins, or in a fugitive camp hidden in the desert.  The priest at the altar, with hundreds of scruffy soldiers kneeling behind him, looks like a general leading his troops into battle. Indeed, he is doing precisely that: exercising the priesthood of the baptized, the Cristeros will offer themselves up on the field of battle in union with the Sacrifice of Calvary, for the sake of the Kingdom.  The physical battles of the Cristero War are but the outward, sensible manifestations of the greater spiritual war against the forces of hell; the stakes are nothing less than the eternal destiny of souls.  For Greater Glory is about so much more than freedom in the political order; it is about how individual souls find redemption -- or lose it.     

Finally, For Greater Glory comes out at a time when it has taken on a far greater relevance in the United States than what its makers had anticipated when it was filmed.  Politicians of the same ideological stamp as Plutarco Calles have taken power in this country and have already begun enacting laws that encroach on the freedom of the Church.  In Mexico, Calles' laws against the Church were followed up by brute force; is it not naive to suppose that the same could not happen here?

¡Viva Cristo Rey!  

Planning, Working, and Praying

A tip from the peerless Father Erik has led to about an hour's reading on a subject not inappropriate for Memorial Day: one of America's most colorful and successful generals, George S. Patton.  In view of Patton's work, beliefs, sayings, and general outlook on life, it was perhaps a mercy that he did not long survive the troops who had given their lives under his command, or live to see the fruits of their hard-won victories squandered.  It is not hard to guess what his take would have been on the West's increasing post-war confusion, or the muddle of the Vietnam War, in which his own son, George Patton IV, served as a general, and which our politicians willed to lose. It is tempting to meditate on what would happen if, by some miracle of modern medicine, the elder Patton had lived long enough to find himself under the overlordship of the present occupant of the White House.

One notable incident of Patton's career in the European Theater has become distorted in our sissified, politically correct times, and needs to be set straight.  The 1970 movie Patton contains a scene in which the general is shown bullying a chaplain into praying for good weather for killing Germans, against the chaplain's conscience.  The chaplain in question -- Msgr. James H. O'Neill, Chief Chaplain of the Third Army -- told a rather different story in an account he wrote in 1950, which was published 21 years later in Review of the News, when Msgr. O'Neill was a retired brigadier general.  He describes General Patton as a devout and practicing Episcopalian, possessing "all the traits of military leadership, fortified by genuine trust in God, intense love of country, and high faith In the American soldier"; he describes himself, the allegedly bullied chaplain, as not at all reluctant to carry out his commander's wishes in the matter of the prayer.

The story begins, interestingly enough, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1944.  Disturbed by the unrelenting, torrential rain that hampered his war effort, Patton called up the Chief Chaplain and asked him if there was a prayer for good weather.  Not finding an appropriate prayer, the chaplain undertook to compose his own:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.

Chaplain O'Neill typed the final draft of this prayer on a 5"x3" filing card, along with a Christmas message to the troops from Patton, and presented it to the general, who affixed his signature to the Christmas message and ordered the printing of a quarter of a million copies for distribution to every man in the Third Army.

Then Patton asked O'Neill a question that would probably get a commanding officer in today's Army court-martialed: how much praying was being done in the Third Army?  When told that not much prayer was going on, Patton said:

Chaplain, I am a strong believer in prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning, or thinking. Then you must have well-trained troops to carry it out: that's working. But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part, or margin in everything. That's where prayer comes in. Up to now, in the Third Army, God has been very good to us. We have never retreated; we have suffered no defeats, no famine, no epidemics. This is because a lot of people back home are praying for us. We were lucky in Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy. Simply because people prayed. But we have to pray for ourselves, too. A good soldier is not made merely by making him think and work. There is something in every soldier that goes deeper than thinking or working--it's his "guts." It is something that he has built in there: it is a world of truth and power that is higher than himself. Great living is not all output of thought and work. A man has to have intake as well. I don't know what you it, but I call it Religion, Prayer, or God.

Whereupon the general ordered the chaplain to draft a training letter to all the chaplains on the importance of prayer.  "We've got to get not only the chaplains but every man in the Third Army to pray. We must ask God to stop these rains. These rains are that margin that hold defeat or victory."

So Chaplain O'Neill got to work on Training Letter No. 5.  Both it and the prayer cards were distributed to the troops in the Third Army between December 12-14.  On December 16th, the Germans, favored by the poor weather, launched their final offensive of the war through the Ardennes: the Battle of the Bulge.  On the 19th, Patton and his Third Army rushed to Bastogne to meet it; and on the 20th came perfect weather for wave after wave of Allied air attacks on the Germans.  The prayer for good weather was answered, and the Germans were defeated.

What if George S. Patton had lived to observe the state of this country in 2012?  No doubt his prescription would include, among other things, planning, working and -- above all -- praying.  Especially praying: and to hell with any executive orders, acts of Congress, federal regulations, Supreme Court decisions or any other government directives to the contrary.  

Happy Lenin's Birthday!

That's what you're really saying any time you celebrate Earth Day.  Yes, April 22nd is the birthday of Vladimir Ilych Lenin, Soviet thug dictator, mass murderer and tool of Satan.    That Earth Day falls on his birthday is no coincidence.  Any time you refrain from using a plastic bag or a styrofoam cup, or throw out all your incandescent light bulbs in honor of Earth Day, what you are really celebrating is the leading exponent of the most murderous ideology in human history.

I'd like to be a multibillionaire, so I could open up a new oil refinery every April 22nd.  But since I'm not a multibillionaire, I'll just have to settle for turning on all my incandescent lights tonight.

The Home Front, Frozen in Time

Take a good, close look at this picture.  Click on it so you can see it better.  With the sharp detail and superb color, it's almost like you're right there.  Would you believe that every single person in this picture is either dead or very old?

You can't tell by the excellent quality of the photo.  We are used to looking at either black and white or grainy photos from this era.  But if you look closely at clothing, hairstyles and technological devices, you can see that this Kodachrome transparency was snapped decades ago.  October 1942, to be exact: at the North American Aviation plant in Inglewood, California.  These plant workers are watching a lunchtime airshow.  

For more amazing images from wartime America, see here.


H/T Adrienne's Corner.  (By the way, American aviation hero Pappy Boyington was from Adrienne's neck of the woods.)

Divine Mercy Sunday and Lifeboats

My daughter, tell the whole world about My Inconceivable Mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender Mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My Mercy.

Diary of St. Faustina

On April 15, 1912, the Divine Mercy reached even the doomed passengers of the "unsinkable" Titanic.  The ship failed to carry the necessary number of lifeboats, but God fitted her out with three lifeboats, each of which could carry to eternal life everyone who approached them: Fr. Joseph Benedikt Peruschitz, O.S.B., a German Benedictine on his way to work at a new monastic school in Minnesota; Fr. Juozas Montvila, a young Lithuanian priest on his way to take over a parish in America (the location is in dispute); and Fr. Thomas Byles, an English priest on his way to officiate at his brother's wedding in New York.  All of these priests refused seats on lifeboats, preferring to help the other passengers to safety, hear confessions, grant absolution, and prepare those who were to die to meet God.  When last seen, Fr. Byles was leading the doomed passengers in the Rosary.  How fitting that the last Masses these martyrs of charity celebrated was the Mass for Low Sunday -- what would later become today's Feast of Divine Mercy.

A religious on board the Titanic escaped via lifeboat -- the lifeboat of obedience.  Br. Francis Browne, S.J., boarded the ship at Southampton for Cobh, Ireland.  He fell in with some wealthy passengers who offered to pay his way to America.  When he wired his provincial for permission to continue on to the States, he received the terse reply: "Get off that ship."  Because he obeyed, Br. Browne was not aboard the Titanic during its fatal collision with the iceberg in the north Atlantic.  He went on to be ordained into the priesthood, and served as a military chaplain with Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J., the saintly Trench Priest of World War I, extending the Divine Mercy even into the hell of No Man's Land.  Fr. Browne died in 1960; to the end of his days he carried in his wallet the wireless message that had saved his life through religious obedience.

Look for God's Mercy in every situation.  Every situation.  It really is there.

Nec Laudibus Nec Timore: Bl. Clemens von Galen

It does not seem that very many people have heard of Bl. Clemens August Graf von Galen.  He gets short shrift in popular histories of the Nazi era: in William Shirer's The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940, for example, he rates one sentence in one footnote; in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by the same author, he gets less than that; he gets no mention at all in Wallace Deuel's People under Hitler, or in Winston Churchill's multivolume war memoirs.  At the time of his beatification in 2005, the only English-language biography of Bl. von Galen was one that subjected him to revisionist vilification similar to that which has been leveled at Ven. Pius XII since the 1960s.  Yet throughout the Hitler years, few opponents of religious persecution, racialism, state-sponsored thievery and euthanasia were as outspoken and forthright as Bl. Clemens von Galen.  At a time when the Catholic Church is again beset by both moral confusion from within and increasing attack and encroachment from without, Bl. von Galen should be looked to both as an example for and as a patron to the faithful, and especially clergy, who struggle to do the right thing.

Clemens August von Galen was born in 1878 into a noble Catholic family which, for centuries, had given the Church many priests and bishops.  He was ordained to the priesthood in 1904, and was for years a big-city pastor.  He was an imposing figure both in body (at 6 feet 7 inches tall) and in personality.  His piety -- founded on penance, study, and deep devotions to the Blessed Virgin, the Sacred Heart, the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, and Holy Scripture -- was as straightforward and uncomplicated as his world view, which was pervaded by a sense of the supernatural.  He was known for his sense of duty, his kindliness, and his accessibility, and also scorned for his staunch traditionalism, his opposition to the increasing secularization of public life, and his rejection of the notion that the Church must change in order to become more "relevant" to the modern world.  One critic faulted him for being "entirely 13th century."  The apostolic nuncio went so far as to complain to then-Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) that von Galen possessed an "overbearing attitude, stubbornness and too schoolmasterly a manner for a simple pastor."  Even the Holy See was not enthusiastic about the idea of giving von Galen a position of responsibility in the Church in Germany.  

So it was with dismay that many received the news of his elevation to the bishopric of Münster in 1933 -- the same year that Hitler came to power.  In calling for the intervention of the Holy Spirit upon his accession to the episcopal throne, von Galen's critics failed to recognize that this deplored accession was itself precisely the Spirit's intervention.  While the devil arrayed his army for battle, God was not idle in preparing His counteroffensive.  This purportedly overbearing, stubborn, doctrinaire and inflexible cleric was precisely what was needed in that time and place.  Von Galen let it be immediately and unambiguously known that human respect would have no part in his government of affairs in his diocese when he took as his episcopal motto Nec laudibus nec timore: "Neither praise nor fear."

Bishop von Galen lost no time becoming a thorn in Hitler's side.  One of his first acts as the Shepherd of Münster was to establish perpetual Eucharistic adoration in a centrally located parish in the diocese.  To prevent the seduction of his sheep, he studied Nazi literature and repeatedly publicly challenged the tenets of Nazi doctrine.  He publicly protested Nazi initiatives to the authorities.  When government officials seized convents and monasteries, turning their inhabitants out into the streets, the bishop called them thieves and robbers to their faces.  After failing to prevent a rally in Münster headed by Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi party "philosopher," Bishop von Galen responded the next day with a huge procession of his own.  

Again and again, Bishop von Galen courted martyrdom, fully expecting it -- perhaps even hoping for it -- at any moment.  At a sermon given at St. Lambert's in Münster on July 13, 1941, he said:

None of us is safe — and may he know that he is the most loyal and conscientious of citizens and may he be conscious of his complete innocence —  he cannot be sure that he will not some day be deported from his home, deprived of his freedom and locked up in the cellars and concentration camps of the Gestapo. I am aware of the fact: This can happen also to me, today or some other day. And because then I shall not be able to speak in public any longer, I will speak publicly today, publicly I will warn against the continuance in a course which I am firmly convinced will bring down God's judgment on men and must lead to disaster and ruin for our people and our country.

But because von Galen had so much prestige, and was so much loved by the people of Münster, the Nazis never dared to touch him, although they longed to be rid of him.  Even the officers of the Gestapo -- of which he was an outspoken critic -- feared to take their lives into their hands by allowing the residents of Münster to see them carting their beloved bishop off to concentration camp.  To the bishop's dismay, they preferred to retaliate against his priests, of whom a number were sent to concentration camps, some never to return.  After the war, upon his return from the consistory where he was created a cardinal, von Galen affectionately chided the people of Münster for their great love and support which had deprived him of the crown of martyrdom.

The centerpiece of von Galen's episcopate was three sermons he gave during 1941, when Hitler's power was at its height.  Despite Nazi censorship of Catholic writings, these homilies were printed, and copies smuggled all over the Reich and beyond.  They electrified the world, and inspired opponents of the Hitler regime.  The Allies used them in their propaganda campaign against Nazism, and the Pope himself approved them in the strongest terms.  The good bishop fully expected to be arrested after preaching these sermons, but still the regime did not dare to touch him, contenting itself instead with rounding up 24 of his secular priests and 13 religious priests.

The first sermon is the one quoted above from July 13, 1941.  In it, the bishop denounces the expulsion of religious communities from Westphalia and the confiscation of their houses, and exposes the hypocrisy of the authorities in the matter of summary "justice."  This homily had an answer for those who took his denunciations during wartime as unpatriotic and subversive.  It is instructive for those who denounce as "counterproductive" the punishing of dissidents within the Church, or the raising of Catholic voices against present-day injustices:

My Christians! It will perhaps be held against me that by this frank statement I am weakening the home front of the German people during this war. I, on the contrary, say this: It is not I who am responsible for a possible weakening of the home front, but those who regardless of the war, regardless of this fearful week of terrible air-raids, impose heavy punishments on innocent people without the judgment of a court or any possibility of defence, who evict our religious orders, our brothers and sisters, from their property, throw them on to the street, drive them out of their own country. They destroy men's security under the law, they undermine trust in law, they destroy men's confidence in our government. And therefore I raise my voice in the name of the upright German people, in the name of the majesty of Justice, in the interests of peace and the solidarity of the home front; therefore as a German, an honourable citizen, a representative of the Christian religion, a Catholic bishop, I exclaim: we demand justice! If this call remains unheard and unanswered, if the reign of Justice is not restored, then our German people and our country, in spite of the heroism of our soldiers and the glorious victories they have won, will perish through an inner rottenness and decay.

On the following Sunday, July 20, 1941, Bishop von Galen delivered what may be thought of as his Hammer and Anvil sermon.  After denouncing in the strongest terms the continuing persecution of the religious orders, the bishop painted a metaphorical picture of a Church under persecution:

Become hard! Remain firm! At this moment we are the anvil rather than the hammer. Other men, mostly strangers and renegades, are hammering us, seeking by violent means to bend our nation, ourselves and our young people aside from their straight relationship with God. We are the anvil and not the hammer. But ask the blacksmith and hear what he says: the object which is forged on the anvil receives its form not alone from the hammer but also from the anvil. The anvil cannot and need not strike back: it must only be firm, only hard! If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard the anvil usually lasts longer than the hammer. However hard the hammer strikes, the anvil stands quietly and firmly in place and will long continue to shape the objects forged upon it.

The anvil represents those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who are driven out and banished for no fault of their own. God will support them, that they may not lose the form and attitude of Christian firmness, when the hammer of persecution strikes its harsh blows and inflicts unmerited wounds on them....

We are the anvil, not the hammer! Unfortunately you cannot shield your children, the noble but still untempered crude metal, from the hammer-blows of hostility to the faith and hostility to the Church. But the anvil also plays a part in forging. Let your family home, your parental love and devotion, your exemplary Christian life be the strong, tough, firm and unbreakable anvil which absorbs the force of the hostile blows, which continually strengthens and fortifies the still weak powers of the young in the sacred resolve not to let themselves be diverted from the direction that leads to God. 

In the third sermon, delivered on August 3, 1941, Bishop von Galen denounced another horror: the systematic murder of the aged, infirm, crippled and incurably ill.  Since the competent authorities could not be moved to put a stop to these killings, "these unfortunate patients are to die...because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become 'unworthy to live,' because they are classed as 'unproductive members of the national community.'"  The following words are no less pertinent to our own brutal time than to the one in which they were originally uttered:

If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill "unproductive" fellow-men — even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenceless mentally ill patients — then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive. Then it will require only a secret order to be issued that the procedure which has been tried and tested with the mentally ill should be extended to other "unproductive" persons, that it should also be applied to those suffering from incurable tuberculosis, the aged and infirm, persons disabled in industry, soldiers with disabling injuries!

Then no man will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of "unproductive" persons, who in their judgment have become "unworthy to live." And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice.

Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice. Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man's conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished!

These thundering denunciations did not prove to be the end of the career of this wonderful bishop, the Lion of Münster.  He soldiered on throughout the war and even the destruction of his cathedral and his house under Allied bombs.  When American tanks approached, on Easter Sunday, 1945, he personally went out to meet them.  Yet his gratitude for deliverance from the Nazi oppressors did not prevent him from becoming a thorn in the side of the occupying forces who allowed Russian and Polish former slave laborers to run riot and take their revenge upon his people.  Once again, Bishop von Galen lived up to his motto: neither praise nor fear.  Nec laudibus nec timore.

On February 18, 1946, Clemens August Graf von Galen received from the hands of Pope Pius XII the cardinal's red hat, to the acclaim of the whole world.  He was the first Bishop of Münster to be raised to the College of Cardinals.  Yet the Anvil of the Church who had outlasted the hammer of the Hitlerites had reached the close of his earthly career.  On March 22, 1946, six days after his 68th birthday and his return home from Rome, the redoubtable bishop who had survived the Nazi terror, the world war, and the Allies' destruction of his beloved Münster, succumbed to a perforated appendix.  Amid profound grief, Bishop von Galen was laid to rest in the family crypt in Münster's ruined cathedral.  On December 20, 2003, Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable; on October 9, 2005, his fellow countryman, Pope Benedict XVI, beatified him.

Today, Christian civilization, and particularly the Catholic Church, are under assault not only in the Third World but even in its nursery, Europe, and in the New World, which prides itself on its tradition of religious freedom.  But neither the faithful nor their shepherds need to wonder how to handle the threats of the modern world: they have the Lion of Münster to show them how it's done, even under the most extreme circumstances.  As Pope Benedict said in his Angelus message on the day of von Galen's beatification: "[T]he message of Blessed von Galen is ever timely: faith cannot be reduced to a private sentiment or indeed, be hidden when it is inconvenient; it also implies consistency and a witness even in the public arena for the sake of human beings, justice and truth."

Nec laudibus nec timore.

Liberty Enlightening the World

The Centennial Light, Livermore, California, the world's longest-burning light bulb.  This picture provides a good view of the mechanism of this lamp, as well as its beauty and careful hand-craftsmanship.  (Source.)

This light bulb hangs from the ceiling at Fire Station 6 on East Avenue in Livermore, California, where it serves as a night light over the fire trucks.  Hand-blown with a carbon filament, it was manufactured at the Shelby Electric Company in Shelby, Ohio and first installed at Livermore's fire department horse cart house on L Street in 1901.  It has been moved twice since then; since its most recent move, in 1976, it has been hooked up to its own independent power source, and has burned continuously without being turned off or going out.

Consider this.  The year this light bulb was installed was the same year that Queen Victoria died.  It was the year President William McKinley was assassinated, and Teddy Roosevelt took his place in the White House.  In 1901, Leo XIII was Pope in Rome; Winston Churchill was just beginning his extraordinary career in the House of Commons; the Panama Canal was still under construction; Douglas MacArthur was still a cadet at West Point; radio and motion pictures were still new inventions; the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk was still two years away, and it would be another seven years before Henry Ford's Model T would begin to roll off the assembly line.  Since 1901, two world wars have ravaged the planet; most of the world's monarchies have toppled; the Soviet Union rose and fell; the Cold War raged; man took flight, first across continents and oceans, then to the moon and back; telephones, televisions, and above all computers have brought the entire world right into our homes.  Through it all, this bulb has continued to shine.   True, the Centennial Light is down to only a fraction of its original brightness; yet even its manufacturers, who prided themselves on making the best lamps in the world, could hardly have imagined how long this light's working life would continue.

Nor is the Centennial Light the only bulb possessed of extraordinary longevity.  Others have been documented as having functioned for many decades, including one that has shone since 1908.  Who knows how many other bulbs have worked for decades that nobody has documented?  Truly, the incandescent light bulb is among the most useful devices ever come up with in the history of human innovation.  

So it makes perfect sense that the current socialist administration, whose ultimate goal is the moral and material enslavement of Americans, should make war upon the incandescent bulb and try to cram vastly inferior fluorescent bulbs down our throats.  

Let's face the facts about fluorescent bulbs -- and particularly the spaghetti bulbs meant to be installed in place of incandescent ones.  Like virtually all other things liberals are always trying to force-feed us, fluorescent bulbs stink.  They take forever to reach their full brightness, and their full brightness isn't much to write home about.  They're costly. They're full of mercury, which makes them dangerous.  They're worthless in an Easy-Bake Oven.  And you can't just throw them out when they burn out, like you can incandescent bulbs.  

Fortunately, there is still a company in this country that manufactures incandescent bulbs.  America's entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well at Newcandescent, which legally manufactures incandescent bulbs.  And they say their bulbs will last 7 years.  

I don't usually plug products on this blog, but I'm glad there's somebody still manufacturing incandescent bulbs in this country.  Still, there is one thing that really sticks in my craw about it.  Even if you are a fan of fluorescent bulbs, if you are a patriotic American and lover of liberty, you must acknowledge that greater principles are at stake than the preferability of incandescent over fluorescent.  The fact that Newcandescent had to (a) redesign incandescent bulbs to comply with new federal requirements, and (b) apply to the Department of Energy for permission to manufacture the newly designed bulbs ought to fill you with rage.     

Did you ever think we'd reach a point in this country when American citizens would have to apply for permission from the federal government to manufacture incandescent bulbs on American soil?  Was this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?  Is there some provision of the Constitution, written, perhaps, in invisible ink, that gives the feds this authority?  Was this what generations of patriots shed their blood in distant lands to protect?

It's a shame to have to admit it, but the America upon which the Centennial Light first shone 111 years ago was a much freer one than the one we live in today.  Our first order of business in this country is to straighten ourselves up as individuals, governing our passions, recovering our Christian morals and living according to right reason.   Without this, nothing else will work.  Our second order of business is to throw out the socialist bums that have seized power in this country at every level of government.  Our third order of business is to reduce the federal government to its original constitutionally mandated functions, and every other level of government to reasonable proportions in accordance with state constitutions, common sense, and the principle of subsidiarity.  And in the meantime, we should support entrepreneurial efforts like Newcandescent that prevent the useful things that improve our lives from being cast into oblivion by socialist elites.

H/T Les Femmes - The Truth.   

January 17, 1994: The Northridge Earthquake

January 17, 1994 was a pivotal day for those of us who lived through the Northridge Earthquake, whose epicenter, by the way, was really in Reseda.  It was not a day that any of us are likely to forget.  "General devastation" is probably the most accurate description of the aftermath of those 20 dreadful seconds, the longest 20 seconds of my life.  For many months afterward, I woke up every single morning at 4:30.

Yet my family were among the lucky ones.  Although many personal possessions were destroyed, the house did not suffer any serious structural damage, and nobody in the family was hurt.  We were without gas for a week -- we shut off the gas right after the earthquake, and the gas company couldn't spare a man to come out right away and check for leaks and turn it back on.  So, we did a lot of barbecuing: all that meat in the freezer came in very handy.  We had water, but no hot water until the gas could be turned back on; and we had power restored that same evening.  I still remember the sound of transformers blowing when the juice started running back through them.  

As for the stuff in the house, even after everything was picked up, it was a long time before we could find anything again.  You remembered where things were before the earthquake; you would always reach for things in their former locations, and be unable to remember where they were afterward.  During the earthquake itself, things got thrown into the oddest places.  My grandmother's old (and quite heavy) meat grinder, which was stored in a cupboard over the refrigerator, ended up clear in the dining room.  And then there was all the broken glass.  For the longest time, slivers of broken glass kept turning up, like a deeply embedded splinter that eventually works its way to the surface of the skin.

One humorous thing about the earthquake.  It was only then that I learned that the San Fernando Valley, where I was born and raised, is the porn capital of the whole universe.  How did I learn this?  Because the porn people came out and announced to the media that this earthquake was not in fact divine retribution on their filthy industry.

As if they would know. 

Tempus Fugit

As the old year winds down to its conclusion, it's only natural to meditate on the passage of time, our ever more distant youth, the death to which every day we are one day closer.  Our souls, of course, do not age, but our bodies do, and the world is not the same as it was when we were kids.

One thing that tells me I'm getting old -- besides the increasing sensitivity of my old injuries to changes in the weather, and the new gray hairs I keep finding all over my scalp -- is that my cultural referents are becoming obsolete.  My similes, metaphors and witticisms are intelligible to a more and more tightly circumscribed pool of listeners.  A generation has now grown into adulthood that has to Google things my generation took for granted.  More and more adults today cannot remember the following:

-- Cassette Tapes.  These were things we used to record songs off the radio -- something the newest generation of adults has probably never done.  Bonus points to you 20-somethings if you can identify an 8-track cassette.

-- Vinyl records.  Vinyl records are played on a revolving turntable.  A needle on a mechanical arm is inserted gently onto the record disk and transmits the recording from grooves in the disk to the speakers.  An LP (long-playing) record is 12 inches in diameter; in the '70s and '80s, we all had thousands of them.  There were also cassette versions of records, and we had thousands of those, too.

-- Televisions without Remote Controls.  In my house, I had to be the remote control.

-- Pong.  A video tennis game, played with a console plugged into a television set, consisting of two lines that moved up and down and a bouncing square.  This was state of the art and highly popular.  Seriously.

-- Playing Outside.  Although mine was the first generation to play video games at home, we still played outside.  I used to roller skate and ride my bike all around the block, even in the suburbs of Los Angeles.  The general rule was that when the street lights came on, you came home.

-- Paul McCartney and Wings.  In 1980, it was a revelation to us kids to learn that before Wings, Paul McCartney had been in the Beatles.  We all knew the Beatles, we just didn't know realize that Paul McCartney was one of them.  31 years later, it is a revelation to learn that there was such a thing as Wings.  I don't want to think about whether the existence of the Beatles is a revelation.

-- Rotary Telephones.  Yes, there was a time when a telephone actually had a dial where you stuck your finger into a hole in a wheel corresponding to a number (or letters, back in the days of telephone name exchanges), pulled the wheel back, and waited for the wheel to return to the start position before you dialed the next number.  I don't remember exactly when we got our first touch-tone phone, but it had to be the late '80s.  Mobile phones were a rarity, and structurally no different than an average touch-tone phone with a cord.  No cameras, no video games, no texting, no sexting, no 30-year-old adolescent co-worker taking pictures of his junk and messaging it to your phone.

-- "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran."  Also in 1980, we had the Iran Hostage Crisis.  This song, a parody of "Barbara Ann" by the Beach Boys (another cultural institution probably unknown to today's adults), was a reaction to the crisis.  "We're gonna rock your Ayatollah/sock your Ayatollah/bomb Iran."  In the far less politically correct climate of three decades ago, this ditty was quite popular and frequently played on the radio.

-- The Impending Ice Age.  Yes, during the 1970s, we were expecting a new Ice Age.  Any minute now.

-- Looney Tunes Cartoons.  Despite watching the unexpurgated version of these cartoons, we did not grow up to become racists.

-- All in the Family.  This show was so huge in the '70s that it is especially depressing to have to explain it to people today.  It is about the Bunkers and the Stivics, who start off all living in the same house: Archie Bunker, the loud-mouthed, bigoted, right-wing longshoreman and veteran of World War II who talks in malapropisms; Edith Bunker, his wife with the high-pitched voice, ding-batty yet wise in her own way (though inconsistently so, due to the producer's efforts to make her friendly to leftist ideology); their daughter, Gloria Stivic, who works to put her husband through school; and Mike "Meathead" Stivic, the hippie-leftist husband, diametrically opposed to Archie's politics.  The show made history with its immense viewership and its controversial subject matter.  Archie Bunker, played by the very-left-wing though gifted actor Carroll O'Connor, was basically Norman Lear's tool for making fun of conservatives.  Still, Archie is anything but one-dimensional.  He also got the last laugh in many ways: except for the bigoted blather, he turned out to be right about a lot of things, and even prophetic (e.g., predicting that Ronald Reagan would one day be president, years before the fact).

-- Mainframe Computers.  The average pocket calculator today is probably more powerful than the average mainframe, which ran on hole-punch cards and occupied an entire room.

-- Old Movies and Old Movie Stars.  We did not see the black and white films from Hollywood's Golden Age in theaters, but we did grow up watching them on television.   As a result, we could all recognize John Wayne, Cary Grant, Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Peter Lorre, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Jimmy Stewart and the rest.  Today, I have to explain who these stars were, and it still doesn't ring a bell.

-- No Altar Girls.  When I was a kid, we only had altar boys.  I cannot recall that any of us girls ever lobbied to become altar girls, or were ever discontent about not being able to serve at the altar in this age before the feminists came along and told girls they needed to be offended about being "left out."  In fact, in an era when daily Mass was offered quite early in the morning, it was a relief not to be called upon to get up before the sun.

-- The Cold War and the Collapse of the Berlin Wall.  About a year or so ago, I was somewhat stunned to realize that many adults are too young to remember the Cold War or even the end of the Cold War; and a new generation just now reaching adulthood was not even born during the Cold War.  When I was a kid, we still had civil defense drills, complete with civil defense sirens.  We kids were actually concerned about what was happening between the United States and the Soviet Union.  After the death of Leonid Brezhnev, the parade of short-lived Soviet premiers, and the idiotic explanations given for their lengthy disappearances from public view, was a popular topic of conversation amongst us junior high kids.  No one who was not alive and in possession of reason during the Cold War can appreciate how all-pervasive and all-shaping it was.  No one not old enough to remember as far back as the Reagan Administration can understand just how sudden and miraculous were the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the fall of East Germany.  The Tienanmen Square Massacre in China had taken place only a few months before.  In October, 1989, my German professor -- a lady of no mean understanding, who had family in East Germany -- gave it as her opinion that the Berlin Wall would never come down, and Germany would never reunify.  Less than a month later, to her joy, the Wall came down.  Less than a year after that, Germany reunified.  Less than a year after that, the Soviet Union itself followed East Germany onto the ash heap of history.

Yes, generations before us have died out, and become mere footnotes in history; we shall not escape the same fate, nor shall those who come after us.  But the reflections inspired by the closing days of 2011 should not end there.  Although our time here is short, and the things and people that were once familiar pass away, we should still resolve, first, to use the time we have to save our own souls; second, to help as many as possible of our fellow men to save their souls; and third, to do what we can to leave this world a better place than we found it, even if we ourselves are forgotten.

Remember Pearl Harbor

This post goes up seventy years to the minute after the Japanese began their attack on Pearl Harbor.  This 70th anniversary is the last one to be marked by the Pearl Harbor Survivors' Association: due to the extreme old age, infirmity and immobility of its dwindling membership (approximately 175, mostly in their 90s), the Association is officially disbanding this month.  Only about 125 survivors are expected to attend this year's commemoration at the scene of the pivotal and defining moment of their young lives.

A Japanese camera captured that moment on the morning of December 7, 1941.  The images of Japanese planes, tiny yet unmistakable, can be seen passing over Ford Island.  The U.S.S. West Virginia and U.S.S. Oklahoma, on the far side of the island, have just sustained torpedo hits. 

One of the iconic images of the Pearl Harbor attack: the U.S.S. Arizona burns.  The explosion of the Arizona's forward magazines claimed 1,177 of the 2,403 American lives lost at Pearl Harbor.  The crew of the nearby U.S.S. Tennessee attempts to fend off burning oil with fire hoses.  

The first two chaplains to die in World War II -- one Protestant minister, one Catholic priest -- died at Pearl Harbor.  Protestant chaplain of the Arizona, Capt. Thomas Leroy Kirkpatrick, sprang to action in sick bay as soon as the attacks commenced.  Sick bay was so near to the forward magazines that he was killed almost instantly in the great explosion while ministering to the wounded.  Chaplain Kirkpatrick still lies with his crewmates in their sunken ship at the bottom of the harbor.

Chaplain Kirkpatrick's clock was recovered from the wreck of the Arizona, the hands frozen at the moment the forward magazines exploded.  

The U.S.S. Oklahoma, capsized and burning.  429 men perished aboard the Oklahoma.

The total number of the Oklahoma's dead would have reached 441 if it were not for Fr. Aloysius Schmitt, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Acting Chaplain.

On December 7, 1941, the young priest from St. Lucas, Iowa, had only been ordained for six years, appointed a chaplain for two and a half years, and had celebrated his 32nd birthday only three days earlier.  Did he have any suspicion that that was to be his last birthday, and indeed almost his last day on earth?  Yet although death came to Fr. Schmitt suddenly, it did not find him unprepared, nor even without Viaticum: when the Japanese attack began, he had just finished celebrating Mass.  

When disaster struck, Fr. Schmitt went to sick bay to minister to the wounded and dying. Mission Capodanno gives the following moving account of what happened next:

When the Oklahoma was struck and water poured into her hold, the ship began to list and roll over. Many men were trapped. Schmitt found his way -- with other crew members -- to a compartment where only a small porthole provided enough space to escape.

Chaplain Schmitt helped other men, one by one, to crawl to safety. When it became his turn, the chaplain tried to get through the small opening. As he struggled to exit through the porthole, he became aware that others had come into the compartment from which he was trying to escape. As he realized that the water was rising rapidly and that escape would soon be impossible, he insisted on being pushed back through the hole so that he could help others who could get through the opening more easily. Accounts from eyewitnesses that have been published in the Arizona Memorial newsletter relate that the men protested, saying that he would never get out alive, but he insisted, "Please let go of me, and may God bless you all."

Fr. Schmitt, martyr of charity, was posthumously awarded the Navy/Marine Corps Medal for his selfless bravery, which saved the lives of twelve crewmen who otherwise would have been trapped in the sinking ship.

Remember Pearl Harbor, soon to pass from living memory.  Remember and do not forget.

11/11/11: St. Martin of Tours and Veterans' Day

How appropriate that Veterans' Day, formerly known in the United States and still known in Europe as Armistice Day, should coincide with the feast of St. Martin of Tours, who began his career in heroic charity as a Roman soldier.  How appropriate, too, that the fratricidal slaughter of 1914-1918 should have drawn to a close during the month in which the Church remembers and prays for the dead.

This Veterans' Day -- the 93d anniversary of the formal end of hostilities in the First World War -- is doubly unique.  First, because of this date's once-in-a-lifetime calendrical configuration: the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year of the 21st century.  Secondly, because 11/11/11 is the first Veterans' Day in history to be celebrated without American veterans of World War I.  The last surviving American veteran of that war, Frank Buckles, passed away on February 27th of this year.  There is now only one remaining known World War I veteran in the world: Florence Green, aged 110, who served in the Women's Royal Air Force.

V. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.

R. And may perpetual light shine upon them.

V. May they rest in peace.

R. Amen.

Ten September 11ths Ago

Funny how we always remember exactly where we were and what we were doing the moment some earth-shattering event takes place.

On September 11, 2001, I was working in the public defender's office in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  I was pretty self-absorbed that morning.  I did not turn the TV on while getting ready for work (I had TV then) and in the car I listened to a station that played '80s music.  At one point, as I was getting close to the office, the DJ said he would do his best to continue with the 8 straight hits (or whatever it was), but he was pretty shaken by what had just happened, as he was sure we all were.  I wondered what he was talking about, but it didn't occur to me to switch to talk radio to find out.  I pulled into the parking lot, got out of the car, and let myself in through the back door.  Just outside the door to my office, a bunch of the support staff were huddled around the desk of my secretary, Lori, listening to the radio. 

"What's happened?" I said.

"The World Trade Center is gone," Lori said.

My mind went immediately to the first attack on the Towers in 1993.  I'm pretty sure the first thing I thought actually came out of my mouth: "So they've finished the job" -- "they" being the bunch responsible for the 1993 attack, or their compatriots.  Despite the rumors that began immediately about domestic terrorists (the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was still fresh in our memories), the first instinct was to prove correct, as it usually does.  A thing like this could only be an act of war.

By the time I learned what was happening, about two and a quarter hours had passed since the first plane crashed into the Towers.  It was almost an hour and a half since the third plane crashed into the Pentagon.  The plane crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania had just taken place an hour before.  It seemed likely at that moment that as many as 50,000 people might have perished in just the Towers alone -- more than 20 times the number of people who died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that had taken place almost exactly 60 years earlier, and to which parallels were being instantly drawn.  Although -- thankfully -- the number of slain on 9/11 proved to be only a fraction of that 50,000, it was still a grievous total that greatly surpassed Pearl Harbor.

Of course our first instinct was to glue ourselves to the news and try to take in these stupefying events.  But we had court that day, and clients to see, and business to transact, and hearings to prepare for, and life had to carry on.  But every minute we weren't in hearings or attending to our work, we were talking about the attacks, and what they meant, and what would happen next.  It is a thing that cannot be understood except by those who lived through it: the outrage -- not only over the attacks themselves, but over the footage of Arabs dancing in the streets in celebration at the murders of thousands of innocent people -- the uncertainty; the realization that we ourselves might die in this new war -- for it was clearly war -- our impotence as individuals and littleness in the face of malign forces beyond our imagining; our attitude of defiance in the face of that impotence and our clinging to God and to each other in our littleness.  

The world utterly changed on that bright September morning.  Though it would be more accurate to say that the change in the world was manifest only on that morning: the change really came the day an extra-national, fanatical movement conceived the idea of using passenger jets as missiles to attack our military and commercial and government centers.  On that day, a new fruit from hell, long in the growing, became ripe for the picking.  That was the real day the world changed; only we who stood outside the tiny circle of conspirators could not know it.  Perhaps the world has changed yet again without our knowing it.  Are we ready to face it?

9/11 was a shot across our bow.  Thankfully, nothing like it has happened again to us in the intervening 10 years, thanks to the brave men and women who defend this country.  It galvanized us and woke us up; but sadly, we have gone back to sleep.  Even the triple catastrophe of New York, Washington and Shanksville has failed to make us straighten up and fly right.  We have proven ourselves more willing than ever to surrender our liberty to the government.  Our moral confusion and cultural degeneracy have increased.  Who, on September 11, 2001, could have imagined that by the tenth anniversary of that dreadful day, we would have submitted ourselves to the government of the enemies of all that this country has ever stood for?

On this 10th anniversary of 9/11, we should pray for the dead and their families; for the safety of our armed forces; and for our repentance and conversion as a nation.

No Time for Prayer

We are advised that the absence of clergy at the official tenth anniversary commemoration of 9/11 at Ground Zero -- where the first certified casualty was FDNY chaplain Fr. Mychal Judge, O.F.M. -- is necessary to streamline the schedule.  Said Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a radio interview: "There's an awful lot of people who would like to participate and you just can't do that...so the argument here is elected officials and those who were there at the time."

Well.  After all, the clergy might use up the time...praying.  Or -- which The Divine Spark In All Of Us forbid -- inviting others to pray.

I am reminded of some remarks Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P., made at the Dominican Lay Provincial Council meeting in Oakland, California last year.  He recalled looking over the agenda of some Dominican event or other and discovering a glaring omission.  "When do we have Mass?" he asked one of the organizers.

"We don't have time for Mass," said the organizer.

Fr. Serpa's reply: "If you don't have time for Mass...you don't have time for anything."

If we don't have time for public prayer at the commemoration of an act of war on our soil that left 2,977 Americans dead...we don't have time for anything.

Fourth of July

Prayer for Government

by +John Caroll, Ordinary of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and America's first Bishop and Archbishop; written November 10, 1791 for recital in all parishes in the archdiocese.

We pray, Thee O Almighty and Eternal God! Who through Jesus Christ hast revealed Thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of Thy mercy, that Thy Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of Thy Name.

We pray Thee, who alone art good and holy, to endow with heavenly knowledge, sincere zeal, and sanctity of life, our chief bishop, Pope N., the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the government of his Church; our own bishop, N., all other bishops, prelates, and pastors of the Church; and especially those who are appointed to exercise amongst us the functions of the holy ministry, and conduct Thy people into the ways of salvation.

We pray Thee O God of might, wisdom, and justice! Through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment decreed, assist with Thy Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude the President of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to Thy people over whom he presides; by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality. Let the light of Thy divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government, so that they may tend to the preservation of peace, the promotion of national happiness, the increase of industry, sobriety, and useful knowledge; and may perpetuate to us the blessing of equal liberty.

We pray for his excellency, the governor of this state, for the members of the assembly, for all judges, magistrates, and other officers who are appointed to guard our political welfare, that they may be enabled, by Thy powerful protection, to discharge the duties of their respective stations with honesty and ability.

We recommend likewise, to Thy unbounded mercy, all our brethren and fellow citizens throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the knowledge and sanctified in the observance of Thy most holy law; that they may be preserved in union, and in that peace which the world cannot give; and after enjoying the blessings of this life, be admitted to those which are eternal.

Finally, we pray to Thee, O Lord of mercy, to remember the souls of Thy servants departed who are gone before us with the sign of faith and repose in the sleep of peace; the souls of our parents, relatives, and friends; of those who, when living, were members of this congregation, and particularly of such as are lately deceased; of all benefactors who, by their donations or legacies to this Church, witnessed their zeal for the decency of divine worship and proved their claim to our grateful and charitable remembrance. To these, O Lord, and to all that rest in Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, a place of refreshment, light, and everlasting peace, through the same Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. Amen.

Organ Transplants and the Culture of Death

Paragraph 2296 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Organ transplants are in conformity with the moral law if the physical and psychological dangers and risks to the donor are proportionate to the good sought for the recipient. Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a expression of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent. Moreover, it is not morally admissible to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.

This paragraph reaffirms the principle, taught by Aquinas, that one cannot do evil in order that good may prevail.  But this principle is vacated so often in today's world that one has to doubt seriously that an ethical post-mortem organ donation is possible.  Call me selfish, but I refuse to be an organ donor: immediately in the wake of the first successful heart transplant in 1967, the definition of death changed so as to allow organs to be harvested from people who are not in fact dead (see this and this).  

What proponent of assisted suicide and euthanasia does not also advocate organ donation?  That the serial killer Jack Kevorkian was an outspoken proponent of harvesting organs, particularly from suicides and criminals, should give us pause to consider to what extent organ donation serves the cause of death, rather than life.  But it turns out that Kevorkian was merely one of a line stretching all the way back to Dr. Christiaan Barnard, who performed the first successful human heart transplant.  In his excellent 1980 essay on euthanasia, "The Humane Holocaust," Malcolm Muggeridge sheds light on the ghoulish side of the man lauded by the world as a medical hero:

Dr. Barnard’s own attitude to his surgery is well conveyed in his autobiography, One Life. His account of his first post-mortem is almost lascivious; as are his first essays with animals, whose snug little abattoir, he tells us, “smelt of guinea pigs, rabbits and hundreds of mice. Yet it was like heaven, and even today those odours excite me with memories of our first days, so filled with hope and dreams.” One of his dreams was to “take a baboon and cool him down, wash out his blood with water, then fill him up with human blood”; another, to graft a second head on a dog, as has allegedly - though I don’t believe it - been done in the USSR.

In the world's first successful human heart transplant, Barnard took the heart of 24-year-old Denise Darvall, who had suffered severe brain damage in an auto accident, and put it into the body of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky.  Washkansky survived for 18 days.  It turns out that Barnard injected potassium into Denise Darvall's heart in order to paralyze it, so that she would be technically "dead" for purposes of performing the transplant.  In other words, he murdered her for her heart.

Wasn't the killing of Denise Darvall worth it?  Heart transplants are all but routine now, thanks to her sacrifice and the pioneering work of Christiaan Barnard.  Besides: she would either not have survived long, or else she would have lived out her days as a vegetable.  The answer is that we come back inevitably to that now-foreign principle that you cannot do evil in order that good may prevail.  How can we press cold-blooded murder into the service of life?

"In Christian terms, of course," says Muggeridge, "all this is quite indefensible."

Our Lord healed the sick, raised Lazarus from the dead, gave back sanity to the deranged, but never did He practice or envisage killing as part of the mercy that held possession of His heart. His true followers cannot but follow His guidance here. For instance, Mother Teresa, who, in Calcutta, goes to great trouble to have brought into her Home for Dying Derelicts, cast-aways left to die in the streets. They may survive for no more than a quarter of an hour, but in that quarter of an hour, instead of feeling themselves rejected and abandoned, they meet with Christian love and care. From a purely humanitarian point of view, the effort involved in this ministry of love could be put to some more useful purpose, and the derelicts left to die in the streets, or even helped to die there by being given the requisite injection. Such calculations do not come into Mother Teresa’s way of looking at things; her love and compassion reach out to the afflicted without any other consideration than their immediate need, just as our Lord does when He tells us to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked. She gives all she has to give at once, and then finds she has more to give. As between Mother Teresa’s holocaust of love and the humane holocaust, I am for hers.

How easily murder disguises itself as compassion.  But the reality is that as soon as we are in a situation where we can avoid one evil only by committing another, we have at that moment reached the end of human resources.  Then the only course open to us is to prostrate ourselves before Him in Whom no one trusts in vain.

67th Anniversary of D-Day

Every year, V for Victory! commemorates the anniversary of D-Day, the great invasion of Festung Europa that opened the long-awaited Second Front and ultimately engulfed Nazi Germany.  Each June 6th is a little more poignant than the last, as the number of surviving veterans dwindles.  This 67th anniversary comes just over three months after the death of Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War I, and one month after the death of Claude Choules of Perth, Australia, the world's last surviving combat veteran of World War I, and the last veteran to have fought in both world wars.  Hopefully, the readers do not mind the revival of some classic D-Day posts.

Battle-scarred Pointe du Hoc on the coast of Normandy, France, four miles south of Omaha Beach.  The U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion suffered heavy casualties scaling these cliffs on June 6, 1944, only to find that the 155 mm guns they had been sent to take out had been removed two days before the invasion.

June 6, 1944: D-Day

FDR's address to the nation on June 6, 1944.

My Fellow Americans:

Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.