Just War

 

Here we are, embroiled in yet another war and what a warlike few decades it's been. That in mind, you'd expect the Church to have something to say about this and it does, that there is such a thing as a just war and you'd better take note unless you want to go to Hell. OK, what are the conditions for a just war? Here, via the Information Superhighway:

1. Jus ad Bellum (Right to Go to War)

These criteria must all be met before engaging in armed conflict: [1]

• Just Cause: The war must confront a real, grave, and certain danger, such as defending against an unprovoked attack or protecting innocent life. [1, 2]
• Legitimate Authority: Force must only be declared by a properly constituted, recognized government or sovereign state. [1, 2]
• Right Intention: The primary objective must be to redress the injury or establish peace, rather than seeking territorial expansion or revenge. [1, 2]
• Last Resort: All diplomatic, peaceful, and non-violent alternatives must be completely exhausted before initiating hostilities. [1, 2]
• Probability of Success: There must be a reasonable expectation of victory; launching into a hopeless cause or slaughter is considered morally unjustifiable. [1, 2]
• Proportionality: The overall destruction and casualties expected from thbye war must not outweigh the good the military action aims to achieve. [1, 2]

2. Jus in Bello (Right Conduct in War)

These rules dictate ethical behavior on the battlefield, regardless of how just the initial cause was: [1, 2]

• Discrimination / Non-combatant Immunity: Military forces must strictly distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Innocent civilians, medics, and prisoners of war must never be the deliberate target of an attack. [1, 2]
• Proportionality: Combatants must use the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve a legitimate military objective. The damage inflicted must not be excessive or disproportionate to the strategic gain. [1, 2]

3. Jus post Bellum (Justice After War)

While historically secondary, many modern ethicists include a third set of criteria to govern the conclusion of a conflict. It emphasizes: [1, 2]

• Peace Settlements: Peace treaties should not be overly vindictive and must respect human rights and the sovereignty of the defeated nation. [1, 2, 3]
• Reconstruction: Victorious states have an obligation to assist in rebuilding infrastructure and establishing a sustainable, just society. [1]

There it is, like it or not, just war in outline as taught by the Church for around 700 years. Until now. Pope Leo XIV has told the world in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas that, "Without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the 'just war' theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated." What, there's no such thing as a just war? That it isn't right to confront a grave and certain danger by force of arms? Apparently yes, because Jesus was all about peace. Here's the NCR:

That does not mean the questions raised by the tradition were foolish. They were not. At its best, just war teaching sought to restrain violence. It asked whether a war had a just cause, whether legitimate authority had declared it, whether it was truly a last resort, whether civilians would be protected, whether the harm inflicted would be proportionate to the good sought and whether there was a reasonable hope of success.

 

Well done NCR, salute the tradition and then? Gut it, because drones and tech and such:

Those questions were meant to limit state power, expose aggression and prevent the easy sanctification of violence. But a framework developed in earlier centuries can no longer carry the full moral weight of the Gospel in an age of drones, cyberwarfare, artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, nuclear arsenals, permanent war economies and civilian populations treated as the battlefield itself.

The wars known to Augustine and Aquinas bear little resemblance to the wars of the 21st century. The battlefield is no longer confined. Hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, power grids, water systems, food supplies and communication networks are routinely drawn into the logic of war. Civilian life is no longer collateral to war. Increasingly, civilian life is the terrain of war.

 

Nope, Augustine and Aquinas didn't really think in terms of "civilian life is the terrain of war" said no one at the end of the siege of Jerusalem ever. What an incredibly, mind-numbingly fatuous thing to write. As if a city overtaken by war in late antiquity or the Middle Ages, with its people slaughtered or enslaved by their conqueror, weren't in the terrain or landscape of war. Think, if you like, of the Moslem slaughter at Otranto or Constantinople. Lord have mercy, Kyrie Eleison, it's exactly that kind of thing Just War theory was advanced to at least mitigate or temper. Relevant now as it ever was, but no, there's a deeper reason for it being out of date. According to the NCR, Jesus was a Woodstock Hippy Pacifist:

Jesus did not give his followers a theory of justified violence. He gave them a way of life. He told them to love their enemies, pray for their persecutors, turn the other cheek and put away the sword. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, welcomed the excluded, confronted hypocrisy, crossed boundaries of purity and tribe, forgave sinners and stood before imperial power without returning violence for violence.

This was not passivity. It was active, public, disciplined resistance. Jesus resisted evil without imitating it. He exposed domination without becoming domineering. He defended the dignity of the vulnerable without dehumanizing those who threatened him. He did not die because he was harmless. He died because the nonviolent reign of God he embodied threatened systems built on fear, exclusion and force.

 

There you have it, Jesus was Gandhi, an active, public, disciplined, non-violent resistance to evil colonial oppression. On the contrary, he brought a sword and you'll note, keen-eyed Biblicists, that he never once told a Roman soldier to lay down his weapon. Not once. In fact, Roman soldiers, along with women, count most amongst the most favored wider circle of his friends in the Gospel account.

So stop with this, Leo. War is a tragedy and we hate it, but don't pretend that Jesus was a Hindoo Hippy and that there's no such thing as the Church Militant here on earth, whose members will justifiably defend their homes and families against an evil secularist aggressor and its Moslem ally of convenience.

Deus Vult,

LSP

Not Peace But A Sword

 

Rise Up,

LSP

Take Note Ye Heathen

You may be a bit confused by this video because there's no trannies or Gaia DEI Rainbow riders in it. How, then, can the Garden-Threatening Russkies be force lethal, given their CIS-Gender commitment? 

Oscar disguised as Tyrol

Good question, and they're obviously too backward Slav Peasant to work it out. So just you wait until our unicorn brigades drive the subhuman Slavs back to Moscow, and don't you dare say Berlin 1945, it's not appropriate and history never rhymes.

Typical Oscar Photo Op

On topic, SS Dirlewanger thought he could disguise himself as a Tyrolienne, right up there in the Alps in 1945. Fail. He was beaten to death by Poles while in captivity. Well, can't say you didn't earn it, psycho.

Cheers,

LSP

Kaiser Hymn

 

Behold, Otto von Hapsburg is laid to rest. A friend was there, ordained by JPII no less, and loved it. Apparently people turned up in Death's Head Hussar uniforms. Respect. Regardless, here's the Kaisar Hymn:

If you scorn the above you're an utter fool. That said, can we wind the clock back to a better, more gilded and glorious age? I'd argue, no, we cannot. On topic if a bit oblique, Chesterton and Belloc argued and argued well for "swords about the Cross." 

Well said, Church Militant, and then the world turned and WWI crashed in with some 60,000 British men dying in the first day of the Somme offensive alone. All of a sudden Chester/Belloc didn't look so good.  The War, you see, caught them left-footed, military metaphor didn't look so bright and we lost faith in our culture. 

Fail. But not so fast, punters, what's wrong with being proud of your country and its tradition, what's wrong with celebrating Christian leadership, not least the Hapsburgs. Nothing at all, especially when we consider its opposite, the Godless, Satanic, kill-it-in-the womb fangs of our omnipresent Aggressor; hiding, of course, behind euphemisms and lies, like "Woman's Healthcare."

Their ruler is the Father of Lies and a murderer from the beginning. His kingdom has been broken, definitively, by the Cross. Here endeth the Lesson.

Walk in the light,

LSP

Poetry Monday - Lepanto

 

It's everyone's favorite day, Poetry Monday, and here's Chesterton's Lepanto in full. You recall the battle, in which a Catholic fleet destroyed the Sea Johad and ended Moslem domination of the Med:

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Years ago, decades ago, an old friend would recite this in his library study in London over glasses of port. Moving, as is the poem.

Domino Gloria!

LSP

Rome Against The Gates Of Hell

 

Leaving aside Vatican I and infallibility, who is the leader of the world's Christians? Is it your local pastor or pastorene, Franklin Graham, the Episcopal Bishop of Dallas, the Patriarch of Moscow or Constantinople? No.

There is one de facto leader of the Faith and that's the Bishop of Rome, the Petrine See, the inheritor of Western imperial authority. Seriously, Christ prayed ut unum sint and where's that unity going to be focused? 

In Virginia, Jerusalem, Canterbury, epic fail, Constantinople even?  No, in Rome, which should and will be a rally point for all Christians of good faith. But in the meanwhile we have this:

A Pontiff who all the world looks to, inviting the blasphemous artist of "Piss Christ" into the Vatican itself, who threatens Bishop Strickland, who adamantly refuses to stand up for the Faith as it's being attacked. Where, Francis, is the denunciation of our Pink Moloch Transnational Superstate? AWOL.

And on. where's the Petrine guidance, the pastoral direction of the Fisherman against the rainbow zeitgeist and its Mengeles who mutilate and castrate our children for profit as they murder life within the womb? It's just not there. Beans says this:

We (Catholics -- and everyone else, LSP) need a Pope who will guide Mother Church back into the Mysteries and Pagentry. One who will not have a problem condemning political leaders who stand for embryonic murder. One who will have no problem calling for a militant defense of Mother Church's properties on this earthly plane.

 

Return of the Church Militant? Yes please,

LSP

St. George's Day

 

It's the Feast of St. George today, the patron Saint of England, and what a saint he was, a Roman officer who was martyred in Diocletian's persecution and won fame for rescuing the people of a Middle Eastern town from a ferocious dragon. He stands for the fight of good v. evil, of light versus dark and the triumph of the Church Militant over the raging forces of Hell.

George never visited England, that we know of, but became beloved of its Kings and people, a model of Christian valor and chivalry. He was canonized by Pope Gelasius in 494 AD as the city of Rome still stood, imperial grandeur intact. A testimony, when you think on it, to the triumph of the Cross.

St. George, a Christian warrior who did not bow down to the heathen secular power of his age, pray for us.

For St. George and England,

LSP

Priest Blesses Italy's Vaxport Rebellion

 

You may have noticed the near complete silence or complicity of the Church in its various manifestations to the atheist state, but there are exceptions. Fr. Floriano Pellegrini blessed thousands of Trieste workers protesting Italy's vaxport mandate. Via Church Militant:

Thousands of protestors in the port of Trieste — the epicenter of current vaccine protests — cheered Fr. Floriano Pellegrini as he addressed striking dockworkers in the town square last Tuesday and led them in the recitation of the Lord's Prayer. 

The outspoken 65-year-old cleric from the northern Italian diocese of Belluno-Feltre, who said his bad knees do not allow him to kneel, climaxed his oration by asking the crowd to kneel and himself kneeling as he blessed the crowds to rounds of thunderous applause. 

"I get down on my knees before God and God alone," Pellegrini said, pausing his blessing in the name of "almighty God," wagging his finger and reminding demonstrators that "only God is almighty, not [Prime Minister] Draghi [and] not [President] Mattarella."

In an interview (see below) with Church Militant, Pellegrini blasted Pope Francis for committing "a great sin and a terrible abuse of his papal authority" by pushing the abortion-tainted jab.  

"God is not happy with Cdl. Mario Bergoglio, whom I also acknowledge as the pope, and with his support for the New World Order. And, of course, He is not happy with the bishops, including cardinals, and priests who support him," Pellegrini lamented. 

 

 

You can and should read the whole thing here. And note, "This is the first time in recent Italian history that the people protest by holding the Rosary." Powerful medicine, and you'll recall it defeated the Sea Jihad at Lepanto, it'll do the same here.

Stand steady and stand fast Trieste.

Salve,

LSP

Vatican Grindr

 

Imagine yourself in Vatican City, the veritable hub of the Roman Catholic Church; the pilothouse, if you like, of the Ark of Salvation herself. So what do you do on those odd moments in between drafting concordats with the Chinese Communist Party or blasting the Latin Mass? Hook up on gay sex apps like Grindr, obviously.

No kidding, reports are coming in about about Vatican City Grindrs. Here's The Pillar:

...during a period of 26 weeks in 2018, at least 32 mobile devices emitted serially occurring hookup or dating app data signals from secured areas and buildings of the Vatican ordinarily inaccessible to tourists and pilgrims. 

At least 16 mobile devices emitted signals from the hookup app Grindr on at least four days between March to October 2018 within the non-public areas of the Vatican City State, while 16 other devices showed use of other location-based hookup or dating apps, both heterosexual and homosexual, on four or more days in the same time period.

The data set assessed by The Pillar is commercially available and contains location and usage information which users consent to be collected and commercialized as a condition of using the app.

Extensive location-based hookup or dating app usage is evident within the walls of Vatican City, in restricted areas of St. Peter’s Basilica, inside Vatican City government and Holy See’s administration buildings including those used by the Vatican’s diplomatic staff, in residential buildings, and in the Vatican Gardens, both during daytime hours and overnight.  

 

Not very wholesome, is it, and more than that it's a security risk because Grindr was owned by a Chinese firm, Kunlun Tech, at the time of the reported, ahem, emissions.  Surely that wouldn't have anything whatsoever to do with Pope Francis' kowtowing to the CCP in 2018, ceding effective control of the Catholic Church in China to atheist Communists.

Don't say blackmail and homosexual hierarchy, or ask yourself if the smoke of Satan has entered the walls of the Church. In the meanwhile, brave Christians are being persecuted for their faith in China and the Vatican's silent. Perhaps they're too busy on their phones.

H/T Adrienne,

LSP

Catholic Restoration

Via Adrienne: Wake up and reclaim your culture.

Say Charles Martell.

Deus Vult,

LSP

Jesus Isn't Your Imaginary Friend

Here's a helpful message for Advent. Maybe you think Jesus is some kind of imaginary buddy, in your mind. Well He's not.

At some point in our history, we began to attribute a merely mental reality to anything that was not an object and reduced the importance of objects to what they could contribute to our mental reality. We live in a sea of psychology. Things, we believe, are only what we think they are. My “relationship” with you means nothing more than the set of inner experiences and dispositions I have towards you. In many ways, a very good version of “virtual reality” is just as good as “reality” itself.

You can read the whole thing here. And while we're at it, let's have Hagia Sophia back.

Maybe you think I'm kidding about that last bit.

LSP