You may have forgotten, but yesterday was the anniversary of a most terrible tragedy, the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, and with it the end of the Christian Eastern Roman Empire. From that time on until now, the splendid capitol of Eastern Christendom, the second Rome, has been occupied by Moslems.
Accounts vary, but it's said that the last Emperor, Constantine XI, fell in action against the Turks who swarmed into the city on that fateful day. The same Turks who went on to desecrate churches and enslave, rape and kill the city's people in a deadly three day orgy of destruction and looting.
Constantine had appealed to the West for help and none came, European Christendom was too busy fighting itself and this, I believe, is utterly shameful. We should have launched a Crusade and rallied to the defense of our Eastern brothers and if we had, not only would Constantinople have remained Christian, so too might much of the Middle East. It didn't because we failed to rise to the challenge and look how that mistake's cost us, quite literally, in welfare payments, to say nothing of terrorist savagery.
So now, thanks to our 15th century failure, Islam, which is an existential threat to the civilization of the West and the Faith that undergirds it, sits on top of what was the Eastern Roman Empire, facing us across the Mediterranean and beyond. We may thank God we had the resolve to throw them off at Malta and cast them down at Lepanto.
Does that resolve exist today? Not in the governing structures of the rainbow-hued utopias of the EU and UK, they're going full-tilt import Islamic savage invader. You may recall Chesterton wrote a book about it, the Flying Inn, so prescient. Here in the US? Maybe not so pressing an issue until you visit Plano, Texas, of all places, or the equally unlikely Michigan.
Regardless, surely it's time we took Constantinople back and restored Hagia Sophia to its former glory. C'mon, it's not as though we couldn't do it, and let's free the North of England while we're at it. Sorry, make that the UK.
Deus Vult,
LSP
