The relativism which seems to pervade large parts of the world shows itself mainly in the realm of ‘value-judgments’ (‘How do we know what is good or bad?’ ‘How can we know?’ ‘Who’s to judge?’ etcetera). A corollary of such uncertainty is that the meaning of words is undermined to the point of being lost, so that even if people believe that they know what a word means they discover – when someone comes up with an unexpected interpretation of it – that really they are unsure of it; ‘agreement,’ therefore, can turn out to be an illusion, and decisions taken on the basis of such ‘agreement’ can be of little value.
‘Agreement’ tends to be portrayed as ‘success’ – at least as ‘progress’ towards an objective, even if the objective is described rather vaguely. Often it is necessary to describe an objective vaguely, because to be more specific would expose discomforting differences of interpretation of the vagueness. Consequently the concept of ‘victory’ is especially hazardous because participants in an ostensibly-joint enterprise are averse to upsetting their own ‘apple-cart’ by acknowledging an underlying ‘us and them’ mentality.
A seemingly-good illustration of the above comments is the Second World War, in which there was an alliance of ‘Western’ countries and Soviet Russia against Nazi Germany (the ‘Allies’ against the ‘Axis’). The Allies had different opinions of how the world should be governed, but they agreed at least that Nazism should not govern it and their collaboration was directed to that end. Conflicting ideologies were subordinated to complementary military effort to produce a clearly-recognisable military result, and there was no doubt about the reality of that result when it was achieved in early May 1945.
The Catholic Church portrays as contrary to Christianity the idea that there are “two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked in permanent conflict,”[1] but it also declares that because of Original Sin that has been the world’s experience.[2] The existence of a continuing “dour combat with the powers of evil”[3] is the basis of the Church’s call for Christians to unite in order to remedy inducements to sin, so that virtue is favoured rather than hindered.[4]
The Second World War seems to have been regarded as a ‘black-and-white’ event: good against evil (with suspended attention to the meaning of those words except to the extent that each side applied them according to preference). In a military sense, good defeated evil in 1945, but whereas God can draw good from evil situations, “evil never becomes a good,”[5] and in some ways evil has come (belatedly, admittedly) from the good of military victory. That was, it seems, illustrated by the liberation of Paris in August 1944, an occasion which provides some interesting points of comparison with today.
The inhabitants of Paris were rightly joyful (archive film conveys that wonderfully), but there were also shameful events: unarmed, surrendering Germans were murdered; liberating soldiers lay drunk in the streets; distribution of free condoms was advertised conspicuously; and fornication and adultery abounded in tents, tanks and armoured vehicles.[6] So Satan had some compensation for his military setback.
The War had given Nazi policy control over most of Europe, and probably most people were unhappy about it, but secularist policy has taken control in the ‘liberated’ countries, and seemingly only a small minority are unhappy about it.
The Germans’ loss of Paris did not come ‘out of the blue’. It was another symptom of their inability to withstand the advance of superior forces since D-Day. As the Germans retreated, more defeats lay ahead, and their counter-attacks, even if sometimes successful, were temporary occurrences which did not reverse the trend of events. Likewise, Christianity’s modern enfeeblement has not happened suddenly, but steadily and unstoppably. Like the retreating Germans, Christians who have not succumbed to secularist thinking have been reduced to fighting rearguard battles which are necessarily designed to prevent matters becoming even worse. Any talk of ‘turning the tide’ is mere fantasy as things stand.
The German commander in Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, had an impossible task. Many of his original forces and their equipment were removed from him to tackle challenges elsewhere. He was left with minimal armament and transportation, and inferior troops who included people who lacked fighting spirit. Battles and wars cannot be won without suitable troops and resources. In modern times the dearth of suitable troops and resources has blighted the defence of Catholic principles which were under attack.
A fighting spirit requires strong commitment to one’s own side and/or conviction that defeat of the other side is essential. Christians of whichever denomination are, however, normally directed officially away from viewing events in terms of ‘sides,’ because ‘sides’ indicate the ogre of ‘division’, and contradict the preferred notions of ‘unity’ and ‘inclusion’. Emphasis on ‘unity’ has contributed to the disabling of Christians as a fighting force, because the desire for ‘unity’ requires suppression of attention to subjects on which people are known to lack unity of belief and outlook. Therefore, when secularists attack, aversion to conflict hampers effective counter-action. Uncontroversially-‘safe’ activities seem to receive much more favour than ones which directly resist the advance of secularism.
Thus we have the opinion that the Church’s proper role is to concentrate on tending wounds. War-wounded will, however, keep coming until the war is won (or ends by compromise). In Paris in August 1944, General von Choltitz used two of his four tanks in trying to force surrender by rebels in the police headquarters. The tanks’ ammunition was capable of putting holes through the building, but caused few casualties among the rebels, and therefore the attack failed. The war between secularism and Catholic morality requires attacking ideas, not people. Our ammunition is designed to blow holes in contra-Catholic principles, and sometimes it does that, but ‘scoring points’ in debates is not enough. General von Choltitz knew that damaging a building was not enough. He needed to remove the rebels. Similarly, opponents of Catholic principle should be removed from positions of power, ideally by replacing them with reliably-authentic Catholics. Are you aware of any organised effort to do that?
Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery said that if a commander has no plan, he will find that he is being made to conform gradually to the enemy’s plan.[7] If Allied commanders had lacked enough interest in the conflict(s), and/or found that the troops were similarly-unenthusiastic and/or mutinous, the Second World War’s outcome would have been different. Subsequent history shows that those military observations apply also in non-military contexts.
Winston Churchill said that “the survival of Christian civilisation” depended on the Battle of Britain, which was about to begin.[8] If, during the War, there was even mention of concepts which saturate society today (tolerance, diversity, inclusiveness, freedom of expression, choice, and such like), it is likely that the practical consequences which they were then intended to produce were ‘a world away’ from those which now have an iron grip on the thinking of legislators and policy-makers. For example, the “perverted science” of which Churchill warned[9] survived the War and is accepted as legitimate. There is reason to wonder how many people, among the probable-majority who approve of Nazism’s military defeat, recognise Nazi opinion and practice in some laws and policies of the ‘victorious’ Allies. The ‘victory,’ although cause for profound and permanent gratitude, did not have an enduring effect on predominant moral convictions. Despite the absence of military conflict in many places which were battlefields during the War, “the survival of Christian civilisation” is under no less threat than in 1940. It has ‘shrunk,’ been ‘hollowed-out,’ to such an extent that there is immense uncertainty about what it means. Without such certainty, there can be no judgment about whether and when it will triumph.
[1] “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraph 285.
[2] Ibid., paragraphs 407-409.
[3] Ibid., paragraph 409.
[4] Ibid., paragraph 909.
[5] “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraph 312.
[6] “D-Day,” Antony Beevor; Viking, 2009; p.509-517.
[7] “The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944-1945,” Alistair Horne, with David Montgomery; Pan Books, 1995, p.21.
[8] “Finest hour” speech, 18th June 1940.
[9] Ibid.