Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Thursday, October 13, 2011
12:51 PM
I am by your side; I am keeping watch.
At least I hope I speak that truthfully. When we were children studying the history of vile deeds, I know we all asked ourselves how common, ordinary people no different from us in essentials, did--without dissent--deeds that most individuals would never contemplate for a moment. Genocide, rape, enslavement, apostasy.
One of the most chilling moments in the film Beyond the Gates, a vivid recounting of the atrocity of Rwanda, is when the English teacher at a religious school sees one of his Hutu friends after the blood bath has begun. He has known this man for some time; this person even worked for the church to which the school is connected. When the Englishman sees him again after the ethnic cleansing has begun, the man is covered with blood and wielding a machete. Even with the grace of the sacraments, he turned to unspeakable evil.
Will most always be united with grace. While God must always reach out for us, while we can do nothing of ourselves, we must choose to wake when He calls. A sort of spiritual drowsiness, a deliberate blindness, a surrender of one's reason and volition to a stronger agent is the only thing that can account for the Satanic manipulation of whole peoples. It is strange how often we choke on the submission due to God, yet we render it unto Lucifer quite readily. And all because he presents the act in the form of a bargain, and man thinks he retains his dignity merely because he got something for his soul.
Degenerate evil is fast becoming the theme of our day, and the call for a rescue against our bellicose animosity towards one another has become the anthem even of those who do not believe:
We must be awake! It is hard, especially in this epoch of multitudinous distractions, and even the five wise virgins of the parable dozed while waiting for the Bridegroom. We have drifted off ourselves, but now we must right our course.
The first step of waking is to open our eyes. Every one has talked with that friend who said, 'Of course, I'm listening to you...I'm just resting my eyes.' Indeed. She was soon napping after saying that. When we wake in the morning we open our eyes and draw the curtains immediately, letting the sun's light dispel our bodily lethargy. Well, what is the light of the soul?
Wisdom is the universal answer, but who is she? And why has her patronage not protected many purportedly wise men from committing diabolical acts? A brilliant musical scholar, Molly Gustin (who strove to show how right reason was wed with good music), was once explaining why the worst music was always made by the educated man. Only scholars produced atonal abominations after all. She said that their education, willfully twisted, had snuffed out the light of truth that a folk musician or even a rocker still retains in his natural state: 'You have to go the university and became an intellectual in order to be perverted.' she gleefully teased her students.
So both the simple brute and the erudite ninny may be drowsing in moral torpitude. Then who is Wisdom, and where may we find her? How can we obtain her when she is found?
Well, the man who has truly awakened himself in mind, heart, and soul, will first say that wisdom cannot be obtained. Remember the ancient image of Wisdom as Athena. She is an armoured woman, and she would skewer any mortal that dared to make her his slave. You bear her yoke; she does not bear yours. The Renaissance made man 'the measure of all things', and until that error is unlearned, we cannot even hope to begin the journey to the light.
And in the multitude of the elect she shall have praise, and among the blessed she shall be blessed, saying: I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures: I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea, And have stood in all the earth: and in every people, And in every nation I have had the chief rule: And by my power I have trodden under my feet the hearts of all the high and low: and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord. (Ecclesiasticus XXIV:4-11)
Humility is the prequisite condition for receiving wisdom. Without it, we may gain knowledge, but will not otherwise profit from any study. For proud creatures, such as fallen human beings, humility has always been hard, but at least it was properly held as a virtue in many creeds and cultures of the past. The postmodern First World however has thoroughly rejected meekness in all its forms, particularly where it concerns feminine-like submission.
The idea of femininity in a position of governance is a concept not to be countenanced by the movers of our times, be they men or women. 'Feminists' did the world a great injustice in choosing to agree with the apostatized West that femininity was of no value and that it was only in imitating man, woman could achieve real worth.
The Catholic neurologist and psychiatrist, Karl Stern, explained the problem thus:
The problem of activism--a lack of balance between action and contemplation--is said to be characteristic of our time...Now whenever we psychiatrists have an opportunity to observe this kind of person as a patient, we find at the bottom of it all a maternal conflict and a rejection of the feminine. (Stern, The Flight from Woman, Chapter I: Introduction)
A 'maternal' conflict. And what is the maternal conflict of our age? Whose motherly voice have we refused to hear? What enlightenment have we refused from fair Wisdom?
Either one believes in a thing, or one does not, so rather than attempting to set the supports for a bridge in the abyss, I shall try to leap it.
It has been ninety-four years now today that we, both the low and the high of humanity, have chosen to ignore the requests of the Lady of Fatima. That non-Catholics have done so is understandable (even with the well-documented miracle that occurred in Cova de Iria, Portugal on this day in 1917). But that Churchmen and the faithful have done so? Granted, one is not obliged to believe in private revelation. One is also not obliged to exercise his body, illumine his mind, or love from the heart in order to stay alive, but such lack of exertion is generally frowned upon by mankind in general.
So what is one to say of the actions of the Vicar of Christ in 1960 in refusing the request of Fatima? Well, nothing in fact. It is impossible to pronounce on the plans of the Lord's anointed, for there is no way of knowing what instruction he might have received from the Holy Spirit. We have never sat in the Chair of Peter. Yet, as we are meant to pray for the Pontiff, we must be alert in some way to what duties he may have to perform. It is necessary for us to know when to double our mortifications for his sake, to know when the lone, white-robbed figure most earnestly needs our prayers to strengthen his fortitude. In that sense, while we may draw no conclusions, we must to some extent ruminate about the duties of a pontificate.
Now in 1962, a certain spirit was about to be unleashed upon the world from the Roman Catholic Church, and we have come to call it the 'Spirit of Vatican II.' When someone finds the good fruits of that spirit, they must write of it. Until then, the faithful will suffer from its effects (whether consciously or no), and those outside the Faith will see it as a sign of the Church's eventual collapse.
Papa Roncalli of course did not envision such an effect from his Council. Father Malachi Martin, in spite of what that priest's detractors have said, believed completely in Pope John XXIII's good intentions and wrote this of the kindly pope:
...May...during the second session of the Council. By then, Pope John knew that the Council was out of his control; his agenda for a deep renewal of activist faith in the Church had been set on a course the Pontiff had not foreseen, and it would serve someone else's agenda instead. And he also knew that he would have no time to alter that fact. One June 3, Angelo Roncalli died in his faith and his regrets. (The Keys of This Blood, Book II: The Geopolitics of Faith, Chapter XXX: Papal Training Ground: Under the Sign of Solidarność)
One particular regret may have reached as far back as 1960, when the behest of Our Lady, penned by the hand of a nun who had been a simple shepherdess, was refused by His Holiness. Whether that is true, it must have struck the Pope as very strange with the Polish Primate, Stefan Wyszyński, later approached him with a request bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Madonna's in the very midst of the Second Vatican Council.
Mainly...Wyszyński wanted to urge upon Pope John that he dedicate the Council, the bishops of the Church, and the laity of the world, whose servants they were, to the same bond of servitude to Mary that the Cardinal was preparing in Poland...
...it was nonetheless widely known by now that Mary had called for dedication of more or less the same kind Wyszyński was urging on Papa Roncalli; and that she had apparently done so for more or less the same georeligious and geopolitical reasons that had motivated Wyszyński.
...Roncalli listened with indulgence and interest...and admitted that if he had heard Wyszyński out before he had made and implemented his decision, he might have acted differently. But his attitude to Wyszyński's urgings was the same as it had been when he had first read the secret instructions of Fatima in 1960...was that this time ''our time as Pope'' was not the time for such an act of dedication. Had the Cardinal been privy to the full contents of the ''three Fatima secrets," he might have wondered if there would be another time. (ibid.)
The heads of great men have of late not steered the barque of the world very well. Perhaps, it is time the Immaculate Heart of the Woman Clothed with the Sun took the helm, and we might begin to cede control to her in honouring this day and the bidding connected with it: pray the rosary.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
In June 1863 after more than two years of bloody conflict the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee commanding, slips across the Potomac to begin the invasion of the North...Their objective is to draw the Union army out into the open where it can be destroyed...General Lee knows that a letter has been prepared by the Southern government; a letter which offers peace. It is to be placed on the desk of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States the day after Lee has destroyed the Army of the Potomac somewhere north of Washington... (Opening Narration: Gettysburg, 1993 [emphasis mine])
Surely there are few literal pacifists living on this earth. The majority of us would acknowledge the necessity of violence in the case of self-defense or the defense of others. To feel one's self in danger invokes all the natural instincts necessary to commit physical evils in order to prevent moral evils. Love, which moves us to will the good of another, brings other persons into that realm of one's own being which we wish always to protect. It may even be more intense than the attachment one has to one's literal self. The more loving the husband and father, the more tender the wife and mother, and the more devoted the brother or sister, the more capable they are of turning viciously on a wicked aggressor in a way which they would never even wish their loved ones to witness.
This is rather self-evident to anyone who has truly loved. What is not self-evident is when the ratiocinations of which man alone is capable projects beyond our emotive, animal instincts and thinks of defense in the light of attack. Here the avenging hand falters. Less than two centuries ago, at just such a juncture, i.e., the Mason-Dixon line, thousands of the grey army of the Confederacy, though bound to their General Robert E. Lee with the most intense filial affection, laid down their arms and refused to go further:
'They had volunteered willingly enough to defend their homes,' a regimental historian explained, 'but some did not think it right to invade Northern territory.' _(Landscape Turned Red, Stephen Sears)
On such a subject as attacking in the name of defense, I am writing of something completely out of the reach of my personal sympathies, both as a woman and as one of melancholic temperament. When I hear of one nation bearing swords across the boundaries of another, I shudder with the same repugnance that I would feel on seeing an armed man entering another man's home. Yet, with my reason, I must acknowledge that my emotive reaction is not necessarily an intution of what is true. Reason must govern emotions. 'The heart can and should obey the head.'
An officer of the state must take in a dangerous criminal, even if he must do so before the man's wife and children. Her pleas and their tears must not alter the course of justice. However clemency may wish to provide for these unfortunates later, evil must not be tolerated to spare them pain. The sacredness of the threshold of hearth and home is not an absolute thing in the case of the individual. Nor is it the case with the State. A nation that has been bellicose against another is not often sufficiently rebuked by merely being defeated on the foreign soil where it had no right to go:
Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow... _Stonewall Jackson
The enemy must be pursued and soundly chastened. It is not enough to make a thief return his booty. He must give expiation for the evil in his act--providing some recompense to the injured party. He must be punished enough himself so that he shall never wish to commit the crime again.
Lee therefore justly overruled his generals in taking his army North. What seemed a desecration of the cause to some, was the best chance of ending the war and securing victory. Considerations of feeding the Confederate army and the hopes of impressing--even galvanizing--European allies also played a great part in the decision. The ability to carry a hard or even severe idea into act is the reason choleric men exist. Once vindicated by their minds, they see--and rightly see--that the time has come to lock up their hearts.
Lucy Maud Montgomery observed this well through one of her finest works. In her narrative, it is revealed that it is possible for a woman's husband to have a surgery that may restore his senses after years of living life only half-aware. The trouble is that he was an unkind, selfish, immoral bore beforehand, and his wife's life has at least been easier after her husband became an idiot. Anne naturally wishes to spare the wife, who is also her friend, but the men in her life come down against her:
"Oh, Captain Jim, I didn't think you'd say that," she exclaimed reproachfully. "I thought you wouldn't want to make more trouble for her."
Captain Jim shook his head. "I don't want to. I know how you feel about it, Mistress Blythe-- just as I feel meself. But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life--no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that--what it's right to do. I agree with the doctor. If there's a chance for Dick, Leslie should be told of it. There's no two sides to that, in my opinion."
"Well," said Anne, giving up in despair, "wait until Miss Cornelia gets after you two men."
"Cornelia'll rake us fore and aft, no doubt," assented Captain Jim. "You women are lovely critters, Mistress Blythe, but you're just a mite illogical. You're a highly eddicated lady and Cornelia isn't, but you're like as two peas when it comes to that. I dunno's you're any the worse for it. Logic is a sort of hard, merciless thing, I reckon." (Anne's House of Dreams, Chapter XXX: Leslie Decides)
Leslie's decision was one for the truth. In the end, it set her free. Ergo:
Surely there are few literal pacifists living on this earth. The majority of us would acknowledge the necessity of violence in the case of self-defense or the defense of others. To feel one's self in danger invokes all the natural instincts necessary to commit physical evils in order to prevent moral evils. Love, which moves us to will the good of another, brings other persons into that realm of one's own being which we wish always to protect. It may even be more intense than the attachment one has to one's literal self. The more loving the husband and father, the more tender the wife and mother, and the more devoted the brother or sister, the more capable they are of turning viciously on a wicked aggressor in a way which they would never even wish their loved ones to witness.
This is rather self-evident to anyone who has truly loved. What is not self-evident is when the ratiocinations of which man alone is capable projects beyond our emotive, animal instincts and thinks of defense in the light of attack. Here the avenging hand falters. Less than two centuries ago, at just such a juncture, i.e., the Mason-Dixon line, thousands of the grey army of the Confederacy, though bound to their General Robert E. Lee with the most intense filial affection, laid down their arms and refused to go further:
'They had volunteered willingly enough to defend their homes,' a regimental historian explained, 'but some did not think it right to invade Northern territory.' _(Landscape Turned Red, Stephen Sears)
On such a subject as attacking in the name of defense, I am writing of something completely out of the reach of my personal sympathies, both as a woman and as one of melancholic temperament. When I hear of one nation bearing swords across the boundaries of another, I shudder with the same repugnance that I would feel on seeing an armed man entering another man's home. Yet, with my reason, I must acknowledge that my emotive reaction is not necessarily an intution of what is true. Reason must govern emotions. 'The heart can and should obey the head.'
An officer of the state must take in a dangerous criminal, even if he must do so before the man's wife and children. Her pleas and their tears must not alter the course of justice. However clemency may wish to provide for these unfortunates later, evil must not be tolerated to spare them pain. The sacredness of the threshold of hearth and home is not an absolute thing in the case of the individual. Nor is it the case with the State. A nation that has been bellicose against another is not often sufficiently rebuked by merely being defeated on the foreign soil where it had no right to go:
Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow... _Stonewall Jackson
The enemy must be pursued and soundly chastened. It is not enough to make a thief return his booty. He must give expiation for the evil in his act--providing some recompense to the injured party. He must be punished enough himself so that he shall never wish to commit the crime again.
Lee therefore justly overruled his generals in taking his army North. What seemed a desecration of the cause to some, was the best chance of ending the war and securing victory. Considerations of feeding the Confederate army and the hopes of impressing--even galvanizing--European allies also played a great part in the decision. The ability to carry a hard or even severe idea into act is the reason choleric men exist. Once vindicated by their minds, they see--and rightly see--that the time has come to lock up their hearts.
Lucy Maud Montgomery observed this well through one of her finest works. In her narrative, it is revealed that it is possible for a woman's husband to have a surgery that may restore his senses after years of living life only half-aware. The trouble is that he was an unkind, selfish, immoral bore beforehand, and his wife's life has at least been easier after her husband became an idiot. Anne naturally wishes to spare the wife, who is also her friend, but the men in her life come down against her:
"Oh, Captain Jim, I didn't think you'd say that," she exclaimed reproachfully. "I thought you wouldn't want to make more trouble for her."
Captain Jim shook his head. "I don't want to. I know how you feel about it, Mistress Blythe-- just as I feel meself. But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life--no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that--what it's right to do. I agree with the doctor. If there's a chance for Dick, Leslie should be told of it. There's no two sides to that, in my opinion."
"Well," said Anne, giving up in despair, "wait until Miss Cornelia gets after you two men."
"Cornelia'll rake us fore and aft, no doubt," assented Captain Jim. "You women are lovely critters, Mistress Blythe, but you're just a mite illogical. You're a highly eddicated lady and Cornelia isn't, but you're like as two peas when it comes to that. I dunno's you're any the worse for it. Logic is a sort of hard, merciless thing, I reckon." (Anne's House of Dreams, Chapter XXX: Leslie Decides)
Leslie's decision was one for the truth. In the end, it set her free. Ergo:
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Œnone
Thus, I have at last come to understand the anniversary celebrated by Poles tomorrow. On 9 October, 1610 Polish squadrons, led by Hetman Stanisław Zolkiewski, entered the Kremlin. This was the culmination of a brilliant military campaign, which had seen such remarkable victories as the Battle of Kłuszyn, where 12,300 soldiers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth soundly defeated 48,000 Muscovites, near the place which today has taken a darker shade of meaning for Poles: Smoleńsk.
As with all military campaigns, there are causes and concerns as to the integrity and purity of both the idea and the execution of the war. Yet, when a man honours the victories of war, he does not assert that the conflict is sainted, but that the elements which were righteous should be honoured. Of course, that sentiment itself is not a sufficient justification. It is as emotive as repugnance for strife. The scrutiny of reason in the light of morality is the only thing that can justify honouring the bloody mess of war.
It had begun with Polish support of 'False Dmitri', one of the many who aspired to the Russian throne after the death of Ivan IV. This support came mainly from Poland's nobility and not her king. When he was killed in 1606, his followers were also massacred. This sparked the Polish invasion of Russian borders. Here, one may concede some measure of retaliation, but invasion? And why had it been necessary for Poles to support any particular contender for the tsardom to begin with? What right did they have to exacerbate Russia's 'time of troubles'?
Now one must go back further. If we begin with Ivan III, one witnesses the explosion of the Russian state's expansion, justifying Ivan's epithet: the 'gatherer of Russian lands.' One of the lands into which he had stepped to gather was Lithuania, from whom he wanted access to the Baltic Sea. His son, Vasili III continued this campaign of warring and annexing. They were unsuccessful however against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, though they had inflicted enough harm to give those two nations pause.
It should not suprise anyone, regardless of their sympathies, that Poland refused to recognize the vast state of Ivan IV, the successor of his father and grandfather in every way. That would have been political naïveté to the extreme of treason. And perhaps even more than politics, this matter concerned the Faith as well.
In 1569 Ruthenia (Ukraine) was annexed to Poland. Those who have read Polish history will have been overawed by her tolerance of other creeds, even in the midst of religious turmoil elsewhere on the continent. So in Ruthenia, the Roman Catholic Church conquered not by the sword, but by grace.
...the Ruthenians...began to compare the lamentable condition of their Church with the development and vitality of Catholicism and to turn their eyes towards Rome. The Ruthenian clergy were steeped in immorality and ignorance; the bishops made no scruple of setting their flocks an evil example, living in open concubinage, and practising the most brazen simony. Russian documents of the sixteenth century bear witness to this melancholy decay of the Orthodox Church in the Polish provinces and to the impossibility of applying any remedy. Face to face with this spiritual ruin, the Catholic Church, reinvigorated by the accession of Jesuit missionaries, was showing her immense religious and moral superiority. Some loyal and honourable members of the Orthodox clergy and laity gradually became convinced that only a return to the Roman obedience could secure for their Church anything like sound conditions. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15130a.htm)
This spawned the Union of Brest, which so overwhelmingly delighted Pope Clement VIII, that he sanctioned without reserve the preservation of the traditions of the Eastern Church, while simultaneously bring her back to the paternal fold of the Vicar of Christ. Russian prelates however did not recognize the embrace of those Latin and Ruthenian bishops. Could there be any reason for this other than that they had wished to bring the flock that had belonged to the Patriarchate of Constantinople into the Patriarchate of Moscow? Alas, that is the only explanation that makes sense, and as Ivan saw himself as a spiritual leader, as well as a temporal one, the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church anywhere would also be his subjects.
Thus, Polish interest in Russian succession is vindicated. Her retaliation for the murder of Poles taking that interest is justified. Her military campaign and diplomacy evinced in that time is a monument to human ability and should be marked with pride by her children. Whether the scope of her speculated ambitions in Russia were wise or just (some do claim Poland wanted to subjugate Russia to her commonwealth) is a matter for those who dote on the question 'What if?' As that query does not concern reality, it does not concern reason. If we do not cling to that, then we are left with naught but the bigotry of our own passions.
As with all military campaigns, there are causes and concerns as to the integrity and purity of both the idea and the execution of the war. Yet, when a man honours the victories of war, he does not assert that the conflict is sainted, but that the elements which were righteous should be honoured. Of course, that sentiment itself is not a sufficient justification. It is as emotive as repugnance for strife. The scrutiny of reason in the light of morality is the only thing that can justify honouring the bloody mess of war.
It had begun with Polish support of 'False Dmitri', one of the many who aspired to the Russian throne after the death of Ivan IV. This support came mainly from Poland's nobility and not her king. When he was killed in 1606, his followers were also massacred. This sparked the Polish invasion of Russian borders. Here, one may concede some measure of retaliation, but invasion? And why had it been necessary for Poles to support any particular contender for the tsardom to begin with? What right did they have to exacerbate Russia's 'time of troubles'?
Now one must go back further. If we begin with Ivan III, one witnesses the explosion of the Russian state's expansion, justifying Ivan's epithet: the 'gatherer of Russian lands.' One of the lands into which he had stepped to gather was Lithuania, from whom he wanted access to the Baltic Sea. His son, Vasili III continued this campaign of warring and annexing. They were unsuccessful however against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, though they had inflicted enough harm to give those two nations pause.
It should not suprise anyone, regardless of their sympathies, that Poland refused to recognize the vast state of Ivan IV, the successor of his father and grandfather in every way. That would have been political naïveté to the extreme of treason. And perhaps even more than politics, this matter concerned the Faith as well.
In 1569 Ruthenia (Ukraine) was annexed to Poland. Those who have read Polish history will have been overawed by her tolerance of other creeds, even in the midst of religious turmoil elsewhere on the continent. So in Ruthenia, the Roman Catholic Church conquered not by the sword, but by grace.
...the Ruthenians...began to compare the lamentable condition of their Church with the development and vitality of Catholicism and to turn their eyes towards Rome. The Ruthenian clergy were steeped in immorality and ignorance; the bishops made no scruple of setting their flocks an evil example, living in open concubinage, and practising the most brazen simony. Russian documents of the sixteenth century bear witness to this melancholy decay of the Orthodox Church in the Polish provinces and to the impossibility of applying any remedy. Face to face with this spiritual ruin, the Catholic Church, reinvigorated by the accession of Jesuit missionaries, was showing her immense religious and moral superiority. Some loyal and honourable members of the Orthodox clergy and laity gradually became convinced that only a return to the Roman obedience could secure for their Church anything like sound conditions. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15130a.htm)
This spawned the Union of Brest, which so overwhelmingly delighted Pope Clement VIII, that he sanctioned without reserve the preservation of the traditions of the Eastern Church, while simultaneously bring her back to the paternal fold of the Vicar of Christ. Russian prelates however did not recognize the embrace of those Latin and Ruthenian bishops. Could there be any reason for this other than that they had wished to bring the flock that had belonged to the Patriarchate of Constantinople into the Patriarchate of Moscow? Alas, that is the only explanation that makes sense, and as Ivan saw himself as a spiritual leader, as well as a temporal one, the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church anywhere would also be his subjects.
Thus, Polish interest in Russian succession is vindicated. Her retaliation for the murder of Poles taking that interest is justified. Her military campaign and diplomacy evinced in that time is a monument to human ability and should be marked with pride by her children. Whether the scope of her speculated ambitions in Russia were wise or just (some do claim Poland wanted to subjugate Russia to her commonwealth) is a matter for those who dote on the question 'What if?' As that query does not concern reality, it does not concern reason. If we do not cling to that, then we are left with naught but the bigotry of our own passions.
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Friday, February 25, 2011
The group and I were silently watching the TV screen as new footage of the Smoleńsk crash (filmed right after the catastrophe) splayed across the screen. The Polish anchorman's words splintered in my ears with as much cogency as the image of a shattered mirror. The report ended and the TV was muted as commercials began.
'What was the significance of that film footage? I know it was of the catastrophe, but I didn't understand what I was looking at.' I asked one whom I knew spoke English.
He responded: 'Well, there was no furrow. A plane crash should have plowed into the ground, leaving a huge ditch in its wake, as well as felling trees.' I felt a chill at this obvious fact, the momentum of a body that strikes the ground at a wrong angle--the abrasion such a thing ought to make against the earth and the long gash it ought to leave behind.
'There was also the lack of burning,' someone noted.
'You mean the fact that only the edges of the plane's pieces were charred?'
'Yes, and the lack of burnt soil and trees. They mentioned that the fuel in a plane ought to keep burning long after a crash.' He paused and squared his shoulders. 'They say it looks more like it exploded in the air, burning up the fuel, and then the pieces fell to earth.'
My stomach turned, and anger churned within it. So, the only media in Poland that would release this information was Ave Maria's channel? Did the secular media not even have secular interests at heart? I wondered what the great non-entities, Komorowski and Tusk, would have to say to about it. Leftist politicians before now had actually accused their fellow Poles of treason merely for wanting a Polish investigation into the death of the nation's president and the heads of the patriotic party of Poland. Marek Jurek, the pro-life politican who resigned from his position as Sejm marshall (the head speaker of parliament) in protest against his party's lukewarm committment to protecting the unborn, is one of the few such men surviving. Whenever I see him at Mass, I cannot but recollect that he is a man who would have been on that doomed plane, but for the convictions urging him to part ways with Kaczynski's twin brother.
Lech Kaczynski, the imperfect champion of Poland and the man whom the Leftist media most eagerly blamed for the catastrophe (citing his impatience to be at Katyń on time as the cause of the tragedy), may well be having the day of his legacy's exculpation soon. As I have written here before, I am less suspicious of Russia than I am of the EU, but the lack of transparency in the investigation's aftermath on Russia's part is troubling. Then again, what should one expect given Tusk's pathetic obsequiousness? In truth, I could as easily believe Tusk himself is responsible and was thus happy to let Russians investigate, obscuring whatever evidence that might bring Polish retribution on his empty head.
However, the above musing is mere conjecture. All that can be said in truth is that too little is known about the crash, that Poland's leaders behaved in a way no other nation's government would have had its president and elite had died, that Kaczynski was the thorn in the side of the EU and Russia alike, and that the new evidence obscures the calumnious explanation that fog and a fussy president brought about the second tragedy of Smoleńsk.
'What was the significance of that film footage? I know it was of the catastrophe, but I didn't understand what I was looking at.' I asked one whom I knew spoke English.
He responded: 'Well, there was no furrow. A plane crash should have plowed into the ground, leaving a huge ditch in its wake, as well as felling trees.' I felt a chill at this obvious fact, the momentum of a body that strikes the ground at a wrong angle--the abrasion such a thing ought to make against the earth and the long gash it ought to leave behind.
'There was also the lack of burning,' someone noted.
'You mean the fact that only the edges of the plane's pieces were charred?'
'Yes, and the lack of burnt soil and trees. They mentioned that the fuel in a plane ought to keep burning long after a crash.' He paused and squared his shoulders. 'They say it looks more like it exploded in the air, burning up the fuel, and then the pieces fell to earth.'
My stomach turned, and anger churned within it. So, the only media in Poland that would release this information was Ave Maria's channel? Did the secular media not even have secular interests at heart? I wondered what the great non-entities, Komorowski and Tusk, would have to say to about it. Leftist politicians before now had actually accused their fellow Poles of treason merely for wanting a Polish investigation into the death of the nation's president and the heads of the patriotic party of Poland. Marek Jurek, the pro-life politican who resigned from his position as Sejm marshall (the head speaker of parliament) in protest against his party's lukewarm committment to protecting the unborn, is one of the few such men surviving. Whenever I see him at Mass, I cannot but recollect that he is a man who would have been on that doomed plane, but for the convictions urging him to part ways with Kaczynski's twin brother.
Lech Kaczynski, the imperfect champion of Poland and the man whom the Leftist media most eagerly blamed for the catastrophe (citing his impatience to be at Katyń on time as the cause of the tragedy), may well be having the day of his legacy's exculpation soon. As I have written here before, I am less suspicious of Russia than I am of the EU, but the lack of transparency in the investigation's aftermath on Russia's part is troubling. Then again, what should one expect given Tusk's pathetic obsequiousness? In truth, I could as easily believe Tusk himself is responsible and was thus happy to let Russians investigate, obscuring whatever evidence that might bring Polish retribution on his empty head.
However, the above musing is mere conjecture. All that can be said in truth is that too little is known about the crash, that Poland's leaders behaved in a way no other nation's government would have had its president and elite had died, that Kaczynski was the thorn in the side of the EU and Russia alike, and that the new evidence obscures the calumnious explanation that fog and a fussy president brought about the second tragedy of Smoleńsk.
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About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.