The great danger of Pacifism

                A great many people, and I am sad to note many clerics and prelates among them, fall prey to the error of pacifism. In practice, if not in profession, they value temporal peace, no matter how wretched the situation of Church and state, over even the most just of wars. A poignant example will suffice to illustrate this point.

Warriors for Christ

        In Mexico, in the 1920s, the masonic socialist government embarked on a campaign not of suppression, not of restriction, but of the absolute extermination of the Catholic Church in Mexico. Swayed by neither reason nor mercy, it carried out its dark purpose with a zeal which mirrored, in an inverted satanic way, that of the most fervent missionaries of salvation.

      But there were some who rose up in defiance, for God and Christendom! Amid the wreckage of churches and monasteries, amid the mutilated corpses of martyrs, the true sons of the Church Militant girded for battle.

 After years of war, and many great successes, they were suddenly defeated. This defeat came not with the speeding bullet, nor on the end of the bloodied bayonet.  It was not the government’s military might, nor even the aid and armaments sent by the US to aid the extermination, which brought this defeat.  It came from somewhere far more ignominious: within.  In a move which even today provokes righteous anger, the Bishops of Mexico signed a crippling and disadvantageous “peace” with the government. Threatened with excommunication, the Cristeros, as they had come to be known, laid down their arms.

      And what great boon did the Bishops receive for this? Did they receive assurance of the freedom and exaltation of Holy Mother Church? A Restoration of the rights of the faithful? Recompense for the slaughter and havoc wrought by the government forces? None of the above.  They received what amounted to little more than a promise of selective implementation of the anti-Catholic laws and statutes.

       And why did they do this? For “peace”.  They compromised the rights of the Church Militant. They abandoned the flock in their hour of great need. The betrayed their charge. And what did they gain by it? In the end, nothing.

                We must always take care to avoid repeating their error and falling into pacifism. For verily, there shall never be true peace on this earth, in this vale of tears. For Our Lord said: “I come not to bring peace, but the sword”. To compromise the rights of the Church for the sake of earthly peace is fall prey to utopianism.

      We are not here for peace; we are not here for comfort. We are at war, we were born into this war, and in this war we will die.  Our three-fold enemy, the world, the flesh and the devil, will hold out empty promises of earthly happiness, of peace. But to seize it, we must first compromise ourselves and the Church. And then, when we rush forward to catch hold of the promised peace, it is snatched away from our grasp. And we find that in our blind rush, we have gone over the edge of the abyss, and are plummeting into the fires of Gehenna.