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This 26 page statement by the Canadian Religious Conference has been making the rounds recently. The document notes several issues, and then lists things recognized, regretted, and hoped for about each in the Canadian Church. Though reading it in its entirety is liable to cause brain damage, I think a few classic lines bear repetition, so here is lent-appropriate selection:
- [We recognize] That communal celebrations of reconciliation with general absolution are the occasion of a beautiful catechesis on the mercy of God.
- [We regret] The unconditional alignment of our Church with directives issued from Rome: the disappearance of the practice of general absolution in communal celebrations;
- [We regret] The prohibition, by Roman authorities, from holding communal celebrations of penance with general absolution despite the fact that the People of God had expressed their positive support for this practice.
- [We hope] That our Bishops intervene with Roman authorities to seek the recognition and restoration of the practice of general absolution, at the very least during high times of the liturgical year: Advent and Lent.
I think I finally understand their motto, “Together for a reconciled world“.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Father Emil Kapaun:
‘Simple kindness and breathtaking courage’
Chaplain’s legend through the eyes of fellow soldiers
“Do not fear your executioner, but prove yourself worthy of your brothers…”
– from Second Book of Maccabees, repeated by Chaplain Emil Kapaun to fellow soldiers just before his death in a Communist prison camp.
The memories glisten in Herb Miller’s eyes.
The 75-year-old Korean War veteran sits on a folding chair in front of the Father Emil Kapaun Memorial on a cloudy spring day in Pilsen, Kan. The wind off the vast plains to the west blows through his wispy white hair. He weeps openly as he tells his tale.
“We were trying to get back to battalion headquarters when the Chinese and North Koreans attacked us,” he recalls. “I was hit in the leg by a hand grenade, and then I got hit again in the hand.”
As Miller lay helpless, face down in a ditch, a Chinese soldier stood over him and aimed a rifle at the back of his head.
Father Emil Kapaun’s heroics on the battlefield earned him the
Distinguished Service Cross and the Bronze Star. Here he helps
a wounded soldier. He is the soldier on the right with a white cross
on his helmet.
“He was going to shoot me,” Miller says with a grimace. “Then there came Chaplain Kapaun from across the road – bravest man I ever saw. He pushed that guy aside and picked me up. I don’t know why they didn’t kill him.”
Over the next two months, as the captured GIs were driven mercilessly toward a prisoner-of-war camp in the mountains overlooking Manchuria, Father Kapaun carried Miller every step of the way.
Miller pauses, shakes his head and swallows: “I don’t know where he got his strength. I kept telling him to put me down, but he said, ‘No, if I put you down, they’ll shoot you.’ He just kept going. How he did it I’ll never know.”
* * *
Father Kapaun, who attended Conception Abbey’s high school and college from 1930 to 1936, died of starvation and pneumonia in a squalid Communist prisoner-of-war camp. He was 35.
Today, 50 years later, he is a legend in military circles and in his home Diocese of Wichita. The U.S. government awarded Father Kapaun the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Vatican declared him a “Servant of God,” the first step toward sainthood.
Miller’s story of the heroic chaplain is one of hundreds brought back from Korea by the surviving members of the 8th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division. Father Kapaun’s legend began in July 1950, on the battlefields near the 38th parallel. The stories flow and overlap, some of quiet, simple acts of kindness, others of breathtaking courage.
This from Gen. Willard Latham of Arlington, Tex.: “We’d be under heavy enemy fire and then you’d see the Father come up to the line with that rusty old carbine he probably never fired and a white cross on his helmet. He had canteens all around his pistol belt and he’d go from foxhole to foxhole offering water and prayers to each soldier. He called it vespers.”
Once, Father Kapaun crawled out into a field during a firefight to pull a wounded American to safety. North Korean gunners missed him, but a sniper’s bullet blasted the corncob pipe from his mouth.
Latham said the priest exhibited an exasperating nonchalance when bullets were flying.
“When you are in a firefight, unless you’re a damn fool, you take cover when possible,” Latham laughs. “He didn’t. I guess he thought he was bulletproof.”
* * *
Latham described Father Kapaun as an enigma, whose heroics belied a quiet and humble nature.
Before witnessing Father Kapaun in combat, Latham says he would have described the priest as a gentle man.
“I hate to apply this to a man, but he was almost sweet.”
Even the enemy experienced the storied Kapaun compassion. According to former medics Romie Menarski, of Grafton, Wis., and Dr. Raymond Skeehan, of Denver, Colo., it was Father Kapaun who cared for captured enemy soldiers and volunteered to bury their dead.
“I’m sure a lot of these soldiers were like ours,” Skeehan said. “They didn’t want to be there. They were human beings, sons of God. That’s the way he thought.”
* * *
In a passage from William Maher’s biography of Father Kapaun, Shepherd in Combat Boots, Captain Joseph O’Connor recalled a day when no one in the division could locate the chaplain.
O’Connor found him in an abandoned Korean hut with an old ammo crate for a desk and an ammunition box for a seat. He had nearly 600 note cards before him, each with the name of a soldier who had been killed and the address of the soldier’s family.
“He was writing a personal letter to each of the next of kin,” O’Connor recalled. “This, to the best of my knowledge, is definitely not required of any army chaplain.”
During one especially heated battle, Father Kapaun approached O’Connor as artillery shells were exploding everywhere and the unit was in danger of being captured. He told the captain that he wanted to say Mass at a front-line position.
“Father, things are pretty hot here at present and I don’t think you should be up here,” O’Connor replied. But the priest persisted. Father Kapaun chose a spot near the front line and a group of Catholic soldiers gathered around him. The Mass progressed as shells exploded 150 yards away. As Maher wrote, “the men were ready to run for cover, but Kapaun ignored the danger and continued praying.” O’Connor later contended that the enemy was deliberately firing shells at the makeshift Mass.
* * *
Born in the spring of 1916 on a hardscrabble farm in the Flint Hills of Kansas, Emil Kapaun was nurtured in the tight-knit Bohemian community of Pilsen. The eldest son of Enos and Bessie Kapaun, he was a quiet, hard-working boy, skilled with his hands and superior at his studies. Young Emil was nervous about appearing in front of other pupils and was never much of a leader.
From early on, the focal point of Emil’s life was the parish church of St. John Nepomucene. When he wasn’t working on his father’s farm or playing in a nearby creek, he served daily Mass and helped out around the church. St. John’s pastor, Father John Skelnar, had his eye on Emil from an early age, hoping the boy might become the parish’s first candidate for the priesthood. In 1930, Father Skelnar persuaded the Kapauns to send their son to Conception for his final two years of high school and even offered to help pay the tuition.
Father Walter Heeney, whom Kapaun befriended when they attended Conception College together, remembered Emil as a serious young man, an honor roll student, who never stood out in the crowd.
But he also had a mischievous side. Father Walter likes to tell of the time when the school’s demanding chemistry teacher, Father Benedict Villiger, prepared a test tube of chemicals for each pupil and asked them to identify the contents by the end of the week. The professor listed the answers in his own unique shorthand and tacked the list to the inside of a closet door. Kapaun, who had deciphered the old monk’s scribbling when he took the class the year before, deciphered the shorthand and gave his friend the answers.
“He agreed,” Father Walter recalls, “that this way of speeding up the work would be quite effective without the ethical problem of doing any great harm.”
After graduating from Conception and completing his theology studies at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, Emil Kapaun was ordained June 9, 1940, and returned to his home parish to assist Father Skelnar. With the arrival of World War II, the patriotic young priest asked to be assigned to military duty. Instead, in 1943, Bishop Christian Herman Winkelmann appointed him pastor, replacing the retiring Father Skelnar.
The following year the bishop relented and Father Kapaun became Chaplain Kapaun. He served out the end of World War II in India and Burma, subsequently earned his master’s degree in education and returned to Kansas in April 1948 for his final parish assignment. But seven months later, Father Kapaun followed his heart and, with his bishop’s blessing, returned to uniform. On July 18, 1950, Father Kapaun and the members of the 1st Cavalry Division crossed the Sea of Japan and made an amphibious landing on Korean soil.
* * *
Father Kapaun’s fateful journey toward martyrdom took a dramatic turn on Nov. 1, 1950 – All Saints Day – at Unsan. The widely dispersed and undermanned U.S. forces were overwhelmed and surrounded by Chinese Communist troops.
Father Kapaun writes a letter to his mother. The chaplain often
left out his heroic feats so his mother wouldn’t worry.
During the American retreat, the chaplain continually ran back into enemy fire to drag wounded soldiers to safety. Amid heavy hand-to-hand combat, he assembled about 30 wounded in a 20-foot-square dugout abandoned by North Korean troops.
By the morning of Nov. 2, as recounted in Maher’s book, the dead bodies of Americans were scattered around the valley. The chaplain and another soldier stacked more than 100 corpses and there were many more they couldn’t reach. Throughout the day, Father Kapaun scanned the battlefield. Whenever he spotted a wounded American, he crawled out and dragged him to safety. For others he would dig shallow trenches to protect them from enemy fire. By the end of the day he had saved 15 men.
That evening, the situation grew desperate as the besieged Americans learned that no rescue efforts could penetrate the Chinese and North Korean forces. They were on their own.
The dugout full of wounded was by now 150 yards outside of the battalion’s defensive position. The Chinese rushed the American line six times. As the US troops ran out of ammunition, they resorted to throwing rocks at the enemy. Soldiers yelled for the chaplain to run, but he refused. As the Chinese entered the dugout full of wounded, they found Father Kapaun administering last rites to a dying soldier. The priest stood and confronted the Chinese soldiers and convinced them not to hurt the men under his care.
Of the 800 men of Father Kapaun’s battalion, approximately 600 were either killed or captured by Chinese Communists. Two months later the captured GIs were starving and dying at Camp No. 5 at Pyoktong.
* * *
The march to Pyoktong has been compared to the infamous Burma Death March of World War II. Americans who stumbled or fell behind were summarily executed. Frostbite, dysentery and beatings at the hands of their captors weakened the American ranks considerably. Once they arrived at the camp, conditions turned from unbearable to atrocious.
Filth, a diet of only about 450 grams of unshelled corn a day, and the extreme cold of the mountain prison ravaged mind and body.
Col. William McClain of Norcross, Ga., spent three years in Pyoktong. For the first seven months he slept beside Chaplain Kapaun on the floor of the prison barracks.
“We were all starving, and we could run our hands through our hair and come away with a handful of lice,” McClain remembers. “Talking about food and picking lice took up all our time. I remember Father would say, Hey Bill, how many lice did you get today and I’d say, Father, I got 85. He smiled and said, Well, Bill, I got 125.”
* * *
In the first six months of 1951, 1,700 American prisoners died. Corpses were stacked eight feet high in the prison compound. Nonetheless, the priest remained resourceful.
“Father Kapaun volunteered for every burial detail,” McClain recalled. “He’d take the soiled clothes from the dead men, spend countless hours washing them in the icy river, and then give them to somebody who needed them.”
It was the little things he did, said McClain, that bolstered the prisoners’ spirits.
McClain smiles as he tells of the chaplain looking all over camp for a piece of tin, which he fashioned into a pan. Then he scrounged for wood, started a fire and heated melted snow.
When the men woke in the mornings, Father Kapaun would pass out cups of heated water and say with a grin, “Here you go, fellas, hot coffee.”
“He was a guy who kept his hands and his mind busy,” McClain says. “He was always active. He gave us hope when things were hopeless.”
The prisoners soon came to know Father Kapaun as “the Good Thief,” for his covert forays in the night. At risk of being beaten or even shot by guards, he would sneak into the surrounding fields or scurry around the prison camp in search of food stored by the North Koreans and Chinese.
Little of what he gathered went into his own stomach. In fact, Father Kapaun hastened his own death by giving away his clothing and food, which weakened his resistance to pneumonia and other diseases. He was further slowed by an ankle injury and an infection from a wood chip that struck him in the eye.
But it didn’t stop him from venturing out in the dark to visit “his boys.” A quick prayer, some words of encouragement and he limped off again to the next building.
Herb Miller remembers the chaplain had a knack for finding tobacco: “When he came to us at night, he’d light up that pipe of his and pass it around. We’d each take a puff, then we’d say a prayer and he’d move on.”
In the daylight hours, Father Kapaun openly disobeyed the Communist ban on religious expression by holding outdoor prayer services. On sunny days he would sit outside wearing his priest’s stole, the trademark pipe clenched between his teeth, and a smile on his face, wishing a good afternoon to all who passed.
“He never posed as a holy man, but when you were with him you thought of God,” McClain explained. “You knew he’d do everything in his power for his fellow man.”
It came with risks. When he was caught stealing firewood, Father Kapaun was forced to strip off his clothes and stand for hours in the bitter cold.
Miller recalls seeing him standing on a hill in the officer’s compound, one side of his face black with bruises from a beating he’d endured for swiping food.
“That was the last time I saw him,” Miller said.
* * *
The sub-zero temperatures, starvation and abuse took their toll. Father Kapaun’s health deteriorated rapidly. He hobbled on a crutch because of a blood clot in his leg, his lungs clouded with pneumonia and malnutrition devoured his flesh. But McClain insists that his friend’s compassion and faith never wavered.
“He mentioned to me that a situation such as we were in would bring out the best and the worst in men,” McClain wrote years later. “His POW status was probably the ultimate challenge of his life and he met it with distinction.”
Perhaps Father Kapaun’s most indelible virtue in the eyes of fellow POWs was his amazing capacity for forgiveness.
When a Chinese officer accused him of spreading anti-Communist propaganda, Father Kapaun simply smiled and said it was “Christian love” he was spreading and promised to pray for his interrogator’s soul. When two American soldiers, after hours of torture, falsely told the Communists what they wanted to hear – that the chaplain was instigating rebellion among the prisoners – Father Kapaun was the first to rush forward and comfort them, saying, “You never should have suffered for a moment trying to protect me.”
And in the end, when the Chinese cut off all medical care and deprived him of food, the chaplain was heard whispering the Gospel passage, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.”
* * *
In May 1951, Father Kapaun’s lungs began to rattle and he drifted in and out of delirium. Soldiers caring for him listened as he babbled about his childhood in Kansas, his family and his friends from Conception.
Despite the protests of his fellow prisoners, the Chinese announced that they would be taking the chaplain to their hospital, a destination the Americans called the “Dying Place,” because few ever returned from it.
Before he was taken away, Father Kapaun asked Lieutenant Ralph Nardella to take over his duties of leading the Catholic prisoners in reciting the rosary and reading from the Bible. He asked another soldier to “tell my bishop I died a happy death.”
He urged the broken-hearted GIs to dedicate their lives to God and warned one soldier that if he didn’t take care of his marital problems, “I’ll come back and kick your butt.”
Father Kapaun died two days later, May 23, 1951. He was buried in a mass grave on the Yalu River. Refusing his final request, the Chinese prevented the Americans from praying over their chaplain’s grave. That spring the Chinese plowed the field where he was buried and planted a garden.
* * *
This year, on Pentecost weekend, hundreds of people gathered in Wichita and in Father Kapaun’s hometown of Pilsen to celebrate his legacy. His family, bishops, generals, political leaders, old friends and the faculty, staff and students of Kapaun/Mt. Carmel High School were on hand as the chaplain, was awarded the Korean Service Medal from the Korean Government. And tears flowed the next day as the town of Pilsen unveiled a life-size statue of him.
In the crowd was Herb Miller, who to this day thinks about the chaplain every time his ankle hurts. Also present were Bill McClain and Willard Latham, both of whom measure each man of the cloth they meet against the lofty standard set by Father Kapaun. Romie Menarski, the medic who served at the chaplain’s last Mass – on the night of the priest’s capture – spent the day choking back emotions. At his side: Dr. Raymond Skeehan, who still has dreams about the priest.
Five decades since they last saw him, Father Kapaun is still present in the life of each man.
Thanks to the chaplain’s example, McClain savors the little things, like turning on a light switch, or the feel of warm water. Skeehan strives to emulate the compassion and humility of a priest who “never put on high-falutin’ airs.” Latham has gained a deeper appreciation for true courage. Miller became a devout Christian who prays for Chaplain Kapaun every Sunday.
And as for Menarski, he says he feels an obligation to live up to what the chaplain did for him and other GIs.
Dropping his chin and fighting back tears, he says, “I need to earn it.”
“Have I been a good man, a good husband, a good father?” he asks himself.
“I’m still working on it every day.”
From First Lieutenant Dowdy:
He wore the cross of the Chaplain branch instead of the crossed rifles of the infantry, but he was, I think, the best foot soldier I ever knew, and the kindest. His name was Emil Joseph Kapaun, and he was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. The men he served in the prison camps of Korea didn’t care whether he was Catholic or Baptist, Lutheran or Presbyterian. To all of them, Catholic, Protestant and Jew alike, and to men who professed no formal faith at all, he was simply “FATHER,” and each of them, when in trouble came, drew courage and hope and strength from him
He’s dead now, murdered by the Red Chinese, and his body lies in an unmarked grave somewhere along the Yalu. The hundreds of men who knew and loved him have not forgotten him. I write this so folks at home can know what kind of a man he was, and what he did for us, and how he died.
The first thing I want to make clear is this, he was a priest of the Church, and a man of great piety, but there was nothing ethereal about him, nothing soft or unctious or holier than thou. He wore his piety in his heart. Outwardly he was all GI, tough of body, rough of speech sometimes, full of the wry humor of the combat soldier. In a camp where men had to steal or starve, he was the most accomplished food thief of them all. In a prison whose inmates hated their communist captors with a bone deep hate, he was the most unbending enemy of Communism, and when they tried to brainwash him, he had the guts to tell them to their faces that they lied. He pitied the Reds for their delusions, but he preached no doctrine of turn-the-other-cheek. I came upon him once sitting in the sunshine by the road. There was a smile on his face and a look of happiness in his eyes.
I hated to break in on his meditations, but I needed cheering, so I asked him” What are you thinking of, Father?” “Of that happy day,” he said, “when the first American tank rolls down the road, then I’m going to catch that little so and so, Comrade Sun, and kick his butt right over the compound fence.”
Father always spoke in parallels, relating the sufferings that Christ endured to those we were forced to bear. As he spoke, the agony in the garden, the road to Calvary, the Crucifixion, became very real to us who bore our own crosses of blows, and cold, and illness, and starvation. Christ endured, he told us, and we, too, must endure, for the day of our resurrection from the tomb of the prison camp would surely come, as surely as the stone was rolled away from the sepulchre. It is because of these sermons, which gave hope and courage, and food he stole for us, and the care he gave us when we were sick, many of us came back home who never would have survived our long ordeal without him.
joe six pack, I thank you so much for sharing all those beautiful, awe-inspiring, and “heroic” stories with us. I am from Corea; so the story of Fr. Kapaun especially touched my heart. I recently got back from a short trip to Corea, and whilst I was there, Iosephus and I had a chance to visit The Corean War Memorial. We were very impressed to see on the corridors, as we walked in, the name of every member of the UN force - the bulk of whom were from the U. S. . The museum was excellent and the most impressive thing of all was the wording (which instantly brought us to tears whilst reading it) above the thousands of names of the fallen:
“Our nation honours her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met.”
We, South Coreans, are still extremely grateful - even to this day to the United States (and Great Britain, and other UN countries) who fought for us and saved us from communism.
Thanks Catherine.
I myself served one-year in Korea (not during the war! 1997-98)
Even 40 years after the armistice it was still apparent to me why we were there: preserving freedom.
We need resist the peaceniks even in our own Church and continue to pursue foreign/military policies that serve to undermine the cruel communist regime of North Korea.
about the civil war, i was brought up in the north and have always assumed that the north was the good guys and the south was bad. but, after giving it further thought, and spending 8 years down south, i think that in light of the suffering and death, it wasn’t worth it and it wasn’t just. the biggest reason being the precedent it set: that ultimately, the national government trumps local authority. this inherently goes against the catholic doctrine of subsidiary.
granted, the national government has a role to ensure the states’ laws are just, but in a secular hedonistic culture like we have today, the idea of justice existing as an objective fact disappears and is replaced by justice founded on sentimentality and majority consensus.
now, as the result of the civil war, abortion is protected as a fundamental right by the national government. if this was decided on by the states, i think most states would have it made illegal, or at least made it very restricted.
war is always a failure. it is easy to glorify and romanticize war as good vs. evil, but God loved those irish soldiers as much as the confederates, of whom many were catholic. in fact several american bishops went to the pope to find support for the south. besides, the biggest reason the south lost was because of their economy.
war, while being permitted, must always be just. and ultimately the church sets the guidelines on how to decide if a war is just or not. i would be willing to say that if we critically analyze american wars according to the just war doctrine, that many would be considered unjust -especially the war in iraq.
Lt. Col Hal Moore, Catholic and Distringuished Service Cross winner, praying in a chapel before shipping out to Vietnam, “…And please ignore the enemy’s heathen prayers and help let us blow up the little bastards.”
I’m sure this makes Cardinal Martino and Bishop Gumbleton shudder!
“war is always a failure”
anon,
tell that to Catherine and her family living in peace and freedom because of war.
of course if the present peacenik mindset prevailed prior to Vatican II, instead of Fr. Kapaun, we’d have Fr. Limpwrist, and instead of warfare against the commies, we’d have “dialogue” with the likes of Kim Il Jung.
Seems to me that saying “war is always a failure,” is something like saying “if only Adam had not sinned…”
Maybe Anon means that the fact of having to go to war always indicates some kind of failure?
rp,
good point.
Joseph Sobran made a similar ambiguous statement a while back, “war is socialism.”
Incidentally, there is presently a statue of Fr. Corby, CSC at about this spot on the battlefield. He later went on to become president of Notre Dame.
Clara and I were there just last year, and I have a picture of Clara posing with the statue.
Dr A,
Is the statue in the form of Fr. Corby giving absolution, similar to the picture in the post?
Yep, sure is. I found a picture online here:
http://www.brotherswar.com/Perspective-1Pic.htm
let me clarify, war is failure in the sense that sometimes we have to resort to violence to protect the innocent. it is a consequence of sin, and more times then not, causes more problem than solves. for instance, pat buchanan made a pretty good case that WWII didn’t solve anything. in the end, poland was still taken by the commies and france, england, and the u.s. just let it happen. and the ironic thing is that germany’s invasion of poland started the war.
basically, it’s possible that we might have been better off not getting involved in WWII; we could have let russian and germany fight it out and japan was ready to sign a peace treaty without the necessity of dropping nukes. it was our call for unconditional surrender which killed so many innocent people.
wwi and the civil war were unjust, stupid wars. you don’t go killing hundreds of thousands of americans over slavery. and there was no glory for those irish who were treated like 2nd class citizens anyways to kill other americans over a problem that would have worked itself out on its own, especially in light of the cotton gin and future advances in technology.
if you are so egar to support war, please enlist in the army and put your zeal to good use. we made a huge mess in iraq over this same kind of nonsense.
“Father William Corby, their chaplain, turned to the colonel and asked for permission to address the men. . . He also reminded them of the noble cause for which they fought”
And what was this noble cause?
“The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.” by H.L. Mencken
Quote above is in last paragraph:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/703308/posts
H.L. Mencken on Abraham Lincoln
I figure many of the blog’s distinguished personnel realize what I am about to say but I would like to anyways:
Communal absolutions are great if that is the only means to address large numbers of faithful who have the intention to confess individually but are unable due to impending death or danger.
Communal penance services are great; but they presume that individuals would confess to the priest and recieve absolution individually.
People are weird when they break off from the Church; plain and simple.
PS-Scholastic and Victoria, check out Chapter 19 of “The Spiritual Combat and a Treatise On Peace of Soul” by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli (note: This book was used by St. Francis de Sales who attributed it to helping him spiritually).
Of course I don’t know much about this apparent “statement” by these Canadian Bishops so if in fact this isn’t exactly correct I recant my above statement regarding weirdness and breaking from the Church.
Johnboy316,
Thanks, I’ll look it over.
But please be advised, I’m a Catholic, not a Jansenist, and thus see the world through Catholic eyes, and so will likewise read it with those same Catholic eyes.
JSP and Anon,
Your comment reminded me that it has been already 52 years (as of 2006) since the 38 degree parallel was agreed. .
Anon, although I understand (and agree with) some of the points you made, I cannot agree that “war is always a failure”. I was growing up in a family where my dad, who experienced the tragic Corean war and served the country with the U.S. Army later on, constantly reminded me that “war is” not “always a failure” - that the USA and its allies did the right and noble thing in throwing the forces of communism out of my country.
The wording, “Our Nation Honours Her Sons And Daughters Who Answered The Call To Defend A Country They Never Knew And A People They Never Met” sets the tone for our deep appreciation towards the USA who lost thousands and risked thousands more (33, 642) defending, protecting, or liberating people whom “they never met”. Same in Iraq. ‘Freedom is not free’; the implication is that war can be necessary and justified. I who am from the country who’s technically still in the war know for a fact that ‘the price of freedom is eternal vigilance’.
So I do not doubt that JSP was in Corea to “preserve freedom”; no matter how many other GIs were there rather to serve other people’s interest, or even if, for some cases, “preserving freedom” wasn’t really their best interest. For, the matter of the fact is, South Corea isn’t a communist country, and North Coreans are not coming down, thanks to the U.S. Army who has remained in my country even 52 years after the armistice.
P.S. Corea or Korea?
The current official usage is “Korea” as in the Republic of Korea. But, the name “Korea” originates from the French description “Coree” when it was first discovered by the Westerners, in Corea (or Coryo) Dynasty (938-1392) from which the original name, “Coree” comes from. The French couldn’t pronounce “Corea” correctly, thus, spelled “Coree”.
When the Japanese occupied Corea in 1910, Japan changed it into “Korea”, because C would come before J, but J would come before K, and they did not want ever to follow behind Coreans in any international order, publications, index, flags displays, etc. etc. Pathetic, really. Japan occupied Corea for 35 years, and of course, the name “Korea” stuck with us ever since.
“Korea” is limited to English-speaking countries only, as other western nations never accepted the “K” spelling. For example, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, among many others, use the “C” rendering.
I found that non-European names are with a “C” (Cambodia, Canada, cocoa, Congo, for example) except where the first letter is followed by an “e” or an “i”, (as in Kenya). Other than that, the “K” spelling is used only in childlike ignorance of spelling conventions (”Kitty Kat” and “Skool”, for examples). So “Korea” is even linguistically incorrect.
From Chpt. 19 “you are more susceptible to occasions of this sin than straw is to fire.”
That is nonsense. Virtue is a habit.
____________________
Mr. Johnboy316,
I read it, it’s an ok exercise. Perhaps. With reservation.. Because if this be it’s intention:
“do not think about the particular vice from which you are endeavoring to free yourself. The least reflection on it may be dangerous.”
It can be counter productive, to say the least, since the entire exercise forces the mind to focus on the temptation.
In college, which was long ago, I bought some relics via mail order, took them to my junior theology tutor, Fr. McGovern, an asked him if he thought they were authentic. He looked at them, said yes, and then said, “but what are they in comparison to Christ who is always available to us in the tabernacle?” Likewise, what is any such exercise as you suggest in comparison to Mass? They are but straw.
http://www.traditionalromancatholicism.com/SpiritualComabtChapter19.html
Johnboy,
Chapter 19 was a great read and very helpful.
You’d better be careful or soon you’ll be called an “ultra” traditionalist.
Anon, “if you are so eager to support war, please enlist in the army and put your zeal to good use. we made a huge mess in iraq over this same kind of nonsense.”
The following is a short current events/history lesson for you and other peaceniks. It is from the Patriot Post March 31 Digest and illustrative of another good reason to stay in a state of grace.
THE UNTHINKABLE—PERHAPS THE INEVITABLE…
The Cold War nuclear threat may have subsided with the
collapse of the Soviet Union, but The Long
War (http://PatriotPost.US/alexander/edition.asp?id=318),
our campaign to secure the U.S. and our national interests and
allies against Islamist terror, is heating up. Also on the rise
is the risk of nuclear attack on Western targets. Albeit limited
in scope, such attacks are much more probable now than during the
Cold War. Preventing nuclear attack is more difficult today because
our Jihadi foes are asymmetric rather than symmetric entities.
For most of U.S. history, perilous national security threats were
symmetric, emanating from distinct nation-states or alliances with
unambiguous political, economic and geographical interests. In
the last century, World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam involved
symmetric threats—that is, well-defined adversaries. Symmetric
threats are tangible and easier for our political leaders to
define. For the American people, this enemy is easier to identify.
Ronald Reagan tagged the Soviet Union as “The Evil
Empire,” and Americans understood this enemy and its
characterization. Similarly, George W. Bush called our post-Cold
War symmetric adversaries—Iraq, Iran and North Korea—the
“Axis of Evil.”
When a symmetric adversary like the USSR possessed large quantities
of WMD and a proven delivery capability, the principle method for
preventing their use was deterrence. Throughout the Cold War,
the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction stayed offensive
strikes, and limited conflicts between communist and democratic
nations to conventional warfare.
When symmetric adversaries do not possess, or have obtained only
limited quantities of WMD, our method of damage control is active
nonproliferation—using all political, economic and diplomatic
means to prevent, constrain, or reverse their spread. In the
case of Saddam’s regime in Iraq, which possessed substantial
quantities of WMD (and used them on Iraqi civilians), the failure
of nonproliferation efforts led to Operation Iraqi
Freedom (http://PatriotPost.US/alexander/edition.asp?id=470)—the
deposition of Saddam and seeding of democracy in place of his
tyrannical regime.
But OIF was more than the enforcement of a nonproliferation policy,
because another adversary had emerged which defied political,
economic and geographical definition. OIF was, more accurately,
an act of Counterproliferation—using all means to protect
against the threat of a WMD attack by non-state actors (terrorists
surrogates) who have been provided WMD by their state sponsors.
In 2001, President Bush estimated, correctly, that Iraq had,
and was prepared to provide, WMD to Islamist terrorists like
al-Qa’ida. As The Patriot reported in October 2002 our well-placed
sources in the Southwest Asia theater and intelligence sources
within the NSA and NRO estimated that the UN Security Council’s
foot-dragging (with substantial help from the French and Russians)
provided an ample window for Saddam to export some or all of his
WMD to Syria and Iran prior to the launch of OIF. It now appears
that they may have done so with the help of Russian special forces.
At that time, we reported that Allied Forces would be unlikely
to discover any WMD stores, noting, “Our sources estimate that
Iraq has shipped its nuclear WMD components—including two
‘crude nuclear devices’ designed to utilize U235 cores—through
Syria to southern Lebanon’s heavily fortified Bekaa Valley.” In
December 2002 our senior-level intelligence sources re-confirmed
estimates that some of Iraq’s biological and nuclear WMD material
and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and possibly
Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled
the plug on the UN’s ruse.
In January of this year, Saddam’s air force deputy commander,
General Georges Sada, now a national-security advisor for Iraq’s
new government, confirmed that in June, 2002, under Saddam’s
direction, he arranged transportation of WMD and related technology
to Syria aboard retrofitted commercial jets under the pretense of
conducting a humanitarian mission on behalf of flood victims. The
Patriot has corroborated evidence that there were such flights
during that timeframe, though our sources would not confirm the
manifest—other than to suggest that the flights did not contain
humanitarian relief.
It is worth noting here that the major intelligence failure
in Iraq was not about WMD but about how long it would take to
stabilize Iraq after removing Saddam. The original estimate,
based primarily on assurances from Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, the man who
was scripted to replace Saddam after the invasion, was 90-180 days.
Of course, we thought we would only be in Japan and Germany for 5
years after the cessation of WWII hostilities—yet we are still in
both countries today. As The Patriot noted prior to the invasion
of Iraq, we clearly have long-term objectives to establish one
or more bases in southern Iraq as forward deployment strongholds
in the region.
Currently, there is mounting evidence that Saddam’s government
did provide significant intelligence and operational support for
al-Qa’ida. The burning question remains, were any of Saddam’s
nuclear components, in whatever state of readiness, acquired
by al-Qa’ida?
Unfortunately, there is no neat Cold War doctrine—no
Mutually Assured Destruction—to stave off a nuclear
attack from an asymmetric threat such as al-Qa’ida. The only
counter-proliferation doctrine capable of keeping this enemy at
bay is that of pre-emption—initiating first strikes on their
turf to keep them off our own.
Al-Qa’ida’s protagonist, Osama bin Laden, has called for an
“American Hiroshima” in which al-Qa’ida cells detonate multiple
nukes in U.S. urban centers. Al-Qa’ida has made it clear that they
will use any means at hand to disrupt continuity of government
and commerce in the U.S. in an effort to impede our influence in
the Middle East. As Osama put it, “We love death. The U.S. loves
life. That is the big difference between us.” Osama’s lieutenant
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith says al-Qa’ida aspires “to kill 4 million
Americans, including 1 million children.”
Why does al-Qa’ida choose nuclear weapons? Because chemical
weapons are low consequence, and biological weapons are
indiscriminate—more likely to inflict mass casualties among
Muslims in Asia and Africa than Christians in the West.
And what is al-Qa’ida’s nuclear weapon of choice? While
radiological dispersal devices (dirty bombs) are low tech,
they are also, like chemical weapons, low consequence. The
highest consequence nuclear weapon would be one utilizing U239,
but plutonium is extremely hard to produce, unstable, easily
detectable, and the bomb hardware is highly sophisticated,
requiring great precision in the manufacture and machining of
its parts.
A nuclear device utilizing U235 is therefore the weapon al-Qa’ida
will use. Highly enriched uranium is more accessible and stable,
and it requires a comparatively low-tech detonation sequence. This
is precisely the type of weapon our sources indicate Saddam had
in production.
Al-Qa’ida has a broad and amorphous network, including cells in
North America. It is unlikely that these cells are in possession of
a nuclear weapon, because moving such a device subjects both the
mover and the weapon to detection—and our methods for detecting
nuclear devices are very good.
But they are not infallible. As Harvard’s Graham Allison, author
of “Nuclear Terrorism,” grimly notes, “It’s a great puzzle… I
think that we should be very thankful that it hasn’t happened
already… We’re living on borrowed time.”
To be sure, an asymmetric nuclear threat is
not the greatest potential hazard we face as a
nation. That would be the very real threat of another
Pandemic (http://PatriotPost.US/alexander/edition.asp?id=335).
Still, the nuclear threat remains very real—and it is greatly
enhanced by the political infighting over OIF and domestic
security issues such as the USA Patriot Act and our NSA terrorist
surveillance programs.
Catharina,
I was wondering what you meant by “Corea”. I had a good friend/roommate from Cornell who was also from “Corea” but he never told me about that stuff.
Those Japanese were not too nice to “Coreans” at times, or so I heard. But as with all past indifferences, the Japanese people today are not guilty of sins of their ancestors; however, I would think the name change seems to incite hatred. It’s too bad.
Fortunately, South “Corea” is considered pretty Christian today, or so I hear. Japan unfortunately is not.
PS–I, personally, Scholastic, think your comments are laced with pride and I, though potentially wrong, get the impression your statements are more like someone who is getting half truths from Satan.
In any case there are several reasons spiritual reading is necessary in addition to the Mass:
1) People that go to Mass are still susceptible to temptation.
2) We are battling with none other than Satan and our naturally disordered appetites; therefore wisdom on these matters is often disseminated through spiritual reading; particularly from those who gained experience before us.
3) We need practical experience on particular topics applicable to our own weaknesses that we are unable to gain from the Mass at times.
Plus I will note that I never intended to downgrade the means of grace through the Mass (ie, Sacrament of Communion). So quit spinning!
Additionally, your high strung statement “virtue is a habit” with regard to the apparent inability for someone “virtuous” to fall into impure sins flies in the face of that Chapter you quote in other places (!):
Consider: “Do not presume on your own strength despite the fact that after many years spent in the world you have remained firm against the force of concupiscence. For lust often achieves in one instant what whole years could not effect. Sometimes it will make long preparations for the assault. Then the wound is more dangerous when it comes least expected and under a disguise.”
Furthermore, speaking of a soul successful (with God’s grace) in not sinning impurely following an impure temptation: “Although you enjoy complete peace and consider yourself safe, avoid with the greatest care all objects that tend to temptation. Exclude them completely from your mind, even if they seem to be virtuous or good. These perversions are the illusions of a corrupt nature or traps laid by the devil…”
So your comments exceed the author’s? Wow. Maybe St. Francis de Sales would’ve been a saint quicker reading your spiritual book [I say that with complete sarcasm to humble you; not to mock you]…
I would also likewise not use the fact that spiritual reading is not the Mass to counter the above statements. As it really has no relevance and/or is a spin.
Joe Six Pack, with God’s grace I’m morally “ultra” in a sense that moral/Divine law is the same independent of time; especially if you compare the traditional [Church] morals with today’s liberal heretical Catholics’.
Johnboy316,
Most impressive indeed. From such few bare threads you weave a most fanciful tapestry And not just once, but have done so now twice. Once again I am reminded of the man who goes to a psychiatrist and is asked to take a Rorschach test:
http://caelumetterra.typepad.com/blog/2006/03/quick_rorschach.html#comments
Seriously, your speculations are grounded in nothing more substantial than the aetherial winds, and whose use in a discussion is reciprocal to said substance.
johnboy316,
Your Corean friend didn’t know maybe because he simply didn’t know about it (if he was a Corean-American), but if you are a Corean, I cannnot imagine ‘how’ in the world you do not know the history.
The ‘C’ rendering is historically and linguistically correct. The ‘K’ is offically correct - which I believe will soon change.
Some people refer to Vatican Council II, others only the Council of Trent.
Choose one that you like. : )