Nothing to Talk About

by Thomas A. Droleskey

We live at a time in human history when everything appears to be negotiable. The novelty of "inter-religious dialogue," for example, has taken such hold of the minds of our recent popes and their apologists that the example of saints who sought to convert people to the true Faith and/or sought to repel the attacks of heretics and infidels must not be called to mind and their incorrupt bodies or sarcophaguses out of public view.

For example, the authentically incorrupt body of Saint Josaphat, who was killed by the Orthodox in retribution for his success at converting their adherents to the Uniat Rites of the Catholic Church, was removed from display in the Basilica of Saint Peter within the past six years, being replaced by the heavily-embalmed body of one Pope John XXIII. Oh, no, the authentically incorrupt body of a martyr who sought to convert the Orthodox must be replaced with the body of a pope who saw to it that a special embalming fluid would be used on his corpse after his death so as to make it appear to be incorrupt. It is no accident that the incorrupt body of a martyr who sought to convert the Orthodox, including Patriarch Ignatius of Moscow, should be replaced by the artificially preserved body of a pope who made a deal with the Russian Orthodox that there would be no criticism of Communism at the Second Vatican Council in exchange for the presence of representatives from that schismatic and heretical church at the council.

The saint who is commemorated in the calendar of Tradition today, March 28, did not believe in ecumenical dialogue. Saint John Capistran, who is better known to Nord Americanos as San Juan Capistrano, sought to stop the spread of the plague known as Mohammedanism into the heart of Europe. As we know, the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King desired by Martin Luther and his other Protestant Revolutionaries, an overthrow that would be further cemented by Freemasonry and the rise of a multiplicity of revolutionary movements, made possible the influx of Mohammedans into the heart of Europe in the name of cultural pluralism. The Church has, in her human elements, promoted the migration of non-Christian people into formerly Catholic Europe in the name of "religious liberty," urging Catholics to live side-by-side with their Mohammedan neighbors without seeking to convert them. Indeed, the insanity is such that Pope Benedict XVI believes that Mohammedans will grant to Catholics the same degree of "religious liberty" in their own countries that is being accorded to them in formerly Catholic Europe, which is a refusal to realize that Mohammedans actually take their false religion seriously and do not want to give any quarter to, as they see it, the "error" of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.

Saint John Capistran would have remonstrated with Pope Benedict XVI and with Renato Cardinal Martino, the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, to come to their Catholic senses about Mohammedanism and to reject the error of religious liberty. Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., provides us with a wonderful summary in The Liturgical Year of Saint John Capistran's magnificent defense of the Holy Faith:

At the time when the defeat of the Iconoclasts was being completed in the East, a new and most terrible war was beginning in which the West was to fight for the sake of civilization and for the cause of the Incarnate Word of God. Like a sudden torrent, Islam overwhelmed Eastern Europe, reaching even to Gaul, and for a thousand years it disputed, foot by foot, with Christ and His Church, the land occupied by the Latin races. The glorious Crusades of the twelfth and thirteen centuries, which attack this power in paralyzing it for the time being. In Spain the struggle continued until the triumph of the Cross was complete, but in other parts of Europe Christian princes forgot the traditions of Charlemagne and St. Louis, grew weary of the holy war, and gave themselves up to the pursuit of their private ambition, so that the Crescent was able once more to defy the Christian powers and renew its plan of universal conquest.

In 1453 Byzantium, the capital of the Eastern empire, fell before the Turkish janissaries, and three years later Mahomet II invested Belgrade on the very outskirts of the Western empire. It might have been expected that all Europe would hasten to the aid of the besieged fortress, for it this last dyke were to fall, Hungary, Austria and Italy would be overwhelmed and the peoples of the North and West would share the fate of the East, that life in death, that irremediable sterility of soil and intelligence which still holds captive the once brilliant Greece. But this imminent danger only resulted in deepening the breach in Christian unity, and the Christian nations were at the mercy of a few thousand infidels. Only the Papacy was true to itself in the midst of all this egoism and perfidy. Truly Catholic in its thoughts, its labours, its sufferings, as in its joys and triumphs, it took up the common cause which had been basely betrayed by kings and princes. The powerful were deaf to the Pope's appeals, but he turned to the humble and, trusting more in prayer to the God of armies than in military tactics, he sought for the deliverers of Christendom among the poor.

It was then than John Capistran, the saint of to-day, attained the consummation of his glory and his sanctity. At the head of a few poor men of good-will, unknown peasants gathered together by the Franciscan Friars, this 'poor man of Christ' undertook to defeat the strongest and best organized army of the century. On July 14, 1456, he broke through the Ottoman lines with John Hunyades, the only one of the Hungarian nobles who would accompany him, and revictualled Belgrade; and on July 22, feeling that he could no longer elude the defensive, he threw himself, to the stupefaction of Hunyades, on the enemy entrenchments. His troops were armed only with flails and pitchforks, and their only strategy was the name of Jesus. John had inherited this victorious battle-cry from his master, Bernardine of Siena. the Psalmist said: 'Some trust in chariots and some in horses: but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God.' This name, so holy and so terrible, proved once more the salvation of the people. At the end of that memorable day twenty-four thousand Turks lay dead on the field of battle; three hundred cannon and all the spoils of the infidels were in the hands of the Christians and, and Mahomet II was seeking a distant hiding-place for his shame. The news of this victory, so like that of Gedeon, reached Rome on August 6, and Pope Callistus III decreed that henceforth the Universal Church should keep a solemn commemoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord on that day, for it was with the soldiers of the Cross as with the heroes of Israel, 'they got not the possession of the land by their own sword: neither did their own arm save them, but thy right hand and thy arm and the light of thy countenance because thou wast pleased with them,' as with Thy beloved Son on Mount Thabor.

We need to invoke the intercession of Saint John Capistran to help us to do battle in our own day with the religious indifferentism that is the fruit of the erroneous novelty of ecumenism. A failure to confront false religions such as Mohammedanism and a failure to seek converts therefrom produces a sense in Catholics that all "three monotheistic" religions are equally capable of striving after "peace," ignoring that there is no peace apart from Our Lord as He has revealed Himself solely through His true Church and that the path to His peace runs through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Mohammedanism is not, as the President of the United States has repeated so mindlessly, a "religion of peace." It is a false religion of war and hatred that is born of the devil himself, founded as it is in the denial of the Sacred Divinity of the God-Man, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Mohammedanism is not, as Pope Benedict XVI seems to believe, capable of adapting itself to the Second Vatican Council's call for "religious liberty" in Dignitatis Humanae.

Consider this excerpt from Hillaire Belloc's treatment of Mohammedanism in The Great Heresies. Although the excerpt was included on this site a little over six months ago now, it has special relevance on the feast day of Saint John Capistran--and in the midst of the errors of ecumenism that cloud so many minds and produces so much sappy sentimentality about how "peace" is to be had in the world:

Mohammed did not merely take the first steps toward that denial, as the Arians and their followers had done; he advanced a clear affirmation, full and complete, against the whole doctrine of an incarnate God. He taught that Our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet: a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether.

With that denial of the Incarnation went the whole sacramental structure. He refused to know anything of the Eucharist, with its Real Presence; he stopped the sacrifice of the Mass, and therefore the institution of a special priesthood.  In other words, he, like so many other lesser heresiarchs, founded his heresy on simplification.

Catholic doctrine was true (he seemed to say), but it had become encumbered with false accretions; it had become complicated by needless man-made additions, including the idea that its founder was Divine, and the growth of a parasitical caste of priests who battened on a late, imagined, system of Sacraments which they alone could administer. All those corrupt accretions must be swept away.

There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same. As we all know, the new teaching relaxed the marriage laws--but in practice this did not affect the mass of his followers who still remained monogamous. It made divorce as easy as possible, for the sacramental idea of marriage disappeared. It insisted upon the equality of men, and it necessarily had that further factor in which it resembled Calvinism--the sense of predestination, the sense of fate; of what the followers of John Knox were always calling "the immutable decrees of God."

Mohammed's teaching never developed among the mass of his followers, or in his own mind, a detailed theology. He was content to accept all that appealed to him in the Catholic scheme and to reject all that seemed to him, and to so many others of his time, too complicated or mysterious to be true. Simplicity was the note of the whole affair; and since all heresies draw their strength from some true doctrine, Mohammedanism drew its strength from the true Catholic doctrines which it retained: the equality of all men before God--"All true believers are brothers." It zealously preached and throve on the paramount claims of justice, social and economic.

The "ecumenical spirit" fostered by the Second Vatican Council and its wretched aftermath has made many Catholics "sensitive" to offending any and all non-Catholics, including Jews and Mohammedans. Father Bernard Donohue, O.S.F.S, the chairman of the Politics Department at Allentown College of Saint Francis de Sales (now called DeSales University), complained to me in March of 1979 that a lecture I had given on legal positivism as part of an interview for an academic position was "terrible" because of its overt Catholicity. "There as Muslim in that class when you lectured," Father Donohue explained to me. I countered that we had the obligation to convert all people to the true Faith, noting that anyone in a Catholic college should expect to hear someone teach according to the truths of the true Faith. My one year, 1979-1980, at Allentown College certainly got off to an interesting start with that complaint from my departmental chairman.

Sadly, we are far beyond a false sensitivity to the "feelings" of non-Catholics. The very symbols of heretics and infidels must be displayed in Catholic churches and schools and universities. Then Dean Rudolph Hasl of the Saint John's University School of Law took down a life sized Crucifix in the front of its main entrance in 1995, replacing it with a mobile of a plain cross, a star of David, and and Mohammedan Crescent, each of which was equal in size to the other. The symbol for World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, last year included those same three symbols, although designed in such a way as to make it more difficult at first glance to catch the symbolism of the "equality of the three "monotheistic" religions. It was a scant three weeks later that the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, whose activities will be documented in Randy Engel's forthcoming book, The Rite of Sodomy, invoke the name of the false god "Allah" when addressing King Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Saint John Capistran, you see, would have none of this. He took seriously the following words of Our Lord, spoken to the Eleven before He ascended to the Father's right hand in glory forty days after His Bodily Resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday:

Going, therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Mt. 28:19-20)

Saint John Capistran, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1425, sought to eradicate various heresies and to evangelize fallen away Catholics. A sermon he preached in Brescia, Italy, to over 126,000 people. He had a great fervor for souls, not presuming the salvation of anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic. He had the same sense of urgency to convert souls as was possessed by the Apostles themselves:

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said to them: Ye princes of the people, and ancients: hear: If we this day are examined concerning the good deed done to the infirm man, by what means he hat been made whole: Be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God hath raised form the dead, even by him this man standeth here before you whole.

This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner.

Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.

Now seeing the constancy of Peter and of John, understanding that they were illiterate and ignorant men, they wondered; and they knew them that they had been with Jesus. Seeing the man also who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing about it.

But they commanded them to go aside out of the council; and they conferred among themselves. Saying: What shall we do to these men? for indeed a known miracle hath been done by them, to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; it is manifest, and we cannot deny it. But that it may be no farther spread among the people, let us threaten them that they speak no more in this name to any man. And calling them, they charged them to speak no more this name to any man.

But Peter and John answering, said to them: If it be just in the sight of God, to hear you rather than God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. (Acts 4:8-19)

A disciple of Saint Bernardine of Siena, Saint John Capistran was fearless in proclaiming the Holy Name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, unafraid of what any force on earth could do to him, once again imitating in his own life the zeal of the Apostles themselves:

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them, saying: Commanding we commanded you that you should not teach in this name; and behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and you have a mind to bring the blood of this man upon us.

But Peter and the apostles answering, said: We ought to obey God, rather than men. The God of our father hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging him upon a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand, to be Prince and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these things and the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to all that obey him.

When they had heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they thought to put them to death. But one in the council, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, respected by all the people, commanded the men to be put forth a little while. And he said to them: Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what you intend to do, as touching these men. For before these days rose up Theodas, affirming himself to be somebody, to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all that believed him were scattered, and he brought to nothing. After this man, rose up Judas of Galilee, in the days of the enrolling, and drew away the people after him: he also perished; and all, even as many as consented to him, were dispersed. And now, therefore, I say to you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this council or this work be of men, it will come to naught: But if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it, lest perhaps you be found even to fight against God. And they consented to him.

And calling in the apostles, after they had scourged them, they charged them that they should not speak at all in the name of Jesus; and they dismissed them. And they indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. And every day they ceased not in the temple, and from house to house, to teach and preach Christ Jesus. (Acts 5:27-42)

Yes, in an age when popes and cardinals and bishops and priests do not seek the conversion of souls to the Catholic Church, it is ever so necessary to invoke the intercession of men like Saint John Capistran, who was willing to give up his life in armed combat for the Faith it God had willed it so. Saint John Capistran knew that there was nothing to talk about with unbelievers. He knew that unbelievers had to hear the fullness of the truths of the true Faith preached lest their souls perish in eternal hellfire. What a salutary example for our own faithless age, steeped in error and novelty.

May Pope Benedict XVI take Saint John Capistrano to heart and follow his manly example of seeking the conversion of all men to the true Faith, something that could be in an instant if only he obeys Our Lady's Fatima Message.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John Capistran, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Bernardine of Siena, pray for us.

Saint Josaphat, pray for us.

Saint John Matha, pray for us.

Saint Peter Canisius, pray for us.

Saint Boniface, pray for us.

Saint Peter Chanel, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Blessed Junipero Serra, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.