A few days ago Tom was asking whether the Church could offer moral clarity to its members any longer. It cannot, if it cannot stand up for its moral principles. It has not only failed to protect the innocent within its own arms, it has sheltered criminals who preyed upon the weakest children. It has not only failed to protect the faithful abroad, it has barely mentioned them as they are slaughtered every day and every hour around the globe.
Raymond Lull, another martyr, knew what was needed.
Then if a knight use not his office, he is contrary to his order and to the beginning of chivalry. *** The office of a knight is to maintain and defend the holy catholic faith by which God the Father sent his Son into the world to take human flesh in the glorious Virgin, our Lady Saint Mary; and for to honor and multiply the faith, suffered in this world many travails, despites, and anguishous death. Then in like wise as our Lord God hath chosen the clerks for to maintain the holy catholic faith with scripture and reasons against the miscreaunts and unbelievers, in like wise God of glory hath chosen knights because that by force of arms they vanquish the miscreaunts, which daily labor for to destroy holy church, and such knights God holdeth them for his friends honored in the world and in that other when they keep and maintain the faith by the which we intend to be saved....The Church has cast away the sword that Jesus came to bring. If it will not pick it up again, only God can save it.
The office of a knight is to maintain and defend women, widows, and orphans, and men diseased and not powerful ne strong. For like as custom and reason is that the greatest and most might help the feeble and less, and that they have recourse to the great; right so is the order of chivalry, because she is great, honorable, and mighty, be in succor and in aid of them that been under him and less mighty and less honored than he is....
The office of a knight is also to search for thieves, robbers, and other wicked folk, for to make them to be punished. For in like wise as the ax is made for to hew and destroy the evil trees, in like wise is the office of a knight established for to punish the trespassers and delinquents.
17 comments:
This is the era of greatest persecution of Christians in history.
You raise an interesting issue. Of course, since the Church does not have a standing army, nor knights, nor any 'enforcement' personnel outside the Swiss Guard, the first question is "......with whom?"
But the more important question is this: is it better for the Church to organize and utilize armed resistance to Muslim and Communist aggression, or for her members to be martyred, which is a sure ticket to heaven?
With volunteers, of course, the same way she organized the First Crusade. If she asked for Crusaders, they would come. You can be martyred that way, too: or in evangelical work, as was Lull.
I noticed quite a lot of negative energy (humans acting like humans) today, which is still so called Easter.
Whether it is Christians persecutingChristians, Christians persecuting Islam, Islam persecuting Christians, Jews vs the world, or the world vs the Jews, same human antics as before.
There is no such thing as "the Church", even if people mean the mystical body of Christ.
There are many churches. Many of them proclaim themselves "The One".
Before the Patriarch of Rome decided to title himself the Pontifex Maximus, priest of Jupiter and Zeus, he was merely a heretic or apostate of Greek Orthodoxy, the traditional churches of Egypt and Syria created from the apostles' work.
The Church long held, as Lull says, that the order of chivalry was somewhat like a religious order: it was ordained by God for a crucial purpose, and thus, there were men who were fit for it in the same way that there are men who are fitted to be priests or friars.
If that was right, then the current model -- whereby the Church uses its chivalric orders for charitable work, rather than to physically defend churches and to crusade against enemies -- is a defiance of a divine ordinance. Is that right? I don't know, but I know that Jesus told his apostles to buy swords even if they had to sell their cloaks. Not all of them had to do it to satisfy him, but two of the twelve did.
It's pushing the envelope to propose that 'divine ordinance' mandates chivalric orders--whether for charity or for armed defense.
Voluntary armed activity on behalf of the Church.......well, on a small scale, such as parish-by-parish or perhaps Diocese-by-Diocese, it may work well, but a lot depends on which country is involved. US authorities will take a very dim view of anything larger than squad-sized forces (we've seen what happens to a platoon, as in New Mexico.)
As to offensive actions---hmmm. Just War Theory bans pre-emptive action, so there are limits.
...pushing the envelope...
I cite Lull's piece because it was broadly accepted in the High Middle Ages, indeed it was part of a series of similar writings on the sacral purpose of the knighthood. There's something to be said both for and against his formulation. On the one hand, it is an invention rather than something one can clearly trace to scripture (unlike jihad, say, which is clearly spelled out in Islamic scripture). On the other, the priesthood to which he likens it is also an invention only hinted at in the Gospels; Jesus never says anything about the orders that eventually develop. Human beings developed all those ordinances themselves, on reflection and prayer.
Back on the first hand, the priesthood is much older as an institution, arguably as old as the early Church. The priesthood also arose directly out of the Christian practice, whereas the knighthood was something the Church was actively trying to absorb into their practice (in part to gain its protection, but also in part to limit the harms caused by armed men riding around exercising power). On the other hand, the reason the Church didn't develop a system of armed protections sooner was probably Rome, which was first too strong to resist via arms and later the chief protection of the Church. You cite the USA in a similar role, but we are at the moment at which the USA's power -- and state power in general -- seems to be less effective, as Rome became first less effective and then absent. Nonstate actors are not now stopped from attacks like this by any governments, not even our own.
In any case I think Lull's description points out a way of aligning a certain kind of man with the religious life, in a way that is beneficial and even sacramental. It is also exactly where the Church has lost its way, as Pope Benedict was saying the other day: it lost its capacity to defend and enforce its moral views, even internally, which allowed wickedness to prosper even in the seminaries. It is unlikely that the priesthood alone can reverse that, just as they were unable to stop it; indeed, now, large parts of the priesthood are captured by it.
Just War Theory bans pre-emptive action, so there are limits.
It is good that there are limits! Although Just War Theory bans aggression, not pre-emption if it is legitimately defensive; there's no pre-emption against Sir Francis Drake's attempt to burn the Spanish Armada in its harbor, as it was preparing to sail, for example.
It would be interesting to see the pro Catholic arguments of Just War vis a vis the Albigensian ethnic cleansing, aka holy war.
Born in Blood describes quite accurately what the Vatican and French feudal lords did to the last knightly order of Christians: The Templars.
So named because they were interested in rebuilding the Temple of Solomon, although their major issue was international banking strangely enough.
These weren't necessarily crusaders. They were commanded directly by the P of Rome. And it was the P of Rome that ordered them tortured in French prisons for a confession most of them knew was false. This tends to repeat itself as with Jean De Arc and others that the Church of Rome finds offensive to their good order and power.
The Church of Rome will most likely declare a Last Crusade, or at least its more fanatic adherents (Catholics like sci fi writer what's his name... john c wright) will. This will probably end up conveniently killing the enemies of the Deep State, not necessarily Islam.
In practical terms, there isn't much space for a non-state army these days. And it's difficult to see how a new crusade could have prevented the attacks in Sri Lanka. It's apparently majority Buddhist, so not really a place where attacks on Christians were expected. Neither does a new crusade seem to be the way to go after the perpetrators there.
On the other hand, an organization like the Knights of Columbus but focused on providing whatever protective services were legal in any given country might be useful. You don't need weapons to keep a careful watch and gather intelligence, nor to sweep an area for possible explosive devices prior to services, or search for electronic surveillance devices, etc. In places like the US, armed security would be possible as well.
It's an interesting idea.
Orthodox Pascha (they don't call it Easter) is this coming Sunday. I am praying for their safety.
the priesthood is much older as an institution, arguably as old as the early Church.
The priesthood was instituted at the Last Supper, when Christ told his disciples to 'do this' in His memory. Yes, differing Orders eventually arose, with different charisms--the Benedictines for music, Dominicans for academic studies, Franciscans for preaching, the Jesuits for fund-raising, etc. (only slightly sarcastic....)
The Church often "baptized" customs, adopting the Christmas tree, e.g., so 'baptizing' chivalry would not be unusual; in fact, since chivalry embodied a good number of virtues, it makes a lot of sense.
Thus Tom's concept of armed and non-armed security is worth examining. An army? Not so much.
...when Christ told his disciples to 'do this'...
That's why I started with the scripture in which Jesus directs his disciples to buy swords. It's a direction to his followers, made at nearly the same time, that is clearly a directive intended to prepare them to carry on without him. This mode of argument supports Lull's contention that God intended to ordain chivalry, as he ordained the priesthood.
Indeed, given that (a) the people directed to 'do' Communion and to buy swords are exactly the same people, and (b) Jesus is satisfied when only 2/12 have swords, one might go as far as to say that God intended that a subset of the priesthood be armed. Military religious orders, such as the Knights Hospitaller, do not in fact appear contemporaneously with the unarmed priesthood. That does not mean that it wasn't what God wanted, though; human execution may have been lacking, rather than Divine intent.
Yah, well, 16% of worldwide Catholics with arms......makes the largest army in the world bar none.
Easter is a target day, ironically termed the Resurrection day, when faithful are extrinsically celebrating an intrinsic concept. A real paradox in Maltese Islands. But at least we are giving relief to refugees, until now, saving ourselves from Muslim retaliation for past colonialism from which we suffered too.
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