PETER AND PAUL AND THE MARTYRS OF THE CHURCH
June 29 is the day in the Catholic calendar for the feast days of the spiritual giants Peter and Paul.
Peter, a commercial fisherman by trade, was a seeker of truth and a natural leader. His brother Andrew, also a fisherman, was a disciple of John the Baptist who went to follow Christ at the Baptist’s urging. Andrew, on seeing Jesus work, told Peter, “We have found the Messiah!” Peter decided to join his brother in Christ’s service. Peter was the “foreman” who led the Apostles in following Christ and doing His will. Another pair of brothers, James and John, also left their fishing boats and their nets to follow Christ. John was somewhat younger than Andrew, Peter, and John.
Peter and all of the other apostles except John (and Judas, who killed himself in sorrow and despair when he fully grasped the horrible betrayal he had committed) fled on Good Friday. Peter denied Christ. And he wept bitterly. That seared Peter’s soul so greatly, that when Christ rose and rebuked him after He rose on Easter, Peter knew he would conquer his fears. For death is preferable to being a public coward. Peter never ran away again. He led the Church into Rome itself, and died a martyr during Roman Emperor Nero’s persecution, upside-down on a crucifix, on Vatican Hill. Peter said he wasn’t worthy of being crucified head-up like Christ.
“Crucifixion of the Apostle Peter” by Luca Giordano
Andrew also met death in crucifixion. His cross was X-shaped, because he too said he was unworthy of dying like Christ. The Roman official who ordered his death in Greece obliged him.
All the apostles except John died as martyrs. They accepted their fates because they had abandoned Jesus to the leaders of the Hebrews and to the Romans. John, to whom Christ on the cross entrusted the care of Mary his mother, lived to be a very old man.
Paul, also a tradesman (a tentmaker), but quite a bit of a scholar, persecuted the Christians. He played a part in the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr. He was on the way to Damascus to persecute Christians when God knocked him off his horse and onto his ass. And blinded him in the process. Christ Himself appeared to Paul, and said, “Saul (Paul’s Jewish name), why do you persecute Me?”
Saul had to be led to Christians in Damascus. They helped him, and Saul regained his sight. Christ directly commissioned Saul, now Paul, as an Apostle, and gave him the mission to preach to pagans as well as to Jews. The other Apostles, all who were Christ’s followers when He was on Earth, also preached to pagans, and in most cases died as martyrs at their hands. The Apostle Paul became known as “Apostle to the Gentiles” because he was the best at reaching the pagans in Turkey, Greece, and in Italy. Like Peter, Paul died a martyr on Vatican Hill during the horribly corrupt and debauched rule of Nero. Since Paul was a Roman citizen, the Romans quickly cut off his head, instead of hanging him out for the carrion birds, like they did to Peter, who was a Hebrew.
Paul and Luke, in still from “Paul, Apostle of Christ”
June 30 is the day the Church uses to honor the other Christians who died as martyrs during the persecution of Nero. Nero was a glutton, a lecher, a tyrant, and a madman of colossal proportions. What else can you say about a man who would have much of Rome burned to the ground so he could expand his palace and gain inspiration for his poetry and songs?
Up to the time of Nero (who ruled from 54 to 68 AD), the Romans tolerated the Christians somewhat. But things changed under this most infamous of the emperors. Nero became so corrupted by his power, he had the great fire of Rome started, then he blamed it on the Christians. And since the suffering the fire caused prompted the Roman people to cry for revenge, he was only too happy to kill the despised paupers, slaves and foreigners who made up much of the early Church.
A novel, if it is to be considered great, must instruct and uplift the reader as well as entertain him or her. This is what separates literature from entertainment. I have read very few novels, but one I would call “great” with no reservations is Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Quo Vadis.” It is a story of the Rome of Nero, and it brings to life the courage of the men and women who were Christians in a way no history book can.
Sienkiewicz, a Pole, wrote in the late 1800s, a time in which his homeland was under the heels of the emperors of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. He wrote novels of Poland’s heroic past to inspire the Poles of his day to continue the struggle against their oppressors. Even “Quo Vadis” had a little of Poland in it … the heroine of the book was Lygia, a Christian princess of a Polish blood. And the sentimental favorite of the book was her Polish bodyguard, a bear of a man whom the people fittingly called “Ursus.”
Lygia was in Rome because she was given to the Romans as a hostage to a treaty between her tribe and the Romans in the days of Nero. Ursus went with her to protect her. A Roman general named Marcus Vicinius lusted for her and tries to use conventional Roman ways (power, force, and influence) to get her, but she rejected his advances.
Marcus became so desperate he and his henchmen tried to kidnap Lygia. Ursus the bodyguard knocked him senseless and broke several of his bones … and that was his gentle mode. He killed the Roman’s henchmen.
Then something happened to Marcus that won him over to the Christian cause. They took him in and nursed him back to health even though he had tried to capture Lygia to satisfy his own sexual desires. He vowed to reform his ways and treat other people decently. And true to the format of many novels, he fell in love with Lygia, and she fell in love with him.
Then Nero declares a persecution of the Christians, and Lygia, Ursus, and any other Christians the Romans could capture were sent to the Coliseum to be killed for the entertainment of the rabble.
Christians urge Pope Peter to leave Rome to save the hierarchy of the Church, so he leaves. But Peter sees Christ on the road, and asks Him where he is going. (“Quo vadis” is Latin for “Where are you going?) Christ tells Peter He is going to Rome to be crucified again if need be. Peter, thoroughly embarrassed, says he will go back and face Nero. Peter sticks his traveling staff in the ground and returns. The Romans crucify Peter upside-down.
Deborah Kerr, as Lygia, in “Quo Vadis” (1951). In the novel, Lygia was stripped, as she woud have been in Nero’s day, for humiliation.
Nero and his wife find out Marcus is friendly to the Christians. So they make Marcus watch in the Coliseum while Lygia is disrobed and tied to a post in the arena, and a huge bull is let loose so he could gore her to death. Nero wanted to see if Ursus would try to save his princess or just die passively like the other Christians. Nero’s wife, whom Marcus had rebuffed when she wanted to commit adultery with him, wanted Marcus to watch Lygia die horribly to get even with Marcus.
Ursus might have humbly accepted death if only his own life was on the line. But the life of his princess was also at stake. Ursus grabs the bull’s horns, and pushes the beast back and forces his head to the ground, and keeps pushing till the bull’s neck breaks.
Max Baer, as Ursus, in a still for Quo Vadis. In real life, he was a heavyweight prizefigher who killed a man in the ring.
Marcus jumps into the arena to free Lygia from the post and cover her with his officer’s cloak. The mob cheers for Ursus and Lygia and Marcus. They all put their thumbs up and pressure Nero to release Lygia and Ursus to the custody of Marcus.
(In the movie version, Nero will not free them, so Marcus’ troops join him in the arena and Marcus announces General Galba is marching on Rome to depose Nero.)
Nero flees to his palace, strangles his wife, then has his female slave help him commit suicide. Galba becomes emperor. Marcus, Lygia, Ursus, and other Christians leave Rome, and when they pass Peter’s staff, they notice it has flowered.
Lygia, Marcus, and Ursus were fictional. But Peter and Paul were real. And Nero was all too real.
Nero was also real strange. He had his mother Agrippina murdered. He had his first wife Claudia Octavia beheaded in 62AD right after he married Poppaea, and had Claudia Octavia’s head presented to Poppaea. He “married” a freeman named Pythagoras in 64 AD while he (Nero) was dressed in a bridal outfit. Nero reportedly kicked his second wife Poppaea to death during her childbirth in 65 AD. Nero then had a boy named Sporus castrated and “married” him. Nero in 66 AD married Statilia Messalina, a female. She was lucky to survive him. Sporus and Nero’s secretary (male) helped him commit suicide when Galba marched on Rome to depose him.
A freak like Nero, if alive today, would be a frontrunner in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination. After all, he swung both ways, committed infanticide, and probably was responsible for no more murders than the Clintons, if you don’t count Christians.
Nero’s death didn’t end the persecutions … they continued, with varying degrees of severity, for two and a half centuries more until the coming to power of Constantine, the emperor who became a Christian.
Christians to the Lions!! Artist unknown to me.
How bad was it for Christians in the Roman Empire?
Father John Laux in his book “Church History,” noted Emperor Constantine, when he appeared before the leaders of the Church at Nicaea, told the clergymen if the Roman armies had slaughtered as many barbarians during the reign of Diocletian as they slaughtered Christians, there would be none left to threaten the safety of the empire.
The book “Lives of the Saints” is covered with the blood of the martyrs of Rome. Here is a partial listing of those who died for the faith of Christ:
Fabian, a pope, was killed in 250; his feast day is January 20. Vincent, a Spanish winemaker, died of his tortures in the 200s; his feast day is January 22. Apollonia, an elderly woman who served as a deaconess, was beaten by a mob and then burned to death in 249; her feast day is February 9. Saturninus and 50 other North African Christians were executed or chained and left to die of dehydration and starvation in 304; their feast day is February 12. Polycarp, a bishop who had been a disciple of St. John the Apostle (Christ’s favorite apostle), was set afire; one of the executioners stabbed him to death to end his suffering. His feast day is February 23.
Perpetua, a Carthaginian noblewoman and the mother of a newborn, and her friend Felicity, a married servant who gave birth while in a Roman dungeon, were mauled by beasts in the arena, then beheaded in 203; their feast day is March 7. Apollonius, a Roman noble, was beheaded in 186; his feast day is April 18. Epipodius and Alexander were tortured and killed in 178; their feast day is April 22.
Perpetua guides the sword to her neck. Often the common Roman soldiers ordered to murder the Christians did not like their duties. Soldiers are often more charitable than the tyrants who order them to kill. Perpetua knews this, and had the poise to try to help him help her achieve her ultimate witness for Christ. She was more afraid of losing her courage than losing her head. Artist unknown to me.
Nereus and Achilleus were Roman soldiers who refused to continue to serve Rome when they became Christians; they were executed in the first century. Flavia Domitilla, a niece of the cruel emperor Domitian who was their friend, was also executed with them. Pancras, a teenager, was martyred in 304. The feast day of these saints is May 12.
Justin, an Arab who lived in Israel, was one of the early Church’s greatest writers and orators. He was arrested in Rome after a public debate and was killed along with several other Christians; his feast day is June 1. Marcellinus, Peter, and a number of other Christian men and women were beheaded together in 304; their feast day is June 2. (Their executioner became a Christian.)
Sixtus, a pope, was murdered in 258; his feast day is August 7. Euplius, a deacon, was tortured and beheaded in 304; his feast day is August 12. Pontian, a pope, and Hippolytus, a priest, were exiled together and were worked to death in the mines in the 200s; their feast day is August 13. Cornelius, a pope, and Cyprian, one of his bishops, were killed in the 253 and 258, respectively; their feast day is September 16. Cosmas and Damian, two brothers from Arabia who were doctors who treated the poor for free, were beheaded in 283; their feast day is September 26.
Pelagia, a teenage girl who lived in Syria, jumped from the roof of her house when a group of Roman soldiers came to bring her to the local Roman official so he could rape her. Her feast day is October 8. St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris, and one of his priests and his deacons were put to death in the 250s; their feast day is October 9. Callistus, a slave who survived banishment to the mines, became a priest, and then a pope. He was killed by a Roman mob in 222; his feast day is October 14. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the early Church’s best teachers, was mauled to death by lions in the arena after confronting the Emperor Trajan in Antioch in 107. His feast day is October 17. Demetrius, a Greek who had been a soldier, was killed in a public bath; his feast day is October 26.
Cecilia, a young Roman noblewoman, was beheaded in the 100s after an attempt to smother her to death failed; her feast day is November 22. Clement, a pope, was killed in 100; his feast day is November 23. Saturninus, a bishop, was tied to a bull by the local pagans and was dragged to death in 257; his feast day is November 29.
The Romans were the first society to start a formal persecution of Christians as government policy. But they weren’t (and won’t be) the last. The Moslem persecutions of Christians in Spain lasted for nearly 800 years; the soldiers of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand finally routed the Moors. The intolerance of the Moslems who seized the Holy Land brought on the Crusades. And the Moslem Turks were infamous for their cruelty … they raped and murdered the Christian peoples of Ukraine until the late 1700s, and murdered the Christian peoples of the Balkans up until World War One … and Moslems murdered many more Serbs from World War One to the present day.
Slave Market, by Jean-Leon Gerome. Moslems prized European women from the Balkans and Ukraine as sex slaves. They even kidnaped a group of English women and Irish women in a raid in 1641 and sold them to the hightest bidders.
The people of the town of Perchtoldsdorf in Austria suffered a miserable fate at the hands of the Turks in 1683. The Turks, on their way to besieging Vienna, forced the town to surrender. They ordered the mayor to give the keys to the town gates to a teenage girl and have her bring them to them. While the townspeople watched, the Turks made her kneel, then one of them cut off her head. That was the signal to kill everybody. Only one person survived, and he reached Austrian lines to report the treachery.
The people of Batak, Bulgaria suffered a similar fate in 1876. Real (not fake) journalist Januarius MacGahan, who rode into the town after the massacre, reported this in the London Daily News:
“They (the dogs) barked at us in an angry manner, and then ran off into the adjoining fields. I observed nothing peculiar as we mounted until my horse stumbled, when looking down I perceived he had stepped on a human skull partly hid among the grass. It was quite hard and dry, and might, to all appearances, have been there two or three years, so well had the dogs done their work.”
“We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and we observed that they were all small and that the articles of clothing intermingled with them and lying about were all women’s apparel. These, then, were all women and girls. From my saddle I counted about a hundred skulls, not including those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly all separated from the rest of the bones – the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded.”
“Bulgarian Martyresses” by Konstantin Makovsky
“And now we begin to approach the (Orthodox Christian) church and the school-house. The ground is covered here with skeletons, to which are clinging articles of clothing and bits of putrid flesh. The air was heavy, with a faint, sickening odor, that grows stronger as we advance. It is beginning to be horrible. The school-house, to judge by the walls that are part standing, was a fine building, capable of accommodating 200 or 300 children. Beneath the stones and rubbish that cover the floor to the height of several feet are the bones and ashes of 200 women and children burned alive between these four walls.”
“We entered the church yard, but here the odor became so bad that it was almost impossible to proceed. We take a handful of tobacco and hold it against our noses while we continue our investigations.”
“Some weeks after the massacre orders were sent to bury the dead. But the stench at that time had become so heavy that it was impossible to execute the order or even remain in the neighborhood of the village. We are told that 3,000 people are lying in this little churchyard alone, and we could well believe it.”
“The harvests are rotting in the fields and the reapers are rotting here in the church yard.”
“The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kni, on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels, he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be.”
“We asked about the skulls and bones we had seen upon the hill upon our first arrival in the village, where the dogs had barked at us. These, we were told, were the bodies of 200 young girls who had first been captured and particularly reserved for a worse fate. They had been kept till last; they had been in the hands of their captors for several days – for the burning and pillaging had not all been accomplished in a single day – and during this time they had suffered all that poor, weak, trembling girls can suffer at the hands of the brutal savages. Then when the town had been pillaged and burned, when all their friends had been slaughtered, these poor young things, whose very wrongs should have ensured them safety, whose very outrages should have insured them protection, were taken in the broad light of day, beneath the smiling canopy of heaven, coolly beheaded, then thrown in a heap and left to rot.”
In those days, writers (and editors) used euphemisms like “outrage” and “wrong” for “rape.” What MacGahan was saying was the Turks picked out the prettiest older girls and young women, raped them for days, then cut off their heads before they moved on.
Armenian momma and her three babies murdered by Turks. A German officer, disgusted by his bloodthirsty Moslem allies, took this picture.
That doesn’t even count the million to million and a half Armenians the Turks, the Kurds, and other Moslems genocidally murdered during World War One.
Diversity, anyone?
Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, and other evil tyrants persecuted Catholics in England, Wales, and Scotland. They pursued a policy of persecution, enslavement, and genocide against the Irish because of the strength of the faith of the Irish people. To this day, no member of the royal family of England can marry a Catholic if he wants to become king. And until recently, the British government pursued a policy of religious discrimination and ethnic discrimination against the Irish in the Six Counties of Ulster.
Ireland is now a secular cesspool like Britain. So the authorities now aim religious persecution at believers of any real Christian denomination in both islands.
Crown Prince William recently said he would not mind if his children turned out to be homosexuals, No bloodline heirs would be the excuse needed to end the royalty for good. Their castles and palaces would make good public housing for all the child-raping Moslems the British authorities have welcomed.
Merely being a practicing Catholic brought persecution to many in France during the French Revolution … and the French government continues anti-Catholic policies to this day. They seized Catholic churches and require parishioners to pay rent on churches built many years ago. During the French Revolution, the government carried out the murders of hundreds of thousands of Catholic peasants and townspeople in the Vendée in western France.
Robespierre’s lackeys had these nuns “Martyrs of Compiegne” guillotined in 1794. Days later, Robespierre and his associated would be overthrown and beheaded on the same guillotine. The nuns prayerfully sang hymns until the huge blade silenced the last nun. Robespierre and his associates, by comparison, died yellow.
General Westermann, a Revolutionary government general, reported to his political masters at the Convention: “The Vendée is no more … According to your orders, I have trampled their children beneath our horses’ feet; I have massacred their women, so they will no longer give birth to brigands. I do not have a single prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated them all.”
Likewise, the clergy and the faithful suffered for their faith in Germany under the Prussians, and especially during the rule of the Nazis. And the long Communist oppression in Russia and Eastern Europe brought suffering and martyrdom to many of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths.
The vast majority of Christian martyrs from St. Stephen to the present day have been Catholic Christians or Orthodox Christians. This holds true even from the times of the Protestant Reformation and the time of religious liberty in America to the present day. This is not a shot at my Protestant readers, but a mention of the truth. The Christian lands in most contact and conflict with Islamists and Communists and Nazis and other statists like the French revolutionaries and the Spanish leftists of the 1930s have been overwhelmingly Catholic or Orthodox Christian.
When leftist vermin in Spain couldn’t find nuns to rape, they dug up dead nuns from their graves and displayed them. These sadistic animals and many others like them are the demonic ancestors of the Antifa movement. Like these two, the Antifas can’t be reasoned with; they must be smashed and totally defeated.
Even here in America, Catholics suffered persecution during the colonial period, and have suffered official and societal discrimination even after they helped other Americans rid the land of the redcoats. And while the Church itself is not under official persecution, the doctrines of Christ which traditional Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and fundamentalist Protestants agree upon are under vicious assault in the America of today.
The Protestant nations of Europe (Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries) have traditionally been the friendliest toward the sons of the Prophet. Now they are reaping the whirlwind, to the victimization of their females and their boys.
In a democracy, we are the stewards of power and we can overturn leaders who act unjustly. We must follow the example of the knights and the crusaders who were bold defenders of the faith in their lands and wherever Christians lived … and in this democracy we are surely within our legal rights to cast out those who abuse power, persecute the faithful, and otherwise rule in an immoral manner. And yet, we must have the faith to live as Christians even if we have no secular power to do these things. These people, the martyrs of Rome and elsewhere, showed us it could be done.
THE FALL OF ROME
The fall of Rome has been the topic of too many books to mention. Many of those who chronicled Rome’s fall concluded it happened because of the degeneracy and cruelty of its leaders and people. I see it that way myself. The fall of Rome is a topic worthy of a good essay, but I didn’t write one for today. Instead, I consulted one of my favorite historians, Father Francis S. Betten, for the job, because he handled it with a moral understanding so remarkable I thought I would share his thoughts with you and say only that I agree with them.
Father Betten, a Jesuit, taught at Marquette University; he wrote several history textbooks in the 1920s for high school students. Father Betten wrote in a to-the-point style, and for teenagers who grew up correctly believing they were responsible for their own actions. He taught them that history was the story of how its leaders and people succeeded or failed based on their wits, their work habits, and their morality (or lack of it). Here are some of his best quotes on the Roman Empire from “Ancient and Medieval History,” a textbook which my father used when he went through Catholic school.
Picture on cover of Dad’s “Ancient and Medieval History” textbook
“Unfortunately the picture of Roman morals has many more dark colors than bright ones … the family ties became in wide circles a thing of the past. Adultery was almost a manner of fashion. Divorces, always permitted by the Roman law, became dreadfully frequent. It was by no means rare that fathers made use of the barbarous “right” of exposing their children (abandoning them to die) rather than rearing them.”
“With the spread of immorality the people became more and more averse to honorable marriage and the responsibilities of parenthood.”
“The gladiatorial shows greatly fostered this contempt for human life … this was the choice delight, not only for the rabble, but of the most educated society, including the most refined ladies. Even the Vestal Virgins (women who came as close to Catholic nuns as pagan society would allow) witnessed these orgies of cruelty and blood.”
Who can forget the Coliseum, scenes of so many gruesome fights to the death? Even the chariot races at the Circus Maximus were ugly displays of inhuman treatment of men and inhumane treatment of beasts. Don’t you remember hating Messala, the evil Roman in the movie Ben Hur, and remember cheering when Ben Hur threw him off-balance in the chariot race … and his own horses dragged him and the other horses trampled him? And don’t you remember still wanting to kill Messala even as he lay dying in agony, when he sneeringly told Ben Hur his mother and sister were lepers?
Messala dies after saying Ben Hur’s mother and sister are lepers. Ben Hur 1959 still
“Slavery, too, was a most fruitful source of moral and other evils. The cruelty with which slaves were treated, the heartlessness with which old and disabled slaves were left to die, increased the contempt for human life. The abyss of vice that is indicated by the complete dependence of this unfortunate class upon all the whims and even passions of the master and mistress can not be described. (In other words, they sexually abused their slaves.) Slavery, moreover, tended to crowd out the free labor of the poorer classes, both in town and country.”
“The position of women improved … women now engaged in various trades. They too were subject to the baneful influence which Roman slavery had upon masters and mistresses (their refined cruelty toward their female slaves was well known); their characters and minds were degraded by the bloody and lascivious shows; and they had before them the unspeakably bad example of the men, including their own husbands, if they had any. Thus they became largely estranged from their natural position as queens of domestic society, and contributed their ample share to the general demoralization.”
“The Roman (Empire) no doubt achieved great things … but if one of the most sacred duties of the state is to prevent the impoverishment of the most numerous classes and prevent them from being overreached by the rich, the Empire failed. The poor became ever poorer, and ever more numerous, while the rich grew fewer and had every opportunity to increase their possessions to a fabulous extent.”
“The predominating character of the Roman world was that of insatiable, cold-blooded avarice, unbounded pride, and a voluptuousness which brooked no restriction of right or decency.”
Father Betten wrote history in an America whose people by and large held themselves and their leaders to a higher moral standard than we do today. It should be very depressing to all men and women of good will that his remarks about the Romans would, with a few editing changes, apply to the American and European societies of today. Father Betten followed his mournful chapters on the decline of Rome with the uplifting story of how Christianity gave Rome and Europe a reason to hope.
Is Donald Trump the modern Constantine who, despite his own imperfections, leads good people to restore Christianity and Judaism to their rightful places in the Republic? Or will his time be too short and will our people be too selfish?
I can only hope that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob … and the timeless Messiah of the Jews and the Gentiles will give some future Father Betten the opportunity to uplift his readers about the changes for the better that come after the fall of the godless society of the present age.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CHURCH
There are days devoted to the Christian martyrs whose blood reddened the Coliseum and virtually any other place where the Romans could hunt them down and kill them. However, these persecuted people, despised as a group of downtrodden losers, would eventually form the largest religious group in the world. The Catholic Church remains to this day the church with more power and unity than all the other creeds which came before it or after it. How did it happen?
Father Francis S. Betten had his own set of to-the-point reasons why the Church survived. Here are a few from his high school textbook “Ancient and Medieval History.”
“Christianity had a most powerful ally in the natural desire in every human heart for truth and happiness. It held out a perfect retribution for the good that goes unrewarded in this world, and the moral evil that remains unpunished. It solved the problem of suffering by pointing to the suffering (of Our Lord), and to the glory that is in store in the other world.”
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. Still from “Passion of the Christ”.
“The virtuous life of the Christians made a strong appeal to those not entirely corrupt.”
“On various occasions, chiefly during the suffering of the martyrs, miracles happened (which were) impossible to deny.”
“All the Christians, not only the priests and bishops, but the faithful as well, including women and slaves, showed a remarkable missionary zeal.”
Then Father Betten delivers the clincher: “The chief cause of this spread (of Christianity) was the will of God that it should come about in spite of all obstacles and handicaps, and the greatest means was the power of His grace.”
The Roman Empire unwittingly aided the spread of Christianity because it imposed unity and a common language on the Mediterranean area and Western Europe, and it ensured there were good roads and reliable ships to travel on.
However, argued Father Betten, “Those who think that these natural conditions explain the spread of Christianity satisfactorily are mistaken. If nothing else had been needed, there is no reason why the whole Empire should not have turned Christian in a few years. Only divine grace was able to help men overcome the fearful array of obstacles which confronted every prospective convert to the new religion.”
The men and women of the early Catholic Church needed this divine grace desperately. Because the Roman rulers, after a brief period of semi-tolerance, would fall upon them hard. Hear what Father Betten said about the life of Christians under the Romans: “The most innocent people were brutally scourged, mutilated, crowded into filthy dungeons, banished, deprived of their possessions, forced to work as slaves in mines, exposed to wild beasts, and beheaded, crucified, or executed in some other painful and ignominious manner … there was hardly ever a time when the Church was not persecuted in some part of the Empire.”
During the persecution of Diocletian in the late 200s and early 300s, Betten said, “The dungeons were so overcrowded with bishops and clerics there was no room for robbers and other criminals. The death sentences sometimes amounted to a hundred a day. Whole cities were surrounded by the soldiers and set on fire, thus killing the entire population.”
With the coming to power of Constantine in the early 300s, the Christian emperor, the Roman persecution effectively came to an end. (It would flare briefly during the reign of Julian the Apostate in the middle 300s, but then die out with his loss of power two years later.) Constantine moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople (Istanbul of today), and his Christian empire of Greece, the Balkans, and Turkey would continue as the Byzantine Empire for more than a millennium. The Church’s leaders effectively took over the old capital where so many of its faithful had died as martyrs, and the popes of the Church would lead the faithful from the Eternal City from then through today.
Father Betten noted, “The prince of darkness who had been enthroned in his idols for thousands of years in the temples of antiquity fled before the Prince of Light and Peace.” But to quote Yogi Berra (a Catholic, but not quite the scholar Father Betten was), “It’s not over till it’s over.”
Just because most Catholics today are not being hunted down like common criminals doesn’t mean our souls are not subject to assault. Our beliefs, God’s laws, are mocked by the worldly. And the temptation of the good life with no commitments lures us constantly. It seems is truly miraculous to us in our comfortable homes that the early Christians could withstand, then overcome a government and society even more evil, pound for pound, than the Swamp government and society today. How many made the ultimate sacrifice for the Catholic and Orthodox faith so its ultimate triumph could take place?
Father Betten noted, “From the indications preserved in the writings of the time, pagan as well as Christian, historians conclude that at least a hundred thousand laid down their lives for the religion of Jesus Christ. This amounts to one martyr for nearly every day of the three centuries.” “Christianity had to conquer the world in the face of overwhelming obstacles. It had to enforce the observance of the Ten Commandments upon a population which had contracted the strongest habit of violating them in the most outrageous manner. All the physical force the mightiest of empires could muster was arrayed against the Church. As the world persecuted Christ, it also persecuted His followers. If we add to this the religious, moral, and social conditions prevailing in the Roman Empire, and the fact that the new religion could have no attraction for man’s natural (sinful) inclinations, we gladly agree with those who see in its victory a miracle which alone would suffice to prove its divine origin.”
Father Betten’s teaching is powerful stuff. But then, he wrote with the assurance of someone who knew the truth and the zeal of someone who wanted to share it with others. Aside from a few clergymen and nuns, do our leaders have similar understanding and authority? Comparing the “inclusive Christianity” of today’s mealy-mouthed bishops and theologians to the charitable but tough Catholicism of Father Betten and men and women of his character is like comparing a white wine spritzer to 100-proof whisky.
As the Fourth of July approaches, let us look at the similarities between Rome and America. Rome started as a small farming society dedicated to the gods and goddesses of home and hearth and land. Their Vestal Virgins were as close as pagan society would allow to a group like Catholic nuns. They were patriotic, and tried for awhile to listen to the voices of freemen. They grew powerful and bloodthirsty. They had great achievements, but they ultimately failed due to greed, blood lust, and many other forms of lust that took them closer and closer to Satan.
“Vestal Virgin” by Sir Frederick Leighton
We started as a collection of small farming societies dedicated to the worship of the One True God.
The men and women who founded the United States believed the nation should have no favored denomination. They did not believe in a separation of God from the State. In fact, they prayed often for God’s help and for the insight to determine God’s will. Since no denomination had the majority of Americans, it was only rational to give all standing. So they allowed all Protestant denominations, and tolerance to Catholics, Jews, and Orthodox Christians. Their descendants punished the Mormons for polygamy, and let up when the Mormons formally abandoned polygamy.
Americans are tolerant of the Asian pagan religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism. Americans have tolerated Islam, but have been uneasy with the jihadism that courses through that religion’s culture.
Up until about World War Two, our past leaders have been patriotic and have tried to listen to the voices of most citizens. Since then, our society has extended the same sort of treatment to American blacks. However, since them, our leaders have become more authoritarian and less democratic. And less tolerant of the Judeo-Christian roots of America. Why? Because it is a limit to their behavior, and a limit to their desires to tax Americans heavily to buy votes of government employee unions, illegals, and others who are unworthy.
Will we go the way of Rome?
Or will we fight for something better?
All legitimately Christian and Jewish churches are under attack in America today, but not under the sort of persecution in the Roman era. However, the 20th Century saw the murders of tens of millions of Christians, almost all Catholics or Orthodox, by the Nazis and the Communists, and the murders of another six million Jews by the Nazis, and a lesser number by the Communists. The Nazis killed two-thirds of the Jews in Europe.
The late 20th Century and the early 21st Century have seen the murders of Christians, almost all Catholics and Orthodox Christians, by Islamist vermin.
Formerly Christian Europe and some of our own states are secularist wastelands where corrupt judges and other corrupt politicians and Mengelistic doctors sentence children like Briton Charlie Gard and Californian Israel Stinson to death for having handicaps. This doesn’t even count the child sacrifice of tens of millions of children to abortion. We used to think it was barbaric to murder children.
In Britain, Scandinavia, France, and Germany, it is OK for Moslem interlopers to rape and molest girls, boys, and women. Spanish and Italian police and navy men have to knock down organized attempts to flood their lands with Moslems from North Africa and the Middle East. Only Eastern Europe, almost exclusively Catholic and Orthodox, unreservedly stands up for their women and girls and boys.
We who call ourselves Christians, be we Protestants, Catholics, or Orthodox Christians, and our friends in the Jewish faith would do well to stand together, and search our hearts, minds, and souls on these issues.
Guardians of the faith like Father Betten showed what our spiritual ancestors achieved though they were under far more pressure than most of us can ever imagine. Knowing that something can be done (living in faith despite the pressures of the world) encourages people to try it … because they trusted God to help them endure. For as Christ Himself said,”With God, all things are possible.”
The incredibly great George Washington humbles himself and asks God for aid at Valley Forge. Does this not put tears in your eyes and zeal for God and country in your heart?
We are not under Nero-style attack. Yet. We can and should do more to advance God’s agenda in the betterment of society. We need to live as if we have internalized Christ’s message. In imitation of Joshua and the Maccabees and the Christians who faced persecution and refused to blink, we and our families should serve the Lord.
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