President
Trump got a lot of cheers when he said the following during his State of the
Union address:
There could be no greater
contrast to the beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child than the
chilling displays our nation saw in recent days. Lawmakers in New York cheered
with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be
ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.
These are living, feeling,
beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams
with the world. And then, we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he
stated he would execute a baby after birth. To defend the dignity of every
person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term
abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb. Let us work
together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.
And let us reaffirm a
fundamental truth — all children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image
of God.
--Nicole Fallert, https://www.vox.com/2019/2/5/18212533/president-trump-state-of-the-union-address-live-transcript
But
are the sentiments expressed here about protecting innocent life, about
affirming the truth that man is made in the image of God, consistent with the
aspirations and history of the American project, or with non-Orthodox Western
civilization in general? Unfortunately,
they are not.
Charles in Charge of the
West
No,
not that Charles:
This
one:
Since
Western Europe first began to conceive of herself in the eighth century as an
entity apart from the worldwide Orthodox Christian Empire, the innocent have
suffered greatly. This process began
when Charlemagne (742-814) set up his heretical version of the Christian Empire
in Aachen, heretical because he denied the validity of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council’s teachings on the necessity to venerate the holy icons of the Lord
Jesus Christ, His Most Pure Mother, and the other saints and angels; and because
of his addition of the Filioque to the Nicene Creed. Given this auspicious beginning, it is
unsurprising to find in the history of his reign that he caused much blood to
flow in the expansion of his ‘Holy Roman Empire’, including the 4,500 Saxons
slaughtered at Verden:
Yet
this is the same Charlemagne whom Pope Benedict XIV saw fit to beatify in the
18th century. The Roman
Catholic faithful are to address him as ‘Blessed Charlemagne’:
Roman Catholic West
That
beatification by the Pope is quite fitting, however. For with Charlemagne’s death in 814, his
false empire collapsed, and the next attempt at Western self-exaltation, at
setting up a false Christian Empire in opposition to the Orthodox Empire, came
from the bishops of Rome themselves, beginning officially in 1054 and lasting
to this very day. Following this
sundering came, predictably, more needless bloodshed. The Roman Catholic Norman Invasion of the
Orthodox kingdom of England took place in short order (1066) with the blessing
of Pope Alexander II. William the
Conqueror’s own words tell how grisly this early attempt at papal conquest was:
I have persecuted the
natives of England beyond all reason. Whether gentle or simple I
have cruelly oppressed
them; many I
unjustly disinherited;
innumerable multitudes perished
through me by
famine or the
sword ... I fell on the English of the northern shires
like a ravening lion. I commanded their
houses and corn,
with all their
implements and chattels,
to be burnt without
distinction, and great
herds of cattle
and beasts of burden
to be butchered wherever
they are found.
In this way
I took revenge
on multitudes of both
sexes by subjecting
them to the calamity
of a cruel famine,
and so became
the barbarous murderer
of many thousands,
both young and old, of that fine race of people.
William’s death-bed
confession, according to Ordericus Vitalis, c. AD 1130
--Quoted in Fr Andrew
Phillips, Orthodox Christianity and the
Old English Church, p. 23 of PDF, http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/pdf/Orthodox_Christianity_and_the_Old_English_Church.pdf
Fr
Andrew continues,
It has been
estimated that during William I’s reign up to one in five of the English
population died by the sword or in famineslxii. This does not include the
deaths of the non-English population in Wales or Scotland, nor the civil war
deaths in the reign of Stephen, nor the deaths resulting from the
Papally-sponsored Norman invasion of Ireland, nor those of the One Hundred
Years War which was provoked by the territorial claims to France of the
Anglo-Norman kings. Even if the figure of one in five is exaggerated and it can
be halved, one in ten is equivalent today to over five million deaths – fifteen
times the number of British deaths resulting from the Second World War. The
account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is unambiguous: ‘And they built castles
far and wide throughout the land, oppressing the unhappy people, and things
went ever from bad to worse’. ‘Only amongst the monks, where they lived
virtuously was righteousness to be found in the land.’ Of William ‘the
Bastard’, the Chronicle says the following: ‘Assuredly in his time men suffered
grievous oppression and manifold injuries ... he was sunk in greed and utterly
given up to avarice. He was too relentless to care even though all might hate
him ... Alas! That any man should bear himself so proudly and deem himself
exalted above all other men.lxiii’ Of the tortures inflicted on captives and
the gruesome account of William’s funeral, when his stomach burst open in
stinking putrefaction, one can read elsewhere (pgs. 25-6).
Not
too long after the Norman Invasion, the Crusades were launched by Pope Urban II
in 1095. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153)
justified the killing this way in his work In
Praise of the New Knighthood:
To be sure, precious in
the eyes of the Lord is the death of his holy ones, whether they die in battle
or in bed, but death in battle is more precious as it is the more glorious (Ch.
I, section 2). . . .
BUT THE KNIGHTS OF CHRIST
may safely fight the battles of their Lord, fearing neither sin if they smite
the enemy, nor danger at their own death; since to inflict death or to die for
Christ is no sin, but rather, an abundant claim to glory. In the first case one
gains for Christ, and in the second one gains Christ himself. The Lord freely
accepts the death of the foe who has offended him, and yet more freely gives
himself for the consolation of his fallen knight.
The knight of Christ, I
say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves
Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear
the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers
and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller,
but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of
Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians.
Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come
safely into port. When he inflicts death it is to Christ's profit, and when he
suffers death, it is for his own gain. The Christian glories in the death of
the pagan, because Christ is glorified; while the death of the Christian gives
occasion for the King to show his liberality in the rewarding of his knight. In
the one case the just shall rejoice when he sees justice done, and in the other
man shall say, truly there is a reward for the just; truly it is God who judges
the earth.
I do not mean to say that
the pagans are to be slaughtered when there is any other way to prevent them
from harassing and persecuting the faithful, but only that it now seems better
to destroy them than that the rod of sinners be lifted over the lot of the
just, and the righteous perhaps put forth their hands unto iniquity (Ch.
3). . . .
Note
the utter dehumanization by Bernard of the Muslims. They are no longer men but simply ‘evil’
itself, confounding person and attribute.
No wonder that upwards of 1,000,000 are estimated to have died in the
Crusades (https://www.reference.com/history/many-people-died-crusades-4483019b5f8684c5). This sort of mindset has remained typical of
the post-Schism West in her wars of righteousness against those she believes to
be ‘evildoers’. And let us also recall
that Bernard has been not simply beatified like Charlemagne but fully canonized
as a saint of the Roman Catholic congregation.
Protestant West
When
the peoples of Western Europe democratized the papist principle (that one man,
instead of a council of bishops guided by the Holy Ghost, can determine what is
and is not the True Faith), applying it to themselves one and all, then the
Protestant Reformation was born, and the shadow which lay across that part of
the Eurasian land grew darker. Delusional
apocalyptic fervor grew, and along with it the flow of blood. A couple of ensamples will suffice.
. . .
The
rest is at https://usareally.com/2749-the-western-assault-on-innocent-life .
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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