Category: History

In Europe in 1914, when Christmas was still considered to be a holy day and an occasion for peace rather than an excuse to party, the combatants of World War I observed a truce in honor of the holiday. The last surviving Allied veteran to witness the 1914 Christmas Peace has died at the age of 109.

"Alfred Anderson was the oldest man in Scotland and the last known surviving Scottish veteran of the war.

"’I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,’ he was quoted as saying in the Observer newspaper last year, describing the day-long Christmas Truce of 1914, which began spontaneously when German soldiers sang carols in the trenches, and British soldiers responded in English.

"’All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning across the land as far as you could see.’

"’We shouted "Merry Christmas" even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again.’"

GET THE STORY.

May Mr. Anderson and all of the witnesses of that Christmas Peace finally be reunited this holiday season to witness the everlasting peace of heaven.

One of the last remaining Australian veterans of World War I died on Monday, October 17. He was just 14 when he left to defend his country; he was 106 when he died.

"William Evan Allan enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy at the outbreak of the war when he was just 14. He served as a seaman on the HMAS Encounter from 1915 to 1918.

"’With his passing, we have lost an entire generation who left Australia to defend our nation, the British Empire and other nations in the cause of freedom and democracy,’ Veteran Affairs Minister De-Anne Kelly said in a statement.

"’Mr. Allan was just a boy when he went to war, much younger than most. His sacrifice is remembered and we honor him for his service,’ she said.

"Allan, born in the southeastern town of Bega in July 1899 and a resident of Melbourne, also was Australia’s sole surviving veteran of both world wars. In World War II, Allan served on an armed merchant cruiser and as pier master of a naval base."

GET THE STORY.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it amazingly uplifting and hopeful that in a day and age where parents kick out freeloading adult children on a "reality-TV" series that we are still within living memory of an era when young people, now considered minors, were mature enough to take on the adult responsibility of serving their country with honor. Perhaps we can still reclaim that heritage of raising self-sufficient and heroically-inclined children (although, of course, we should wait until they are eighteen before calling them up for war).

May William Evan Allan and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace through the mercy of God.

A reader writes:

Putting aside all the paranoid conspiracy nonsense,
what is the modern church’s view on the supression of the Templars?
Especially since we now know that confessions made under torture are
essentially useless.  Let’s be honest this is not one of the shining
moments in church history, if for no other reason than Pope Clement
V’s moral cowardice in the face of King Philip’s bullying.

The Church doesn’t really have an official view on historical incidents like this–at least not usually. Normally the Church leaves the evaluation of particular historical incidents to the conscience of the individual and to historians.

It does, however, comment in a general way on historical events that raise the considerations that the Church would bring to bear on the question if it were to comment on particular events (as it does on some occasions).

Some of the principles that the Church brings to bear in evaluating historical events are spelled out in the document

MEMORY AND RECONCILATION: THE CHURCH AND THE FAULTS OF THE PAST.

In general, the Church tries to acknowledge objectively wrong moral behavior but it also tries to evaluate the behavior against the character of the time and not hastily condemn individuals whose consciences, ultimately, are known to God alone. It thus tries to hold in tension the need to acknowledge the moral truth about particular behaviors alongside the need to acknowledge the historical factors affecting individuals and the fact that we cannot know their hearts.

One can see these being played out in the following passage from the Catechism, which addresses the subject of torture:

Respect for bodily integrity

2297 . . . Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. . . .

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

This establishes the Church’s general take on such historical realities without juding particular cases (in which individuals may have been more culpable or less culpable). It would be up to historians and private individuals to apply these principles to particular cases like what happened with the Templars and see how they stand up.

For an informed Catholic indivual’s attempt to do just that, SEE THIS ARTICLE. It was written almost a hundred years ago, and the author has a very negative view of what happened to the Templars (including the torture). I doubt if very many today would take a positive view of the situation.

 

An ancient Christian church, possibly dating to the founding of Christian monasticism, has been found near the Red Sea:

"Workers from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities found the ruins while restoring the foundations of the Apostles Church at St. Anthony’s Monastery. The remains are about 2 or 2 1/2 yards underground, said the head of the council, Zahi Hawass.

"The monastery, which is in the desert west of the Red Sea, was founded by disciples of St. Anthony, a hermit who died in A.D. 356 and is regarded as the father of Christian monasticism. A colony of hermits settled around him and he led them in a community.

"The remains include the column bases of a mud-brick church and two-room hermitages."

GET THE STORY.

Stories like this remind me of an observation made by the tour-guide priest during a pilgrimage I went on to the Holy Land in the Jubilee Year 2000. He noted that visiting the Christian sites in the Holy Land is a visible testimony to the antiquity of the Church. All of the major Christian sites in the Holy Land are claimed either by the Catholic Church or by Orthodox churches whose ancient communities in the Holy Land broke off communion with the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the Protestant presence at Christian sites in the Holy Land is negligible because Protestantism didn’t enter the scene until over a millennium-and-a-half after the founding of Christianity. While this isn’t "proof" against the claims of Protestantism, it is a historical reminder that Protestantism is a Johnny-come-lately phenomenon.

Today, August 6, back in 1991, was the day the first web page went online.

HERE’S AN ARCHIVED COPY.

The World Wide Web was the brainchild of Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, who proposed it back in 1980.

MORE ON HIM.

That was presumably sometime after Al Gore invented the Internet.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Sixty years later, Hiroshima remembers the atrocity:

"Though Hiroshima has risen from the rubble to become a thriving city of 3 million, most of whom were born after the war, the anniversary underscores its ongoing tragedy.

"Officials estimate about 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months after the Enola Gay dropped its payload over the city, which then had a population of about 350,000.

[…]

"The true toll on Hiroshima is hard to gauge, however.

"Including those initially listed as missing or who died afterward from a loosely defined set of bomb-related ailments, including cancers, Hiroshima officials now put the total number of the dead in this city alone at 237,062.

"This year, about 5,000 names are being added to the list."

GET THE STORY.

On August 9, Japan will mark the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on another Japanese city, Nagasaki, which has been the epicenter for Catholicism in that country. For a Catholic perspective on the atomic bombings of Japan, see this e-letter by Karl Keating, written to commemorate the anniversary last year. For an overview of Catholic principles of just war, see Catholic Answers’ Answer Guide: Just War Doctrine.

Rabbi David G. Dalin writes:

Many readers of the New York Times no doubt believe that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope.” John Cornwell’s bestselling book told them that, and it’s been reaffirmed by Garry Wills, Daniel Goldhagen and other writers since. It’s been said so often in fact that most well-read liberals know it for a certainty. The only trouble is: it isn’t true.

Not only does it contradict the words of Holocaust survivors, the founders of Israel, and the contemporary record of the New York Times, but even John Cornwell, the originator of the phrase “Hitler’s pope,” has recanted it saying that he was wrong to have ascribed evil motives to Pius and now found it “impossible to judge” the wartime pope.

But there’s something else that has been ignored nearly all together. Precisely at the moment when Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church in Rome (and throughout Europe) was saving thousands of Jewish lives, Hitler had a cleric broadcasting from Berlin who called for the extermination of the Jews.

He was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the viciously anti-Semitic grand mufti of Jerusalem, who resided in Berlin as a welcome guest and ally of the Nazis throughout the years of the Holocaust.

GET THE STORY.
(CHT to Thomas Woods for e-mailing!)

Rabbi David G. Dalin writes:

Many readers of the New York Times no doubt believe that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope.” John Cornwell’s bestselling book told them that, and it’s been reaffirmed by Garry Wills, Daniel Goldhagen and other writers since. It’s been said so often in fact that most well-read liberals know it for a certainty. The only trouble is: it isn’t true.

Not only does it contradict the words of Holocaust survivors, the founders of Israel, and the contemporary record of the New York Times, but even John Cornwell, the originator of the phrase “Hitler’s pope,” has recanted it saying that he was wrong to have ascribed evil motives to Pius and now found it “impossible to judge” the wartime pope.

But there’s something else that has been ignored nearly all together. Precisely at the moment when Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church in Rome (and throughout Europe) was saving thousands of Jewish lives, Hitler had a cleric broadcasting from Berlin who called for the extermination of the Jews.

He was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the viciously anti-Semitic grand mufti of Jerusalem, who resided in Berlin as a welcome guest and ally of the Nazis throughout the years of the Holocaust.

GET THE STORY.
(CHT to Thomas Woods for e-mailing!)

Today–July 20th–back in 1969 was the day man first walked on the moon. (Unless you’re one of those folks who thinks it was all fake, like in that thar Capricorn One movie.)

Neil Armstrong was supposed to say "That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," but as the tapes reveal, he actually said "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"–which makes no sense.

It’s always been a comfort to me that the first words spoken by a human being on another celestial body were a blown line.

Should help keep us humble in the face of such achievements.

GET THE STORY.

Y’know . . . I’ve always thought that a Saturn V rocket looks rather a lot like a tower. Now where have I heard something about towers to heavens and confusion of tongues before . . . ?

The chunk o’rock to the left is The Rosetta Stone (Dum! Dum! Dum!).

It was found today–July 15–back yonder in the year 1799 by Napoleon DynamiteBonaparte–well, actually by one of his men.

Now, thing is: The Rosetta Stone was instrumental in helping us figure out how to read Egyptian. Jean-Francois Champollion (an old, dead French dude who was then a young, alive French dude) deciphered hieroglyphics using help from the stone.

He was able to do this because the rock contains engravings of the same text in Greek, demotic script (the kind of script used by ordinary Egyptian folks in ancient times), and hieroglyphics (the more sacred way the Egyptian language was written). Since Greek was a known language, it was possible to figure out what the text as a whole said in the other two scripts.

YEE-HAW!

Ain’t linguistic discovery a hoot!

So anyway, now that the Rosetta Stone has been cracked (no pun intended, though look at the edges), if you want to learn hieroglyphics yourself, SEE HERE.

Also, GET THE STORY.