"They Screamed At Us, They Spat On Us"

So back in August, a feminist group in Neuquen, Argentina decided to hold a pro-abortion protest in front of the city's cathedral. Some Catholic youth, fearing their church would be desecrated, organized to defend it by surrounding the cathedral and peacefully praying. The following video shows what happened.



Here is a news story describing the event from a Catholic youth named Pablo.

“Everything lasted more or less an hour and forty minutes. It was terrible. They wouldn’t go away. They screamed at us, they spat on us, they threw cans and rocks, they tore up an Argentinean flag and burned it. We were only praying one Hail Mary after another, without stopping, praying for each one of them, praying for each aborted child, praying for our Church and her pastors, and also in reparation for the blasphemies,” Pablo said.

Despite the tension, “we felt an extraordinary peace, and all of us who were there agreed [it was] a peace that cannot come from anyone else besides our Lord and God. We felt his consolation in our souls.”

Asked if they felt tempted to respond to the aggressions with violence, Pablo responded that all the young people came with the intention of “resisting to the last drop of our blood. Some guys up in front became very upset, because they insulted the Virgin Mary, calling her a lesbian. You feel like doing everything, but we know that our testimony needs to be different, and the virtue of fortitude is more perfect when we resist than when we attack.”

According to Pablo, after that experience in Neuquen, the young people were more committed to “living life as it truly is: a battle, a war.” “I think it is time to wake up, we must be aware that if we don’t do it, nobody will. Nobody will bear witness to hope if we Catholics do not do it. The world is waiting, the world expects that we go out to find it and conquer it.”

Notice in the video how the first line of Christian defenders, those bearing the full brunt of the crowd's hatred and abuse, are all young men - and I do mean men, not boys, whatever their chronological age. This old-fashioned chivalry must have driven the radical feminists into even more of a frenzy.

Unless you hang out in front of abortion clinics, you don't see this sort of thing in the U.S. very often. Mark my words: you will, and maybe sooner than you think. American Christians are going to make some tough choices in the next few years. How many of us will have the courage shown by Pablo and the others in Neuquen on that night?

Centuries ago another Pablo - St. Paul - took full advantage of all the rights his Roman citizenship gave him to spread the Gospel truth and defend the helpless. Eventually he paid the price in blood. Yet he was not defeated; the empire that killed Paul fell even as Christianity thrived. The same will happen again, but not before some of us face the modern-day lions.

The Greater Love of Maximilian Kolbe

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

When we think about the Holocaust, the first victims that come to mind are Jews. Yet the Nazis also killed many thousands of people from other undesirable groups: disabled people, mentally ill, Gypsies, homosexuals, uncooperative Christians, and others. Maximilian Kolbe was one of them.

Kolbe was born in Russia in 1894 to German and Polish parents. In 1907, he and his brother became illegal immigrants when they crossed into Poland and joined a Franciscan junior seminary. He was later sent to study in Rome and ordained a priest in 1918. While in Rome he founded an evangelistic group called the Militia Immaculata which still exists today. Fr. Kolbe returned to Poland and busied himself launching a new monastery, a seminary, a radio station and several religious publications.

In the 1930s Fr. Kolbe made several mission trips to Japan. While there he founded a monastery on the outskirts of Nagasaki. Against the wishes of the local Shinto people, he insisted it be built on the side of a mountain facing away from the city. This enabled the monastery to survive when most of Nagasaki was destroyed by the atomic bomb in 1945.

During the Second World War, Fr. Kolbe provided shelter to several thousand Polish Jews in his monastery and used his radio skills to broadcast secret messages about German military activities. In 1941, he was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's barracks disappeared and was presumed to have escaped. Nazi practice in such cases was to execute ten prisoners for every escapee. Ten were chosen; one cried out in despair that his family needed him. Father Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take the man's place. His offer was accepted.

The ten were executed in a particularly cruel manner: they were placed in a bunker with no food and water and simply allowed to starve to death. Another prisoner who was forced to help with the execution later described what happened.

The ten condemned to death went through terrible days. From the underground cell in which they were shut up there continually arose the echo of prayers and canticles. The man in-charge of emptying the buckets of urine found them always empty. Thirst drove the prisoners to drink the contents. Since they had grown very weak, prayers were now only whispered. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men.

Father Kolbe never asked for anything and did not complain, rather he encouraged the others, saying that the fugitive might be found and then they would all be freed. One of the SS guards remarked: this priest is really a great man. We have never seen anyone like him ..

Two weeks passed in this way. Meanwhile one after another they died, until only Father Kolbe was left. This the authorities felt was too long. The cell was needed for new victims. So one day they brought in the head of the sick-quarters, a German named Bock, who gave Father Kolbe an injection of carbolic acid in the vein of his left arm. Father Kolbe, with a prayer on his lips, himself gave his arm to the executioner. Unable to watch this I left under the pretext of work to be done. Immediately after the SS men had left I returned to the cell, where I found Father Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head drooping sideways. His face was calm and radiant ..

The date was August 14, 1941. A few months later, another young Polish man entered an underground seminary to study for the priesthood. Like Father Kolbe, he was sent to study in Rome and later returned to Poland to serve the church. His name was Karol Wojtyla, and he went on to become Pope John Paul II. In 1981, the Polish Pope canonized Father Maximilian Kolbe as a martyr and saint.

Among those present at the ceremony was Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man for whom Father Kolbe died. Gajowniczek survived the war and returned to his family. He lived another 53 years before passing away in 1995. Every August 14, he returned to Auschwitz to honor the man who saved his life.

What about the man who escaped, causing the executions? His body was later found in the camp latrine at Auschwitz. He did not escape at all; he simply drowned and disappeared. Did Father Kolbe die for nothing? Certainly not. It is unlikely any of these men would have left Auschwitz alive in any case. They were, at least, allowed to die with Father Kolbe praying by their side.

People sometimes wonder why Catholic priests are celibate. There are many reasons, but one of them is so the priest can offer himself fully as a servant of God's people. Father Kolbe gave himself in the fullest possible sense. In so doing, he preached a message that will survive far longer than anything else he did in his life on Earth.


For further reading:
FatherKolbe.com
Wikipedia
Catholic Online
KolbeNet
Saint of the Day

Viva Cristo Rey!

An unfortunate fact of life in 2007 is that the word "martyr" conjures up for most of us images of Islamic suicide bombers. In fact, the first martyrs were Christians who died at the hands of Romans, hundreds of years before Mohammed came along. Unlike today's terrorists, the first Christian martyrs did not seek to die for their faith. Many stories show them accepting their fate, and as the moment grew closer they often embraced it. They did not try to take others with them.

Americans have a hard time understanding the reality of true martyrdom. Other than a few cases of early missionaries being killed by Indians, it's just not part of our heritage. Martyrdom is something that happened a long time ago in places far, far away - but not always. 1927 was not so long ago, and Mexico is not so far away.

In 1917 Mexico adopted a new constitution that, among other things, imposed a number of restrictions on the religious freedom. The specific target was the Catholic Church but others were affected as well. Churches were forbidden to operate schools and their ability to own property was severely restricted. Ministers were stripped of the right to vote and ordered not to wear clerical garb in public or speak about political issues. Worship services outside of church buildings were outlawed.

For the first few years these provisions were only sporadically enforced. In 1924 Plutarco Elias Calles took over as president and soon began oppressing the Church with gusto. A resistance movement called the Cristeros arose in parts of Mexico.

Keep in mind, this is not that long ago. In 1927 Ronald Reagan was a teenager, Billy Graham a child, and George H.W. Bush a toddler. Josef Ratzinger was an infant and Karol Wojtyla was a small child. People are alive today who saw these events in Mexico. It's not ancient history.

The Calles government was ruthless. Between 1926 and 1934, the number of Catholic priests in Mexico dropped from 4,500 to 334. Most were expelled or left the country voluntarily, but at least 40 priests were killed. One was a young Jesuit named Miguel Agustin Pro.

Padre Pro served his flock faithfully despite the very difficult conditions. He used a variety of disguises to reach people who needed him, sometimes dressing as a beggar and arriving in the middle of the night to perform baptisms. He reportedly donned a police uniform in order to visit condemned prisoners in jail.

With an assassination attempt on an ex-president as pretext, in 1927 Padre Pro was arrested along with his brothers Humberto and Roberto. Another man confessed to the crime and said the Pro brothers had nothing to do with it. Nonetheless, President Calles ordered Padre Pro executed while sparing his brothers. Calles wanted to use the execution to inspire fear and so invited reporters to document everything. We have photographs of the event.

On November 23, 1927 - eighty years ago today - Miguel Agustin Pro, S.J., was led from his cell to a courtyard where the firing squad waited. After blessing each of the soldiers, he asked for a moment to pray. This last request was granted and he knelt on the ground. Then, refusing a blindfold, he faced his executioners with arms outstretched in imitation of Christ on the Cross. He clutched a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other.

As the soldiers prepared their weapons, Padre Pro shouted "May God have mercy on you! May God bless you! Lord, thou knowest I am innocent! With all my heart I forgive my enemies!" Just before they fired, he cried out "Viva Cristo Rey!" "Long live Christ the King!"

Padre Pro lived through the first rifle volley, and a soldier killed him with a bullet at point blank range. He was 36 years old.

Fifty-two years later, another priest came to Mexico and was greeted with open arms by a different president. This was no ordinary priest; it was the Bishop of Rome. You see, the gates of hell did not prevail against God's church; they could not prevail. In 1988 Padre Pro was beatified by Pope John Paul II - the first step toward sainthood.

Will there be more such martyrs? Times change. Constitutions can be amended, or just ignored. There are more than a few people in the United States right now who would like to do what President Calles did in Mexico. Will today's Christians have the courage of Padre Pro?

I'm afraid some of us may find out.



Padre Pro web site
Video dramatization (in Spanish)