July 14th - Bastille Day: Baptism by Blood

Crisis Magazine ^ | July 15, 2008 | John Zmirak

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Bastille Day marks the beginning of the greatest organized persecution of the Church since the Emperor Diocletian, and the explosion onto the world of ideologies that would poison the next two centuries: socialism and radical nationalism. Between them, those two political movements racked up quite a body count.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who pointed out that the mass murders of Christians in Russia were directly inspired by those in the Vendée. The Bolsheviks, he said, modeled themselves on the French revolutionaries, and pointed to the Vendée massacres as the right way to deal with Christian resistance.

Of course, it wasn’t supposed to work out this way. The Revolution had begun with a financial crisis, and promised to pare back an absolutist monarchy, perhaps along British lines.

And some reforms were certainly needed: the ruthless centralization imposed by Louis XIV and XV had hollowed out French political life and concentrated power over the lives of citizens almost entirely in Paris, in the hands of technocrats. Predictably, they’d made a mess of things.

The abuses that would mark the Revolution — including mass executions of priests and nuns — were endorsed by intellectuals schooled on the slanderous pamphlets of Diderot, full of pornographic falsehoods about the “secret lives” of monks and nuns.

Indeed, there’s a chilling similarity between the anti-clerical literature that prepared the public for the looting of monasteries and the anti-Semitic canards that were spread by the Nazis. The euphemism that was used to describe stealing monastic property for the state — “secularization” — found its echo in the 1930s in the term the German government employed for robbing the Jews: “aryanization.”

[otness_e]

First of all, if Paul was wrong about that bit, Jesus would have had him incinerated in public, literally, and then threatened everyone into ignoring his words with the clear implication that anyone who heeds Paul’s words would meet the exact same fate, as God the father would not tolerate anyone speaking falsehoods about what he said under their authority. He certainly wouldn’t have let it into the New Testament, which alongside the Bible was authored by God himself.

Second of all, Stalin and Hitler were NOT appointed by God at all, considering they tried to exterminate Christians and made clear they adhered to atheism. This isn’t even remotely the same thing as the monarchies, who at least DID adhere to Christianity at least in public, if not in private.

Lastly, I’m not at all fond of Jefferson due to his supporting the Jacobins even after most of his contemporaries learned they were very bad news by the September Massacres. Besides, he also gutted the bible even more than Martin Luther did and stripped Jesus of any of his divine aspects, making him little different from the Dalai Lama. He can rot in a ditch for all I care.

[otness_e]

To be fair, Louis XVI was actually nothing like the guy shown in the GIF, and if anything DID come far closer to actually living the Christian life than most of the other nobles (Marie Antoinet as well). In fact, he so lived the Christian walk that the only reason he was denied Sainthood was because he ultimately failed to consecrate the Heart of Mary before being beheaded. He even forgave his executioners only to have his speech drowned out.

[otness_e]

Actually, King Louis XVI not only was willing to accept reforms, he actually ATTEMPTED to make reforms in person. Unfortunately, most of the atheists helming the mobs thought he was too slow or less radical in his changes, and they decided to just off him. And that’s assuming the atheists heading the mobs actually CARED about reforms and just wanted ANY excuse to off the king for their own reasons.

[lavaroise]

If you understand French, listen to Stephane Edouard of Hommes d’Influence , and he will demystify you the French woman quick.

[lavaroise]

Yes. Robespierre was only interested in Power.

It was all Machivellian

[otness_e]

Or at the very least destroying Christianity.

And it wasn’t just Robespierre, either. Even the French Philosophes had evidence of just wanting to cause a ruckus for the sake of it, in addition to deeply wanting Christianity dead.