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1917 and the Breaking of Christian Europe
Catholic Herald ^ | 23 Jan 2020 | Bishop Barron

Posted on 01/26/2020 1:55:29 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege

...I have long maintained – and the film 1917 brought it vividly back to mind – that one of the causes of the collapse of religion in Europe, and increasingly in the West generally, was the moral disaster of the First World War, which was essentially a crisis of Christian identity. Something broke in the Christian culture, and we’ve never recovered from it.

...For five awful years, an orgy of violence broke out among baptised people – English, French, Canadian, American, Russian and Belgian Christians slaughtering German, Austrian, Hungarian and Bulgarian Christians. And this butchery took place on a scale that still staggers us. The 58,000 American dead in the entire course of the Vietnam War would be practically a weekend’s work during the worst days of the Great War. If we add up the military and civilian deaths accumulated during the war, we come up, conservatively, with a figure of around 40 million.

...As witnessed to by so many thinkers and writers who participated in it – Paul Tillich, JRR Tolkien, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ernest Hemingway, etc – the First World War represented, as did no other war to that date, a collapse, a sea change, a cultural calamity.

...I wonder whether we might take the feast of the Baptism of the Lord as an opportunity to think more deeply about the moral implications of being a son or daughter of God, and hence a sibling to everyone else in the Mystical Body of Jesus. And I wonder whether we might look long and hard at this wonderful and disturbing film in order to see what happens when Christians forget who they are.

(Excerpt) Read more at catholicherald.co.uk ...


TOPICS: History; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: 1917; christendom; christianity; europe; firstworldwar; gramsci; woodrowwilson; ww1; wwi
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1 posted on 01/26/2020 1:55:29 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

The church was more of a cheerleader for their respective nations than they were a sane voice of calm.

People went to war with the idea that heaven was on their side.

Then they found themselves is a disaster that soilders on both sides realized was a complete farce that was doing little more than chewing up people in the name of monarchies and empires.


2 posted on 01/26/2020 1:59:40 PM PST by VanDeKoik
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

The seeds go back to the French Revolution


3 posted on 01/26/2020 2:00:58 PM PST by 11th_VA
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

WWI was the death of Europe.


4 posted on 01/26/2020 2:01:57 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

And to think it all took place due to an action the Clintons consider just an everyday occurrence.


5 posted on 01/26/2020 2:04:11 PM PST by immadashell (Save Innocent Lives - ban gun free zones)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Woodrow Wilson was insane to ever allow the United States to become involved in World War 1.

The Germans, the British, and the French were on the verge of an armistice, which would have ended the conflict in a draw.

There never would’ve been a punitive Treaty of Versailles, which begat Hitler, Stalin, the Holocaust, and the death of Europe.

Woodrow Wilson forever bears this burden of shame, for sending U.S. troops to die in the sodden trenches of France.


6 posted on 01/26/2020 2:05:52 PM PST by BrexitBen
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

It was a really good movie. I just saw it yesterday. Fantastic cinema that told a very narrow story without dealing directly with the big story.

I am a Christian, but I respectfully disagree with the Bishop on this as my take on WWI is different.

WWI is what happens when you have a government of the elites for the elites. Period. When governments are concerned about the health and welfare of their own people they do not go to war other than in the most dire circumstances. When the elites are worried about what is in their own personal interests or they put their pride in front of their people we end up in war. In fact, a Christian worldview and heart would demand that any leader think first of the welfare of those he/she leads.

There are times and reasons to go to war for just causes, but WWI did not come close to meeting that threshold with most involved never really understanding how/why they got there. It was a tragic war and a huge waste of young men.

Beautiful film that told a sober story. I sat there towards the end absorbing the futility of it all thinking of our own political class in DC just shaking my head. I served, but in hindsight I wonder what I served. In my heart it was the nation, my family, my (fellow) soldiers, and my community.

In my mind, I now see that it was Bush Sr., Clinton, and W and their interest were not mine or those of the average Joe/Jane.


7 posted on 01/26/2020 2:06:39 PM PST by volunbeer (Find the truth and accept it - anything else is delusional)
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To: BrexitBen

And the number of Americans killed and horribly wounded was all for nothing.


8 posted on 01/26/2020 2:08:13 PM PST by samtheman (I hope someone close to Trump is reading FR every day.)
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To: 11th_VA

It was a “birth pang”. The old idea of government being subject to God’s authority, was replaced with the 20th century version: Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc. — ie,
the highest morality now becomes the will of the dictator.

And with the idea of God’s authority removed, we are now ready for worship of a worldwide dictator/hero, a la Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc., but bigger — a hero figure to rule the whole world, and with whom mankind will become enthralled...(and without God’s restraining influence)


9 posted on 01/26/2020 2:09:43 PM PST by CondorFlight
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

WWI and WWII killed off the alpha male genes in Europe.


10 posted on 01/26/2020 2:10:08 PM PST by rbg81 (Truth is stranger than fiction)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Didn’t analyze it that much. Less than Saving Private Ryan but it showed to an extent the fight in the trenches.
Didn’t walk out even thinking about it. Something was missing.

I don’t know if you can make a war movie without the smell(s). Dead horses, smell of sh*t and intestines,
overflowing latrines or burning excrement with kerosene, if any, rotting corpses, all the screams and smell of fear.


11 posted on 01/26/2020 2:10:56 PM PST by Karliner (Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 8:28 Isa 17 "This is the end of the beginning" W Churchill)
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To: BrexitBen

Britain should have stayed out of it. She had her Empire, and Germany’s navy could never match Britain’s.


12 posted on 01/26/2020 2:11:53 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: rbg81
Warlike societies usually come back from deep losses.

What happened in Europe is they didn't want to be warlike anymore.

Nothing to do with genes.

13 posted on 01/26/2020 2:14:00 PM PST by x
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To: immadashell

That’s right.


14 posted on 01/26/2020 2:15:18 PM PST by laplata (The Left/Progressives have diseased minds.)
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To: x
What happened in Europe is they didn't want to be warlike anymore.

And Hitler was able to take advantage of that.

As Churchill said in 1934:

Many people think that the best way to escape war is to dwell upon its horrors and to imprint them vividly upon the minds of the younger generation. They flaunt the grisly photograph before their eyes. They fill their ears with tales of carnage. They dilate upon the ineptitude of generals and admirals. They denounce the crime as insensate folly of human strife. Now, all this teaching ought to be very useful in preventing us from attacking or invading any other country, if anyone outside a madhouse wished to do so, but how would it help us if we were attacked or invaded ourselves that is the question we have to ask.

Would the invaders consent to hear Lord Beaverbrook's exposition, or listen to the impassioned appeals of Mr. Lloyd George? Would they agree to meet that famous South African, General Smuts, and have their inferiority complex removed in friendly, reasonable debate? I doubt it. I have borne responsibility for the safety of this country in grievous times. I gravely doubt it.

But even if they did, I am not so sure we should convince them, and persuade them to go back quietly home. They might say, it seems to me, "you are rich; we are poor. You seem well fed; we are hungry. You have been victorious; we have been defeated. You have valuable colonies; we have none. You have your navy; where is ours? You have had the past; let us have the future." Above all, I fear they would say, "you are weak and we are strong."

15 posted on 01/26/2020 2:16:48 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: rbg81

That’s what I think too. The best and the brightest were killed.


16 posted on 01/26/2020 2:16:58 PM PST by punknpuss
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
The loss of Christian civilization, yes . . . See T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Hollow Men, bur also Eliot's Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets.
17 posted on 01/26/2020 2:18:31 PM PST by MrChips ("To wisdom belongs the apprehension of eternal things." - St. Augustine)
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To: dfwgator

Excellent arguments have been made that it was the death of Western Civilization itself; we have been living in its rubble ever since, distracted by gadgets and the pursuit of pleasure.


18 posted on 01/26/2020 2:20:16 PM PST by Captain Walker
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
an orgy of violence broke out among baptised people

Oh, those historians. No doubt Trump was at fault, too.

19 posted on 01/26/2020 2:25:04 PM PST by aspasia
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To: BrexitBen

Interesting!


20 posted on 01/26/2020 2:26:18 PM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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