Since we’re on the subject …. Originally penned and posted on August 1, ARSH 2012. More on this tomorrow with regards to a new genuine hero who has stepped to the front, Edward Snowden.
If you forced me to distill everything that is wrong with this culture down to one word, to find one word that covered almost every sin in one fell swoop, it would be cowardice. I look at western civilization and I see cowardice EVERYWHERE. It is in the eyes and hearts of every adult. Its stench permeates everything.
First, the definition. Cowardice is, when you boil it down, total self-absorption. Cowardice is putting your own immediate and superficial desires above everyone and everything else. Cowardice is indifference to your fellow man, and to God, and as we have already established, indifference, not hate, but INDIFFERENCE is the opposite of love.
The coward cowers and fails to act because he puts himself first, thus breaking the two Great Commandments simultaneously: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul AND thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The coward gives both God and his neighbor the proverbial finger, pulls the covers over his head, and retreats into his own lint-filled navel, oftentimes rhetorically hiding behind the words †prudence† and †benignity†.
The word †Prudence† has been twisted by cowards into the lie that one should never act, but rather think and think and think ad infinitum until either they have talked themselves out of any action (which is always very easy to do) OR until someone else comes along and takes up the slack, thus making the question of their own action moot. In other words, STALLING.
Prudence is being able to discern the right, see the big picture and then DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. Many people think that they can †legally† dodge this by simply doing nothing. Ah, but they forget that to NOT act is to act, to NOT speak is to speak, to quote Bonhoeffer. It is impossible to avoid action, because inaction is itself an action. When prudence truly dictates that something MUST be said or done, inaction then becomes a sin, no matter how one might try to justify that inaction as prudence. That sin is called COWARDICE.
Benignity means †kindness†, which is not the same as †being nice† or even being liked. True kindness sometimes requires sternness, or even ferociousness. Ferocity is defined as “extreme intensity”. If you walked into a kitchen and saw a three year old child just about to drink from a bottle of drain cleaner, would you not ferociously dive at the child yelling, †NO!† in order to save that child from poisoning and burning themselves? Anything less would be unthinkable. How could one react with silent paralysis to a child about to drink poison? How would that be kind? How would that be benign? It wouldn†t. It would be malignant malefaction devoid of prudence and charity, and utterly cowardly.
The other term that gets distorted by cowardice is †meekness†. The tragic coincidence that the word †meek† rhymes with †weak† in English has led many intellectually lazy people to believe very falsely that the words are synonyms. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Meekness is POWER UNDER CONTROL. Hence, Christ is perfectly meek, because as the Second Person of the Triune Godhead He is infinitely powerful, but yet so under control of His power that He freely chose to be crucified. An absolute monarch, powerful politician, powerful corporate executive, or law enforcement officer is called to meekness: power UNDER CONTROL. Power itself isn†t necessarily bad, as the absence of authority leads to anarchy and chaos. Power without the integrity of self-control is the problem. I think we can all agree that we have a serious, serious meekness deficiency in this culture, borne from cowardice, which recall is total self-absorption. A coward cannot be meek because a coward has no LEGITIMATE power to control in the first place. You hear me, Barack?
The reason we are in this mess, and the reason why I don†t see any indication of anything getting any better is because we are indeed a nation, and a civilization, of cowards. I see exactly ZERO willingness by anyone to offer any meaningful resistance to evil. I see zero willingness for anyone to do anything that might result in the least bit of discomfort, loss or material damage to themselves or their estate.
As an example, over the last couple of days I have been inundated with emails from people who remember the Mass before 1968, and they all say something very similar: When the changes came, we hated them and just KNEW that they were bad, bad news. We also KNEW which priests were gay, it wasn†t like they were trying to fool anyone.
My universal response to that is: WELL, WHY THE HECK DIDN†T YOU DO ANYTHING?
The answer is cowardice. People wanted to maintain their social standing, and so they chose the action of inaction. People wanted to just pull the blanket over their head, not get involved, and be considered †nice†. This is the ultimate self-absorption. If you people KNEW that the Church and the Mass were being profaned and you did NOTHING, then you will be held to account for that cowardice. You will be made to answer for the hundreds of millions, if not billions of human beings who were lost to hell because of the Marxist-homosexualist near-destruction of the Church and the Mass. You will be held to account for the horrific gutter dive that this culture has taken, because if the Novus Ordo Mass had been deep-sixed by the irate demand of the people before it ever got off the ground, this world would be a very, very different place. If the Marxist-homosexualists had never been allowed to rise to power by the silent assent of the cowardly people, God would still be shedding His grace on us, and tens of millions of dead babies would be very much alive today, and countless millions of people might not have been lost to hell.
This is why we, the people, are and will be punished by God – not just the psychopath politicians, banksters, oilgarchs and sodomites. This is why just war theory permits actions that can involve civilian casualties and destruction of non-state property. THE PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR GOVERNMENT. And no one is more responsible for their government, no one is more complicit in the sins of their state than the poeple whose organizational document begins with the words, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union ….”
Every time I hear someone say, †Well, I can†t DO THAT. I can†t SAY ANYTHING. I can†t stop paying taxes. I can†t get crossways with the IRS. I can†t cancel my cable. I can†t get on my boss†s bad side. I can†t jeopardize my job. I can†t jeopardize my reputation. I can†t jeopardize my income. I can’t jeopardize my pension. You just don†t understand. I just CAN†T,† I have just one question in response. It is very easy, and only requires a single number is response † not even words. Just one number. The question is, exactly how many human souls are you content to see lost in exchange for your personal comfort and ability to navel-gaze uninterrupted? I need a number. No prose. No bee-ess excuses. Just a number. If you are willing to admit that you are willing to see a billion people lost, then say it. If you†re willing to see 3.5 billion people lost, then say it. If you†re willing to see the entire surface population minus yourself lost, then say it. But don†t bee-ess me by saying †zero† and then cowering in fear and refusing to so much as lift a finger or say ONE WORD in the face of this evil.
Fish or cut bait, people.