Special Series: "1919—2019 A Centenary Meditation on the Church and a Quest for Purification Gone Mad" - Part II: Dangers on the "Catholic Purification" Front

1919—2019
A Centenary Meditation on the Church and a Quest for “Purification” Gone Mad

A Series by Professor John C. Rao, DPhil

Part I: The Peace, the War, and the Longing for Purification

Part II: Dangers on the "Catholic Purification" Front 

Unfortunately for Catholics, the Church’s quest for purification of the spaces of public life in 1918 was a hotly contested one, with her Gnostic, Nominalist, Reformation, and Enlightenment shaped opponents either potentially or immediately wielding more power than she might ever hope to command on her own. Dangers on the purification front were international, national,and broadly cultural in character, with most of the threats in question ultimately perilous on all these levels.La Civiltà Cattolica continued to apply and develop the conclusions reached by the revival movement of the previous century to understand and parry them. Therefore, much of what I have to say below is fit into the broad framework that this journal’s interwar analysis provided.

One of the two newer, but historically rooted perils of the interwar period emerged from the United States. Due to her entry into the European conflict, and President Woodrow Wilson’s statement of allied goals in his Fourteen Points, his response to Pope Benedict XV’s peace proposals, and his popularization of the worldwide struggle as “the war to end all wars”, America loomed large as a potential purifying influence on November 11th, 1918 and in the months thereafter. Although the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles by the United States Senate and her consequent failure to participate in the League of Nations removed the imminent threat of New World competition for the political control of spaces in the Old, America’s “isolationism” in the interwar years was never truly complete. Latin America and East Asia remained public American concerns and fields of action, and New World cultural impact---the American way of life ---also continued to grow unabated in much of Europe as well. Cultural “Americanism” eased the way to American political domination of the European world in the wake of the second global conflagration. By 1945, mobilization of the American Way---what then came to be called pluralism---as a weapon for coaxing the reawakened Catholic Faith of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries back into its eighteenth century dogmatic slumber was complete.

A second new force competing with the Church for the occupation and purification of social spaces came out of Russia, which, although it played no role as a nation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, was nevertheless “present” in everyone’s mind at that gathering. For the seizure of power in Russia by Lenin’s Bolsheviks---formally known as the Communist Party from March, 1918 onwards---and the impact that Marxism-Leninism immediately exercised outside that troubled country’s fluctuating borders gave grave significance the world over to what was happening therein.This was certainly true in the defeated nations, Germany’s Communist movement sparking the Sparticist uprising of the weeks preceding the opening of the Peace Conference, and Hungary experiencing a Soviet style government briefly thereafter. But the spirit of the Revolution was not unknown to the victors either, with Red Guards seizing factories and agricultural estates and dreaming of an Italian imitation of the distant Russian model.

Special Series: "1919—2019 A Centenary Meditation on the Church and a Quest for Purification Gone Mad" - Part I: The Peace, the War, and the Longing for Purification

1919—2019
A Centenary Meditation on the Church and a Quest for “Purification” Gone Mad

A Series by Professor John C. Rao, DPhil

***

Part I: The Peace, the War, and the Longing for Purification 

Despite its claims of openness to everyone and anything, friendliness to time gone by is sorely lacking in our pluralist society, and this for very good reason indeed. Pluralism needs to destroy knowledge of the past in order to survive. Historical wisdom makes the depth and longevity of the intellectual, spiritual, and practical divisions in our daily life all too clear to those seeking to learn its lessons. Such wisdom diverts attention away from the only acceptable pluralist solution to human problems: the satisfaction of those material passions to whose endless permutations, monotonous as they ultimately really are, fallen man in his dullness seems ceaselessly attracted.

Unfortunately, we Catholics living in an all-encompassing pluralist society are ourselves subject to its soporific effects. We also have a tendency to don an historical blindfold, to focus on immediate material concerns and their time-bound explanations of current events, and, thus, to replace real intellectual judgments with shallow, pluralist-approved mantras. The result is that our own appreciation of the causes of our present ecclesiastical debacle is both too mundane as well as much too limited historically in its scope.And, sadly, this prevents us from dealing with its horrors effectively.

Socci: "The Curious Phenomenon of Sudden 'Conversions' among Churchmen" - while struggle for unborn life is abandoned

Pope Bergoglio’s “Politically Correct” Peace

Antonio Socci

[for Italian daily] Libero

September 14, 2014

Moving with the new winds?

Chesterton: Is War Irrational -- or is Pacifism Feverish?

The Peace Fever

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

May 29, 1915

It is customary to talk about the war fever, but in those who still exhibit it, the peace fever is much more feverish. With these people peace is not as much a prejudice as a mania.

There is said to be a sort of person in the lunatic asylums who thinks he is a chicken. But even he is only somewhat exaggerating his legitimate claim to know his own business best. He is too modest to commit himself to the proposition that all human beings are chickens. That, however, is very much the proposition to which the extreme Pacifist commits himself: for he really talks of man as if he were talking of some other animal; as if a naturalist were to class men with poultry merely because they have two legs. Legs can be used for other purposes than that of running away; and man's highest moral and mental powers can be used for other purposes than that of keeping the peace. Mere Pacifism has in this crisis [World War I] failed fully to support anything or anybody, even its own best exponents, and that for a perfectly simple reason: that mere Pacifism is morally wrong. Mere peace does not fill the heart; it does not satisfy the conscience or even the affections. I have heard of a person having the highly unpleasant accomplishment of being able to stop his heart from beating; and men of a generous and civilised breed can only reject the case for just anger and battle by an artificial stoppage of the heart.

September 5, 1914: Péguy at 100 - I - The Mystery of Charity in War and Death

Exactly 100 Years Ago: A Beautiful War Story Rabbi Dies Holding a Crucifix for Dying Soldier

At the end of the first month of the Great War:

A New Fatima Secret?...

Italian religious commentator Antonio Socci, whom we admire, has a very interesting, almost entertaining, book on what he calls, "the fourth Secret of Fatima," a supposed missing passage of the private revelations originally made in Fatima, Portugal, and put into writing many years later. In the past few days, he has insisted on it (excerpts in English), based on some passages of a newly published biography of Sister Lucia. It must be said that a not so interesting part of Socci's original book were his frequent mentions of... Medjugorje.

Anyway, missing or not, what really matters is that the message of Fatima is the message of Lourdes, which is the message of Our Lord:

POPE SAINT PIUS X A Reflection on The Centenary of His Death,by Roberto de Mattei

Pope St. Pius X celebrates Mass in St. Peter's on 50th Anniversary of Proclamation of the Immaculate Conception
(Dec. 8, 1904)

One hundred years after his death the figure of Saint Pius X stands erect, majestic and heavy-laden in the firmament of the Church. The sadness which clouds Pope Sarto’s expression in his last photographs, not only reveals a sense of the catastrophic consequences of the First World War, which had started three weeks before his death, but seems to foresee an even greater tragedy than the wars and revolutions of the 20th Century: the apostasy of nations and of churchmen themselves in the century which would follow.

The main enemy which St. Pius X had to face, had a name, which the Pontiff himself gave: Modernism. His relentless fight against Modernism characterized his Pontificate indelibly and was a fundamental element in his sanctity. “The lucidity and firmness with which Pius X conducted his victorious fight against the errors of modernism - affirmed Pius XII in his speech at the Canonization of Pope Sarto – testifies to what heroic degree the virtue of the faith burned in his saintly heart (…)”.

To the Modernism that was proposed, “a universal apostasy of the Faith and Church discipline”, St. Pius X opposed it with an authentic reform which had its major point in the custody and transmission of the Catholic truth. The encyclical Pascendi (1907), where he struck down the errors of Modernism, is the most important theological and philosophical document produced by the Catholic Church in the 20th century. Yet, St. Pius X did not limit himself to fighting the evil of the ideas, as if they were disincarnated from history. He wanted to strike at the historical bringers of these errors by imposing ecclesiastical censures, by watching over seminaries and Pontifical universities and imposing the anti-modernist oath on all priests.

This coherence between doctrine and pontifical praxis gave rise to violent attacks from “crypto-modernist” environments.

When Pius XII promoted his beatification (1951) and his canonization (1954), Pope Sarto was defined by opponents extraneous to the renewing ferments of his time, guilty of having repressed modernism with brutal and police-like methods. Pius XII entrusted Monsignor Ferdinando Antonelli, a future cardinal, with the compilation of a historical Disquisitio dedicated to dismantling the accusations against his predecessor, based on witnesses and documents. Today, however, these accusations appear once again even in the “celebration” that the “Osservatore Romano” dedicated to St. Pius X, by the writer Carlo Fantappiè, exactly on the anniversary of his death on August 20.*

August 1914: Kulturkampf reaches a whole new level

On August 19, 1914, the advancing German armies that had grievously violated Belgian neutrality earlier in the month, occupied the city of Louvain (Leuven), Brabant.

Fontgombault Sermon and Allocution: Assumption of Our Lady, Proclamation of Love, Motherhood and Life Vow to Our Lady: a Vow for Peace and Prayerfulness

Assumption of Our Lady

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau

Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault

(Fontgombault, August 15, 2014)

There is more happiness in giving than in taking (cf. Acts 20:35).

God the very first has put into practice this fundamental rule of spiritual life: He gave us His Son, He gave us Mary.

In monastic life, men give themselves to God through the practice of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They renounce riches, the legitimate joys of a human family, and the exercise of their own will, thus giving to the world the testimony that God only suffices. Today we remember the commitment that fifty years ago two of us have made. Throughout these years God has remained faithful. Man can rely on this faithfulness to enter into a path which might seem to go beyond human strength.

Whereas current ideas incline us to zapping, to ceaseless changing, to the culture of the temporary which debars us from any long-term commitment, life’s true joy and fecundity spring from an irrevocable commitment which gives us time to grow, to ripen, to blossom. Monastic life thus emerges as a laboratory where in the contact with divine realities, in liturgical prayer, in lectio divina, in personal prayer, as well as in brotherly life, a sweet fragrance is evolved which goes up from earth towards heavens to the praise of the Maker’s glory.

It is therefore not very hard to understand why monks like to choose Mary’s feasts to commit themselves before God by the links of profession or promise, and why they cultivate a great love for her. Mary is she who has entirely been God’s possession, to the extent that God has wanted to take flesh in her. To man’s gift, to his often so poor prayer, God Who is never niggardly of His grace answers with His abundance, He gives bountifully and lavishly. Mary is full of grace and she invites her children to follow the path of abandonment to Providence.

We remember today the end of Mary’s earthly life. She has gone up to Heaven in her body and soul and she has been crowned by God as Queen of heaven and earth. 

The Guns of August Still Rumble - 3rd and last Part- After the Age of Empire, the Age of Totalitarianism and Genocide

It is simply astonishing how much our daily lives are still so closely linked to the First World War -- and even more so those of our dear Christian brethren in the Middle East. In 1915, during the war, Muslims in Anatolia would join hands to effect the first major genocide of the 20th century, as over 1 million Armenians, Assyrians, and Hellenic Pontic Christians were killed, and a good number were expelled to make room for the 99%-Muslim Turkish Republic we know today. As it can be seen above, Aleppo, Mosul, Deir Ezzor, once again today brutalized by Islamic forces, were cities to which Christians were deported 99 years ago. The remains of the Ottoman Empire were divided by French and British, and, though many ideas were considered, a nation for Christians was never really effected in the border redesign -- the closest thing was Lebanon, but the slight Christian majority there did not last as long as it was thought it would. Many of the expelled Assyrian Christians from Anatolia would join their kin who had always lived in what would become Northern Iraq and Syria. The rest is history being made before our eyes.

The third and last part of Italian historian Roberto de Mattei's special article on the First World War shows how that "Jacobin War," in his words, reaches us powerfully even today in its mighty consequences.

__________________________________________

[Part I here]
[Part II here]

The Guns of August Still Rumble

(Part III)

by Roberto de Mattei

for Il Foglio

(excerpts )

The Conference of Paris united and consolidated Germany, but at the same time humiliated its aspirations, pushing her towards rearmament and revanchist policies. The “injurious paragraphs” in the Treaty of Versailles, for example, article 231, which cast the moral blame entirely on Germany and her allies for the August 1914 “aggression” as well as the demand to hand over the “war criminals” starting with the Emperor William I, were received by the German public opinion as an unacceptable “diktat” and offered the pretext for the constitution of a “anti- Versailles front” which united progressives and conservatives. John Laughland noted how those Treaties go back to “the ethic of punishment” imposed in the name of “humanitarian law” which would characterize the contemporary age, while all the Treaties for Peace, concluded from the beginning of the XIV century until Versailles, contained “amnesty clauses” for the losers. (Total War for the sake of The Good, in “Limes”, n. 5 (2014), pp.61-66).

The lack of balance generated by the peace of Versailles, favored the two “brother enemies” which came on the scene more or less at the same time in the twenties: Bolshevism and Fascism. Did the European civil war begin in 1917, as Ernst Nolte sustains or in 1914, as other historians claim? In reality there is no contradiction, since the Russian Revolution is part of the First World War and cannot be separated from it. The historical European and global dynamic, between 1917 and 1945, was determined, as Ernest Nolte underlined, by the great “European Civil War”, conducted between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Many European politicians did not understand the underlying affinity linking the two ideological systems, but ascribed the “avant garde” role to Soviet Communism in the process of democratizing mankind.

The Guns of August Still Rumble: Part II - In the End, Austria Dismantled, but Germany More Centralized and Unified than Ever: Why?

Balmoral, 1896: Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna with Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna in her arms, Tsar Nicholas II, Queen Victoria, and Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward VII) 

__________________________________________

[Part I here]

The Guns of August Still Rumble

(Part II)

by Roberto de Mattei

for Il Foglio

(excerpts )

English historian Niall Ferguson recalls that on the eve of the war, descendents and relatives of Queen Victoria sat on the thrones not only of Great Britain and Ireland, but also of Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Romania, Greece and Bulgaria. In Europe only Switzerland, France and Portugal were republics. “Despite imperial rivalry in pre-war diplomacy, the personal relations among the monarchs themselves remained cordial, even friendly: the correspondence between George, Willy and Nicky, reveals the continuation of the existence of a royal, cosmopolitan and polyglot elite with a certain sense of common interests.” (The Truth Silenced. The First World War: the greatest error in modern history, tr. It. Corbaccio, Milan 2002, p.559).

An Italian scholar, Alberto Lumbroso published The Imperial and Royal Correspondence 1870-1918 (Bompiani, Milan 1931) wherein he collects telegrams exchanged between the European sovereigns during the “the tragic week” which closed July and opened August of 1914. On the 29th of July a intense telegram from Willy (Wilhelm II) convinces Nicky (Nicholas II) to renounce the general mobilization for a few hours as well as the order of only one partial mobilization against Austria. On the 31st July, the Kaiser turned once again to his cousin, appealing: “Peace in Europe can only be saved by you, if Russia decides to stop the military measures that threaten Austria-Hungary.” When Nicky receives Willy’s last telegram, asking for “an immediate, affirmative, clear and precise reply” to “avoid incalculable disasters” , Germany’s ambassador has already consigned the declaration of war to the Russian Minister of Foreign affairs.

London, May 1910: Standing, from left to right: King Haakon VII of Norway, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria (abdicated, 1918), King Manuel II of Portugal (deposed, 1910), Kaiser Wilhelm II of the German Empire (abdicated, 1918), King George I of Greece (assassinated, 1913) and King Albert I of Belgium. Seated, from left to right: King Alfonso XIII of Spain (fled country, 1931), King George V of the United Kingdom, King Frederick VIII of Denmark.

Europe precipitated into the abyss in gleeful frenzy. Pacifist predications had produced the opposite effect in young Europeans, thirsty for glory and heroism. In the more recent national States, like Germany and Italy, war was seen as an occasion to create a new national conscience. Social Darwinism affirmed the inevitable character of combat and Catholic Modernism saw in it a form of spiritual purification. If for Benedict XV war was a “useless slaughter”, for Romolo Murri, and his disciple Luigi Sturzo, [future] founder of Christian Democracy in Italy, war was a “powerful purifier” destined to raise up “the value of divine and eternal principles of morality, law and religion.” (E. Gentile, op. cit., pp 211-212).

"The Guns of August Still Rumble" - I

Memorial Tablet in the Cathedral of Marseille, France

Today is the 100th anniversary of the entrance of the British Empire as a belligerent power in the general European conflagration of 1914, the last of the major powers to do so, turning it into a completely global war. From Australia and New Zealand to India and South Africa to Newfoundland and Canada, and including a burning Ireland, the world was at war.

We begin today a series with excerpts of Italian historian Roberto de Mattei's major article on the centenary of that conflict that created the world in which we live today.

__________________________________________

The Guns of August Still Rumble

(Part I)

by Roberto de Mattei

for Il Foglio

(excerpts )

(Part II here)

One hundred years later, are the rumbling guns of August, still echoing in European skies, able to offer us a lesson from history?

August 4, a special day for the Curé d'Ars and the Pastor-Pope

‎

[In the famous image above, Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, Patriarch of Venice, on August 4, 1901, exactly 113 years ago and precisely 2 years before his election, in a trip from Borso del Grappa to the top of Mount Grappa (Province of Treviso, in the Veneto), where he would unveil the little shrine to Our Lady Help of Christians. The Madonnina del Grappa would be damaged during World War I, in which the Grappa was a place of intense fighting in three battles between Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces. NC]

________________________________________________

by Fr. Paul J. McDonald

And on yet another August 4, in the year 1903, exactly 111 years ago, the Conclave following the death of Pope Leo XIII elected the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Sarto, as the Successor of St. Peter and Vicar of Christ.

This date is very significant. It is the anniversary of the death of the Curé d'Ars, St. John Vianney. It would be Pope Sarto who would beatify Vianney.

Pope Saint Pius X was the only and still is the only pope who worked as a priest in charge of a parish: a "Pastor", as we say in America, a "Parish Priest", a "Curé", a "Parroco"‎.

Exhortation Dum Europa, of August 2, 1914, for Peace in Europe - The Final Words of Pope Saint Pius X

Le sang injustement répandu

est long à pénétrer dans la terre.

Paul Claudel

June 1915

The Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia of July 23, 1914, caught most of Europe by surprise. 

Vatican diplomacy, which had been weakened since the fall of Rome in 1870, was also shocked with the fast pace of events, since political assassinations of major figures were not exactly a rarity in the period, and, to the world outside the very highest Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin government circles, the escalation towards war had remained mostly unknown for almost a month until the ultimatum.

It is an opinion shared by all his biographers that Pope Saint Pius X's health deteriorated rapidly when the scale of events became clear in the days following the ultimatum. Pius X died for peace: that was also the unanimous judgment at the time of his death -- his health, that had been under great threat in 1912, was in an apparently excellent state in 1914, including in the tense weeks of July and early August.

And then...as almost all Europeans, Pope Sarto could not believe his eyes, so many of his children involved in a fight to death, ones against the others, Catholic Austrians, Hungarians, Croats, Slovenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Bavarians, Swabians, Prussians, Alsatians, and so many others... against Catholic Poles, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Belgians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Catholics from throughout the French, Russian, and British Empires and so many others...

On August 2, the same day on which Italy formally proclaimed its neutrality and the non-application of the Triple Alliance treaty in those circumstances, Pope Pius X, burdened by a general European conflagration just put into motion in the hours before, made a final appeal.

It would be his final public document. The Pope died 18 days later.

________________

EXHORTATION

DUM EUROPA
OF POPE PIUS X
TO CATHOLICS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD

The Telegram

The telegram, in the universally recognized language of foreign affairs of the age, sent by the Austrian-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and whose text had been personally approved by the Emperor in Bad Ischl, was received in several different locations of Serbia, including at the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nis, Southern Serbia, to which several relevant Serbian ministries had already moved preemptively.

It is almost unimaginable to see unfolding from this moment in an otherwise pleasant and warm summer day the unprecedented horrors, in cruelty and sheer numbers, of the century that was beginning in that instant: the millions of dead in the battlefields from East to West, the genocides (the first in Turkey the following year), Lenin arriving at the Finland Station, the Cheka, the Holodomor and the Gulag, Paracuellos de Jarama, Dachau and the Wannsee Conference, Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor, the skeleton of the Urakami Cathedral and the Great Leap Forward, the Khmer Rouge, partitions, and civil wars, and ethnic cleansings, religious persecution beyond measure, upheavals even reaching our own days.

It was July 28, 1914, early in the afternoon. 

“The royal government of Serbia having not satisfactorily answered the notice that had been handed to it by the minister of Austria-Hungary in Belgrade on the date of July 23, 1914, the imperial and royal government finds itself compelled to safeguard its rights and interests and to resort therefore to the force of arms. Austria-Hungary considers thus itself from this moment in a state of war with Serbia. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria-Hungary, Count Berchtold.”

He left, never to return

On Tuesday, July 28, 1914, in his summer residence, the "Kaiservilla" in Bad Ischl, Emperor Francis Joseph signed the declaration of war to the Kingdom of Serbia and the manifesto to his peoples presenting his motivations, transcribed below. The telegram declaring a state of war to be sent by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Dual Monarchy to Serbia was also approved by the Emperor on that occasion and was received by the Serbian Government and High Command at 1300 (1 p.m.) of the same day. It was the first day of the Great War.

He left Ischl for Vienna on the following day -- never to return.

____________________________________

His I[mperial] and R[oyal] Apostolic Majesty has graciously deigned to proclaim the following Manifesto and Rescript.

Dear Count Stürgkh:

I have resolved to instruct the Ministers of my Household and Foreign Affairs to notify the Royal Serbian Government of the beginning of a state of war between the Monarchy and Serbia.

In this fateful hour I feel the need of turning to my beloved peoples. I command you, therefore, to publish the enclosed manifesto.

Bad Ischl, on July 28, 1914

Franz Joseph m.p. [manu propria]

Stürgkh m.p.

To my peoples!

100 years ago, the Dual Monarchy delivered its ultimatum to Serbia - A recommended video on World War I -- and the end of Civilization

July 24, 1914 paper reports on Ultimatum:
the July Crisis reaches its zenith

Vienna had received on July 6 the "blank cheque" (Blankoscheck) from Berlin, and, on July 23, 1914, the ultimatum related to the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his consort was delivered to Belgrade -- exactly 100 years ago today. The ultimatum had been drafted in such a way that it would be impossible for any honorable nation to accept it, and Serbia had until Saturday, July 25, 1914, at 6 p.m. to accept it, or risk war.

At this moment, the mechanism that would trigger the war was almost in place but, incredibly, Russia and the British Government prevailed upon Serbia to practically accept all of the ultimatum's demands, except for a minor detail. In France, the secularist elite had alienated the Catholic majority of the population (that was in those days with their eyes fixed in Lourdes for the 25th International Eucharistic Congress, held from July 20 to July 25), and the country was still divided in half right before the conflict.

In any event, with the systemic failure of the elites of some (not all!) of these countries avid for war, even the late-moment efforts for peace failed, and the localized affair became a general European conflagration in just a matter of days.

The following short documentary by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Catholic News Service on all aspects surrounding World War I, from its origins to its consequences, is a little web jewel, because in a very short time (under 20 minutes) and with the help of historians such as Christopher Clark, Margaret MacMillan, David Berlinski and the great Roberto de Mattei, it shows what Europe was and what Europe became.

Syria: let us pray for our Christian brethren

July 26, 1914

Seeing the unfolding events in the Syrian crisis is like watching the July 1914 Crisis, which will be widely discussed next year. We are not affirming that it is the beginning of a new continental or world war, not at all. However, as in the Balkan interventions of the early 20th century, it is clear that there is an interest of some Powers to pursue an armed intervention in an area where multiple, complex and deeply historical interests are at stake, it is absolutely clear that it cannot end well, and it is reasonably safe to predict that it may end with results that are opposed to the core interests of those same Powers. It is like witnessing a car crash and not being able to do anything.

Let us pray for those who will lose the most in any intervention, the weakest link in the Middle East: Christians.

From L'Osservatore Romano and the Chaldean Bishop of Aleppo, Antoine Audo, S.J. (The Tablet):

A Syrian Chaldean Catholic bishop yesterday warned that armed intervention in Syria could unleash a "world war".

Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo told Vatican Radio: "If there is an armed intervention, that would mean, I believe, a world war. That risk has returned."

The Syrian prelate was speaking as Britain and the US discussed plans for military action in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria last week, plans strongly opposed by Russia and Iran.

"We hope that the Pope's call for real dialogue between the warring parties to find a solution can be a first step to stop the fighting," he said.

The Vatican's semi-official daily, L'Osservatore Romano, meanwhile criticised Western powers in an editorial and called for greater "prudence".

"The drumbeat of an armed intervention by Western powers is becoming ever more insistent and ever less restrained by prudence," it said.

From the Moscow Patriarchate (AsiaNews):

Moscow Patriarchate: acting as "international executioners," the US is sacrificing Muslims and Christians in Syria

Speaking to AsiaNews, Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Department for External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, condemns threats of NATO intervention without a UN mandate. More victims will be "sacrificed on the altar of an imaginary democracy".

Moscow (AsiaNews) - As a Western military intervention against the regime of Bashar al-Assad appears increasingly likely, the Russian Orthodox Church expresses "strong concern" about possible developments of the crisis, this following US charges that the regime used chemical weapons against civilians.

"Once again, as was the case in Iraq, the United States is acting as an international executioner", said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Speaking to AsiaNews, the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church strongly criticised the US position, which is "completely one-sided."

"Without the endorsement of the United Nations, they want to decide the fate of a whole country of millions of inhabitants."

"Once again," Hilarion warned, "thousands of lives will be sacrificed on the altar of an imaginary democracy;" among them, according to the Metropolitan, there are, first of all, "Christians, about whose fate no one cares."

They are at "risk of becoming hostages to the situation and the main victims of radical extremist forces, who, with the help of the United States, will come to power."

"The international community," he concluded, "must do everything to avoid that events develop in this direction." (M.A.)