Tag Archives: forgiveness

Catholics should help Donald Trump!

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To get to Heaven.

If you are Catholic and you don’t understand what’s going on here – one of the richest men in the world honestly confronting his own mortality – then contact me and I will explain it to you.

https://youtu.be/6xI6_hksdP4

Donald Trump wants to make a deal with Catholics. Hillary Clinton wants to put us out of business. Pray for both of them but don’t be an idiot and possibly commit a mortal sin by voting for Hillary and the Democrats.

From Matthew, Chapter 19:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘In truth I tell you, it is hard for someone rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven.’ When the disciples heard this they were astonished. ‘Who can be saved, then?’ they said. Jesus gazed at them. ‘By human resources’, he told them, ‘this is impossible; for God everything is possible.’

July 1, 1916 – Hell on Earth

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Today is the 100 year anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme. The British Army suffered over 50,000 casualties on the first day. By November more than one million men had been killed or wounded on all sides. Laurence Vance has an excellent article to commemorate this horrendous and tragic event:

How to End War Once and for All

In addition, in following a link in Mr. Vance’s article, I came across this discussion of what was known as “shell shock” during WWI. In this the Year of Mercy, let us never forget that in time of war the scale is always tipped dramatically in favor of the merciless and the powerful.

from Driven Mad by the Horror of War by Tony Rennell:

“Every soldier lost to a diagnosis of shell shock was viewed not as a casualty but as ‘wastage’ — a reduction in the manpower needed to defeat the Germans. Compassion was now regarded as weakness. ‘Man up’ was the message from on high to those on the ground.

One recourse was to deny mercy to traumatised men who fled the battlefield. Death sentences for desertion and cowardice soared: 100 British soldiers were executed in the two years before the Battle of the Somme, and nearly 250 in the two years during and after.

Shattered nerves were no excuse. Rejecting a plea for mercy, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the commander-in-chief, confirmed the sentence on one particular Somme soldier with an exasperated: ‘How can we ever win if this plea is allowed?’

Another general said of a private who went to pieces during a gas attack: ‘Cowards of this sort are a serious danger. The death penalty is instituted to make such men fear running away more than they fear the enemy.’

The deranged private was tied to a stake and shot at dawn.”

All of which made me think of this great antiwar classic:

https://youtu.be/-XUOkE9QQwg?t=5273

Bl. Anwarite Nangapeta, Dec. 1

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Bl. Anwarite Nangapeta

Bl. Anwarite Nangapeta

Blessed Marie-Clémentine Anuarite Nengapeta (1939 – 1964) was a member of the Holy Family Sisters in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1964, a civil war broke out across the country. The Simba rebels opposed westerners but also indigenous monks and nuns because they suspected them of cooperating with foreigners.

Simba rebels stormed her convent and attacked many of the sisters. A soldier, Colonel Pierre Colombe, killed Anuarite Nengapeta when she resisted his attempted rape. She was beaten and bayoneted and then shot to death. Between the blows she had the strength to say to her attacker: “I forgive you for you know not what you are doing.”

Sister Marie-Clementine was beatified on August 15, 1985, by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Zaire, a ceremony which drew 60,000 people.  The L.A. Times reported:

“Reportedly among the worshipers but unrecognized was the man convicted of killing her, former Simba rebel Col. Pierre Olombe, now a beggar and devout Roman Catholic. He was condemned to death for the assault and served five years in prison before being pardoned by Mobutu. A number of other rebels involved in the attack on the convent were never tracked down. Through a local newspaper editor, Olombe had expressed a wish to see the pontiff and ask forgiveness. The editor passed the request along, together with the information that the girl’s parents had already forgiven Olombe.”

John Paul recounted that the martyred nun had, “like Christ,” pardoned the soldier who assaulted her. Then he added, “And I too forgive her killer with all my heart, in the name of the entire church.” She was the first Bantu woman elevated to the altars.