He will return with his immense heart, with his heart of fire, his poor man's soul
and his smile. He will return! And the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph!

WARTIME CHRISTMAS

The French Republic is secular. Is French secularism “positive” or “negative”? The debate has caused a lot of ink to flow. What is certain is that the French Republic is sending our army on a Crusade and that blood will flow…

On a « Crusade »? Yes, indeed!

The bloody ambush on 18 August cost the life of ten French soldiers in the Uzbin Valley in Afghanistan and wounded twenty-one others. This ambush makes “Carmin”, the 4^th Company of the 8^th rpima (Régiment parachutiste de l’Infanterie de marine: Paratrooper Regiment of the Naval Infantry), a true unit of “Crusaders”. Moreover, this is how the Taliban refer to them in their communiqués: « The French Crusaders ». Matching their actions with their words, they ritually slit the throat of one of them. They would have spared him had he pronounced the Muslim profession of faith, the shahada.

That morning, the chaplain had said Mass earlier for those who were to leave on operation at 9 am, and he consecrated them to the Blessed Virgin. Thus, when Hell broke loose, they confronted it with a magnificent spirit of sacrifice. They were outnumbered one to five, but eliminated eighty Taliban, including two important leaders. But our ten soldiers who fell died martyrs. What about us? We must not sleep during this time.

“World” war is before our eyes as in 1914, as in 1940. It is indeed the most indisputable aspect of “globalisation”, against a background of financial crisis, recession, and. therefore, famine. There is “holy war” in the Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq, in Sri Lanka; piracy, in the Indian Ocean.

THE PIRATES OF THE BARBARY COAST

In Somalia, the pirates of the Barbary Coast are back. “Humanitarians” who attempt to assist the civilian populations who are victims of fighting, as well as maritime transport companies that merely navigate on the open sea off this country bear the cost of it every day. Somalia has 3,700 km of coast and a premiere rank in volume of international maritime traffic; the country has become a veritable snare for the boats that cruise off its shores. The Gulf of Aden, through which must pass the sixteen thousand ships that use the Suez Canal each year, 30 % of which are oil tankers, is today considered a “war zone”, to speak in insurance company terms.

Because the state has collapsed in this country, which has been plagued by civil war since 1991, the coast guards have turned to piracy and hostage taking… On sea or on land, they do not hesitate to cross the border of their neighbours to seize their victims and bring them back to their Somalian hideout: for example, two Italian nuns were kidnapped in the night from 9 to 10 November at 1 am, in the north of Kenya.

Pirates also plague the Gulf of Guinea and the seas of Indonesia. Tuna fishermen demand the assistance of military vessels. Will we send them our nuclear submarine missile launchers?

This warning that Abbé de Nantes gave thirty years ago in his monthly current events conferences at the hall of the Mutualité is truly prophetic:

« In our times of international brigandage in which any out of control gang leader can capture and detain with complete impunity our nationals who have ventured into their lands, who will prevent organised piracy on our coasts, as there was a hundred and fifty years ago, if the only defence of our country is based on nuclear deterrence? » (Are We Well Defended? CRC n^o 115, March 1977, supplement, p. 2)

We have now reached this point! And we are poorly defended…

THE SARACENS

In Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, and in the Middle East in general, “Are the Christians of the East Going to Disappear?” This is the title of a book that has just been published by Salvator (sic!), authored by Annie Laurent. Even in Lebanon, the « only State to offer its Christians a citizenship shared equally with the Muslims » (p. 97), events have forced several hundred thousand Christians to flee; the presence of our forces under blue un helmets are insufficient to deter them. As Bainville had already said in the time of the League of Nations: « What if the international force is defeated? »

In the Congo, at least 253,000 persons have fled from their domiciles in the province of North Kivu due to fighting that opposes government troops to the rebels of Laurent Nkunda, a former general of the Congolese army. “The Pope and the UN Denounce the Violence” is the title in La Croix. When all is said and done, these hollow remarks manifest not only their powerlessness to remedy it, but the blindness of both of them, since they persist in failing to see that the cause of this disaster is decolonisation. It suffices, however, to compare what the general situation was in the world before World War II with what it is today.

In Asia, Communist China’s surge in power, which has been brought about by modernising its equipment and developing its nuclear and ballistic capabilities, threatens Taiwan and India, the latter of which is itself a nuclear power…

In Israel, for the time being, the confrontation opposes the Israelis and Palestinians. The Finul is an intervention force whose mission is not at all to defend Christians. The result is that they are torn between the two camps. For Mgr Gregory III Laham, the Eastern Church must define itself as “the Church of Islam”. The formula obviously does not commend itself to Israeli Christians, for they exist! Presently, everyone is at war with everyone: the other day in Jerusalem, violent fighting broke out around the mosques of on the esplanade and at the Wailing Wall, in other words, on the “Temple Mount”. This is a rivalry that has lasted for thirteen centuries. On Sunday, 9 November, the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre was the scene of a brawl between Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests.

In Egypt, nothing seems to be able to disarm the hostility, the victims of which are the Coptic Christians and Catholics in this country that saw the birth of the “Muslim Brotherhood”. The unstable power of Hosni Mubarak closes its eyes to the endemic persecutions that regularly strike Christians.

In Iraq, it is different: everyone is in agreement to massacre Christians; consequently they have to choose either “the suitcase or the coffin”, as in Algeria in the past. It is, however, their homeland! They originate in the Churches founded by the Apostles after Pentecost, as do those in Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. Who will defend them?

THE CRUSADERS

In order to put a victorious end to this « world war », and firstly to defend our persecuted brethren, we must have an army animated by the spirit of the Crusade. Yet, to do this we are lacking – even more so than soldiers and the material to equip and arm them – religion and, above all, the Catholic Faith. For want of this, our demography is plummeting, our democratic anarchy has reached its peak, thousands of problems remain unresolved in all spheres: national education, health, agriculture, the string of bankruptcies in our small and medium-sized businesses, etc. Our “European” defence is already unwieldy; our African and overseas commitments mobilise our forces, without speaking about our poor political, civic, moral, and religious state, about our poorly-assimilated immigration, finally about our catastrophic disarmament.

In such conditions, it is crazy to commit ourselves in Afghanistan where there are no Christians. Yet, because of the decision of the head of State, we are there. We are at war. When leaving, our soldiers say: « Why on earth are we going to get involved in this business? » The answer: « We are in God’s hand. So, let us pray to Him! Let us pray to the Virgin Mary, Queen of France! » to whom our Phalange of the Immaculate is consecrated. As our Father already wrote in 1991 with regards to our involvement in reconquering Kuwait:

« It is impossible to envisage any criticism, desertion, or betrayal. As Frenchmen, we know that we are bound in conscience to obey the established power for “all authority comes from God”. As Catholics, we are bound in charity to come to the aid of our soldiers, known and unknown, with our prayers, penance, and efforts of patriotic propaganda and national union. We must bring unflagging ardour to this new common commitment, behind our soldiers and with them.

« The past will belong to the historian one day and perhaps to the judge of some High Court, but that is an area forbidden to us. Even to discuss the decisions of the Head of State is to demoralise the country, and to support possible options other than the only real one would be a betrayal of France at war… even if we had reasons or even if we were right. The iron dice are thrown. What is necessity is virtue, which is to support the Army, to preach discipline behind the lines, to applaud our allies, not to make difficulties for them, and to praise and approve the United States, on whom depends the fate of our expeditionary force. » CCR n^o 235, January 1991)

The United States? Rightly or wrongly, they considered Afghanistan under the Taliban regime to be the breeding ground and the staging area of Islamist terrorism more or less affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The total destruction of this regime was within Washington’s reach if the mission that was undertaken after 11 September 2001, with the approval of 90 % of Americans and the whole of the “international community” had been carried out in a coherent way. This was not the case.

Quite ineptly, Bush first refused to associate the allies to what should have been a Crusade against Al-Qaeda and international terrorism. Then, once the Taliban had been defeated – in reality removed from power – he made an about turn and attacked another target, Iraq, on false pretences. Thus he diverted military and financial means that would have undoubtedly allowed the consolidating of the initial victory in Afghanistan and the more rapid rebuilding of the Afghan state.

Despite appearances and beyond the conventional diatribes, the United States’ relations with Russia are “not too bad”. The “anti-terrorist” Crusade remains on the agenda. Flights sent to supply Nato troops in Afghanistan continue to fly through Russian air space and make refuelling stops. Already Medvedev holds out his hand to the president-elect by calling for resuming “constructive dialogue”.

But in order to be a mediatrix of peace, Russia is in want of being consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Brother Bruno of Jesus.