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December
21, 2002 3:45 p.m. |
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spent Christmas before the last war with Iraq with dear friends in the
Netherlands. As midnight approached, the family with whom I was staying
put on their coats, and we all walked toward the church in the center
of town. Holland is a post-Christian country now, and the churches, both
Catholic and Protestant, are virtually empty on most Sundays. On Christmas
Eve, however, folks still want to go to church, and it was standing-room
only at this town's Catholic parish.
I don't speak Dutch, so I couldn't follow what the priest said to the congregation. It was probably a blessing. For the evening's music — remember, we're talking Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, the only time all year when a fair number of these people are ever going to be in church — the pastor had selected several antiwar pop songs. Everyone sang John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "So This Is Christmas (War Is Over)," and a British pacifist ditty from the Second World War. One of the verses began, "Please Mr. Churchill, don't send me off to war."
Now, Holland was occupied by the Nazis, and this town particularly suffered because it was in the path of the Allies' Operation Market Garden, which drove the Germans from the country. My older Dutch friends, who were children then, have vivid memories of what the Germans did to them. Mieke lost a cousin when the child picked up a chocolate bar at the edge of the forest. The candy was secretly attached to a land mine. Think of what kind of evil mind can conceive of tying a chocolate bar to a land mine during a time of hunger and privation, and you'll understand instantly why war, as horrible as it is, is sometimes necessary.
Like I said, I don't speak Dutch, but I got a clear sense of what was going on at this Mass. It was a ritual shorn of any mystery or grandeur, much less dignity, and impotent to inspire or console. In that, it was scarcely different from bourgeois Christianity in America, but I didn't know that in 1990, because I wasn't yet serious about religion. I was beginning to take serious steps in that direction, and had come to Europe that winter with naïve ideas about what it would be like to be present at Christmas Mass in the continent that cradled Christian civilization. I had not realized that the Christian faith was lost to the good people of Holland, who within living memory sent out more Catholic missionary priests than any nation on earth, and that the Dutch differed from other Europeans in their secularization only in degree. The undeniable fact is that western Europe is no longer Christian in anything but a notional sense.
Walking through town after mass, my gentle host asked me what I had thought of the service. What could I say? The most-diplomatic thing I could muster was, "Well, I find it hard to believe that that is the faith that sustained you all through the war." We changed the subject, and went home to our late supper. Three weeks later, the Gulf War began.
Here we are 12 years later, another Christmas upon us, another war with Iraq looming. This time, the peril is graver. Saddam Hussein has had 12 years to build more weapons of mass destruction — and he knows now that we are coming to kill him. The world is not allied against the dictator as it once was. Our cities — my city — now know what terrorists fighting in the name of Islam, Christendom's ancient foe, are capable of doing to us, without warning.
There was nothing abstract about September 11. There is no such thing as a safe American home anymore, and there is not likely to be again, not in our lifetime, maybe not ever. We are going to have to endure a great deal more death and suffering, and learn how to sustain the fight without giving our souls over to unfettered rage or crushing despair. I didn't know anyone who died in the World Trade Center attack, but I went to a number of funerals and memorial services, and I lived in this stricken city as it struggled to cope with the loss. It was New York's finest hour, our finest year, really, and no one who was part of it will ever forget.
I must say that I do not know how we would have made it through the valley without God. Of course there are stoic atheists, but most of us, I think, cannot process the massive pain caused on a single morning by the deliberate evil of men without some recourse to the divine.
John Lennon is dead and buried, but a mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. I don't wish to make a pious point here, though, but one that has to do with history, with sociology, and maybe psychology. Whether or not one believes in God, one must recognize that Western civilization is the product of Judeo-Christian religion synthesized with Greco-Roman law and philosophy. The dynamic force animating that civilization and midwifing its achievements has been spiritual, and specifically Christian.
"'Religion is the key to history,' said Lord Acton, and today, when we realize the tremendous influence of the unconscious on human behavior, and the power of religion to bind and loose these hidden forces, Acton's saying has acquired a wider meaning than he realized," writes the historian Christopher Dawson.
He continues:
Why is it that Europe alone among the civilizations of the world has been continually shaken and transformed by an energy of spiritual unrest that refuses to be content with the unchanging law of social tradition which rules the oriental cultures? It is because its religious ideal has not been the worship of timeless and changeless perfection but a spirit that strives to incorporate itself in humanity and to change the world. In the West, the spiritual power has not been immobilized in a sacred social order like the Confucian state in China and the Indian caste system. It has acquired social freedom and autonomy and consequently its activity has not been confined to the religious sphere but has had far-reaching effects on every aspect of social and intellectual life.
Dawson goes on to say that social and intellectual benefits aren't necessarily important from a religious point of view, but if not for the spiritual force behind these developments, they would have been "utterly different," if they would have been at all.
Even a resolutely secular atheist like the murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn testified that the freedom and prosperity we in the West cherish would have been unknown without Christianity. He said this to a nation that, having given up its Christian faith, was coming close to giving up the civilization that faith had bequeathed to its children. The children of Mohammed are heirs to a spiritual force as well, one that has a far greater hold on their hearts and minds. It is a force, as Fortuyn warned, that shackles minds and imprisons souls, and his countrymen were in danger of trading their birthright — Western liberty and human dignity — for a pot of multicultural message.
We did not seek this war, but it has found us, and we must fight it, and we must prevail. We shall not find the strength to do as we must by hymning the effete pieties of pop stars in our holy places, and by reducing our faith, as precious to the survival of the West as any cache of armory, to whimpering pacifist platitudes.
But that, I'm afraid, is what too many of us will get as we go to church to mark the birth of the Prince of Peace: the demeaning thoughts of those who believe the way to holy peace is through surrender. We will get that because we got it on the commemoration this year of the anniversary of September 11. I am reminded of a sermon given on that day by the Rev. George Rutler, about whose preaching I wrote:
He then talked about how we cannot honor our dead by bringing justice to their murderers, and by eliminating those who would murder more Americans, unless we are willing to act. A World War II-era song, said Rutler, contained the line, "wishing will make it so," to comfort a nation that had seen too much blood. But that's a sentimental lie, the priest said.
"One man said the only thing that will conquer evil is blood, toil, tears, and sweat," Rutler said, alluding to Churchill. "Sentimentality is love without sacrifice; therefore, it is not love at all."
"We cannot exact revenge because of evil," Fr. Rutler went on. "But we are not Christians if we think vindication is revenge. ...Vindication is honoring that which is true. Vindication is offering the self for love."
"Wishing does not make things so. Blood makes things so. Toil makes things so. Sweat makes things so. Tears make things so. We are all called to show mercy, but only those who have suffered have the right to show mercy to their persecutors. Jesus asked mercy, but Jesus did not ask mercy for the Devil. Jesus killed the Devil on the Cross. That is the power of love."
You might also reflect on the famous sermon given by the vicar in the climax of Mrs. Miniver, the World War II-era film that did so much to improve the morale of Allied troops. The vicar, speaking in the ruins of the village church, concluded his remarks thus:
Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is a war of the people, of all the people, and it must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home, and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom!
Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves and those who come after us from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the people's war! It is our war! We are the fighters! Fight it then! Fight it with all that is in us, and may God defend the right.
Indeed. We have had our wholly sentimental Christmases, and while we are surely grateful for them, they are no longer allowed us. Not today, not if we want to be around for Christmases future. It's a tragedy, but life is tragic, and there you are. As the angel told the shepherds long ago, "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill to men who enjoy his favor." As for the rest: Soon and very soon, habibi, your day is coming, courtesy of the United States Armed Forces.