Finally, a priest who dares to speak out: "A Christian Duty in the Face of Terror"

This article by the New York priest, Father George Rutler, should be read by all people who still care about Western civilization. Here are extracts from the article:

After another devastating ISIS attack in France, this time against a priest in his 80s while he was saying Mass, the answer isn’t just, “Do nothing.” As racism distorts race and sexism corrupts sex — so does pacifism affront peace.
Turning the other cheek is the counsel Christ gave in the instance of an individual when morally insulted: Humility conquers pride. It has nothing to do with self-defense.

The Catholic Church has always maintained that the defiance of an evil force is not only a right but an obligation. Its Catechism (cf. #2265) cites St. Thomas Aquinas: “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life, the common good of the family or of the State.”
A father is culpable if he does not protect his family. A bishop has the same duty as a spiritual father of his sons and daughters in the church, just as the civil state has as its first responsibility the maintenance of the “tranquility of order” through self-defense.--

Were it not for Charles Martel at Tours in 732 and Jan Sobieski at the gates of Vienna in 1683 — and most certainly had Pope Saint Pius V not enlisted Andrea Doria and Don Juan at Lepanto in 1571 — we would not be here now.  No Western nations as we know them — no universities, no modern science, no human rights — would exist.--

The dormancy of Islam until recent times, however, has obscured the threat that this poses — especially to a Western civilization that has grown flaccid in virtue and ignorant of its own moral foundations.

The shortcut to handling the crisis is to deny that it exists.
On the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, there were over 60 speeches, and yet not one of them mentioned ISIS.
Vice has destroyed countless individual souls, but in the decline of civilizations, weakness has done more harm than vice. --

The priest in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvrary in Normandy, France, was not the first to die at the altar — and he will not be the last.
In his old age, the priest embodied a civilization that has been betrayed by a generation whose hymn was John Lennon's "Imagine" — that there was neither heaven nor hell but "above us only sky" and "all the people living for today." When reality intrudes, they can only leave teddy bears and balloons at the site of a carnage they call "inexplicable."

Pope Francis and Egypt´s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Islam

Here is an interesting comparison:

In a speech to Egypt’s top Islamic authorities, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for a “religious revolution.” Why? Because he believes that Islam has problems: “That corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries … is antagonizing the entire world.” He continued: “Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants…?” He then warned the assembled imams not to “remain trapped within this mindset” but to “reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”
However you interpret el-Sisi’s remarks, it’s clear that he believes the problems of Islam are not the fault of a tiny minority. He seems to think that a great many are to blame, and he particularly singles out Islamic religious leaders, whom he holds “responsible before Allah” on “Judgment Day.” And, most tellingly, he refuses to indulge in the this-has-nothing-to-do-with-Islam excuse favored by Western leaders. Rather, he states that “the entire umma [Islamic world]” is “a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world” because of “the thinking that we hold most sacred.”
By contrast, after his visit to Turkey, Pope Francis compared Islamic fundamentalists to Christian fundamentalists and said that “in all religions there are these little groups.” A little over a year ago in his apostolic exhortation, he joined the ranks of those who say that terror has nothing to do with Islam by observing that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”
So the leader of the largest Muslim country in the Arab world thinks that the entire Islamic world is suffused with dangerous and destructive thinking, and the leader of the Catholic Church thinks terror is the work of a few misunderstanders of Islam.

Read the entire article here.

On taboos and political correctness in Germany (and Europe in general)

Focus magazine columnist Thomas Wolf has written a brief, but so true article on political correctness in Germany:

There are taboos in Germany. The person who is against the euro and makes it know publicly, will almost always have a hard time. Do-gooders of all colors denounce people with eurocritical opinions in talks shows as anti-European and revanchist.

Also the person who questions human caused climate change is not likely to find apologists. "Such people do not have any sense of responsibility for the future of our children" is the killer argument. And the person who thinks that the victims themselves are to blame for poverty and social problems, is callous and totally lacking solidarity. You are only allowed to reject Christianity. Because the Pope forbids the pill and priests live a celibate life. However, any criticism of Islam is forbidden. It would be xenophobic. 

When differing opinions are not expressed anymore, because their holders are castigated as immoral, every debate runs dry. 

Political correctness and taboos have created a climate without any alternatives in the German Federal Republic, which the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk describes in this way: "Whether you confess to social democracy or not, has for long ceased to mean anything, because there cannot really be any non-social democrats among us, the society is per se social democrat, and the person who is not, is either in a madhouse or abroad ..."

Wolf's and Sloterdijk's descriptions are, of course, not only applicable in Germany. Exactly the same taboos and political correctness prevent any meaningful discussion and debate in many other European countries.