On Christian Violence

Liberal Christianity Must Be Destroyed

In my recent article on political violence I made the case that violence is the obligation of young men, and that it is necessary to secure civilization.

In this essay I will put the case in more explicitly Christian terms. This is necessary because so many Christians, spiritually neutered by heresy, have thoughtlessly adopted a pacifist version of Christianity based on a false understanding of the Gospel. Since religion is a force that is meant to provide moral clarity for right action, this is an existential problem that we must address.

Contemporary Christianity is infected with a deep moral rot. Whether the liberal post- Vatican II Catholic Church or mainline Protestantism, Christian churches have been infiltrated, co-opted and weaponized against Western Civilization.

For the last 70 years our enemies have fed us a false version of Christianity, foreign to anything our ancestors would have recognized. A version which, if we were to accept it, would force us to anathematize two millennia of our Christian ancestors and adopt the impious and absurd position that modern liberals are better Christians than the Crusaders were. A version of Christianity which, if we accept it, will mean the destruction of civilization itself.

An Enemy Has Done This

How did we get here?

The short answer is: infiltration. Much has been said and written on the well-documented infiltration of the Catholic Church by her enemies in the 20th century and the results speak for themselves. We now have a hierarchy which is actively hostile to Western Civilization, and proactively hastening its demise.

Since I am Catholic, I address this from a specifically Catholic angle, but the overall thrust is clearly true in the Protestant churches as well. Even more isolated sects like Mormons have seen similar effects.

The infiltrators have twisted selectively chosen the verses of the Gospel to create a veritable slave morality which renders Christian men pliable to the will of the slave masters. Scriptural passages, previously understood in context and held in balance with natural law and tradition, have been stripped of their context and used to neuter Western man, even as his enemies pour over his borders, rape his children, and plunder his patrimony.

Perversion of the Gospel

“Judge not lest ye be judged” prevaricate those who forbid us the most basic function of the intellect, which is to construct an objective value system predicated on the idea that “this is better than that.”

“He who is without sin cast the first stone” hiss those who would manipulate the scruples of the virtuous into tolerating even the most savage depravities of the unrepentant wicked.

“Reist not evil… turn the other cheek” say those who would castrate Christian men, to ensure that the perpetrators need not fear retribution for their evil deeds.

“Resist not power” say the regime apparatchiks who subject and enslave us, appealing to our Christianity as they operate rape and blackmail rings.

“Forgive your enemy” say the godless and lecherous traitors who plunder us and murder our children.

“He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword” say those whose lives depend on their being able to violate us with impunity.

Are you disgusted? You should be.

If this were in fact the true Christianity, then it would justify an ad hoc persecution and extirpation so extreme in its violence as to make Diocletian pale in horror.

But of course, this is not the real Christianity. To assert so would be to anathematize the entire history of the Church from Constantine to Franco, to deny the Christianity of the Crusaders, the Vendee, the Cristeros and every other Christian who has spilled blood for the sake of justice.

We must refute, renounce, reject and totally destroy this fake liberal Christianity which would have us capitulate to our enemies and forfeit the patrimony which we owe in justice to our progeny.

Those who attempt to promote liberal Christianity, whether infiltrators, effete pastors, sodomite prelates, histrionic women or effeminate males, must be execrated, reviled and ultimately crushed.

Real Christianity

So if this is a false doctrine taught by the Enemy, what is the true Christian doctrine?

For starters, without doing any deep theological or scriptural exegesis, we can know that it isn’t pacifism, because of the Church’s long history of recognizing the legitimacy of force. We can also know that such force cannot be restricted only to the “state” or “public authorities” (whatever that means), since the Church has always maintained that there is a right of resistance, and that it recognized the justice of the Vendee and the Cristero uprisings. Neither is it attached to any superstition of democracy, as explained by all the popes before Vatican II.

With that said, let’s look at the passages that are so often misquoted, and what the Church’s actual teaching is.

Reclaiming Weaponized Passages

“Judge Not Lest You Be Judged”

In this oft-misused passage, Christ did not forbid judgment itself, but rash judgment. (Making an unwarranted prejudicial assumption about another’s interior disposition.)

Aquinas addresses this explicitly:

“In these words our Lord forbids rash judgment which is about the inward intention, or other uncertain things … or else He forbids judgment about Divine things …” (ST II-II Q.60 A.2 ad 1)

He goes on to say judgment is lawful when three conditions are met:

“… first, that it proceed from the inclination of justice; secondly, that it come from one who is in authority; thirdly, that it be pronounced according to the right ruling of prudence. If any one of these be lacking, the judgment will be faulty and unlawful.” (ST II-II Q.60 A.2)

Thus “Judge not” does not suspend the duty of fathers, rulers, and communities to judge and act on evil. It forbids only hypocrisy and rash judgment about hidden matters, i.e., the internal disposition or eternal lot of another. And it in no way forbids us from calling a spade a spade. On the contrary, Scripture commands us to name evil and to condemn it:

“He that saith to the wicked man: Thou art just: shall be cursed by the people, and the tribes shall abhor him. But they that rebuke him shall be praised, and a blessing shall come upon them.” (Proverbs 24:24-25) God also commands us to take His side against evil explicitly:

“Who shall rise up for me against the evildoers? or who shall stand with me against the workers of iniquity?” (Ps 94:16)

And the New Testament commands us not only to name evil, but to hate it: “Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good.” (Romans 12:9)

“He Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Stone”

This verse is often used to dissuade us from condemning unrepentant public sinners. But that isn’t at all what it means. It is a condemnation of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The tradition of the fathers is that what Christ wrote on the sand there was the names of the Pharisees who had themselves committed the same sins they accused Mary Magdalene of. He was condemning the hypocrisy of the Synagogue of Satan.

The Fathers consistently interpreted John 8 as Christ rebuking the hypocrites, not nullifying the idea of punishment itself. The Mosaic law remained valid. Christ exposed their malice, He did not deny the legitimacy of the sentence. If He did, there would have been no need for Him to forgive her. This passage therefore upholds right judgment by the rightly disposed.

But in the 21st century, liberals tell us to withhold judgment on public prostitutes who have neither repented nor done penance, on the basis of this passage.

Christ never said that Mary Magdalene didn't deserve to be stoned. He rebuked her accusers for hypocrisy because of their own lust, and he commuted her sentence because of her complete contrition, and out of His Divine Mercy. Mary Magdalene wept at Christ’s feet for her sins and spent the rest of her life in penance. In the Roman Missal she is the only saint categorized as Penitent.

Contemporary public prostitutes who have not both repented and done penance, removing themselves from public life, deserve no such consideration.

“Resist Not Evil” / “Turn the Other Cheek”

This verse is often cited to support pacifism or to undermine the right to self-defense.

These words from Matthew 5 are counsels of patience and forgiveness at the personal level; they were never read by the Fathers or by Aquinas as revoking the duty to protect the innocent or punish evil. Aquinas explicitly holds that vengeance can be an act of charity when ordered to correction and the common good (ST II-II Q.108 A.1). Augustine likewise teaches that the sword is meant to restrain evil.

It is also important to note that Christ often uses hyperbole, common in Hebrew, to drive home a point. In this verse He makes a shocking statement meant to drive home the notion of humility and mortification of our pride. It is not a literal injunction.

In the same sense that when He says “if your eye scandalize you, gouge it out,” is not a literal injunction to gouge out your eyes if you are tempted by immodesty. It is a hyperbole intended to drive home the imperative of removing occasions of sin from our lives.

“Forgive Your Enemy”

Liberal heretics use this verse to try to persuade us not to enact justice against wrongdoers.

But here, Christ commands us to forgive personal offenses, not to surrender to injustice. It is an admonition of the heart. Forgiveness is ultimately spiritual. Christ forgave the thief on the cross, but did not commute his sentence. He allowed him to expiate the temporal punishment due to sin by dying in agony. This has been the Church’s position on just punishment forever.

Augustine:

“It is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that in obedience to God good men undertake wars … when right conduct requires them to act, or to make others act.” (Contra Faustum XXII.74)

Forgiveness is a virtue only when you actually have the power to punish and choose mercy.

“He Who Takes the Sword Shall Perish by the Sword”

This verse is another favorite with the heretical pacifists. But as usual, it’s misconstrued. Peter is obviously justified in using force to defend Christ and the apostles against an unjust and illegitimate arrest. But it was Christ’s divine will to be taken. As He said "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?"

And Peter and the Apostles had just been made bishops. Their role was evangelization, not the wielding of the sword. The Church has maintained the doctrine of Two Swords, that the spiritual and temporal powers are distinct in their exercise.

Christ clearly does not condemn the use of force or self-defense in the Gospel, saying: “Go sell your cloak and buy a sword.” (Luke 22:36)

At multiple points, He also speaks highly of centurions, whose profession is the sword.

And of course, Scripture is littered with references to justified violence, such as “cursed is he that witholdeth his sword from blood.” Jeremiah 48:10.

Christian Anger and Violence

There is a long Christian tradition of righteous anger and the use of force to right wrongs and bring about order.

Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor of the Universal Church says, in his treatment of the virtue of meekness:

“He who is not angry when he ought to be, sins.” (ST II-II Q.158 A.8, quoting Chrysostom)

“Meekness moderates anger according to right reason … Clemency mitigates punishment guided by reason.” (ST II-II Q.157)

Meekness and mercy presuppose the ability and willingness to act. They moderate the excess of our passion of anger, but do not relieve us of the duty to do justice.

For us who are in a struggle for civilization itself, mercy without victory is only a veil of cowardice for impotence and surrender.

Obligation

The Church also has a positive doctrine enjoining men to use their God-given power of violence to protect the innocent. From the Catechism:

“Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life.” (Catechism 2265)

This is not permission, but obligation. We are entrusted not only with our own lives, but with the lives of our children, and with the patrimony passed down by our fathers, which is owed to our progeny. We are entrusted with the care of our land and our people. To fail to protect them for the sake of a false peace or a false unity is to betray our most sacred duty.

The Right and Duty To Act

At this point many will say “this is all fine and good, but what are we to do? Isn’t the prosecution of justice the role of the state, the public authority?”

But this is a weak and cowardly way to avoid responsibility. The right and duty to protect the community lies with the men of that community. To the extent that such a right can be delegated to a particular person or group of people, that delegation is customary law, not natural law, and can and must be revoked if those entrusted with it fail in their duty.

To those who, in this late hour, still harbor some superstitions about the legitimacy of the modern state and its purported monopoly on violence, I have a lengthier piece in the works systematically dismantling this ahistorical and un-Christian notion.

But for the time being, St. Augustine gives us a clear-eyed view of the nature of such states:

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity.” (City of God IV.4)

Augustine’s point is incontrovertible. Coercive power without justice is just crime on a systematic scale. Legitimacy flows from justice, not from any office.

A “state” that violates justice loses any moral authority. The men of the community still retain the natural right and duty to defend it and to punish evil.

Aquinas reinforces this when he says in II-II Q.60 A.2 that judging requires authority, but authority arises from justice and right order, not merely a claim. And the modern state is merely that: a claim, backed by nothing but violence.

In addition to the obvious moral issues with the State’s claim to sovereignty, we can also ask some simple historical questions to expose the contradiction of the claim:

Was the American Revolution justified? If it was, then we accept the principle of secession, that a people can exercise a right of rescission over their political affiliation with a larger body. In which case this right also belongs to our communities. If the American Revolution was not legitimate, then the current American state is founded on an illegitimate action and can therefore not demand our obedience.

When we look at it this way, the farcical incoherence of theState’s claim to sovereignty becomes obvious. If we add to this the long list of grave violations of our rights and liberties which our government has visited on us over the last centuries, the case becomes utterly undeniable.

The Sanctity of Just Violence

Because of the slave programming to which we were subjected since our earliest years, it is still hard for many good Christians to hear these truths. They sound radical, subversive. They sound too aggressive. But the fact is what I have said here is milquetoast in comparison to what our fervently Christian ancestors thought. Our ancestors believed every free man could, in the last resort, have legitimate moral recourse to his sword, when all else had failed. This was his sacred right. It is our right also, if we dare to use it.

We must familiarize ourselves with this moral thought of our ancestors. Understand how sacred to them was the exercise of arms. How inviolable the right to enact justice. We must breathe in their spirit and let it reanimate our souls. Let the false doctrines of liberal degeneracy be burned away by purifying fire of just wrath. Listen to St. Bernard of Clairvoux:

“Fly then to arms; let a holy ire animate you in the fight, and let the Christian world resound with these words of the prophet, ‘Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood!’”

These are not the words of a peacenik modern Christianity. These are not the words of an effete pastor. These are not the words of a luxurious prelate in his gilded palace. These are the words of a man of God. A man animated by Christian zeal and a righteous European fury.

It seems fitting to close with an excerpt of Urban II’s exhortation upon the launching on the First Crusade:

“Oh, race of Franks, race from across the mountains, race beloved and chosen by God — as is clear from your many deeds — set apart from all nations by the situation of your country, your Catholic faith, and the honor of the Holy Church!

To you our words are directed, and for you our exhortation is intended.

We wish you to understand what a grievous cause has led us to your country, what peril threatening you and all the faithful has brought us…

O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ!

With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion!

Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago.

Let those who for a long time have been robbers now become soldiers of Christ.

Let those who once fought against brothers and relatives now rightfully fight against the barbarians.

Let those who have been mercenaries for a few coins now obtain eternal rewards.

Let those who have worn themselves out to the detriment of body and soul now work for a double honor.

Behold! On this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that the rich; here the enemies of the Lord, there His friends.

Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let them hasten to go and earn the reward of everlasting glory.

God wills it! God wills it!”