I think we scare the mennonite community cause on some major moral issues we all agree and they thought catholic was that corrupted form they get feed in their school text books and sunday preaching.

Hmm modest catholics who homeschool, dont condone divorce never accept remarriage, open to life, despise the world, love scripture, afraid to commit any mortal sin, love Jesus dont worship Mary and have seen the fruits of self interpeting the bible.

Poor mennonites.  But wait us small group of catholics dialoque quite a bit with them and they are VERY PEACEABLE and we are currently discussing the THOU SHALL NOT KILL.

Is there anywhere in early history where christians stood up and fought for their faith or did they really passivly just die and get fed to the lions? Trying to find literature on Christianity and War and rights to Defend even though at first glance it seems to contradict Christ teachings.

Any help appreciated

Your friendly canadian  :farmer:

Thanks for that but I see alot of the examples are Catholic ones thats why Im hoping for the first 300yrs where we hear alot of martyred christians but not to many fighting ones???

I will keep digging eventually I will find it. Thanks

Your friendly canadian :farmer:

Off topic but it's funny that it was a monnonite who first explained traditional catholicism to me. He came from around Winnepeg and we worked to gether for a while, we are still friends. One day we were talking about religion and he told me about the Catholics who "only worshipped in Latin" around Winnepeg, I guess he had gone to a Latin mass with a traditional Catholic friend of his. He said he wasn't that well received.

Anyhow, if it weren't for him I might have never dicovered tradition.

I was looking for news regarding Bergoglio and went to, of all places, "Fr Z"'s website.  Surprisingly, I came across this very helpful quotation from a book regarding Saint Francis's journey to Egypt and his 1219 AD meeting with the Ayyubid Sultan al-Kamil :

The same sultan submitted this problem to him: “Your Lord taught in his gospels that evil must not be repaid with evil, that you should not refuse your cloak to anyone who wants to take your tunic, etc. (Mt 5,40): All the more Christians should not invade our land!”. And Blessed Francis answered: ”It seems to me that you have not read the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in its entirety. In fact it says elsewhere: “if your eye causes you sin, tear it out and throw it away” (Mt 5 , 29). With this, Jesus wanted to teach us that if any person, even a friend or a relative of ours, and even if he is dear to us as the apple of our eye, we should be willing to repulse him, to weed him out if he sought to take us away from the faith and love of our God. This is precisely why Christians are acting according to justice when they invade the lands you inhabit and fight against you, for you blaspheme the name of Christ and strive to turn away from his worship as many people as you can. But if you were to recognize, confess, and worship the Creator and Redeemer, Christians would love you as themselves instead”. -- Verba fratris Illuminati socii b. Francisci ad partes Orientis et in conspectu Soldani Aegypti, Codex Vaticanus Ott.lat.n.552.

Voilà, St Francis declares that one must repulse all enemies of Christ.  Given what we know about the peace in the world that must be defended against enemies of Christ, in contradistinction to suffering persecution under the hand of a lawfully constituted authority, it makes sense that the Popes, in the role of moral arbiter of the Law of Nations, have often counseled and commanded Christian rulers to defend the Faith and Christendom against anti-Christ aggressors, even to the point of reducing them and their subjects to penal servitude.  

The principle here is that there is a pre-existing peace that is natural to the order of the world (and thus willed by God's law, since He created the world) and that the Christian rulers, being lawfully deputed holders of God's authority over temporal things, are obliged to defend it and to order it to Christ the Logos and Center of all Creation.  They must do this, however, according to the moral principles for prosecuting a just war, the chief of which is having a just cause.  Now, non-Catholic rulers can hold lawful authority, but they are to be repulsed and defeated if they make themselves enemies of Christendom and thus threats to the salvation of the human race.  

As for the exact way in which lawful authority is transmitted to men from the Eternal Father in Heaven, well, that seems to be a matter of debate.  I have been researching this exact subject for years now, and quite intensively within the past six months or so, whenever I am able.  It seems to me that the relationship between grace and nature, the natural law and the means of knowing it, the natural order and the divine order -- is precisely one of the major points of contention, though it was impatiently dismissed by the English followers of Newton and their Continental European apparatchiks and propagandists (Freemasons and their offspring under the species of liberalism, socialism, communism, etc.) as a settled question in favour of materialism.  So, sorry, but I cannot give a precise description of the exact process in question here, nor can I point you to a pithy and exact description, since I have not yet found one that is satisfactory (probably because of ignorance, not because this is a question that has not been touched by reputable theologians).  I personally think the most reasonable answer is that divine authority is deputed to powers on earth through a combination of Divine Providence and positive recognition or condemnation by the Sovereign Pontificate according to concrete historical circuмstances and relationships between particular authorities as moral persons and the Mystical Body of Christ.  As you can surely imagine, things get complicated quite quickly.

Here is an article from the Catholic Encyclopedia that comments on these matters :

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15108a.htm

Here is another one that is a corollary :

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15546c.htm

They are interesting and shed some light on the issue.  Anyway, something that is often obscure to people today is that the right of war, the authority to defend oneself, and the authority of temporal sovereignties to punish criminals with death all stem from the same natural law conceptual framework.  That is to say, in war, one side (or neither) is restoring the damaged peace in the world, but that the concept of a just war derives from the presumption of something lawfully established being attacked or harmed by an unjust aggressor.  Anything truly constituted with real authority must also have the authority to defend its existence with coercion, otherwise it only exists in the mind rather than in actuality.  Thus, a man can defend himself to the death without sin, and it is in fact virtuous to so defend his family (though in the early Church there was still a penance for shedding blood).  Likewise, a nation -- or rather a sovereign prince -- fights to protect the peace of the natural order, of which his own authority participates and thus to which he is beholden.  

As an aside, this is one of the reasons that the competition between the nations caused by Protestantism and the rise of towns and moneylending in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance was so serious :  Men began to quarrel to the death in order to protect their own interests at the expense of Christendom, often in defense of their codified vernacular cultures.  A single hegemon, a great captain who defends the Church and maintains a single center of gravity that balances the global order and also thereby guarantees the customs of each particular people (not absolutely, but reasonably) within a greater framework -- this would end this endless cycle of violence and ambitious development between the nations.  (Even so, of course a true and lasting peace could only be won through the integral reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.)  Many nations sought to recapture the mantle of the Roman Empire with this frame of thought in their minds, each seeking to become the so-called "universal monarchy" upon which the tranquility of Christendom depended (perhaps hindsight is twenty-twenty here, but in any case many nations did indeed seek to become a universal monarchy and to restore the Roman Empire).  If Louis XIV had only consecrated himself to the Sacred Heart, this glorious age would have already occurred and perhaps it would still persist.

Anyway, the Church is no stranger to high politics and the causes and realities of warfare.  The Protestants are scandalised by this because they imagine that Christianity should be entirely spiritual, having no relation to material things, especially hierarchies and institutions staffed by sinning, mortal men.  On the contrary, Our Lord is incarnate as His Church is.  Thus, the Christian project for the salvation of the souls of individuals cannot help but to likewise be a project for the security of the common good of all men under the universal reign of Christ.  That is to say, Christianity's uniquely sacramental, incarnate vision of the universe is very political (being that "politics" is synonymous with the social life of a temporal community wherein and over authority is wielded by one designated to do so).  But the Church does not only exist in the world of abstract principles.  It's head is in a real city that was chosen during a real historical time period according to real and specific historical conditions.  This state of affairs has, of course, persisted and could not be otherwise.  Thus, defending the Christian powers that have a relationship with the Church -- defending the real and existing Christian moral personalities that have been and cannot help but continue to be significant historical actors in the narrative of salvation history -- is plainly a natural duty for the everyday Catholic layman.  He is not being tainted by preserving these goods pursuant the rights of Our Lord's Sacred Royalty.  On the contrary, he is just being a good Catholic like any other since Pentecost, and that according to the same principles and sense as his forefathers in the Faith.

That is my best foray into an explanation of these matters at the moment.

whoa, thanks so much lots to digest!!!. Nothing like keeping the cathoic brain full. So nice to have a catholic spouse and read, learn, and discuss these topics I love that part of marriage very very much. Feel for those who dont have that.

Busy here with kidding goats and soon to prepare the easter baskets at our Ukrainian Rite so lots to do before Good Friday not to mention getting geared up for Gardening.

Thanks for all the resources you guys are wonderful Hope you have a blessed Easter.

Kristos Voskras

Your friendly canadian :farmer: