Crisis In Christendom, No. 15 of 17 No. 15 of 17

The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men presents the Catholic Almen. Today's program will consist of music by a unit of the Polish choristers and then addressed by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen. Tenabre Fakteis-Suntz. And the first one is the Piano. Today's program will consist of music by a unit of the Polish choristers and then addressed by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen. Tenabre Fakteis-Suntz. And there was darkness. The Polish choristers open the Catholic hour with Kaczulini's beautiful setting from the Holy Week text. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic church. And there was darkness. And there was darkness. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America will now deliver the 15th in his series of 18 addresses on the crisis in Christendom. His discourse today is entitled Moral Basis of Peace. I present Monsignor Sheen. Friends. I'll give you a new podcast. It will attract no attention, exercise no influence whatsoever on public opinion. It will not be quoted in a single newspaper. People are talk about spheres of influence, global strategy, ball confederations, international courts, beverage plans, freedom and democracy collapse like a house of cards. It is this, our point. I stares it in the language of pious the eleventh. It is the last in peace. Neither peace treaties nor the most solemn facts nor international meetings or conferences nor even the most disinterested efforts of any statesmen will be enough. Unless in the first place are recognized the sacred rights of natural and divine law. In other words, a strong sword can put an end to this war, but it cannot be get peace. For peace does not come from the womb of arrested hostilities, but from a justice rooted in God. Families who are quarreling over a back sense may stop fighting when one of them runs out of bricks, but peace will not follow unless a change takes place in their hearts. In order to bring home the moral basis of the peace we ask these questions. Why should the treaties or facts which will be signed at the close of this world war be kept? What guarantee have we that they will be more honored from 1943 to 1963 than they were in that twilight of honor from 1918 to 1939? No one ever seems to discuss these questions, but they are so very elementary that until an answer is given there is no reason for making any treaties. One reason for keeping treaties that is given today and it is a false reason is that treaties bind because nations enter into them freely. But what is to prevent nations from freely walking out of treaties? As Russia and Germany did in the case of Poland, as Japan did in the case of China and as Italy did in the case of Ethiopia. Another reason that of the pragmatist or positivist theory of law and one that is the most common in America today is that a treaty is binding because it is advantageous or expedient to keep itself. But suppose it is to be advantageous. Suppose it becomes more expedient to abandon it then Hitler is. Pragmatism is the philosophy of human needs and one of the greatest of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. When one gets down to rock bottom there are only two possible reasons for keeping treaties either because of force or because of moral obligation. If force then might make right. Then the Nazis are right in Holland and in Belgium. Then the Japs are right in the Philippines. Then if the Nazis and the Japs conquered us, God forbid, the treaties they would make would be just because imposed by force. The theory of force seems right when we can apply it. But in its health, force can never make right. Force works on proofs but it does not work on men. Power without morality is power without responsibility. As Lord Acton put it, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Beware of power. It is more dangerous now than ever. For power today is passing from the many to the few. It used to dwell in the masses. Now it is in the dictators. Outside of this force of you of force there is only one reason for keeping treaties. Namely because a treaty implies a moral obligation rather than a physical one. A treaty is a sacred thing because the God of justice is its witness. That is why there runs through history a record of a sacredness of treaties based on the moral order. The Jews always made their treaties in the name of the Lord God of Israel. Almost all the nations of antiquity surround their treaties with religious symbols and rights. For as expressing the best of the Roman tradition warned, what profit vain lies without moral support. Lincoln in his first inaugural address expressed the American tradition by reminding himself that his oath was registered in heaven. And all of the treaties of Christian Europe from the very beginning were written in the spirit of an obligation rooted in morality. For they all began in the name of the holy and undivided Trinity. And so they continued in that name until the treaty of Versailles. That began in the name of the high constructing parties. Men had become wise. In the meantime they had learned that man had come from a monkey. That progress was due to evolution. That evil was due to bad glands. That morality was a convention and that God in the language of a professor from the state of Ohio was a projection into the roaring loom of time of a unified complex of cyclical values. And we wonder why we should have two world wars within 21 years. Are we blind? And we not see that if law is divorced from morality and religion then treaty cease to be obligatory and begin to be mere arrangements binding only so long as they are advantageous. Rob international justice of its foundation in morality and treaties are hypothetical, not categorical. They are convenient tools, not honorable obligations. While law becomes an attorney's cloak woven from the film, flimsy fabric of legalistic fraggie phraseology and artfully placed on the shoulders of arbitrary power. No wonder we had 4568 treaties signed before the League of Nations from 1920 to 1939. And 211 signed the 11 months before the war. Cooper described in advance the mentality of such treaty makers. And thou hast sworn on every slight pretence till perjuries are as common as bad pints. While thousands careless of the damning sin kissed the book outside who dare look within. What should be done? Well, the League of Nations or whatever it is to be called when this war is over should not be open to everyone. It should have its membership conditioned upon the acceptance of certain basic moral principles of justice. It should be more like a club than a street car. It should have certain standards of admission. The subscription rate of a lost league was too low because anyone could walk in, anyone could walk out. Hensay nation or a state that will not accept a common ethos or a set of moral principles as superior to the sovereignty of any nation. And existing before any nation began and binding even when its application goes against itself should not be permitted to sit in that august body any more than a foreigner may sit in the councils of the United States. Hensay big nation makes a condition that it will not have the league. Unless it can swallow up half a dozen small nations then left up power whether it be Japan, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Russia. Or the United States be quarantined until it recovers its ethical health. No court of justice can survive if the people agree to its decision only on condition that he may keep his loot. Is there any hope for the restoration of this moral order based on justice? There is. Mr. Churchill asked wheat told England that the education of England must return to morality and religion or perish. And Mr. Roosevelt said, we are especially conscious of the divine power. It is seeming that at a time like this we should pray to Almighty God for his blessing on our country and for the establishment of a just and permanent peace among all the nations of the world. But until these sentiments are translated into action by us they are a sounding brass. And that is why we ask every Jew and Protestant and Catholic in the United States to spend an hour a day in meditation and prayer for the cause of victory in the just peace. And anyone wishing a prayer book for these war times entitled the shield of faith we were gladly send it free for the asking. Besides this hope of prayer there is hope too in the fact that a new America is being forged on the Anvil of War. With the hammers of divine justice. Most of the young men in our arms service are getting a sounder education than if they stayed in school. For they are now learning that the difference between right and wrong is so hard and so absolute that it takes death sometimes to make the right free of them. Their thinking has broken with our gilded past. Some Marines at Guarda Canal looking at a few moronic topological use to protect and suit food said maybe we ought to go back and clean up America. Now they wounded by a just back from the Pacific said before I went to war I believe the justice was what I wanted. Now I've learned to live and to fight for others I've learned to live and the fight for others. I've learned to live and to fight for others. I've learned to live and to fight for others. When each hearty recalls the words of the soldier at the time there are no atheists in foxholes. These boys are learning justice the hard way. They will love America more when they come back. For a parallel look to the American Legion of the last world war which more than any other organization in the United States outside of the Catholic Church consistently unfairlessly opposed the growth of communism in our midst. Which opposition incidentally within the past few days found its echo in the statement of the eternal turn of the general of the United States. He said it may not be good for Russia to get rid of the communists but it will be good for America. These boys of ours in like manner will know the wrong things and the right things when they come back. For they are finding them out now in the mud of Africa and the rolling seas of the Atlantic and the Pacific, the jungles of New Guinea and in the swamps of the solomans. When you and I go to work we know that we will come back. When they go on the field and in the air and on the sea they have a rendezvous with uncertainty. And this be not to care because they have one supreme interest the taking of an objective. And all morality is ground that on an objective on an end on a goal on God. We will have an invasion when this war is over. Not from a foreign enemy but an invasion of great men. Twice born Americans. And unless we get down on our knees and transform our hearts by prayers as they have by sacrifice, we will not understand the language that they speak. Their values will be different. Their outlook on life will be different. They will be the new America. And those who do return will never be able to blow out out of their memory. The thousands of the little white crosses they left behind. Mocking a spot where fallen earth was piled high on hearts that loved American soil. And these crosses will be symbols of the justice for which they fought. Vertically pointing up to God from whom justice is derived. And horizontally pointing out where to America and to the world to whom that justice is to be applied. Each little cross to them will be a miniature Calvary. A cameo god of that. A splinter from a great cross whence comes greater love than this no man has. And when finally the taps sound on the first night of peace. When the guns of the world go to sleep, we will join with these returning soldiers in beloved memory to those little white crosses. And we shall pledge with them that America shall have a rebirth of justice under God. Thanks to our martyr dead, who we have given to this earth. Some of the noblest red blood dispersed of ours as drunk since Calvary drank the blood of Christ. O Lord Jesus Christ, who in dimer sea hear us the prayers of sinners. For a fort we've asheed the oral grace and blessing upon our country and its citizens. We pray in particular for the president, for our Congress, for all our soldiers. For all who defend us in ships weather on the seas or in the skies. For all who are suffering the hardships of war. We pray for all who are in peril or in danger. Bring us all after the cabbos of this life into the haven of peace. And reunite us all together for ever of your art, interi-chlorious heavenly kingdom. The address you have just heard was entitled Moral Basis of Peace, and was delivered by Montsenier Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America. This was the fifteenth in his series of eight years. The address you have just heard was entitled Moral Basis of Peace, and was delivered by Montsenier Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America. This was the fifteenth in his series of eighteen addresses on the crisis in Christendom. A copy of today's talk, as well as of the booklet referred to by Montsenier Sheen, the shield of faith, may be obtained by writing to the National Council of Catholic Men Washington DC, or to the station to which you are now listening. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. The Catholic Hour closes with the hymn by the blood that flowed from thee. Next Sunday at this time, on Senior Sheen, we'll deliver another address in this series entitled Jew and Christian in History. Your announcer is John Patrick Costello. This program has been presented by the National Broadcasting Company and the Independent Radio Stations associated with the NBC Network in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men and came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company. The National Broadcasting Company is the National Broadcasting Company. This is the National Broadcasting Company.