Peace, No. 12 of 17 No. 12 of 17

The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men, presents the Catholic Hour. The Catholic Hour opens with a group of the Polish choristers singing in Gregorian Chant, the Lenten hymn, Attendee Domini. The Catholic Hour opens with a group of the Polish choristers singing in Gregorian Chant, the Lenten hymn, The Lenten hymn, The Lenten hymn, The National Minister of the Catholic University of America will now deliver the twelve in his series of seventeen addresses on the General Subject Peace. His discourse today is entitled, The Divine Cost of Stopping the War. I present, Mr. Senior Sheen, Friends. In this broadcast, we enter into the very heart of the question, why does God not stop this war? And the answer is that the Divine Cost of Stopping this War would be the destruction of human freedom. This needs some explanation. Let us begin with this fact. This is not the only kind of a world God could have made. He could have made a world without freedom. He could have so fashioned us that we would have been good by the same necessity, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But God will not to make a mechanical universe people by automata, rather that He choose to communicate to us something of Himself, namely His freedom. Not in the same degree of perfection, of course, but enough of it to say no. Which would give a charm to a yes when we freely chose to say it. In other words, God chose to make a moral universe, where characters would emerge by the right use of freedom, a universe like a nation, where there would be patriots because men might betray us. A universe like a battlefield where there would be heroes because men might be cowards. A universe like a church where there would be saints because men also might be devils. There is no epic for the certainties of life. There is no lyric without the suspense of sorrow and the sigh of fear. No watchful love covers over the invulnerable. No crown of merit rests a spendet over those who do not fight. Take this quality of freedom away from man, and there would be no more reason to honor the fortitude of martyrs and soldiers than to honor the flames or the bullets which send them to their death. God will to make a moral universe of praise and blame. But this could be done only by making men captains and masters of their own fate and destiny. There is one word which sums up God's plan in making this world. That is the word love. God made each heart capable of love. But love implies a choice. Love is not only an affirmation, it is also an negation. If I choose this, I necessarily reject that. A heart that loves must be a heart to give or to keep. Because therefore God will to make love of Him possible in this world, He had to make us free. But if you made us free to love, He had to make it possible also for us to be free to hate. The universe thus became populated with free wills, little gods, each armed with a reflection of God's freedom. God pledged Himself after giving us that freedom, never to destroy it. The purpose of how many petrol and souls which freak against Him, why does God not stop this war? God could challenge us, or rule us, permit us to be visited by the consequences of our misdeeds. But He would never destroy that great gift of freedom. Even could if He so wanted, go on defying God. For time and for eternity subvert His moral law, blast the cosmos and even break His heart. And still God would not take away freedom. In this sense the decree of creation to make man free was also the decree of Calvary. For a free man that could break God's commandments could also crucify Him. Not even then would He take away freedom. But in His goodness He would make man's misuse of freedom the phalic sculpa, the occasion of offering Himself as a holy cost of love, not to force men back to Him, for His hands and feet were nailed, but to entice them back by a revelation of love greater than that which no man has, that He laid down His life for His friends. Now that brings us to this question. Could God stop this war? Most certainly God could. But if God were ever to be untrue to Himself or to us, what would God have to do? He would have to destroy our freedom. That would be the divine cost of stopping this war. We say we are fighting for freedom. Then why do we ask God to destroy freedom? That is precisely what we ask. When we say why does God not stop this war? We say we are fighting to destroy dictators. Then why do we ask God to become a dictator? We say that dictators are wicked because they would destroy the last vestige of freedom on earth. Then why do we ask for a dictator in heaven? Shall we one moment rage against earthly dictators because they would trample liberty underfoot and then in the next moment, freak for a dictator in heaven who would do the same thing? Certainly if we had to choose, it would be far better to live under earthly dictators for a few years than to have a dictator in heaven who by one blast of omnipotent power could take away that quality in us that makes us the paragons of creation. Fortunately, however, we have no choice in the matter. God will not destroy freedom. He will not be a dictator. And that is why God will not stop this war. More than should the blame for war be placed on God's gift of freedom or on our abuse of freedom. Have we not been too proud to admit that we might be sinful? When the world goes wrong, we blame it on systems, tyrannies, governments, unsound economics and bad plans, but never on our own will. The real evil in the human situation lies in man's unwillingness to recognize his dependence, his fine-artness, his creaturehood, or the possibility that there exists something greater than himself. Even as the abuse of freedom, and that is why the modern man who denies sin found himself in a world of dictatorship. Even the idea of hell is found up with freedom because hell means responsibility. And you deny responsibility. Deny responsibility and you deny freedom. We began this broadcast by asking, why does God ask? Why does God not stop the war? Now the question is turning around. Why do we not stop warring against God? This war is not of God's arbitrary making. It is the effect of our own abuse of God's gift of freedom. We must therefore not expect God to suspend the operation of His laws to protect us from their consequences. God will not suspend the law of gravitation to protect the life of a man who throws himself off the top of the Empire State Building. Neither will God suspend the operation of His moral law to immunize man from a war. It is born of the abuse of freedom and of the decrystallization of individual and social life. Why should we always think of the dictators as the creators of the world's woe? They are not its creators. They are rather the creatures. Dictators are like boils. Superficial manifestations of an inner rockiness. They would never have come to this surface if there had not been the proper conditions in the world from which they came. Therefore, be a very faithfulness state to think that if we could get rid of the dictators, this world of ours would be lovely and rosy. We assumed that if we could get rid of the Kaiser, the world and the last world war, we made that live in peace and prosperity, Kaiser. But we have another world war in 21 years. We removed the boil, but we kept the infected bad blood. We rid ourselves of the symbol of the world's wrong, but we did nothing to correct the wrong. And what assurance have we now that if we defeat these wicked dictators, the world would pursue justice and righteousness? Unless we cut down the evil tree that begins this evil fruit, we shall come having more wars. To change the figure, it will do us no good to treat the world for a fox fight. If like this fathom youth, we are going to continue to carry a fox and our blouse. This war, did we know it, is really only an episode in the working out of a great truth. It is not the great truth that is an episode in this war. And that truth is that this war is not a sign that men are with God. It is a sign that men have been against him. I am trying to say is that God did not start this war, and God will not stop you to part from our free cooperation with his law, which is the perfection of our freedom. When the world is crashing down in our heads, it is really silly and stupid to say that the major frustrations of life are economic or political. Or that if we had another system of economics, or another kind of government hall would be well. It is not the systems of the world that have gone crazy, but our hearts. Economics and politics upset the world because evil and selfishness and godlessness first upset the hearts of economists and politicians. And to assure ourselves that the major eels of our time are not economic, we need but inquire who are the disillusioned people of the modern world. They are not the poor. They are not the economically dispossessed. They are the who possess with power, who are selfish, faciated, who need blaring orchestras without melodies to drown their self-consciousness. There is a thousand times more disenchantment among the intelligentsia than among the poor. Everything else is wrong than besides economics. Our souls have lost God. Now does the appeal for a daily holy hour begin to make sense? You know that in each broadcast I appeal to Jews and Protestants according to the light of their conscience to spend the non-broken hour a day in prayer and meditation for our country and for the peace of the world. I ask Catholics to do more than this because we Catholics believe that our divine Lord is really and truly present on our orders under the species of bread. And to all Jews and Protestants and Catholics who desire a holy hour booklet to assist in this national act, a regeneration, we would gladly send one free. The reason of the holy hour is to make us conscious that seems the source of the world's confusion. That there must not only be an army which will defend us against external enemies, but also an army to overcome evil internally by reparation and by the rededication of our lives to God and to His divine Son. We should enter into this national act of reparation and prayer humbly as our Lord entered into the Garden of Gethsemane. Innocence though He was, He entered that Garden not as one subject to human brutality, not as rebellious against the injustices of the world, rather did He see in it an occasion to satisfy divine justice by taking upon Himself the sins of the world and thus fulfilling His Father's will. And so should we enter into this war, not regarding ourselves as innocent victims of other sins, for we are all sinners, but as transgressors assuming part of the blame for the sins of the world. If there's anyone who thinks He is good, let Him realize that He lives in an evil world. Therefore, He must redeem it. If however we feel ourselves as guilty because we abuse God's freedom, then we have need of making a tone for ourselves. In either case, we are under God's purposes. Humbly submitting ourselves to His will either to repair the broken fences of our neighbors, or else to replant our own wrecked vineyards. Like unto the Master in the Garden, we will not say we are under a violence imposed by men, but under the sweet compulsion of furthering the cause of God. In our hearts we will feel less that we are suffering from man's injustice, then from a free cooperation with God's justice for the redemption of the world. Or when evil men came with swords and clubs to apprehend our Lord in the Garden, he turned and said to them, this is your hour and the power of darkness. Your hour and all that you can do with it is to extinguish the light. Your hour and all you can do with it is to turn the world into a staging blackness. Your hour with the seeming power of authority, but which in reality is only the power of darkness, the power to do evil. And we are living in such an era of the world's history now, and hour of darkness where evil has its way. And how shall this darkness be ended? Not by the sword alone, even though justice sometimes must be armed. Evil can be overcome only by matching an hour of darkness with an hour of watching. That is why our Lord in the Garden, when he turned to Judas and his followers and said, this is your hour of darkness, said to his apostles, can you not watch with me one hour? He suggested that the holy hour of watching is the divine remedy for the hour of darkness. Shall we foolishly believe that there is any other escape? Satan has his hour, but God has his day, and that day can be ushered in only by watching through the night. Will you watch one hour with him? O Lord Jesus Christ, who in thy mercy heareth the prayers of sinners, or forth we beseech thee all 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, whether 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 troubles of this life, into the haven of peace, and reunite us all together forever, O dear Lord, in thy glorious heavenly King. The address you have just heard was entitled, The Divine Cost of Stopping the War, and was delivered by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America. This was the twelfth in Monsignor Sheen series of seventeen addresses on peace. A copy of today's talk, or of the Holy Al booklet described by Monsignor Sheen, 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 continues with Oz Good's arrangement of the Sanctus. Sanctus, Sanctus, the divinity of the Saviour, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. Sanctus, Sanctus, the divinity of the Saviour, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. Sanctus, the divinity of the Saviour, Sanctus, Sanctus. CHEAD M made it even more Cold! court I am And my praise of God's Son, and my praise of God's Son. Next Sunday at this time, Mancinya Shrin will deliver another address in this series entitled, Trust in God's plan.