Crisis In Christendom, No. 13 of 17 No. 13 of 17

The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men, presents the Catholic Hour. Today's program will consist of music by a unit of the Paulus Corristers and an address by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen. From the great treasure house of Plain Song, the Paulus Corristers select the Lenten chant, Attende Domine. This hymn scams apart for its simplicity as well as richness of melodic lines. Hon Rima Koo is the Chatter. Here is the Holy Spirit. Attende Domine, the Holy Spirit. Here is the Holy Spirit. Attende Domine, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. Attende Domine, the Holy Spirit. Attende Domine, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. Attende Domine, the Holy Spirit. Attende Domine, the Holy Spirit. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America will now deliver the 13th in his series of 17 addresses on the crises in Christendom. His discourse today is entitled, Judgment of Nations. I present Monsignor Sheen. Friends. War is a judgment of God. Not in the sense that God acts outside history, but inside history as a catastrophic effect following the breaking of his moral law. Such was the burden of last and these broad chests. Today we shall mention two instances of how forgetfulness of God brought on the ruin of nations, namely Jerusalem and Rome, and then show how two great Americans expressed the same vision of judgment in our own American life. First the fall of Jerusalem. That great patriot who loved the Holy Spirit as his own stood on a hill opposite, looking down upon it, wept at the consequences which he knew would inevitably follow from a refusal to accept the truth, which their consciences had already been convinced. Oh Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered together thy children as the hemmed up gather her chickens under her wings and thou wouldst not? That is the heart of sin. I would, thou wouldst not. Human will set up against divine will. I would have gathered one man, a carpenter. No man can gather a stabilization. Only the son of God can gather a whole people. And it came to pass as he had foretold. The station going to Rome to become the emperor gave the order to his son Titus on Easter day in the year 70 to lay waste Jerusalem. The temple was destroyed as the Savior had said, and not a stone was left upon a stone. History was the stage on which Jerusalem worked out to full the effects of its severance and the laws of God. The city had not known the time of its visitation unless the Lord built the house. They labor in vain to that building. The second example of how forgetfulness of God brought on the ruin of nations is the fall of Rome. During the winter of 57, 58, St. Paul addressed the letter to the Romans. In the short time later, on the very year of his death, St. Peter likewise warned Rome of a judgment that awaited it because of its themes. Years later, in the year 370 at the mouth of the Danube of a great busy-goch family was born Alleric. Alleric himself was probably a Christian. But baptism had not destroyed in him that war-like lust. On three occasions he made visits to Rome, the third being on the 4th of August 410, with horses dancing like ox and moving, battering rams like mountains, he forced the Svalarian Gate, allowing his soldiers who were the scum of Europe to put them a croppelus of the earth to sack and to go to Rome. The humble giants of the nations of the world, nothing has fallen since. Like Satan's fell from heaven. The fall of this city was terrible. It terrified the whole empire. Not for 800 years. Since the taking of Rome of the Gauls in the year 387 before Christ had the capital of Rome been invaded and outraged by barbaric hordes. Her surprise was greater than her terror and her shame greater than her surprise. And at the close of that century, the Holy Father, Gregory the Great, standing at the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul, freaks this time and affirming the truth of the words of these Apostles already mentioned. Today is that Gregory, there is on every side, on every side grief, on every side desolation. On every side we are smitten and our cup is being filled with drops of bitterness. On the other hand, those saints at whose tomb we now are standing lived in a Roman world that was flourishing. Yet they trampled upon its material prosperity with their spiritual contempt. In that world of Rome life was long. Well being was continuous. There was material wealth. There was a high birth rate. There was tranquility of lasting peace. And yet when that world was still so flourishing in itself, it had already withered in the heart of those saints. In other words, almost four centuries before Rome fell, Peter and Paul said that it would, because it had forgotten God. Now Gregory, representative of the Church that has survived the fall of all civilizations, said that these men of the Church knew it would fall. When they saw it, when no one else saw it, namely when Rome was strong and the mistress of the world, in their eyes the city had written its own sentence of death with its own godless hands. And now we turn to our own American history. We find here also a recognition of divine judgment. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he penned these lines. All men are created equal. He made no exception. All men. But Jefferson kept slaves. And in Europe, to his credit it must be said, that he introduced a law into the Virginia legislature in 1778 prohibiting the slave trade, those slavery continued in the state. Recognizing however the inconsistency, and knowing that the blood of some men was in his own time being spilled by other men, because they denied equality, Jefferson expressed his fear in these words. I tremble for my country. When I reflect that God is just, and his justice does not sleep forever. It was a language almost identical to that which Peter used against Rome. Well, my Jefferson be concerned for any nation with spills blood, either its own or another, will have its own poured forth in reparation. He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword. We know well when the injustice was right it and the judgment came. One great man was great enough to see in the Civil War, a manifestation of the justice of God of which Jefferson spoke, and that man was Abraham Lincoln. These were his words. It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the over-roiling power of God. And in as much as we know, that by his divine law nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not just sleep here. That the awful calamity of Civil War, which now desolate our lands, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people. We have been recipients of the choices, bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers and wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand that preserved us in peace, multiplied in enriched and strengthened us. And we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior virtue and wisdom of our own. In toxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace to prowl to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended power to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Thus spoke Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. This was one of the greatest documents ever written by the pen of any American. To Jefferson goes the credit of writing our Declaration of Independence. To Lincoln goes the credit of writing our Declaration of Dependence. Jefferson said we were independent from tyrants. Lincoln added we are dependent on God. The ethical complement to our Bill of Rights Lincoln told us is our Bill of duties. If Lincoln could come back today, would he not remind us in the midst of this awful war that we are under the judgment of God and that prayer and reparation for national sins may well be the condition and the essential condition of victory? Are we convinced of that truth? How little prayer there is for victory? And how little thanks there is to when we win a victory? To make some amendment for these forgetfulness of ours, we ask every Sunday that the Jews and Protestants and Catholics spend an hour a day in prayer and meditation. And Catholics should include a daily massing communion in this hour whenever it is possible. Army is alone and cannot defeat the cohorts of Satan. We need God's help and let us pray therefore for it. Anyone wishing a prayer book written, expressly for this war, we will gladly send it free for the askings. Pray then for victory. No other hand. Are we thankful to God when we do have victories? What public thanksgiving do you know? Was there made for the victory at God again? The Carl C. Bismarck C. To the great credit of General McArthur, it must be said that after his recent victory in the Bismarck C, you were a lost less men than the Japs' lost ships. He wrote in his communique a merciful pavidance has granted us a great victory. And what did the journalist of this country do to that message? One of the most widely syndicated articles ridiculed McArthur's thanksgiving to God. And when a Rick and Bacher is saved it's see by prayer and poison or wrath for rescue through prayer, and both thank God for their safety, our newspapers write of the prayerfulness of these heroes in the same style spirits as if these brave men had been saved by goblins. One would get the impression that anyone who prayed in danger is doing something as unusual as for anyone to recite the soliloquy of hamlet. And let's be saved through prayer was as little to be expected as that hamlet himself should come to their rescue. The whole town of the prescenities affairs is imagined prayer. As if no one prayed. As if there were no God. How do we expect, except by prayer, to make effective indeed the words of the Atlantic Charter? We are on record in the Atlantic Charter as gone team the freedom and integrity of small nations. For example Poland with the Wadian and other nations. Now the Atlantic Charter is a kind of a political counterpart to the sermon on the Mount. For it is a defense of the weak and the poor. This is no compliment but a tremendous responsibility because the sermon on the Mount prepared for the crucifixion. Oh how little does those who isolate the Beatitudes from the cross understand that one entailed the other. Our Lord knew that the weak could not be defended except by bearing the slings and arrows of the strong. And that to speak for the poor was to invite a cross from the rich. Now then shall our Atlantic Charter which defends the integrity of small nations become effective except by bearing the oprobrium of the strong. How shall we liberate the oppressed except by being smitten by the sword of the oppressor? I tell you the day we wrote that Atlantic Charter. We wrote in Greek something that can be fulfilled only in blood. The Atlantic Charter can come into being only as the sermon on the Mount by enduring a call for a few hours from the powerful stage of the earth who has swallowed up the weak and the infirm. We can saw that when Eeroth is proclamation for freedom of the Negro and we must see it too as we proclaim the freedom of the children and the nations of the world. And we will need God's help in order that we may never compromise with his father. The word God was left out of the Atlantic Charter. But our president did not leave it out of his declaration of war for he ended it with these words. So help us God. And all Americans who are one with him in this war trust that when the day of victory dawns we will begin to talk of peace with the same words. So help us God. God love you. Lord Jesus Christ, who invi're the hearth the prayers of sinners, for forth we've received the 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 kingdom. The address you have just heard was entitled, Judgement of Nations, and was delivered by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America. This was the 13th in Monsignor Sheen series of 17 addresses on the crisis in Christendom. A copy of today's talk, as well as the booklet referred to by Monsignor 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 continues with a selection from the repertoire of the Paulist Corestors. We hear SB Whitney's setting of the hymn, The Son of God goes forth to war. Corestors signyards award co-workers Fayboud Batot for feathers, disponible for Tingloas Viralist, Odyeus Echolier Archives, Semenis mos believed to be B. Chorus of God, stand deadly, mallow, dressed in haphonoes Graciasople, lohan sang la cordu The Father of the Year is great! Holy Spirit, O Ant-Greyons! Next Sunday at this time, on senior sheen will deliver another address in this series entitled, Conversion by Kater.