Nazi Germany

Hannah Arendt Questions Whether School Desegregation Was Wise: Little Rock and Civil Rights
Civil Rights

Hannah Arendt: Was School Desegregation Was Wise? Little Rock & Civil Rights v States’ Rights

08/14/2024 Bruce Strom 0

In 1957 the NAACP registered nine black students to attend a previously all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. At first Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to “preserve the peace” by preventing these black students from attending. This civil resistance offended President Eisenhower. As a prior general, he viewed this as insubordination, so he nationalized the Arkansas National Guard, instead instructing them to protect the African American students. This did not stop the bullying and taunting, one of the black students had acid thrown in her face. There was a protracted struggle, the public schools were closed for a year, and after reopening black students had to face both white mobs and bullying for several years. […]

Preparing the Way for Vatican II: CS Lewis' Mere Christianity
CS Lewis

Preparing the Way for Vatican II: CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity

05/17/2024 Bruce Strom 3

CS Lewis did not wave the flag of ecumenicism, attending this conference or that on interfaith dialogues, but instead prepares the way, saying that what denominational creed you profess is less important than whether you truly believe the core Christian teaching of the two-fold Love of God and neighbor. This was the key change wrought by Vatican II, no longer did the Catholic Church believe you needed to be Catholic to be saved. Likewise, CS Lewis is against the notion that Catholics cannot be saved. […]

Facing the Nazi Menace: CS Lewis' Mere Christianity and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning
CS Lewis

Facing the Nazi Menace: CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

05/16/2024 Bruce Strom 9

Mere Christianity was compiled from a series of radio addresses by CS Lewis explaining the tenets of Christianity which were broadcast during the dark days of World War II, when Londoners fled to the safety of the underground subway tunnels while Nazi bombers destroyed their homes above. We will reflect on the many instances where CS Lewis referred often to this monumental struggle, one of the rare political struggles that actually pitted the forces of good and evil against each other, in Mere Christianity. […]

Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Speech, March on Washington DC, Biography
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Speech, March on Washington DC, Biography Chapter 8

01/19/2024 Bruce Strom 4

MLK’s I Have a Dream Speech begins: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.” […]

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality, Biography Chapter 7

01/17/2024 Bruce Strom 2

In September 1963, a black church in Birmingham was dynamited, killing four young girls and injuring several dozen others. Addressing the nation on television, President Kennedy proclaimed, “This nation is committed to a course of domestic justice and tranquility.” “If these cruel and tragic events can awaken that city and state, if they can awaken this entire nation,” “then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost.” But no whites attended the funeral services of these four young black girls. […]

Double Agent Garbo: The Ordinary Person Who Played a Major Role in Defeating Nazi
History

Double Agent Garbo: The Ordinary Person Who Played a Major Role in Defeating Nazi Germany

12/15/2023 Bruce Strom 0

After Nazi Germany invaded Poland, then France, Pujol decided the best way he could contribute was to serve as a spy against Nazi Germany. He visited the British embassy in Madrid three times in early 1941 offering his services. He was rebuffed out of hand.
How could our Spanish friend burnish his spy resume? By volunteering at the German embassy, playing the role of a fanatic Spanish fascist who could travel to London on official business! The Germans gave him a crash course in espionage, secret writing with invisible ink, a codebook, cash for expenses, giving him the codename ALARIC. His instructions were to move to England and recruit a network of British agents. […]

History

Ratzinger Report, by Future Pope Benedict XVI, Preparing for Catholic Catechism

01/13/2023 Bruce Strom 1

Cardinal Ratzinger teaches us: “Every council that bears fruit must be followed by a wave of holiness. Thus it was after Trent, and it achieved its aim of real reform for this reason. Salvation for the Church comes from within her,” not solely “from the decrees of the hierarchy. Whether Vatican II and its results will be considered as a luminous period of Church history will depend upon all the Catholics who are called to give it life. As Pope John Paul II said in his commemoration of Charles Borromeo in Milan, ‘the Church of today does not need any new reformers, the Church needs new saints.’” […]

History

Was Pope Benedict XVI proactive in the pedophile priest sex scandal?

01/11/2023 Bruce Strom 0

Penance is what Christians do; Christians repent. Unfortunately, many secular media interpreted these gestures by Pope Benedict as an admission of personal guilt.
During this time Cardinal Ratzinger confessed, “The greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without but arises from sin within the Church.” “The Church has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice.”
The media can be unfair at times. Pope Benedict XVI said that “we must be grateful for every disclosure. The truth, combined with love rightly understood, is primary. The media could not have reported these incidents had there not been evil in the Church herself.” […]

History

Milestones: Memoirs of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Future Pope Benedict XVI

01/06/2023 Bruce Strom 0

Archbishop Ratzinger teaches us that “this psalm from the wisdom tradition shows the straits of faith that comes from the absence of earthly success. When you stand on the side of God, you do not necessarily stand on the side of success.” “When the psalmist stands in before God, in the presence of God, he grasps the ultimate insignificance of material wealth and success and recognizes what is truly necessary and what brings salvation.” […]

History

How Did the Experiences of World War II Influence the Second Vatican Council?

11/30/2022 Bruce Strom 1

Vatican II marks a shift in the Church’s attitude towards the modern secular world. Gone are the anathemas of the Council of Trent and many other councils that condemn those who may disagree with the teachings of the church, instead Vatican II seeks dialogue with the modern world in with a pastoral rather than a condemning attitude. The Vatican II decree on religious freedom announced that democracy and freedom of religion and conscience were the friends of the church, that a totalitarian form of government could never be a trustworthy friend of the Catholic or Christian Church. […]