HURRAH ME SOUL, SAYS I. ME SHILLELAGH I LET FLY

Over at The Catholic Whistle, Paul Mallinder's excellent and ever-interesting blog, he speculates about why the Tatchells of this world direct their spleen against the Catholic Church, but say little or nothing about Islam, or Mohammedanism, as we used to call it.

His answer - and I think the right one - is fear.

I prefer 'cowardice'.

Muslims strike back. Catholics don't any more. Why not?

Is this non-violence of Christ and so truly Christian, or Catholic? If it were, I would have to admire it. But I suggest that it is not always from Jesus. He, too, could be violent, as witness the apisode when He drove the money-changers from the Temple.

In fact, most soi-disant liberal Catholics, who are flipsy-flopsy on abortion and contraception, are hard-line against violence whether to people or animals. They don't fight, they don't hunt, but they vociferously support the killing of the unborn.

Why? Because they have married the liberal, sentimental spirit of the age and, as someone said, will soon, thank God, be widowed. They haven't the guts to stand up for the Truth. The approval of liberal windbags is enough for them.

Catholic Europe survived because of people who thought differently. To protect what they loved and believed, they went to war.

Victory at Lepanto, at the Battle of Vienna, on the Vistula in 1920, and in the Second World War was not brought about by passive resistance, but by people who fought, killed, died, and won.

I'm glad that we had Churchill, not Gandhi.

We still, some of us, as Catholics, celebrate Lepanto. But would we follow its example?