Why England Slept (1940), the senior thesis of John F. Kennedy at Harvard, an immediate best-seller, was an amazing accomplishment for a 22 year old. His father Joseph, then US Ambassador to England, was a militant isolationist, a supporter of Chamberlain's appeasement, a despiser of Churchill. He preferred a Europe under Hitler to a war with him. In the summer of 1938 as a rising senior John travelled Europe, speaking with politicians, diplomats, taxi-drivers, hitchhikers and every one he could. He decided his father was wrong about Hitler. He returned to Harvard, devoured all available literature including diplomatic documents not available to anyone else. He produced a historic document. He went from there to become a war hero in the Pacific. His courage and stamina, even as he was very sickly, were admired by all who served with him. He became a voice entirely contradictory of his own father: for a generous, expansive even militant American internationalism. Later he became a fierce Cold Warrior, facing down Russian Communism with steadiness, confidence, intelligence. and resolution. He was not a perfect man. But he (along with Martin Luther King and maybe Ceasar Chavez) stands as an icon of the nobility of the USA at mid-20th-century. USA was not then, is not now, a perfect country. But it victoriously defended human liberty and dignity against the Japanese, Nazi and Communist totalitarianisms.
On the global scene they stand beside Churchill and DeGaulle but all of them are surpassed by another figure: John Paul II as a youth faced Nazism, as a bishop Communism, and as a pope Cultural Liberalism. He is the essential 20th century icon of human freedom and dignity. He is the quintessential Culture Warrior.
JFK's thesis describes the urgent longing for peace and disarmament that gripped England (and the United States as well) after WWI. That passivity, naivete and pollyannish optimism enabled Hitler's armament and led to Munich. Churchill, by sharpest contrast, represents the heroic, militant response to tyranny that eventually engaged FDR, JFK and that entire generation.
In the 1960 election, JFK rivalled Nixon as a Cold Warrior. He was fierce, confident and determined to defeat the imperialist Soviet Union. Later, Ronald Regan carried that torch and Russian communism collapsed of its own weight under the pressure of a militant USA and a morally heroic Pope.
The contrast between the isolationism of Chamberlain (and Joe Kennedy, Charles Lindberg and most of England and the USA) and the defiance of Churchill (young JFK and his generation, our fathers, the Great Generation) finds an analogy in today's Church and world. The two fiercest enemies of human dignity and liberty today are: Western Cultural Liberalism and Chinese Communism. Pope Francis is alive with the spirit of Munich as he strives to accommodate to sexual liberation and to Red China. He defers to fashionable European liberalism and to the Communist Chinese government in vain hope that they will be won over to his good-will. He offers no resistance to the degradation of human dignity advancing rapidly in the West and in China. He channels his energy against the death penalty and global warming but stands by passively in the face of the more massive and blatant violations of human life and freedom.
Contrast John Paul: heroically he resisted Hitler, then Stalin, and then the desecration of sexuality, innocent life, marriage and human dignity.
Well: the Culture War continues. It shows no sign of abating. We Catholics have a simple choice before us: follow Francis or follow John Paul.
No comments:
Post a Comment