Pagan Darkness and Advent’s Light

I have fond memories of strolling along beautiful Bondi beach years ago, while at World Youth Day in 2008, and it never crossed my mind that I might get shot. Perhaps dim thoughts of whether a great white shark roamed the shoreline, and certainly dreams of surfing. I did dive into the frigid Pacific briefly (it was Aussie winter), but at another beach whose name I have forgotten.

It is now approaching summer down under, strange to ponder as we endure an arctic cold front here in Canada. Still, all the same, Christmas comes in ten days, in ice and frost, or sand and sun. In Judaism, it is the beginning of Hanukkah, commemorating the Maccabean revolt against paganism, and the rededication of the Temple after its desecration under Antiochus Epiphanes, who made many martyrs of the Jews.

Well, the fight for the Faith lives on. From what we know, just as the first candles of Hanukkah were being lit in the eight-day feast, two Muslims, a father and son, Sajid and Aveed Akram, decided to murder as many Jews as they might, gathered on Bondi to celebrate. (One viral tweet has two juxtaposed photos of Mr. Akram and tennis star Novak Djokovic. Only one of them was barred entry to Australia, the latter for not getting the coerced mRNA ‘vaxx’. Priorities signify much). Dozens were injured, and recent reports say fifteen are dead, including a child and a holocaust survivor who died shielding his wife. One of the gunmen has also gone to his judgement (Sajid), felled by a policeman’s good aim. To paraphrase Padre Pio, the elder Akram may not have believed in Christ and God the Father, but he does now, for better, or for worse. Whatever his fate, there will be no 72 virgins, and we will leave that judgement to God. Kyrie, eleison.

As Mark Steyn points out, for some reason, in a nation with some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world – one must demonstrate a real need for such, most often in farm or rural settings – Mr. Akram was permitted six of them. Both père et fils were on a watchlist, having apparently committed themselves to ISIS, a radical group responsible for innumerable atrocities, most recently the killing of two American soldiers and one civilian interpreter. Why was he permitted a veritable arsenal?

On Bondi, according to one eyewitness, the police took 45 minutes to show up, while father and son strolled the boulevard picking off victims with their high-powered rifles. One of the assailants was apparently disarmed by a brave civilian, Ahmed Al-Ahmed, who was shot five times for his efforts, but survived and is in hospital. There were any number of other heroes. Mobile phone footage of the massacre is already disappearing off the internet, however, censored by whatever powers control such. Like Billy Joel’s eponymous woman, they will only reveal what they want you to see. Even this incident may not be entirely what it seems to be, and there are wheels within wheels, and the barber-shop mirror of the internet recedes into infinity.

Whatever the case, there are already calls for the canard of ‘stricter gun control’, but, prescinding from the actual motives of this present tragedy, what is actually needed is a frank and honest dialogue about immigration and assimilation, and what it means to be a ‘nation’ and a ‘people’, united in some purpose or end. Pope Leo says we shouldn’t fear Islam, which wasn’t quite the message of his predecessor, Benedict, nor of all the popes and kings of the Crusade. Peruse Benedict’s 2006 Regensburg address, more timely than ever, the central theme of which is that God is not a God of violence, but of love and truth. In its beginnings, Islam owed many of its ‘conversions’ to the sword, bloodshed, war and conquest. And things, in general, always return to type. Is not a religion that has to spread its message by ‘force and fear’, with death for apostasy and conversion at gunpoint, by its nature, to be feared? Or, perhaps, more to the point, to be resisted.

Is the idyllic dream of peaceful coexistence of Islam and Christianity realizable? The end point of both religions is worldwide conversion, only by quite different means. Perhaps a certain rapprochement may be reached, especially when Islam does not feel dominant enough to impose its claims, but when it waxes strong, the choice is clear: it’s conversion, dhimmitude or, should you not prefer either of those options, exile or death. In any nation on the earth where Islam is dominant, and ask yourself, could you practise your Catholic faith freely there, without, to put it mildly, hindrance? There are a few exceptions – U.A.E is one mentioned – but they are rare, and one wonders about their motives. Even here, is one permitted to evangelize? And Muslim nations certainly wouldn’t allow themselves to be overwhelmed demographically by Christian immigration, nor Christian terrorism. Demography is destiny, and Australia won’t be that of Crocodile Dundee in one or two generations. You’ll have a tough time finding a Foster’s lager.

Then there was the shooting during the engineering exam at the elite Brown University in Rhode Island, with two dead and multiple injuries, the perpetrator still at large. I have also sat through many exams in such large halls, and, although anxiety-inducing, my worst fear was flunking, not death.

Finally, we hear of the brutal slaying of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, found in their home with multiple knife wounds. Readers may recall him as semi-reformed hippie Mike ‘Meathead’ Stivic from the 1970’s sitcom, All in the Family, a show which ironically, and subtly, undermined the notion of the traditional family. Mr. Reiner went on to direct some very famous, profitable and usually enjoyable films – such eclectic fare as Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride – all sort of reactionary in one way or another to traditional mores. In the last one, the hero is a pirate, not a prince, sort of an inversion of a fairy tale, and what is one to say of the rock-mockumentary? But, hey, who didn’t enjoy them? We still quote many of their lines. Mr. Reiner supported just about all the ‘liberal’ causes – a vocal proponent of same-sex marriage – and although raised in a Jewish home, his family did not really observe their religion, and he declared himself an atheist with a vague affinity for Buddhism, like so many other actors. But he seemed genuine in what beliefs he did hold. Their sometime-psychotic-drug-addict son, Nick, has been taken into custody. According to reports, they did everything they could to help Nick get back on the right track – everything, I suppose, except religion and God which, in the end, are the only things that matter. As Dostoyevsky put it, without God, anything goes, and all morality becomes subjective, unhinged and chaotic. it’s helter skelter to nowhere good. In the midst of the horror of their final moments, may the Reiners somehow have availed themselves of the mercy of God, which is open to a soul right up to the last moment, as Dysmas demonstrated. Whether it means anything, Rob Reiner had a pleasant face and smile, and seems to have loved his son. We may remember him so.

Odd, that these murders took place on the anniversary of the Sandy Hooke massacre (December 14th, the memorial of Saint John of the Cross). Christmas is a time of great joy, but, alas, also of profound sorrow to too many, who are asked to share in some vivid, if unwitting, way the via Crucis. In what should be a festive season, there will now be even more empty chairs around the table.

For now, we pray for the victims of these tragedies, not least at this time of year.

Chesterton quipped that to see the world right side up, you have to see it first upside down. Those on the antipodes are ‘upside down’ to us, and us to them. Perhaps the world will now see, and understand what’s at stake, the very fabric of our civilization, our culture, and our faith. These are what’s holding back the primal and demonic forces of the resurgent new paganism, all those forces, material and spiritual, outside of Christ and His Church. And not only outside, but against His Church, the very spirit of anti-Christ. He who is not with Me, is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me, scatters. (Mt 12:30)

In whatever guise this new paganism takes, whether it hides under the mask of ‘reason’ or religiosity, we should heed Hilaire Belloc’s prophetic warning:

Men do not live long without gods; but when the gods of the New Paganism come they will not be merely insufficient, as were the gods of Greece, nor merely false; they will be evil.  One might put it in a sentence, and say that the New Paganism, foolishly expecting satisfaction, will fall, before it knows where it is, into Satanism.

Reading of other horrific random (?) attacks across this darkening world, we seem a good deal of the way towards that endpoint.

But we should not end on a dark note of despair in this Advent, for we Catholics have Christ and His truth, stronger than any evil. As Saint John put it in his prologue: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

And that Light is just around the corner.

Dominus prope est, venite adoremus!