Pagan Violence - Pure and Simple

David Quinn, like Mark Steyn, has a thing or two to say about Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, in the wake of the two near-bombings in his fair city and one semi-successful bombing in Scotland.

What I want to suggest, however, goes beyond the predictable hand-wringing and dissembling of journalists and talking-heads. The first place you should go to is to the wisdom of 3 Mass'keteers' friend and mentor, Gil Bailie, who reports on his remarks stated at the COV/R Amsterdam Conference. Here you will begin to see how honest, consistent confrontation with the template proffered by Islam and its prophet can be carried out by a (lay and unofficial) spokesman of the Christian faith, in general, and the Catholic Church, in particular.

But, for the record, let it be stated that from my understanding of the mimetic theory of René Girard, the acts of violence carried out by any human beings in the name of whatever deity they chose to foist their acts of terror upon are, by definition and structurally, sacrificial and at-one with the primitive sacred, regardless of what they themselves call them or however they seek to justify them. Such violence is pagan, a product of Original Sin, and is satanic, purely and simply.

This might surprise representatives of a certain major world religion whose numbers hover around a billion (like that of Catholicism) who feel a compulsion to murder innocent men, women, and children whom they deem to be infidel, while (a) a majority of fellow co-religionists seem to view their more violent brothers and sisters as better representatives of "true" religion than themselves and therefore (b) are likely to cover for these violent extremists if necessary.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ vouchsafed by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and couched in the deposit of faith found in Scripture and Tradition is the clearest renunciation of such sacred violence. Do people who call themselves "Christian" carry out similar pagan violence? Yes, and they should know better and their guilt is far, far greater for falling back into paganism. And yet, how many of us drive past abortion clinics and do not bat an eye at the genocide and silent screams going on there?

If this sounds shrill, it is not intended to. Rather, it is proposing that we do not fall into a doubling rivalry that will whisk many, many followers of Jesus Christ into the swirling vortex of the primitive sacred realm of Satan. Let us follow Mr. Bailie's example (above) and confront in honesty, charity, and reality in Jesus' Name. The consequences of not doing so are too great to ignore. Secularist naïveté will only continue to create a vacuum that the primitive sacred will gladly fill.