Father Jerzy Popiełuszko

Andrzej Iwański CC BY-SA 3.0 downloaded from Wikimedia

At a recent Bible Study, I found out about the late Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko who was murdered during the Communist regime in Poland. He was a chaplain to Solidarity. It's a coincidence that at the same time I'm conversing with several people about the moral licitness of violence. It's not a question if violence can be licit, but rather when and in what circumstances. And so I've collected a few quotes related to the topic.

From JPRS (Joint Publications Research Service) dated 1 March 1985, it has these excerpts from devotional meditations, 19 October 1984. This is the day Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko was killed.

To preserve dignity in order to increase good and over come evil is to be guided in life by a sense of justice. Justice flows from truth and love. The more truth and love there is in a man, the more justice there is as well. Justice must go hand in hand with love, for without love one cannot be totally just. Where love and goodness are lacking, hatred and violence come to take their place, and if one is guided by hatred and violence, one cannot speak of justice.

To overcome evil with goodness is to remain faithful to truth. Truth is a very fragile possession of our reason. It was God himself who planted the will for truth in man; that is why man has a natural striving for truth and an aversion to falsehood. True, like justice it is linked to love, and love has a price. True love is self-sacrificing; therefore truth too must have a price. Truth always unites people and brings them together.

In order to over come evil with good, one must care about the virtue of courage. The virtue of courage is the overcoming of human weakness, especially fear and dread. A Christian must remember that he should only be afraid of betraying Christ for a couple silver pieces of sterile peace. To merely condemn evil, falsehood, cowardice, coercion, hatred and violence cannot suffice for the Christian; rather he himself must be a true witness, advocate, and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love. He must boldly claim these values for himself and for others.

The following comes from "Fr. Popielusko and Communist Poland" by Robert Royal, Arlington Catholic Herald (2000).

Do not struggle with violence. Violence is a sign of weakness. All those who cannot win through the heart try to conquer through violence. The most wonderful and durable struggles in history have been carried on by human thought. The most ignoble fights and most ephemeral successes are those of violence. An idea which needs rifles to survive dies of its own accord. An idea which is imposed by violence collapses under it. An idea capable of life wins without effort and is then followed by millions of people. 

Who Rules?

Christ Pantocrator, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, photo by Andrew Shiva

I think the Declaration of Independence represented an advance for all mankind, and I think that the Gettysburg Address put a right focus on those words: "All men are created equal." Those words are true in a metaphysical sense, that is, all human beings are equally human beings, or one human being is not more human than any other, or some humans are not less than human. No one can truthfully claim that any human being is subhuman or superhuman. Once we step below the metaphysical, inequalities are everywhere. Morally, some people are inhuman and some people are fully human in living their lives as they are meant to. Some are short; some are tall. Some are smart; some are stupid. Some have more talents than others (indeed, recall the parables of Jesus about the talents).

Then there is the spiritual battle beginning with Original Sin. We're at war with evil. But as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted, the battlelines of good and evil cross through every human heart. It seems to me that this is why Jesus in the parable of the wheat and the tares (or weeds) had the harvest workers wait until the harvest (meaning the time of Judgment) before separating the wheat from the tares (see Mt 13:24-30). Evil will be with us until the Judgment. Repentance or succumbing to evil are the choices ever before us. This means that all men will stumble into sin; this means governments and cultures will fall. Furthermore, there is no perfect government, and utopia is impossible for as long as men's hearts remain impure. At best, we can design governments to account for human fallness, but there is no guarantee that any government won't fail. It's always "a republic, if you can keep it."

And so governments are set up to keep order and peace. And the better governments will strive for justice (but perfect justice in this world before the Judgment will never prevail). And while with the help of technology, modern governments will increasingly look to police minds and hearts, such efforts will always be totalitarian and inhumane. Liberty will only be found when individuals police their own minds and hearts. "The truth will set you free" (from Jn 8:31-32, Jesus then said to those Jews who believed in him, "If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free").

And the truth is key. Rod Dreher's latest book is titled, Live Not by Lies. I've not read the book, but what I've read from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel about life under tyranny, its broad thesis is not hard to discern. We cannot accept the lie. Jordan Peterson passionately expressed this regarding the use of pronouns for transgender and the like, "If they fine me, I won’t pay it. If they put me in jail, I’ll go on a hunger strike. I’m not doing this. And that’s that. I’m not using the words that other people require me to use." But there is something deeper than mere thoughts and words. It's personal integrity, how one lives his or her life. After the Holy Spirit descends upon the Christian disciples, after Peter heals a cripple, the Jewish authorities told them that they must stop preaching about the Christ, to which they replied, "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

Jesus Christ is King. But he is not like other human rulers, he will not force himself into a human heart. Indeed, in the battle of good and evil within our hearts, we must invite Jesus into our hearts if we ever hope for the battle to be won by Goodness and Truth. We must pray and ask that God transform our hearts that it might be a suitable throne for the King; "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ez 36:26).

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by Andrew
modified by adding text