Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community — however necessary and honourable be their function in worldly things — whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinises them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race.

As God’s sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creator’s right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are.

This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.

— Pope Pius XI (Mit Brennender Sorge: On the Church and the German Reich)

In his Summa Theologiae, St Thomas Aquinas explains that decorum is the virtue wherein one’s speech, behaviour, and comportment is fitting in accordance with their state in life.

1. Interior decorum is the ordering of one’s desires, emotions, and intentions in accordance with reason which cultivates a nobility of soul known as magnanimity. By cultivating interior decorum, one develops discipline of character which prevents one from acting impulsively.

2. Exterior decorum is the visible expression of one’s inner nobility and is expressed in one’s speech, dress, manners, and public conduct especially in regards to his relationships with others. Like the other virtues, decorum is not a fixed position but adjusts according to one’s state in life and according to circumstance.

In a modern world that celebrates self‑expression over self‑mastery, decorum reminds us that true happiness is not found in doing whatever one pleases, but in acting as one ought — in a manner according to reason, and proportionate to one’s state in life and place within their community.

We need to rediscover the virtue of decorum because ordered and honourable people create ordered and honourable societies.

Christians are called to be peacemakers, but Christians are also reminded that in order to make peace, sometimes it is necessary to wage war.

How do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?

In the Gospels, Christ exhorts us to imitate him for He is “meek and humble of heart”, and to “turn the other cheek” rather than retaliate against our enemies. These verses have been used as proof that Christianity is inherently a pacifistic religion and averse to conflict — a stance which has been embraced by the West particularly in the aftermath of the 20th century.

In this climate, such interpretations are promoted by priests and professors alike to justify a broader retreat from conflict in the spiritual and civic dimension, producing a generation of Christian men uncertain of their obligations and unprepared for the battles already upon them.

Now, what if I told you that this pacifistic interpretation has been deliberately weaponised against you? What If I told you it is a calculated effort to render you defenseless, and to prevent you from fighting for your faith, your family, and your fatherland?

This interpretation is not just incomplete — it contradicts the perennial teaching of the Church.

To understand how we must respond to the current crisis — and how to recover our traditional, militant faith — we must turn to Pope Leo XIII, who issued the Church’s clearest call to arms in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae: On Christians as Citizens.

Pope Leo XIII’s Call to Arms

Two arguments are often used to suppress the Church’s militant character.

1. It is claimed that Christianity is an inherently pacifistic religion that is fundamentally opposed to all forms of conflict, and presents a pseudo-Manichaean theology where the merciful God of the New Testament serves as a counter to the vengeful God of the Old Testament.

2. It is conceded that conflict in the early ages of the Church and its development of just war theory were tolerated, but now claims that we have “progressed beyond” such archaic thinking. As refined and enlightened people, we are told that warfare is no longer required and that every challenge must be met with dialogue and diplomacy.

Pope Leo XIII rejected both arguments completely.

In 1890, he surveyed a civilisation trembling under the ever advancing hand of secular modernity and liberalism. Europe had been devastated by a century of conflicts — namely, the Napoleonic Wars, the revolutions of 1848, and the Franco‑Prussian War — and with each conflict, traditional Christian institutions were weakening while anti‑clerical regimes were empowered. Moreover, while the Western world was becoming more modernised, industrialised, and ‘civilised’, it was also becoming more aggressively secular and hostile to the Church that stood as a bulwark for truth and tradition.

It was into this crisis Pope Leo XIII unleashed his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae — not as a pastoral reflection but as a call to arms, the way a commander addresses his soldiers on the eve of battle.

Sapientiae Christianae tears away the modern illusion that Christians must be passive, pliable, and perpetually apologetic. Leo XIII reveals how this distortion has been used to weaken you, and outlines eight principles to restore the Church Militant.

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In his Summa Theologiae, St Thomas Aquinas provides a systematic account of man’s obligations concerning the commandment of love. He explains that the order of charity (ordo caritatis) is a hierarchical love that begins with God and then extends outward in proper degrees.

One must first love God above all, then oneself rightly ordered to God, and then those most closely united to him.

A father’s primary obligation is to his immediate family, then to his extended family and friends, and then to his wider community.

Similarly, a nation’s primary obligation is to its own citizens, then to neighbouring peoples and allies, and finally to the wider international community.

A man that inverts the order of charity — whether under the name of charity, mercy, or tolerance — is as the name would suggest, fundamentally disordered.

In his Summa Theologiae, St Thomas Aquinas laid out one of the most charitable yet practical arguments concerning immigration that effectively shaped the West for almost 1,000 years.

Firstly, immigration must always be proportionate so that foreigners can properly assimilate into the culture and mode of worship of the state.

Secondly, citizenship — and associated rights — should only ever be granted after the third generation to preserve the culture, mode of worship, and constitution of the state.

Finally, the common good of the citizens must remain the highest priority of the state, meaning, the state’s obligation to provide aid to its neighbours can never be at the expense of the citizens.

However, Aquinas ends with the sobering reminder that some peoples and states are incompatible with one another, and these must be held as “foes in perpetuity”.

Suffering is an inescapable part of the human experience.

Disease, war, famine, and disaster strike without discrimination. They fall upon the just and the unjust, the rich and the poor, the young and the old with the same indifference — and none of us can escape their grasp.

But why would God allow good people to suffer?

This question has been wrestled with for thousands of years, and yet nobody seems to have come up with a satisfactory answer to it. Or haven’t they?

The Stoics like Seneca the Younger believed that suffering was a test of virtue, insisting that adversity reveals the man, writing that “fire tests gold just as misfortune tests brave men”.

But Christianity — especially in the hands of St Augustine — goes even further. He argued that the just do not suffer less than the unjust, but more, and insists that this is not a contradiction of God’s goodness, but a revelation of it.

Here’s what I learned from City of God, and the enduring lessons laid down by one of history’s greatest theologians.

The Flames That Devoured Augustine’s World

To understand Augustine’s theology of suffering, we must return to the catastrophe that shaped his final years.

For centuries, Rome had been the centre of the world, so when Alaric’s Goths breached its walls in 410 AD, the empire reeled as if history itself had come undone.

Senators fled, temples were desecrated, households were torn apart — and the violence did not spare the innocent. Holy virgins were dragged from altars, priests were cut down beside sacred vessels, and families known for charity and piety were slaughtered alongside the wicked and corrupt.

Augustine emphasises repeated that the Goths did not pause to distinguish the good from the evil, and God did not intervene to shield the good from the sword.

Twenty years later, Augustine witnessed the siege of Hippo. The Vandals encircled the city, cutting off supplies, and burning the countryside. The clergy suffered with the laity, the devout suffered with the lukewarm, the old bishop himself suffered with his flock.

He died before Hippo fell, but he died knowing what would come.

This context matters — but it must not overshadow the theology. Augustine wrote City of God not from a monastery but from within the conflagration.

When I read Augustine, I feel the urgency of a man trying to teach his fellow Christians how to suffer without losing themselves, and how to remain faithful when the world itself is collapsing.

Augustine’s Doctrine on Suffering: The Fire that Purifies and Destroys

One of the most incisive reflections on suffering from the ancient world comes from the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, the tutor of the infamous emperor Nero.

In Letter 67 of his Epistulae Morales, written to his friend Lucilius, Seneca writes:

Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles?

Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places.

None of these men says as he begins his march, “The general has dealt hardly with me”, but “He has judged well of me”.

Augustine does not dismiss this noble, stoic insight but deepens and perfects it through the light of Christian revelation. He takes Seneca’s metaphor of the battlefield and transfigures it into the realm of grace, arguing that suffering is not just a test of virtue but also the instrument by which God sanctifies the soul.

In Book I, Chapter 8 of his City of God — a passage I have returned to many times in my life, especially in times of adversity, Augustine writes:

“Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing.

To Augustine, adversity is the great discriminator. It separates the weak from the strong and the pious exterior from the faithful interior.

For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.

And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.”

Thus, St Augustine understood that suffering is not a punishment but the price we pay for greatness. The fire that causes us pain is the same fire that strengthens what is weak and purifies what is imperfect. For the soul is steel, and God is the divine smith: He tempers us in the flames of adversity, lays us upon the anvil, and strikes us again and again — not to shatter us, but to harden us.

Once you understand this, the question is no longer “How do I escape suffering?” but “How do I suffer well?”

It is easy, however, to speak about virtue in abstractions, but abstractions collapse the moment those abstractions become a reality. Fortunately, Augustine gives us five essential principles to carry with us today, and this is where the real work begins.

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Many Americans instinctively understand that the president is not the state. His authority exists to uphold something higher than himself – namely, the Constitution. Because of that, Americans can easily distinguish between the office of the U.S. President and the man who holds it. Even when political passions run high or partisanship clouds judgment, t…

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Throughout history, poets, philosophers, and theologians have praised patriotism as one of the highest virtues, a noble form of love that binds a person to the land, the people, and the inheritance that formed him. Far from simple sentiment, this love was understood as a moral bond and recognition that one’s identity is shaped by a community that existe…

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Blessed be the Lord my God, who teacheth my hands to fight, and my fingers to war. My mercy, and my refuge: my support, and my deliverer: My protector, and I have hoped in him: who subdueth my people under me.

Lord, what is man, that thou art made known to him? Or the son of man, that thou makest account of him? Man is like to vanity: his days pass away …

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Kingdoms and empires have passed away; peoples once renowned for their history and civilisation have disappeared; time and again the nations, as though overwhelmed by the weight of years, have fallen asunder; while the Church, indefectible in her essence, united by ties indissoluble with her heavenly Spouse, is here to-day radiant with eternal youth, st…

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The question of capital punishment has accompanied human civilisation from its earliest political formations to the present age. It stands at the intersection of law, morality, and metaphysics, demanding from the jurist and theologian alike a sober consideration of justice, authority, and the common good (bonum commune). As Aristotle observed in his Pol…

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The school of Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium in the early third century before Christ, arose as a noble attempt to provide the Greco-Roman world with a philosophy of life adequate to the turbulence of empire, commerce, and war. Its principles were austere yet consoling.

To live “in accordance with nature” meant not the indulgence of passions but the…

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The Church has always upheld, in continuity with Sacred Scripture and the wisdom of the Greco‑Roman tradition, that capital punishment is just when the sword is wielded by legitimate authority and ordered towards the protection of the common good.

Echoing this perennial teaching, St Thomas maintains that public authority, as minister of the divine order …

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The modern insistence on "active participation" and feeling emotionally "engaged" reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of worship and the virtue of religion.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is, as the name suggests, the re‑presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary.

In Persona Christi, the priest offers to the Father the same Christ who was immolated on t…

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The perennial question concerning the relationship between Church and State has occupied Christian thought from the earliest centuries, but it finds its most systematic articulation in the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, whose vision continues to shape the Western understanding of the balance of powers.

In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas uses Sacred Scriptu…

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The perennial question, ‘What is the best form of government?’, has occupied the minds of political theorists and philosophers from the Golden Age of Greece to the modern world. Among the most profound contributors to this discourse is St Thomas Aquinas, the 13th‑century Dominican theologian whose synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theol…

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Kingdoms and empires have passed away; peoples once renowned for their history and civilisation have disappeared; time and again the nations, as though overwhelmed by the weight of years, have fallen asunder; while the Church, indefectible in her essence, united by ties indissoluble with her heavenly Spouse, is here to-day radiant with eternal youth, st…

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Many Christians don’t seem to understand the concept of the development of doctrine.

The Church needs to refine and clarify her teachings in order to respond to heresies or when circumstances demand it.

Did the Church invent the doctrine that the Son is co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father in 325AD at the Council of Nicaea?

No.

The Son was always c…

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Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles?

Because in the army, the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places.

Not one of …

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Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – Sweet and honourable it is to die for one’s Fatherland.

In this famous maxim, the poet Horace gave voice to the spirit of sacrifice that defined the Roman people, a spirit most vividly expressed in the ritual of devotio. For the Romans, this was not simply a poetic flourish but a lived reality.

In moments of crisis, …

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