Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Viva Cristo Rey!
During the years the Bolsehivists devastated Spain, they murdered, for no reason other than their Faith, approximately 11,000 innocent Catholic Bishops, priests, nuns, brothers and laity (for assisting them).
They live in eternal glory.
“Most Americans know very little about the Spanish Civil War. During this violent time in Spain’s history, the anti-Catholic government openly persecuted Catholic churches, religious orders, and individuals. … In August of 1936, this persecution was particularly brutal, which is why the Church’s calendar is particularly full of Spanish martyrs during that month.
On August 3, 1936, Blessed Salvador Ferrandis Segui was arrested and shot because he was a Catholic priest. On August 8, 1936, Blessed Zephyrinus Jimenez Malla, a businessman and Dominican tertiary, was executed for hiding priests from the authorities. On August 19, 1936, nine Carmelite sisters were martyred together. On August 20, 1936, Blessed Maria Climent Mateu, a laywoman who was active in her church through the Saint Vincent de Paul Society and the Catholic Women’s Trade Union, was stabbed to death. The charges against these individuals had nothing to do with committing any serious crimes, but everything to do with their Catholic faith.
The Spanish Civil War and its persecution of Catholics lasted from 1934 to 1939, and it certainly was not limited to August of 1936, although hatred of the faith was particularly virulent then. …
Since some estimate that more than six thousand Catholic priests and religious were executed during the Spanish Civil War, along with many members of the laity, this list of blesseds is both too long (even one martyr is a tragedy) and too short (there are many more than can be listed here). But in the month of August we can remember that less than a century ago, it was a brutal time for the faithful Catholics of Spain.”
– Dawn Marie Beutner – “Saints of 1936”
https://dawnbeutner.com/2020/08/03/saints-of-1936/
Also:
https://www.amazon.com/Saints-Becoming-Image-Christ-Every/dp/1621643417/
https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Christendom-1815-2005-History-vol/dp/0931888840/
Game theory tells us that in most any ongoing situation there’s advantage in cooperation, and in most any chaotic situation there’s advantage in backstabbing. There’s always a chance of the bad guys winning in any war, but in a multiparty civil war, the winner is almost certainly going to be the person with the fewest scruples. The saints probably won’t make it past the early rounds. My point is, there’s a reason it’s hard for the average American to understand the war. It’s disorderly. Thank God we don’t have a national memory of going through that ourselves.
He who controls the past controls the future.
Today, it’s a crime in Spain to write or speak the truth about the Spanish CW.
Franco and tens of thousands of heroes saved their country from the dire fates of Tibet, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Cambodia, et al.
Then, he was painted as the bad guy for bringing justice to mass murderers and war criminals.
Imagine that they didn’t lie about it for the past 80+ years.
There were villains among the nationalists. The whole thing was a mess of factions within factions, so there were villains everywhere. But there were far more villains among the Republicans.
Even making note of the fact that the Republicans in the war dragged priests into the street and killed them merely for being priests is taboo. The closest thing that people who attack the martyrs of the war have to an objection is “a dozen or so Basque priests were killed while they were resisting the nationalists, so how dare you talk about the thousands that the republicans killed as part of their anti-clerical crusade.”
It is ironic that the Republicans were romanticized by Hemingway, New York Times, Picasso, et al as fighters against totalitarianism and then promptly allied with Stalin to fight Hitler. Any competent military strategist could have seen the proper approach would have been non-involvement in the Eastern theatre and concentrating on defeating the enemy in the West. The efforts today of excusing the crimes of the left of yesterday and today have brought us a new collective tyranny in the west called the European Union and a tolerance for the sake of profit in the East through the Communist party in China. In the meantime we endure the rot in Western countries through the medium of greed, hedonism and a debasement of common morality. When comes our turn, the fall of Rome will be little more than a footnote of history compared to the consequences of our own foolishness that will bear the bitter fruit.
https://www.history.com/news/big-three-allies-wwii-roosevelt-churchill-stalin
FDR’s a Republican, now?
Huh, and here I thought he was mildly famous for being the shining example of what a Progressive Democrat was, and had in fact been politically friendly with Stalin well before Pearl Harbor.
::goes to look::
In fact, in his first year as president, FDR took action to recognize the existence of the Soviet Union and normalize diplomatic relationships with the Kremlin.
Dang. Them Republicans is powerful.
The Bando Republicano were supported by the USSR during their Civil War, and the Nationalists were supported by Italy and Germany during the civil war, so really not any kind of “turn around and ally” with anybody, the alliances were already there.
https://spartacus-educational.com/SPrussia.htm
Have I mentioned how glad I am that my ancestors got the heck out of Europe? No wonder they managed to start two world wars with that kind of ‘everybody agree not to help either side, oh hey we’re going to have people helping both sides but pretend not to notice’ stuff.
And yes, I know that FDR was a pain for that stuff, too.
After thinking it over, my attempt at throw-hands-in-air wry comment on the sheer soaked mess of functionally allied/ officially not allied/ helping/ officially not helping/ insert grade-school girls doing emo drama here is probably not written well enough to be good dark humor, and probably leans too much on knowing how FDR went from being proudly pointed to as a Dem/Prog president when I was a kid to mostly avoided, probably soon to be attacked as a horrible person.
(Sort of like how Lincoln magically has no party attached to him, and no modern political parties were involved in the US civil war.)
/sigh
I’m about halfway exhausted, sorry.