What do some measly US Army battalions stationed on the East flank of NATO matter! Just two weeks ago we moved to the borders of our country over a million people armed with the most advanced weaponry! Its efficiency has been proved on many battlefields. It strikes the enemy targets with a hundred percent accuracy. From the Tatras to the Baltic, from the Oder to the Bug River the Polish Anti-demonic Shield (PAS) was spread out.
The implemented strategic defense initiative (which means the strategy of the highest level as it concerns spiritual matters) met a counter-attack of those who deemed it an example of “Polish Islamaophobia”, “xenophobia” and even “racism”. Although on October 7th at the very moment the PAS was being installed over our country the much feared military exercises Zapad 17 carried out by Russia beyond our eastern border had ended, in the evening completely new war games started in the democratic and free West. “Counter-information units” moved into action. All the time their aim has been to present the strategic spiritual defense initiative either as a party initiative (“supporting the anti-migrant policy of the ruling party”) or as “controversial” intentions (see above).
Wesprzyj nas już teraz!
The fact that they did not decide to use the tactics of concealment (“to pass it over in silence”) is meaningful. Spreading out the spiritual Anti-demonic Shield over Poland must have hurt many. And it must have hurt a lot. The “Rosary to the Borders” was a magnificent culmination of the centenary of the apparitions at Fatima. Magnificent because directly and on a large scale fulfilling Our Lady’s request to pray the Rosary. There is one more similarity to Fatima. Both the PAS and the apparitions of 1917 were met almost immediately with the same hostile, full of gall and sulfur reaction.
It is very characteristic for our times that those attacking at the front included also those western media labeled as Catholic. For example an Italian magazine called Famiglia Christiana saw in the Rosary prayer at our borders an expression of the anti-migrant attitude of Poles which – as the author of this lampoon wrote – “will not win Vatican approval”.
Except for the obvious nonsense in this type of thinking (it is as if we accused Austrians, praying the Rosary in 1955 for the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from their country, of being “Russophobic” and “inciting cold war feelings”), it is worth noticing that the author of that Italian article did not lie in one thing. Indeed the Holy See media (among them L’Osservatore Romano leading the way) were very moderate – using a euphemism – in expressing their attitude towards the “Rosary to the Borders”.
But a noise was made. And a huge one it was, raising up straight to Heaven. The initiative came from laymen (have you heard that? Have you heard that you, the “children of the Second Vatican Council” who keep harping on “the participation of laypeople in the life of the Church”?) and the whole multigenerational families participated in the prayer. The last fact is worth emphasizing, especially in the situation when the spiritual Anti-demonic Shield was attacked by the magazine called “Christian Family” (Famiglia Christiana).
The reaction of the „children of the Second Vatican Council” to the Rosary prayer at the Polish borders has only confirmed something one could realize earlier: the slogan – “more participation of the laypeople in the life of the Church” is first of all meant to promote the participation of laymen in undermining Church teaching and the Catholic tradition. If it does not serve that aim, on the contrary it is an expression of millions of Catholics’ concern about the traditional family (e.g. the French “Manif pour tous”) or about the spiritual condition of the nation (our “Rosary to the Borders”) – in that case it’s a different matter. In that case it is “rigorism”, “moral superiority” or even “Islamophobia”.
Professor Stanisław Grygiel appositely commented those attacks of various “counter-information units” in his recent interview for the Italian website Nuova Bussola Quotidiana. This professor emeritus of the Lateran University, formerly a member of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, privately a friend of John Paul II, said that the real reason for those attacks against the Polish “Rosary to the Borders” was the fact that a large part of the so called “European elites” rejected the truth about the cultural identity of Europe whose “roots spread from Jerusalem to Athens and Rome”. “Some, maybe too many, of the representatives of the Church in the West” – Prof. Grygiel continued – “don’t understand that. No wonder that also they are working on depriving Christ’s Church of her roots and changing her into a humanitarian association, much the same as so many others. Man’s prayer is a measure of his faith”. And then he adds: “If someone does not live and breathe prayer he or she cannot understand what it is all about. If someone does not live in dialogue, he or she does not know what a dialogue is, either. There is a lack of spiritual life. The dead don’t breathe. If some priests or even bishops say that Poles destroy bridges and raise walls praying the Rosary, it would be better if they retreated to a monastery to learn how to pray”. He really hit the nail on the head.
Grzegorz Kucharczyk.
translation: jjf
