Learn the lessons from those who brought prosperity and peace. Study the case of Konrad Adeneur

"We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon. In an instant age, perhaps we must relearn the ancient truth that patience, too, has its victories."  - Konrad Adeneur

Konrad Adenuer, statesman

Today visited Cologne, Germany the birthplace of Konrad Adeneur, Germany's greatest statesman who presided over the German economic miracle following the destruction of the country in World War 2.  He was Time's Man of the Year in 1954. The roots of Western civilization have a long history in Cologne, Germany and no doubt shaped his formative years along with his Catholic faith.

Stain glass from the Cologne Cathedral

 Cologne was a fortress outpost of the Roman Empire beginning in 38 B.C with the first urban settlement of Oppidum Ubiorum in what is today modern day Germany, the dividing line between civilization and barbarism. This first urban settlement was established on the Rine by Roman General Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. The website of the Romano Germanic Museum in Cologne described its evolution. "The military outpost continued to grow and was eventually elevated to a colony status under Emperor Claudius in A.D. 50. He re-named the area, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (“Colony of Claudius and the Altar of Agrippina”) after his wife Agrippina the Younger who was born there. From the colony’s shortened name Colonia Agrippina, thus came the modern name Cologne. Due to its strategic location on the Rhine, the colony grew both militaristically and economically, and was eventually made the capital of the Roman province Germania Inferior."

According to the Cologne Cathedral website, says that "the first mention of a bishop of Cologne, St Maternus, was in the year 313 AD. Although there is no architectural evidence to prove it, it is possible that in Maternus's lifetime, the cathedral (the seat of the bishop) in Cologne, which was a Roman city at the time, stood in the same area as the cathedral we see today. The site of the Early Christian cathedral was in the north-eastern corner of the city, directly alongside the city wall and close to the northern gate. The area was predominantly residential. It is possible that the first church was situated inside a Roman house, which has been proven to have been the case in other Roman cities." The Western Roman Empire collapsed in in the west, when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer in 476 AD. In the east, it continued until 1453 AD.

Roman ruins excavated in Cologne, Germany

Eighty five years after construction began on the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the construction of the Cologne Cathedral began on 1248 A.D.  1,210 years after Christianity arrived in Cologne this magnificent Cathedral was built.

European civilization would reach a breaking point in the 20th Century with World War One and World War Two. Adeneur's political career as a Christian Democrat was paused in 1933 by the Nazis, who understood that he was a threat to their designs. He would suffer political repression during the Nazi dictatorship and be arrested several times. In the aftermath of WWII he emerged as a leader, and the first chancellor of post-Hitler Germany. He presided over the economic recovery in Germany and that countries integration into what would become known as the European Union. He was a fierce and brilliant anti-communist. In large part it is thanks to him that Germany where it is today. His legacy of intelligent democracy promotion is carried out today by the foundation that bears his name.

Popular culture focuses on the destroyers: Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and their defenders and critics debate their merits, despite the societies they led being destroyed on every level: moral, material, spiritual and the rest. This is a stupidity of the first order. Soviet Foreign Minister Anatoliĭ Andreevich Gromyko in his book Through Russian Eyes : President Kennedy's 1036 Days (1973) quotes Adenuer, "In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity." 

This is a mistake one should focus on those who preserved the peace and made things better such as Adeneur, De Gasperi, Churchill and others who founded a Europeaan order that prevented the outbreak of a major war for over seventy years as Metterneich and another generation did from 1815 to 1914. Listen to the words of one of the men who helped give Europe seven decades and counting without a major war.

First World War Centenary: Time to take nonviolence seriously

 “The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”  - Martin Luther King Jr.  

"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." - Rom. xii. 21. 
  

One hundred years ago this month on August 4, 1914 World War I began, a conflict that destroyed Western Civilization, out of which emerged empowered the toxic ideologies of Communism and Nazism.

This conflict paused between 1918 and 1939 only to explode again in September 1939 in what became known as World War II and is viewed by some academics as a continuous process. Today, the peoples of the West are living in the ruins of a once great civilization after what some describe as a wasted century.

World War One was supposed to be the “war to end all wars”, but instead it turned out to be the suicide of the West. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia emerged out of the ashes and together plunged the world into another total war on September 1, 1939. 

The weight of this history fills one with sadness. However, at the same time one must not despair recalling while there is life there is also hope and that Martin Luther King Jr. was right, we do have a choice between nonviolence and nonexistence.

The above mentioned southern civil rights leader, and decades earlier the Indian national independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, demonstrated that nonviolence could confront and overcome powerful governments such as the United States and the British Empire without firing a shot.

First World War (1914 - 1918)                     Salt March (1930)

Furthermore that at the core of Western Civilization is found the doctrine of Jesus Christ whose whole ministry was a testament to nonviolent resistance and living in truth challenging evil and injustice. Reclaiming this ministry is at the heart of saving the West and taking nonviolence seriously as a means for creating, preserving and defending a system rooted in justice that protects human rights and dignity.

This is not  pacifism or passive aggressiveness but rather nonviolent resistance to evil and injustice. In the run up to World War II in many quarters passivity was practiced before the great evils of Communism and Nazism. There is nothing passive about nonviolent resistance.

The best manner to confront and defeat evil is not denouncing or destroying one's adversary but producing and preserving that which is true and having a constructive program. On September 11, 1906 in South Africa, as part of a contest, Mohandas Gandhi coined the term Satyagraha which translates into English literally as "holding firmly to truth."
 
Nonviolent resistance calls for having an aggressive attitude in confronting injustice while at the same time refraining from hating your enemy or seeking to do them or their property harm.
Martin Luther King Jr. listed the six principles of nonviolence that remain relevant today:

SIX PRINCIPLES OF NONVIOLENCE

Fundamental tenets of Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence described in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom. The six principles include:

(1.) Nonviolence is not passive, but requires courage;

(2.) Nonviolence seeks reconciliation, not defeat of an adversary;

(3.) Nonviolent action is directed at eliminating evil, not destroying an evil-doer;

(4.) A willingness to accept suffering for the cause, if necessary, but never to inflict it;

(5.) A rejection of hatred, animosity or violence of the spirit, as well as refusal to commit physical violence; and

(6.) Faith that justice will prevail.

The struggle for civil rights in the United States demonstrated the superiority of nonviolent resistance over violent resistance. The early and sustained successes of the nonviolent civil rights movement contrast sharply with the failed and sterile violence of the later black power movement.

On the international front beginning in 1989 with the freedom of Poland, the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 were all achieved through mass movements that nonviolently resisted brutal and violent regimes.

Advocates for waging the First World War claimed it was the "war to end all wars" but should have called it "the war to debase human life" and would continue to find new lows in the 1930s and 1940s with gulags, death camps, and nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Despite the century of horror  unleashed by this conflict the twentieth century was not a wasted century.  Nonviolence was able to demonstrate in high profile and well documented instances throughout that century around the world in India, the United States, the Philippines, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Chile and many other places that it could liberate millions at a fraction of the human cost found in violent conflicts. 

In Cuba nonviolent exemplars demonstrated that it was possible to live the life of a free individual under the most extreme totalitarian regime

In these uncertain times nonviolence is more relevant than ever and its study is needed to confront and transform violent and unjust regimes. At the same time nonviolent art and imagery is desperately needed in this world bombarded with extreme and violent images.

The choice to embrace nonviolent resistance as a method to confront and defeat evil is a development critical for the survival of the human race and will conclusively demonstrate that the 20th century was not a waste of time, lives and a prelude to human extinction. It comes down to a question of non-violence or non-existence: civic resistance or nuclear holocaust.

Václav Havel: Christmas is the holiday of the advent of hope to this world.

On December 18, 1999 Václav Havel presented a Christmas tree to His Holiness Pope John Paul II and made the speech reproduced below. Twelve years later to the day on December 18, 2011 Havel passed away. Nevertheless it remains as relevant today, despite all that has happened since then, as it was 13 years ago.

Speech of President of the Czech Republic Václav Havel on the occasion of the presentation of the Christmas tree for St. Peter's Square to the Holy Father, John Paul II

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Vatican, 18 December 1999

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great privilege to be able to present , on behalf of the Czech Republic, to the Vatican and the city of Rome, a Christmas tree which will stand this year on this famous square, and to be able to greet you all from this site.

It is also a great privilege for the Czech Republic and all its citizens, irrespective of their denominations, that it has been namely our country which was asked to decorate this place at Christmas at a time when we are all preparing for the advent of the jubilee Year 2000.

Since ancient times jubilee years have traditionally served as an appeal for reflection and reconciliation. I have deep respect for the persistent effort of the Holy Father to have this dividing line of epochs inscribed by the Catholic Church and, generally, by all people of good will into the history of the world as a time of universal reconciliation, reconciliation of nations, cultures, spheres of civilization, and thus, especially, as a time of new and better mutual understanding between followers of different faiths.

For a long time I have been deeply convinced that the good future of this civilization depends on how well and how quickly is mankind able to find and understand again the absolutely fundamental spiritual values and principles common to all religions. We all know what they comprise: respect for the miracle of creation, of the creation of the world, Nature, life, and the human being, as well as respect for the moral order growing out of this miracle. I am sure that without the restoration of these values mankind would hardly be able to face all the threats looming over civilization.

People, simply, should not focus so much on what makes their spiritual traditions different, but much more on what they have in common and what is being revealed today by the dialogue between various religions.

I am convinced that if we were to descend to the very depths of our diverse traditions, we would start finding common roots and perceiving them much more strongly as merely different branches of the same tree. A tree of certainty that all that is has its source, its order, its inspiration and its memory beyond us and above us.

I shall be happy if the Christmas tree which I have brought from the Czech Republic could symbolize, amongst other things, the spiritual reconciliation between the different branches of human spirituality based on the awareness of their common trunk and common roots. 

This tree grew in a country which used to be depicted on ancient maps as the heart of Europe, and now it will light up in the city which used to be considered Europe's head. It would be wonderful if it could also remind us that the spiritual reconciliation and spiritual rebirth, to which we attach our hopes at the divide of epochs, must grow from harmony between head and heart.

Christmas is the holiday of the advent of hope to this world.

Let the coming jubilee year bring all people of good will new hope that the human family will, after all, find a way of averting the dangers which it is inflicting upon itself.

I greet you, I wish you a Merry Christmas, and, especially, peace with the world, with Nature, with your brothers and sisters and with yourselves!

Text taken from Havel's official website.

Pope John Paul II's address to Havel and the Czech pilgrims.