Herbert W Armstrong

Such a development was presented in the June 26, 1985 WALL STREET JOURNAL article titled "Pope Looks East in Search for European Unity." It was submitted to the WSJ by Roberto Formigoni, an Italian member of the European Parliament. Mr. Formigoni is chairman of the EP's Political Commission. Here are key excerpts:

Next month the Vatican' s secretary of state, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, will represent Pope John Paul II in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia at celebrations marking the 1,100th anniversary of the death of St. Methodius. Earlier this year, the pope had designated St. Methodius and his brother, St. Cyril, as patron saints of Europe. The symbolic importance being attached to this choice of two missionaries to the Slavic peoples highlights the pope's vision of united Europe.

The brothers Cyril and Methodius are responsible for bringing Christianity to what is now Eastern Europe. When the pope designated them as patron saints of Europe, alongside St. Benedict, The founder of Western monasticism, many Westerners saw this merely as the Slav pope's "gesture of homage" to his own people. But, as we are only now beginning to realize, the pope's action sprang from the recognition that European unity derives from its common roots....

When the two brothers set about their mission, they did not do so solely in obedience to the orders of the Byzantine emperor who sent them as "messengers and missionaries." Cyril and Methodius left a peaceful academic life behind them to follow up on a marvelous intuitive concept: that of a Europe based on unified culture.... They invented their own alphabet (hence Cyrillic) and taught their liturgy in "barbarian" tongues to "barbarian" peoples, so that their followers would gain an awareness of their own identity and their own history. They thus converted to Christianity that part of Europe to which the Romans had sent legions and proconsuls, and where the German empire had sent Saxon troops and empire builders....

In the Western imagination, Eastern Europe exists as a jumble of confused images. These nations do not stand out for their proud histories and their cultural heritages. Who identifies Prague as the "heart of Europe"?... About 10 years ago in a town in Czechoslovakia in an area once evangelized by Methodius, I met a little man on a bitterly cold winter's night. It was 30 degrees Celsius below zero, and the man was sitting on a pile of snow with a bottle of vodka. "I am a little man from Czechoslovakia," he was saying, "a little man from a little country right in the heart of Europe. For over a thousand years we have been invaded left, right and center. But the heart goes on beating."

What the little man said was true: For if that heart did not go on beating, what would happen to Europe? There would be no Europe on the lines that Cyril and Methodius or even Benedict dreamed of. These European men dreamed great dreams and then acted to change the face of their world and their era.... Even amid the persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the Pan-European vision of Cyril and Methodius still inspires the oppressed Slavic peoples. The following moving reflection is offered by a great Czechoslovak theologian who passed through both Nazi and Stalinist camps, and today lives in Prague under tight police surveillance:

"We Christians here below want to be present armed with our patience, fulfilling a useful role with the small amount of God's infinite abundance that is in our possession.... Our church is like a huge tree with its leaves exposed to the sun and wind: but its roots are firmly embedded a thousandfold in the earth.... Our dialogue continues even when we are compelled to silence, but it is in and also during the silence that the way to the Lord is prepared."

In designating the two missionaries to the Slavic peoples, Pope John Paul II has again turned the sights of those interested in European unity eastward. Certainly there would be no Europe without them, and neither would our civilization exist. That is a message as important for those of us in the West to understand as it is for our brothers in the East.

Another interesting insight into the Pope's perception of things was buried deep in an article "Pulling in the Welcome Mat" in the May 27, 1985 issue of TIME. The bulk of the article dealt with the pontiff's recent trip to the Low Countries:

Perhaps the Pope's most important confrontation was with the Rev. Henk Huting, chairman of the Netherlands Reformed Synod. Huting deplored the Catholic Church's ecumenical regression and blamed it on "instructions from higher authority." Read: Rome. For his part, John Paul skipped some hard-line passages in his prepared address, but the text remains the Pontiff's most forthright statement on his approach toward Protestantism. Discussion of joint Communion services is futile, he indicated, and Rome is unwilling to explore changes in the nature of the priesthood. The speech removed any remaining doubt that John Paul foresees substantial ecumenical progress only with the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Counsels of Restraint

As we go to press, the Middle East hostage crisis continues: Apparently there is considerable behind-the-scenes multilateral diplomatic activity engaged in an attempt to pry loose the remaining hapless hostages. The diplomatic route to freedom seems to be the preferred choice among journalists these days, with a few notable exceptions, such as James J. Kilpatrick, who wrote in his June 21 syndicated column in the SAN DIEGO UNION:

Back in the summer of 1904, kidnappers in Tangier seized an elderly American citizen, Ion Perdicaris. The responsible party was well known: A brigand chieftan named Ahmed ben Mohammed Raisuli, an enemy of the sultan of Morocco. At that very moment the Republican National Convention was meeting in Chicago. Theodore Roosevelt was nominated by acclamation. He dispatched an ultimatum to be delivered in Morocco and read to the convention: "Perdicaris alive, or Raisuli dead!" Perdicaris was freed....

There is but one way to deal with such terrorists. It is to apply the ancient law spelled out in Exodus 21:23. Let us match "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Suppose, to be supposing, that when the terrorists killed their first victim, and tossed his body from the plane, the Israelis had chosen one Shiite Moslem at random from the 700 they held as prisoners. Suppose, then, that this randomly chosen prisoner had been put to death at once by firing squad, and that proof of the execution, in the form of a TV tape, were shown to the hijackers. And suppose this act of summary retribution were accompanied by a threat: For every American passenger you kill hereafter, we will kill 10 of your brothers.

Such a cold-blooded policy would set off cries of protest in every humanitarian quarter. The U.S. Constitution does not apply in Israel, but we would hear that the proposed executions would violate due process of law; they would be cruel and unusual; they would amount to ex post facto punishment. We would be "lowering ourselves to the level of the terrorists.” We would be murderers. All of that. But if such a policy were adopted and enforced,...it just might put an end to the kind of savagery we witnessed with the hijacking.

Make no mistake: We find ourselves in a virtual state of war. War is inherently cruel. War is inescapably unjust. During World War II, the Germans indiscriminately bombed targets in England; the Allies retaliated with the saturation bombing of German cities. Innocent and unoffending human beings — as innocent and unoffending as American passengers on a jet plane — died in those raids of 40 years ago.

Americans, wrote George Will in the June 21 LOS ANGELES TIMES, "are not nearly angry enough" — especially over the cruel treatment dished out to that unfortunate passenger aboard TWA Flight 847, Robert D. Stethem, a U.S. Navy man who was kicked so often every rib was broken, shot in the head, and then his body dumped from the plane onto the tarmac like a piece of garbage. Is anyone capable any more of showing righteous indignation at such an out­rage? Or have the millions of staged murders on television so sated the pubic that the real thing no longer inspires revulsion? To quote Mr. Will:

ABC's Peter Jennings says that television has "got to be very careful not to feed the public anger." Have the networks decided on the appropriate American mood and their responsibility for fine-tuning it? Americans are not nearly angry enough about the savage beating and murder of the sailor who followed Major Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. to Arlington Cemetery. [Nicholson was killed by Soviet guards in East Berlin.] Intelligent behavior flows not from keeping one's passion and rationality separated, but from reasonably relating a proper passion (in this case, cold fury) to action.

It is getting late in World War III for Americans to heed Douglas MacArthur's warning that all military failure is explicable in two words: "too late." Too late perceiving, too late responding to, threats. The President says that he does not want to jeopardize the lives of today's hostages. He is too late. Today's hostages are, to some extent, victims of yesterday's flaccid responses by him to terrorism, emphatically including the non-response to the truck bomb that blew U.S. forces out of Lebanon.

All the while the news media hypes the event, concentrating on the "human side" of the story as if a hijacking (and murder) were some sort of live soap opera. Columnist Joseph Kraft wrote, in the June 20 SAN DIEGO UNION:

Journalism, almost as much as government, experiences anguishing difficulties in coping with terrorism. For the professional impulse is to draw close to the event the better to extract its human interest. But yielding to that instinct helps the terrorists for whom publicity is oxygen.... The press and television vied for independent access to [Amal Shiite leader Nabih] Berri. Those who got it were "used" by the Shiite leader to put additional pressure for concessions on the American government. In effect, the American media lent themselves to a campaign that weakened the hand of the U.S. government....

Finally comes the misrepresentation — not to mention the abuse of good taste — inescapably bound up with sticking mikes in the faces of hijack victims and their sisters, brothers, cousins and aunts.... Such encounters are the stuff of soap opera.... They reduce political acts to tears. They sentimentalize events and make it that much more difficult for American authorities to deal with the terrorists, and their intermediaries, on the merits.

Refraining from such actions would, to be sure, restrict the freedom of news organizations. But...it is not as though, by brilliant journalistic enterprise, new and important facts are disclosed.... There is an overwhelming case for the exercise of special journalistic self-discipline.

The terrorists know how to manipulate this "soap opera" to achieve their ends. (After all, probably quite a few of them have spent time in the U.S., observing daytime TV.) The popular press (read more by the middle and lower classes) generally calls for action, whereas the so-called "elite" press counsels restraint. A good example of the "call to restraint" was given by columnist Edwin M. Yoder, writing in the June 21 LOS ANGELES TIMES:

The hijacking of Flight 847, like the Iranian hostage crisis and the bombing of the Marine bar racks in Beirut, brings out the longing to hit back and hit back hard. Yet the still, small voice of civilization warns that unfocused reprisal, with no clear connection between crime and punishment, may bring only glandular satisfaction, brief and perhaps even self-defeating. Such action would gratify the beast in everyone, but visiting violence on a fuzzy target, for hypothetical and speculative purposes, would constitute a handsome tribute to terror, levied against civilization.

Many journalists have been writing lately that there are many "scratches" in President Reagan's "Teflon coating." But the Bitburg incident proved not to be a scratch. And the President finally got funding for the Nicaraguan contras from Congress. The TWA hijacking, however, unless quickly and satisfactorily resolved, could prove to be the first real political blow Mr. Reagan has suffered. David Broder wrote in his article "It's Not Like Reagan to Let This Go On" in the June 21 LOS ANGELES TIMES:

Much of Reagan's aura and much of his appeal rest on the convincing picture that he has conveyed of brimming self-confidence in himself and this nation.... No problem, he said repeatedly, no problem is too big for free Americans to overcome, so long as we have faith in ourselves. However, that was not the message that Reagan delivered to a sober and listening nation on Tuesday night. The news conference answers were studded with references to "the impossibility" of the situation and the "frustration" that Reagan shared with the watching millions....

Not only is his own reputation as an effective, optimistic President at stake, so are many of his cherished policy goals.... Reagan has asserted that his expensive defense buildup has made the United States more secure and more respected. Few voters can gauge the stockpiles of Soviet and American missiles, but they can draw clear inferences when terrorist tactics in small countries checkmate the clear national interest in individuals' freedom to move safely around the world. This may be an inadequate yardstick, but it is an understandable one, and no amount of rhetoric will disguise the message of weakness that is conveyed by successful acts of terrorism against Americans abroad.

Where's "Rambo" When We Need Him?

It is rather curious that the latest terrorist outrage, and the so-far hesitant governmental approach to it should occur at the very time that Americans, especially the younger crowd, have been flocking to the theaters to see "Rambo: First Blood, Part II." "Rambo" is a Vietnam vet who embarks on a dangerous mission to free soldiers held prisoner in Vietnam. It's rated "R" for excessive violence and blood. I've heard that audiences cheer loudly everytime Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) encounters and dispenses with another "Commie." Said one commentator, "They're there to cheer on an American winner, something liberal film critics and politicians don't understand." But there are no "Rambos" in real life.

It's also worth noting that the hijacking has occurred at virtually the same time as the revelation of the Walker family spy case. The June 28 NATIONAL REVIEW pointed out, in an article titled "An Absolute Moral Void," that the nation suffers from a drastic decline in true patriotism (love of country and fellow citizens), so much so that the phenomenon of "treason for money" could take root. According to the article,

The Soviet Union has lost any moral glamor it once had. Today it has to pay cash; its American helpers aren't deluded enough to think they are working to create a better world.... The Walkers appear to have operated in a normless state of mind, cut off from all feelings of civic virtue, motivated only by money. This and other new spy cases also suggest that the notion of what Jeane Kirkpatrick calls "moral equivalence" between the "two super­powers" has had its corrosive effect. A great many Americans no longer recoil with horror at the idea of betraying their country: The tepid reaction to the Walker case proves that. We have begun to feel it would be presumptuous to expect simple loyalty.

The Walker case should also demonstrate to one and all the shabby state of American counter intelligence. [The Walker family] would still be in business if it hadn't been for a tip from Walker's ex-wife — a loop hole Frank Church forgot to close. We are left to wonder how many other termites there are in the structure. Even liberals have quit trying to deny that the main business of Soviet "diplomacy" is spying, and it is only too likely that the Soviets have had plenty of cooperation from a generation that has been taught there is no such thing treason....

American patriotism, though there are signs of revival, may never again be what it once was. And it is true that we can't demand that loyalty to the nation be every individual's highest loyalty. But if we mean to survive, we had better make it clear that we expect every American citizen to find some place for loyalty to his country among his own hierarchy of affections. An emphatic way to make the point would be to seek the death penalty for anyone who puts at risk the lives and liberties of his 240 million fellow citizens.

The same issue of NATIONAL REVIEW had a to-the-point one-liner about the Walker case: "The family that spies together, fries together." But the American Civil Liberties Union would never stand for that. The Walker case exemplifies the end-time phenomenon prophesied in Matthew 24:12: "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold" (RAV).

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau