War and Peace

When Patrick Henry said "these are the times that try men’s souls," he put into historical perspective a truth that often carried with it the presence of war. War, not peace, has transformed the lives of peoples around the world as great powers rise and fall. The words of Virgil, Rome’s greatest Latin poet who penned the Aeneid, are appropriate. "These are the tears of things, and the stuff of our mortality cuts us to the heart."

Edward Gibbon in 1776 said that the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Rome fell due to the empyrean of narcissism which in turn led to the empyreal rise of Christianity. Each phenomenon was fired by fiery forces but with opposite outcomes. After the fall of Rome, medieval, Christian Renaissance thought triumphed on the world stage.

Of course, periods of peace have always been punctuated by periods of war. The daimon or inner spirit of Socrates transforms itself into the demon of war and the West has not been lacking in martial spirit over the centuries. Otto Skorzeny, a loyal Nazi working for Hitler in the early 1940's during World War II, knew that Germany need worry about the Allies because "in the hour of danger Anglo-Saxon capacity for resistance soars to stupendous heights."

When Pope Benedict XVI today calls for "wisdom and courage" of world leaders to end wars, don’t hold your breath. A rise and a fall are somewhere in the making.