By Rod Dreher, Substack.
Christians Cannot Afford To Trust Ecclesial Leaders To Defend The Faith
I wrote something on Friday here about Pope Leo’s recent exhortation to love the poor, as Christians should, but complaining, and complaining bitterly, about the part of the document in which he said Christians have a moral duty to open the door wide to migrants. I didn’t send that to the entire list of subscribers, just the paid ones (there are seven times more unpaid subscribers than paid ones), but enough of those who saw the piece put it, or parts of it, on Facebook that I’ve gained over 100 new subscribers in the past 48 hours. That has never happened. So I’m going to post it again to the entire list today, below. There’s clearly demand for it.
But before I do, let me tell you what I did this weekend. I have been at a conference in Dubrovnik, where conservative European politicians and others gathered to celebrate the memory of Charlie Kirk, and to talk about what his legacy means for them, given that Europeans face free speech challenges that dwarf what Americans have to deal with. Always, my fellow Americans, thank God for the First Amendment!
There is, of course, the state, and parastate entities like the European Union, trying to control speech through legislation, like the odious Digital Services Act, and diktats handed down from on high. There is also real-world dangers of criticizing Islam, which could cost you your life. To that end, we all heard a speech by Thibault de Montbrial, a top French lawyer and law professor who is enmeshed in France’s security leadership, and who has had to live under constant police guard for the last nine years as the cost of his professional role in fighting Islamism and Islamic terror networks in France. He told us that the French intelligence services would only let him travel to Croatia if he agreed to be accompanied by an undercover armed intelligence agent. (I saw this person later, and let me just say that I would not want to cross hostile paths with an armed French intelligence agent.)
De Montbrial has a new book coming out in France next week, about what he regards as his country’s “emergency” situation. I suppose the talk he gave yesterday, in English, is part of it. He warned that western Europeans should prepare themselves for mass violence at the level the continent (minus the 1990s Balkans) hasn’t seen since the end of World War II.