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Our Fight against Violent Extremism Goes Beyond Using Force Obama Says: How to Cope with Errant Young Men

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US President Barack Obama says extremist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) will not be defeated solely by military force. He says concerned nations must fight violent extremism by countering messages of those groups that seduce young men, and some young women, to join their ranks. In addition to any work on the internet, success will require aiding families’ efforts to keep their children away from those groups.

In a February 18, 2015 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed entitled, “Our Fight against Violent Extremism”, US President Barack Obama explained “The US has made significant gains against terrorism,” but also noted that “the US campaign to prevent people around the world from being radicalized to violence is ultimately a battle for hearts and minds.” Obama’s Op-Ed echoed remarks he made during a three–day summit in February 2015 on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) in Washington, DC, attended by representatives from over 60 countries. Noting that a US-led multinational coalition was engaged in a fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), which he refers to as ISIL, Obama further explained in his Op-Ed that “We know that military force alone cannot solve this problem. Nor can we simply take out terrorists who kill innocent civilians.” As an additional approach, Obama stated that “We also have to confront the violent extremists—the propagandists, recruiters and enablers—who may not directly engage in terrorist acts themselves, but who radicalize, recruit and incite others to do so.” One plan Obama proffered to counter the interpretation of Islam promoted by ISIS and al-Qaeda is to “help Muslim entrepreneurs and youths work with the private sector to develop social media tools to counter extremist narratives on the internet.”

Despite Obama’s clarion call to arms, in both his Op-Ed and in a speech at the CVE summit, a February 19, 2015 New York Times article indicated many leaders and officials attending the meeting doubted his administration had the ability to counter extremist messages, especially from ISIS. It has a reach and agility in social media that surpasses that of the US government. Sasha Havlicek of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based research organization, emphasized in her presentation at the conference, “We’re being outdone both in terms of content, quality and quantity, and in terms of amplification strategies.” She explained that there was a “monumental gap” between ISIS, which uses social media services like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and the Obama administration, other governments, and nongovernmental organizations. Havlicek called for private firms to become involved in what she called “the communications problem of our time.” Administration officials sense they face a huge challenge. US Deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin Rhodes explained “You could hypothetically eliminate the entire ISIL [ISIS] safe haven, but still face a threat from the kind of propaganda they disseminate over social media.” Yet, most promising about Obama’s Op-Ed was his claim “We know from experience that the best way to protect people, especially young people, from falling into the grip of violent extremists is the support of their family, friends, teachers and faith leaders.” Aiding efforts within families to defeat the influence of extremist groups is the key to long-term success.

When Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were on the march, there were voices of great men and women in Europe who spoke out against the evil Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini embodied. They outlined the crimes and atrocities committed by authorities of those regimes. Their messages were genuine, truthful, and were heard. For those innocent people trapped in lands dominated by their regimes, those important words helped them hold on to their humanity and hope. However, in the end, the use of force was the only way to defeat such evil. Western powers now search for the bromide to destroy the appeal of ISIS among many young Muslim men and weaken the organization. Developing a counter-ISIS or counter-Islamic extremism message is a formidable undertaking. Nevertheless, the attempt to approach the issue must begin with a look within the families of young Muslim men. The response of those young men to ISIS or a similar Islamic extremist group will be determined foremost by the perspective of his family toward such groups. He must be provided with the spiritual, moral, and ethical foundation which would lead him to reject ISIS, or any other Islamic extremist group, hoping to capitalize on his devotion to Islam. By the time the young man first views any Islamic extremist material on the internet, instilled in him should be all that he needs to know in order to turn away from it. Dictum sapienti sat est! (A word to the wise is sufficient!)

Young men who convey an enhanced devotion to Islam in their communities are often spotted by recruiters from Islamic extremist groups. The recruiters condescend to them in conversation. They encourage the exploration of their spirituality. Eventually, radical views are insinuated into the relationship.

The First Brush with Extremism: The Best Chance Counter It

From many angles, young men are pulled into the grip of Islamic extremist groups such as ISIS. A young man can often become bound up in himself, making of himself a very small package. That sort of young man does not learn from adversity or difficulties, but is instead humbled by lessons. He is destroyed by humiliations. Pessimism infiltrates his thinking. He may seek to become somebody to everyone else, and not for himself. Young people of this age become easily seduced by the culture of entertainment. To acquire attention or importance, some young men may seek to convey a religiosity. It may make them seem spooky among some friends and neighbors, but favored among those in their family mosques who will respect their new devotion. Such young men are often spotted by recruiters from Islamic extremist groups. They condescend to them in conversation. They encourage the exploration of their spirituality. Eventually radical views are insinuated into their relationship.

Long before those recruiters reach the young man, his family may discern changes in his perspective. He has perhaps become more cynical and may often display petulance and a rebellious attitude. The family wants to believe that, in his heart, the young man is approaching Islam as he was taught at home. It will expect the young man to be guided by integrity and that he will keep things in perspective and act with proportion in mind. The family will hope that the young man will accept that the religion it taught him, serves to provide guidance on living in communion with God and on traveling the path that God makes for him. However, the fear may build that he will approach Islam as a novelty and expression of ego or pride, as ISIS presents it. The family, more precisely, his parents, want the young man to be the very best he can be. They may recall great dreams of his youth in which he wanted to be an educator, carpenter, or entrepreneur, or dreams they had of him becoming a doctor, lawyer, political leader, or manage the family business. However, good families today live in a world that is off-kilter. While parents may believe there many other things for their son to work toward, that belief will be confounded by his new religious focus that they may notice is straying toward radicalism.

At his university, a young man is taught about the lives of noble figures from the past. Professors discuss the past and the young man learns what works and what does not. He discovers that there is a harmony in how the world works. Further, in the classroom, the young man may begin to understand the human soul, especially his own. Yet, radical views can reach a young man during this learning process. Much as shallows of water may be clear to the bottom, shallow thinking can make a lot of sense to a poor thinker. The young man attempts to find deep truth surrounded by a world of lies provided by the Islamic extremist group. In becoming more radical than spiritual, the young man becomes a more tragic, apathetic figure as time goes on. While the classic approach to religion has stood the test of time, the sorrow of the age is that young men are often drawn to the latest style of the day. ISIS is the latest fad of the day. While claiming to adhere to Islam, ISIS merely pantomimes it. The actions of its members indicate a rejection of God, and are befitting of the most pagan religions on record. Yet, it provides a “feel-good” religiosity for spiritually ungrounded young men, searching for something bigger and better. ISIS recruiters can convince the young man ISIS is that bigger and better thing. ISIS’ establishment of the Islamic Caliphate supports that notion. The idea of being associated with celebrity substitutes itself for worship. It plays into the young man’s vision of his own greatness.

Good parents want their children to be the very best they can be. However, good families today live in a world that is off-kilter. While they may want their children to work toward great things, that hope can be confounded by a son’s new religious focus that may be straying toward radicalism. They must fight to prevent that.

It is at this point the family has the best chance to stop the young man by speaking to him as an individual. The Islamic extremist recruiter speaks to him as being one of many. Lies cannot survive before the truth. However, the individual must respond to the truth. The young man must recognize that nothing will be accomplished through ISIS, particularly in this world of impermanence. If the family has raised the young man with a strong spiritual foundation, taught him how to accept truth, and if he can use his education to recognize where ISIS truly fits in history and how he is devaluing himself by having even the slightest ties to it, he may turn back at this point. Many young men, however, prefer to reject the truth and dismiss reality. They redefine what exists into projections of their egos. They then seek to satisfy their passions. The Romans would refer to this as laetizia. They sense the power, celebrity and the satisfaction of the ego that the process of joining ISIS provides. They “understand” ISIS’ need to have its way with others through domination and control. It is what the Romans would refer to as felicitas. However, one degrades oneself by imposing ones world view on others through political slavery and moral bondage. Those who have held absolute power over others in history are often found in the end holding on to power by their fingernails, knowing if they let go they will be destroyed. When challenged, they self-destruct rather than face retribution. Cupido dominandi cunctis adfectibus flagrentior est. (The lust for power inflames the heart more than any other passion.)

There are some young men who reach a point where they seek to strike out on their own, perhaps feeling stifled or encumbered by their routine lives with their families. This occurs worldwide, regardless of religion. The young man may decide to go into a self-imposed exile. He becomes deaf to voices of reason, proportion, truth in his life. He seems to live off a steady diet of ego and soul-searching. He wiles the idea of fabricating a life and a reality that cannot be built. When this youthful zeal becomes tied in young Muslim men to the illusion that ISIS or another Islamic extremist group will allow for the best use of his powers, he may be drawn by the conviviality of recruiters or gossamer fantasies of brotherhood and unity offered by ISIS and other groups on the internet. His family’s only hope is that the young man will discover his error early on. If not, he may travel to Syria or Iraq where many soul-searching young men are killed.

Hoping Seeds of Reason Sown Earlier Will Sprout

No matter how a young man eventually arrives on the road to Syria or Iraq, he is undoubtedly filled with an anticipation of what he might find. He likely believes that away from his home, his family, a paradise awaits. This thinking is promoted by the ISIS recruiters with whom they have dealt. In a euphoric state, the young man views his surroundings as being lush. As he passes through the so-called Islamic Caliphate, his “new home,” he is impressed by the size of the territory the group holds. He sees the nearly endless columns of vehicles and heavy weapons captured from the Iraqi Security Forces. He observes ISIS fighters clad in camouflage uniforms and brandishing a variety of small arms and multiple bandoliers of bullets and grenades and AK-47 magazines. In towns and villages he passes through, he sees commercial activity and the people appear supportive of ISIS. Despite the discouraging remarks of family and friends, the young man may feel that he has placed himself on track to become “true warrior for Islam.” He and the other deluded young men with whom ISIS has him traveling to a training camp likely congratulate each other over their accomplishment. The young man continues to receive encouragement from ISIS members during his training. However, after training is completed and there is no longer the need to seduce the young man, attention placed on the young man soon wanes. When the spotlight shined on him, there was a palpable sense of celebrity. Once the spotlight goes off, his sense of importance fades.

As a novice member of the group, he discovers an organizational structure where he is on the bottom. The young man, albeit trained to fight the ISIS way, is required to perform common tasks for strangers that he probably never would have been asked to perform at home. He may be directed to help gather the dead from battlefields under the guns of watchful opposing snipers. He may be ordered to help with the preparation meals for other fighters, serve tea or meals to leaders and commanders, or run errands. He may understand that in the Islamic Caliphate, all are ruled under Sharia law. He may have found that attractive before he joined ISIS. However, in Syria or Iraq, he finds himself placed under rules and regulations a bit different than he imagined. He learns that in the Islamic Caliphate, Sharia law is determined by whoever is in charge where one is and not a central authority. He becomes witness to atrocities against Syrian and Iraqi citizens, much of it being of a revolting, degenerate nature, meant to control and terrorize the inhabitants of towns and cities. He also discovers infractions of that individual’s vision of Sharia law can lead to summary execution, even for ISIS fighters. Indeed, fighters are killed by ISIS now and then partly with the goal of encouraging others to stay “in line.”

If a family has raised a young man with a strong spiritual foundation, taught him how to accept truth, and if he can use his education to recognize where ISIS truly fits in history and how he is devaluing himself by having even the slightest ties to it, he should turn away from it.

At the front, what the young man learned in the abstract from the internet does not survive his first day with war’s realities. He may find himself in ranks with other new recruits and regularly thrown into wasteful human wave attacks or diversionary moves to draw fire from opponents. Those moves would cover the more effective, more protected maneuvers of more experienced ISIS fighters. New recruits may be encouraged or ordered to execute a suicide bombing. Afraid to refuse, they meet their end. Setbacks, heavy losses, and wasteful actions, allow the young man to get a true picture of ISIS. They discover that war is not thrilling or glorious, but odious and terror filled. They may face the reality that ISIS is fighting people who only wish to protect their families and save their homes. Fictio credit veritati! (Fiction yields to the truth!)

Finding a Way Out of Extremist Groups: The Family Is the Beacon

There will be young men truly lacking judgment or overwhelmed by madness who will not be repulsed by ISIS’ actions. They will find pleasure in what is evil. They will be immune to the cries and lamentations of innocent civilians. Madness rejects truth. However, among those with sense, the truth of what ISIS is doing may be overwhelming. Soon enough, their self-imposed exile will become home sickness. The voice of rebellion loses the struggle with the voice of reason and truth. Thoughts of how he previously employed cunning in his actions, now creates a sense of shame. The association with ISIS becomes senseless. Despite all of the mistakes he has made, the best hope for him at this point is to somehow try to get away from ISIS before it is too late. Traveling back on the road he took to reach ISIS, there is little excitement in the young man. He may see the same weapons and know that they were just trophies, a sign of ISIS’s vanity, and were not used on the battlefield. The dead and wounded become more apparent, and he wonders how many of those he came with are still alive. The fighters in camouflage, brandishing weapons, cause him alarm for he cannot be certain if they represent some rabidly violent local ISIS authority and are seeking out an unwitting ISIS fighter of which they can use to display their power and their will. He now knows the people in the towns and villages are not supportive of ISIS. Rather, they are intimidated and enslaved by it. The young man’s own errors will become more pronounced as his conscience speaks to him. He may find some relief only when he holds himself accountable for any crimes he may have witnessed, been party to, or committed while with ISIS. The incidence of post traumatic stress among those unable to cope with their time in ISIS must be considerable. The young man’s family may bemoan over his initial failure to respond properly, to adhere with the spiritual, moral, and ethical foundations that were instilled within him. Working with government authorities, the family can help set a new path for him. He can make amends for what he has done to them, others, and himself.

More often than not, families manage to defeat Islamic extremist recruitment efforts. For the average young Muslim man, love for his family, and his responsibility to it, will play a huge part in his rejection of Islamic extremism. Even if submerged in the young man due to delusion, the love for family can find its way to the surface.

The Way Forward: Redemption, Defeating the Threat to Others

The story of a family worrying over the return of a young man who acts on thoughts of running off from home and involves himself with the loathsome, is not new. That story has been told for thousands of years. Two thousand years ago, it was best told as the Parable of the Prodigal Son in The New Testament. Leaving the warm embrace of his family for something bigger and better than what he knew, his adventure turned into tragedy as he found himself tending pigs and nearly challenging them for their slop. He was lucky enough to find his way back home to his loving father. With clarity, the young man amended his ways and found a better path in life. Similarly, young men who leave home to join ISIS soon find themselves among repugnant men who behave worse than pigs and find themselves immersed in an illegitimate fight in which they engage in murder and destruction and feel shame, disgrace, and self-loathing: slop.

The family unit is the most powerful and effective counter to ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups. Those groups should not be able to influence young Muslim men if their families have provided solid spiritual, and moral and ethical foundations for them. Their extremist views will be an annoyance more than anything else. Clearly, the majority of young men have rejected it. If a young man becomes radicalized, hope remains that the truth about Islam, instilled in him by his family during his youth, will overcome extremist lies. More often than not, families will defeat Islamic extremist recruitment efforts. For the average young Muslim man, love for his family and his responsibility to it will play a huge part in his rejection of Islamic extremism. Even if submerged in a young man due to delusion, love for family can still find its way to the surface.

As mentioned, there will always be “hard cases”, madmen and the senseless, on which no counter-ISIS or counter Islamic extremist effort will have impact. There will be cases in which a father or brother of poor judgment may cause a young man to follow them into ISIS, into some other radical group, or to commit a terrorist act. However, the focus of Western efforts should be on the positively minded families. Fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins and, mothers in particular, have the power to thwart ISIS recruitment efforts. A young Muslim man is most receptive to messages from them. Early in his life, they must make their opinions on groups such as ISIS known to him. There must be clarity in his thinking on those groups. Without the participation of families, counter-ISIS or counter Islamic extremist efforts will fail. Engaging in a long-term approach that includes families will ensure the effort to defeat Islamic extremism will become a generational affair. Dabit deushis quoque finem! (God will bring an end to this!)

Book Review: George William Rutler, Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Combat 1942-1943 (St. Augustine’s Press, 2013)

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Above is what remains of the tomb of the prophet Jonah of the Old Testament and tthe mosque that held it, in Mosul, Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) destroyed it. Western governments are greatly interested in what is driving ISIS’ campaign of religious and ethnic bigotry, murder, and destruction in territory that it controls in Syria and Iraq. In Principalities and Powers, George William Rutler discusses the role evil played in World War II. His book may help Western leaders better understand ISIS and how to proceed against it.

The world’s response to Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) initially was reminiscent of the late 1930s when war came to Europe, and so many turned a blind eye as countries were conquered and countless innocent civilians killed in aerial bombardments, artillery fire, tank guns, and small arms. Lamentations heard from numerous innocent civilians, including children, in Iraq, Syria, and Libya by beheading, crucifixion, and forced exile from their ancient homelands are chillingly enough to remind not only of the fighting in World War II, but also of the cries heard from ghettos and concentration camps resulting from the vile anti-Semitism and crimes of German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party (Nazis). Anti-ISIS governments must acknowledge today what governments fighting the Nazis recognized. The fight against ISIS is a fight against evil.

In Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Combat 1942-1943 (St. Augustine’s Press, 2013), George William Rutler illustrates that World War II, which began for mixed reasons and was fought on many fronts, can only be understood in its essential dynamic as spiritual combat between forces of great good and palpable evil.  Rutler explains that from his book, readers should gain an understanding of how “the same moral dilemmas of an old war, in their display of human dignity and the anatomy of cruelty, are background for the same realities in our own day.” Given the evil that ISIS poses, Principalities and Powers is an exceedingly relevant book to read right now.

Reared in the Episcopal tradition in New Jersey and New York, Rutler was an Episcopal priest for nine years, and the youngest Episcopal rector in the country when he headed the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. However, in 1979, he was received into the Catholic Church and was sent to the North American College in Rome for seminary studies. A graduate of Dartmouth, Rutler also took advanced degrees at the Johns Hopkins University and the General Theological Seminary. He holds several degrees from the Gregorian and Angelicum Universities in Rome, including the Pontifical Doctorate in Sacred Theology, and studied at the Institut Catholique in Paris. In England, in 1988, the University of Oxford awarded him the degree Master of Studies. From 1987 to 1988 he was regular preacher to the students, faculty, and townspeople of Oxford. Thomas More College and Christendom College awarded him honorary doctorates. For ten years he was also National Chaplain of Legatus, the organization of Catholic business leaders and their families, engaged in spiritual formation and evangelization. A board member of several schools and colleges, he is Chaplain of the New York Guild of Catholic Lawyers, Regional Spiritual Director of the Legion of Mary (New York and northern New Jersey) and has long been associated with the Missionaries of Charity, and other religious orders. He was a university chaplain for the Archdiocese. Rutler has lectured and given retreats in many nations, frequently in Ireland and Australia. Since 1988, EWTN has broadcasted Rutler’s television programs worldwide. Rutler has made documentary films in the US and England, contributes to numerous scholarly and popular journals and has published 16 books, referred to by some as classics, on theology, history, cultural issues, and the lives of the saints.

Principalities and Powers is a history of the pivotal years of World War II: 1942–1943. In its discussion, Rutler, as expected, devotes attention to well-reported events of the period. Yet, the discussion of those events is used primarily to couch a recounting of the efforts made by a diverse set of individuals to confront the enemies of humanity. Admittedly, there is a predominant focus on the resistance of priests and officials of the Catholic Church to evil, including the papacy’s direct activities against atheistic totalitarian governments. However, that history helps to fill the book with loads of drama and intrigue. Many of the individuals mentioned are forgotten today and little was known of some even then. (The book’s “Index of Names” has 277 entries.) Several of them did not survive the war. Rutler explains that events of this period demonstrate human nature never changes. Heroes and cowards, and saints and sinners are revealed. To write Principalities and Powers, Rutler drew from a collection of actual letters, newspapers, and journals of the period. He skillfully used those resources to provide a profound discussion of events. (The information might well have been lost as most of these documents were printed on rationed paper and are deteriorating.) Previously, greatcharlie reviewed and highly recommended Rutler’s book, Cloud of Witnesses: Dead People I Knew When They Were Alive (Scepter, 2010). Rutler has amazed greatcharlie again with Principalities and Powers.

At the start of World War II, no one could be certain about its outcome. The situation was touch and go. Rutler notes that defenders of humanity had the good fortune of having the right leaders in place at the right time. Winston Churchill was not well-liked within circles of power. He was a harsh critic of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. At the outbreak of the war, King George VI appealed to Lord Edward Halifax, the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom and Viceroy of India before that, to take on the post of Prime Minister. However, after France fell, the invasion of the United Kingdom was viewed as certain. Art from the National Gallery was removed. The Royals’ bags were packed. Halifax would decline the prime minister’s post, perhaps concerned as many other leaders over how the Nazis would respond to them if the United Kingdom fell. Churchill, serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, was available, was willing, and was begrudgingly selected. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was another fortuitous placement. Roosevelt, known as a deal maker, aligned completely with the United Kingdom. Rutler explains that Roosevelt, as Churchill, viewed Hitler as truly evil. Hitler spelled his plans out in Mein Kampf and executed them. Despite the US public’s overwhelming support for neutrality and the Neutrality Act of 1939, the Lend-Lease Act was passed in the US Congress in March 1941. The US received leases for a chain of British islands guarding the Caribbean for the loan of US ships and other material support, committing the US to the United Kingdom’s defense. The Atlantic Charter of August 1941 affirming the solidarity between the two countries. Churchill was certainly uneasy with Roosevelt’s deals with the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, who he viewed as no-less evil than Hitler. He never reconciled with the division of postwar Europe and remained concerned over Soviet plans for global Communist domination.

From right to left are Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, on the portico of the Russian Embassy during the Tehran Conference in 1943. Roosevelt and Churchill jointly held the view that Hitler was evil and had to be approached as such. Churchill, however, was uneasy over deals eventually made with Stalin that established the postwar division of Europe.

Rutler notes that during its ascent, Nazism was essentially ignored by European governments for what it truly was, they paid a high price. The delusion of European leaders that Hitler could be managed, contained, or controlled, fostered an environment for the growth of Nazi power. From the very beginning, it was clear that the founding principles of Nazism were inimical to Western ideals. As Rutler explains, Nazism was more than a political movement, it was a religion, possessing its own ceremonies and rituals. The Nazis created their own pagan gods for their religion and used Norse pagan gods. Having created an artificial church, the Nazis sought to disband existing religions. Having prevented the people from believing in the true God, they submitted to a cult of personality. They worshipped Hitler. Hitler copied all of the trappings of fascism from Italian Duce and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, but Hitler’s abilities as an orator put him in a special class. While the great orator among the defender’s of civilization, Winston Churchill, spoke to convince people that they could do anything. Hitler spoke to convince people that he could do anything. The Judgment of the Nations was a work published in 1942 by the Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, but it began to get significant attention only in the early months of 1943. “The old landmarks of good and evil and truth and falsehood have been swept away and civilization is driving before the storm of destruction like a dismasted and helmless ship.” Dawson saw proof in world events that “evil too is a progressive force and that the modern world provides unlimited prospects for its development.” He believed what accounted for this was that things spiritual had been invaded by the secular state. Through that arose the totalitarian state, which imposed “total control of all human activities and all human energies, spiritual as well as physical . . and their direction to whatever ends are dictated by its interests, or rather the interests of the ruling party or clique.” From 1942 and 1943, it was clear that evil was rising all around Europe, seemingly transmitted by the Nazis as they gained territory and authority over Europe’s peoples. An incredible number of atrocities were being committed by governments across the continent. Villains that may be more memorable include Vichy French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, whose cruelty amazed even many Nazis. He reportedly stated: “Cardinals and bishops have intervened, but everyone is a master of his own trade. They handle religion. I handle government.”  Rutler indicates that evil even managed to consume some officials of the Catholic Church. A priest, Monsignor Josef Tiso, as puppet president of the Slovak State, paid the Germans to deport 60,000 Slovak Jews for extermination in Auschwitz, making Slovakia the only country to subsidize such deportations.  Pro-Ustashe Archbishop Sarić of Sarevejo penned an ode to the leader of the Ustashe government of Croatia, Ante Pavelić. Croatia had the highest rate of genocide, in proportion to population, of any European country. After the war he fled to Spain, while Pavelić was hidden by Jesuits near Naples and eventually settled in Argentina. In Yugoslavia, Bishop Alojzije Mišić of Mostar expressed horror at the massacres of Serbs with the complicity of Herzegovinian Franciscans residing in Široki Brijeg near Medjugorje. Bishop Mišić described hundreds of women and children and elderly men thrown alive into ravines at Surmanci.

In Belgium, the University of Louvain was purged of its Catholic faculty and Mass was forbidden. In Poland, the Germans suppressed all patriotic hymns, litanies, and prayers and took particular umbrage at the practice of hailing the Virgin Mary as “Queen of the Crown of Poland.” Dr. Mutz, Chief of the Department of Internal Administration, abolished all mentions of the Polish State, “which no longer exists.” May 3rd would no longer be celebrated as the day of the Beatae Mariae Virginis Patronae Rei Publicae Poloniae. The August 15th “Actio gratiarum pro Victoria super Bolshevicos 1920″ was forbidden, along with the thanksgiving for the victory at Chocim on October 10th and all services on November 11th commemorating the rebirth of the Polish Republic. Outside of Europe, in Syria, the Nationalist Socialist Party hailed Hitler as “Abu Ali” and the Young Egypt Party called him “Muhammed Haidar.”  The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini visited Hitler, secured the deportation of 5,000 Jewish children to death camps, and obtained a promise from Hitler to liquidate the Jews of Palestine after a Nazi victory.

On the far left is Ante Pavelic, leader of the Ustashe government of Croatia, making a Nazi salute in the presence of a prayerful Monsignor Alojzije (Aloysius) Stepinac on the far right. Under Nazi influence in World War II, Croatia had the highest rate of genocide, in proportion to population, in Europe.

The resistance to evil was strong. Included among the thousands of individuals who, as Rutler says, “attained virtue on a heroic scale,” is the pioneer of pan-Europeanism, the Austro-Hungarian Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi. The character Victor Laszlo in the film Casablanca was based on him the Count. Although he was a professor at New York University in 1943, Hitler still loathed him as “everybody’s bastard.” He was, however, admired by Archduke Otto von Habsburg, Aristide Briand, Albert Einstein, Horace Mann, Sigmund Freud, and later by Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle; he was an anti-Nazi and foe of anti-Semitism (like his Catholic father, who annually walked out of Good Friday services at the mention of the “perfidious Jews”).  Rutler mentions the Foreign Minister of Generalismo Francisco Franco’s Spain, Count Francisco Gomez-Jordana, who helped make his country a haven for Eastern European Jews, especially Sephardic Jews from Hungary. German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a well-known conspirator in the plot to assassinate Hitler, is mentioned. However, Rutler also discusses the lesser-known assassination attempt against Hitler by German Army Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff, chief of intelligence for German Army General Gunther von Kluge. Further, Rutler mentions the attempted protests by students at universities in the Netherlands against the Nazi revision of their syllabus, and protests by students at the Sorbonne and Grand Paris Ecoles. Rutler includes their letter to Vichy French Chief of State Philippe Petain which stated: “For more than two years, forgetting their rowdy traditions, the students of the University of Paris have abstained from demonstrations. But our silence has never implied acceptance of events of which we were the distressed observers. Above all, the brutal deportation of thousands of French workers has provoked our indignation.”

For Rutler, the strong role of the clergy in the resistance to tyranny was natural given their sense that the barbarity unleashed by the war was in reality a manifestation of evil and the presence of the devil. Rutler points to leaders such as the bishop of Berlin, Johann Konrad Maria Augustin Felix Graf von Preysing Lichtenegg-Moos, who stated when the Nazis had first come into power, “We have fallen into the hands of criminals and fools.” Bishop von Preysing exhorted in his Advent message of December 12, 1942, “Every departure from right and justice will sooner or later be broken against these foundations of God’s Dominion.” He explained the world’s present miseries were the result of human contempt for natural and divine law: “Resistance to God’s sovereign rule was a product largely of the eighteenth century—the century which proclaimed the primacy of human intelligence, the individual as an autonomous being and as his own sole judge, and which declared that all right was to be derived from this intelligence independently of God’s law.” The state had imposed itself as the very incarnation of God, replacing justice and right with power and profit. The Bishop’s appeal was stark: “My dear Brethren: ‘Repent,’ and change your mode of thinking. This is my appeal to you.” The pro-Nazi newspaper Vooruit of Ghent rued the pastoral letter of Jozef-Ernest Cardinal van Roey, who opposed forced labor. At the same time, the primate of Hungary, Jusztinian Cardinal Seredi, told representatives of the Hungarian Catholic press that “all States have equal sovereignty” and so “the Hungarian nation has a birthright to claim—freedom, autonomy, and national independence.” Reverend R. H. W. Regout, professor of international law at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, died at the age of 46 in Dachau, where he and three other professors had been sent shortly after the occupation of the Netherlands. The “priest block” in that concentration camp held 2,579 priests over the war years, 1,785 of them Polish, more than a thousand of whom perished there. By February1943, 34 Italian chaplains had been killed in active service.

On April 19, 1943, the Swedish Svenska Dagbladet printed a letter from the archbishop of Zagreb, Monsignor Alojzije (Aloysius) Stepinac, to the Italian ambassador to the Croatian puppet state. The Italians had been exploiting conflicts between Croats and Serbs to make them seem ideological rather than ethnic: “I must protest energetically against the incredible atrocities committed by Italian troops against the defenceless populations in the districts of Krasic, Vidovina and Brovac, where several villages have been burnt down. . . . Even if some Communists should have succeeded in taking refuge there, I can vouch that there were not, and are not now, any Communists among the village population.”

Pope Pius XII ( center) meets with members of what Rutler calls the forces of “great good,” in this case the Canadian Royal 22nd Regiment, following the liberation of Rome in June 1944. Pius XII refrained from directly rebuffing Hitler and Mussolini and kept channels open to their regimes. Yet, he understood that Hitler, in particular, represented true evil.   While remaining neutral, he did as much as he could to mitigate suffering in World War II.

In France, the activities of the Catholic Church against the Nazis were so significant that the editor of a Protestant French newspaper wrote: “The militant Catholics in our country have taken a place which is important and, we do not fear to say, preponderant, at the head of the movement of resistance in which, very often, they have taken the initiative, and of which they remain the inspiration.”   The 81-year-old Auxiliary Bishop of Paris, Emanuele-Anatole-Raphael Chaptal de Chanteloupe wore a Star of David in protest again the deportation of Jews, and soon was buried wearing it. The collaborationist Vichy radio mocked Cardinal Gerlier of Lyons for hiding Jews and resistance fighters: he was “an ex-lawyer who late in life became an archbishop more as a result of the omnipotent grace of the House of Rothschild than to the laws of Holy Mother Church.”  When German officials ordered the Jews of Beauvais to register at the municipal headquarters, Bishop Felix Roeder claimed a distant Jewish antecedent and was the first to register, processing through the street in full pontifical vestments, and preceded by an acolyte carrying the Cross.

Rutler notes that in the war’s distress, increasing appeals were being made to the Pope for help and advocacy. L’Osservatore Romano published an article on the history of papal diplomatic prerogatives by General Francois de Castelnau, president of the French Federation National Catholique. He pointed to the irony by which the European powers in the 19th century had threatened to exclude the Pope from their deliberations, while turning to him in crises. Seemingly debilitated by the loss of the papal states in 1870, the papacy ironically took on a new prestige when its loss of temporal power gave it a grander kind of neutrality. In 1885, Bismarck, only ten years removed from the Kulturkampf, had asked the Pope to arbitrate between two nations, Spain and Germany, for the first time in three centuries. In 1890, the Pope was asked to mediate between Great Britain and Portugal a matter of navigation on the Zambesi. That same year, US President Grover Cleveland desired a papal arbitration between Venezuela and Great Britain to define the frontier between Venezuela and Guyana. Five years later Cleveland asked Pope Leo XIII to do the same for Haiti and Santo Domingo.   However, the Nazis had contempt for the appeal to neutrality, and the pontiff’s ability to intervene on issues was more constrained. In February 1942, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine and former Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1921 to 1936), Dr. Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, published a statement saying that he had appealed to the Pope to intervene with the combatant powers on behalf of European Jewry. Without out noting specifics, the Holy See replied that “the Pope is doing everything in his power on behalf of the persecuted Jews of Europe.”  It was telling that Rabbi Herzog, who remained as Chief Rabbi until 1959, would eventually remark about the Pius XII, “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world.”

Pius XII’s message on the Vatican radio on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1942, broadcast in German, said: “God’s ship is destined to reach port safely. She will not sink, for Christ is the helmsman and the gates of hell, the onslaught of the wildest waves and of the spiritual U-boat action (“Geistige U-boot Arbeit”) of godless neo-paganism will not harm her… For while paganism cannot build up, still less can neo-paganism, which lacks even that nobility of mind and true humanity which was found in the old pagans.” When Christmas came in 1942, The New York Times said Pius XII “is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent.”

There is much more in Principalities and Powers. After starting it, the book is hard to put down.

Causa latet, vis est notissima! (The cause is hidden, but its force is very well known!) Rutler views the test of character in the struggles of the world’s greatest war as a litmus for how the present generation should and should not behave in the face of challenges. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott well-described ISIS as a “death cult,” but the imbalanced, barbaric behavior of ISIS has flummoxed Western governments wanting to categorize the organization and appropriately respond to it. As Rutler shows in Principalities and Powers, the starting point for understanding ISIS or any similar organization that might arise is its main characteristic, which is evil. Principalities and Powers may support the development of a better understanding of ISIS, what it represents, and the devising of new approaches to defeat it. As it is greatcharlie’s mission to provide commentary and advice for foreign and defense policy makers, political and business leaders, and policy aficionados worldwide, we enthusiastically recommend Principalities and Powers to our readers.

By Mark Edmond Clark