Photo of painting (Segovia, Spain) of St. James by Sacred Destinations (flickr)

Today Catholics celebrate the feast of St. James the Greater, one of the twelve apostles, while Spanish Catholics celebrate his feast day under the name of their country’s patron saint, Santiago Matamoros (Saint Iago the Moor Slayer). He was called “greater” to distinguish him from the apostle James the Less, who was likely shorter or even slenderer. After the Ascension of Jesus, according to legend, St. James traveled to Spain to spread the Gospel, and after some success in converting the people there he returned to Jerusalem where he became the first apostle martyred, beheaded by Herod Agrippa in 44 AD for violating his prohibition against preaching the new Christian faith. The apostle’s followers transported his remains to Spain, where tradition has it that they found on the Galician coast a field illuminated by a star to indicate the apostle’s predestined resting place. The great cathedral housing the statue that made the news in 2004 is the Santiago de Compostela—St. Iago from the Field of the Star.

Nobody is a true pilgrim unless he is journeying towards the “house of St. James.”—Dante

My first thought when I learned of the Muslim outrage over the statue was to wonder what Mohammedans were doing in a church in the first place, but that’s the absurd world in which we live, a world not so unlike the time when Santiago was first rediscovered by Spain in the ninth century. For now as then, rediscovering the great saint comes when he is most sorely needed, when the furious enemy is not just outside the gates but is rather in our homelands and in our sanctuaries.

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In all the mail through which I’ve been wading the last several days is one pointed query from a subscriber wondering if my intent is to maintain a well-crafted blog that no one reads. Touché! Yes, I’ve been busy. It’s the end of the fiscal year for us bureaucrats and desk jockeys, and then there’s life—not to mention all this mail. More about the mail in a moment, but above is a playlist of a few things to which I’ve been listening while reading, replying, deleting, and what not. It always helps things along to have a little music in the background, don’t you think? Of course, just as one man’s personal, interior struggle is another man’s violent jihad, one person’s mood music is similarly another’s annoying noise pollution. Nevertheless, there should be something in the list for all but the most obtuse cretins like my friend Jack, who listens to crap that should be illegal. If the whole playlist makes you ill, then you may want to think about it as piped-in sound for the elevator ride you’re sharing with me.

BIMBO’S DATE: “Do you like Billie Holiday?” BIMBO: “I love him!”

As for my intentions as a publisher, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This blog is a lot like western civilization or even modern life as we know it. Just because it’s here today, that doesn’t mean it will be here tomorrow. Only our love is here to stay. All else may just be passing fancy and in time may go. There may be trouble ahead. Soon we’ll be without the moon, humming a different tune, and then there may be tear drops to shed.

So while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance, let’s face the music and dance.

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Hajj photo by Ali Mansuri (Creative Commons)

The plan of salvation also includes . . . the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God . . . (CCC, p1s2c3p4)

Today marks the ninety-first anniversary of the first apparition in the series of alleged supernatural apparitions at Fatima, Portugal in 1917, and on this day twenty-seven years ago Pope John Paul II was shot in Vatican Square by the would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Acga, a Turkish Muslim who later claimed the assassination attempt had something to do with the “third secret” of Fatima, which wasn’t released or even openly discussed much by the Vatican (in fact, no pope had ever even acknowledged the mysterious secret) until much later. The gravely wounded pontiff convalesced in the hospital for a full year, and then astonishingly his first public act on May 13th was to travel in his weakened state from Rome to the tiny village of Fatima, of all places, for the anniversary celebration of the famous apparitions at the Cova da Iria. Not coincidentally, I might add, Fatima is the name of the daughter of Mohammed, the seventh- century Arabian warlord and founder of Islam, historically the avowed enemy of the Church.

What does this have to do with anything, especially as regards defending ourselves from the global jihad? Well, that’s a fascinating (terrifying may be a better word) story if you are so inclined, but I will not elaborate on it here. In a broader sense, though, we might ask what benefit to us is a religious perspective in this ongoing war against radical Islam? I know that many of those who speak out courageously against the Islamic threat will not agree, but in my mind the short answer to that question and the question in the title of this essay is, “Quite a lot, actually.” For a long time I’ve avoided coming to this conclusion, but it’s almost inescapable, really. Admittedly some of the most illustrious voices condemning Islamic militancy and the global jihad are owned by atheists and agnostics, and all of us religionists count them as friends in opposing the Mohammedan menace. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Hugh Fitzgerald, Wafa Sultan, and many others—even the entertaining eccentric Pat Condell of YouTube fame comes to mind—are all without faith in God. It would seem that a religious perspective is effectively unnecessary in order to criticize aspects not only of Islamic law and culture, but even of Islamic theology and scripture. Indeed, when for example canonical texts and traditional doctrine call for the forced conversion, subjugation, or slaughter of unbelievers, garden-variety secular humanism is sufficient to condemn such scriptures and doctrine out of hand without pointlessly bringing God into it. In this sense and in this regard, religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.

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