The most excellent, enduring battle known to Man, known to history, is the battle of ideas.

Overcoming Evil With Goodness

by Peter S. Rieth

“Do not use violence in your struggle. Violence is not a sign of strength, only of weakness. He who cannot win the heart or the mind seeks his victory through violence. Each act of violence is vivid proof of moral incompetence. The most excellent, enduring battle known to Man, known to history, is the battle of ideas. The most pitiful and insignificant battles are the violent ones. An idea which requires weapons to defend it will die on its own account. An idea which can only live by violent means is a perversion. An idea which is capable of life conquers on its own account. Such an idea will find millions of spontaneous followers.”

Thus spoke the Blessed Martyr Father Jerzy Popieluszko on December 26th, 1982. Father Jerzy loved his enemy. During martial law, in 1981, he told Poles to take hot drinks and food to the soldiers who stood ready to shoot them. The tens of thousands who came together to celebrate the Eucharist with him did not carry weapons, they did not shout partisan political slogans full of hate for one group and blind worship of another group. They never once took up arms against their oppressors. They listened to Father Jerzy’s famous ‘Homilies for the Fatherland’ in which they were told that the only proper action a man could take in the face of physical and spiritual oppression was prayer and constant acts of love—especially towards their enemies.

No matter how many bullets were fired at them, no matter how many police batons loomed over their heads, sometimes striking their bodies, no matter how empty their stomachs due to food shortages, the tens of thousands of people who came to receive the Body of Christ from Father Jerzy’s hands, the nine million members of the Solidarity Union for whom Father Jerzy was a moral patron and the tens of millions of Poles who heard his words and learned of his works never once engaged in armed revolution, insurrection or any form of mass coordinated popular violence.

Their enemy, the Communist Polish State and the nuclear armed Soviet Union that stood behind it, charged three officers of the Ministry of the Interior to murder Father Jerzy; they beat him, tied him, put him into the trunk of a car, tied his arms, neck and legs together, tied a heavy rock to him and threw him into a river, after torturing him and apparently bludgeoning his skull. The men who committed this murder are free today. One of them had and may still have a lucrative career writing anti-Catholic news articles for the mainstream Polish press. The other two convicted murderers changed their names amd live free. All three of them served only a few years of time in jail. Their friends are well known democratic politicians. They are free primarily because the III Republic of Poland is a nation state built on a compromise between Father Jerzy’s murderers and Father Jerzy’s followers.

For the murderers of Father Jerzy were not merely the three men who physically beat, tortured and threw Farther Jerzy’s body into the water; the murderers are members of parliament, ministers of government and former Presidents who all played a role in organizing the killing. These people now are under the protection of NATO and the EU, who have taken up the role once played by the KGB and GRU. Father Jerzy’s murderers are now heroes of Democracy. Father Jerzy is not a hero of Democracy; he remains a witness to Truth. This truth is a simple one: after Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt and their progeny attempted to reconfigure the world every which way, yet failed to bring humanity one step closer to justice, after mankind found itself stuck at the brink of nuclear war between two hegemonic super powers, God heard the prayers of his people and sent them Father Jerzy Popieluszko who, for the few years before he was murdered, taught us the secret to securing liberty and winning the peace of the world.

As you read the teachings of Father Jerzy, dear reader, do not let your mind be fooled into thinking them the ravings of a dreamer, nor the naive prattling of a simpler age. Father Jerzy, though he died while his murderers still live, has triumphed. The Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin wall fell, human liberty was restored where all the guns of the world wars failed to plant it—by one man: Father Jerzy Popieluszko. You may not hear much about him or his teachings now, when the Pharisees of our time speak of their plans to democratize the world and end tyranny and build nations and color revolutions any hue but blood red. Likewise, just as no one remembers the great armies that fought and bled in the time of Christ, so too, a thousand years from now, Churchill will be forgotten, Stalin and Hitler will be forgotten, the graves at Normandy will be forgotten, because as Father Jerzy taught—the battles of armies are meaningless. Only the battle of ideas has meaning, only it changes the world for the better. To read Father Jerzy’s teachings is to read simple truths which, like all truths, change human life for the better.

On February 2, 1982, Father Jerzy taught:

“The calling to freedom is intricately rooted in the nature of each individual person and within a mature national consciousness. This is why the calling to freedom is connected to law and duty. It is connected to law insofar as every limit of freedom necessarily leads to the suffering of every person and every nation. Limiting Man’s inalienable right to freedom leads to rebellion, even to war. The calling to freedom is therefore connected with the duty to understand that freedom—not license—is the challenge standing before each person and it requires reflection, prudence, the ability to choose, to make decisions.”

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