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One of the great moments in the history of freedom was when, in 390 A.D., Saint Ambrose of Milan, whom we commemorate tomorrow, excommunicated the Roman emperor for his massacre of seven thousand Thessalonian civilians. For several months, the most powerful man on earth dressed himself in rags and knelt in public penance outside the cathedral in Milan. Here's the story told by a near-contemporary ─ St. Ambrose Humiliates Theodosius the Great.
The Ambrosian tradition has persisted until our present times.
In Nazi Germany, there was Der Löwen von Münster ("The Lion of Muenster"), Blessed Clemens August von Galen, who protected Jews and fought Hitler's euthanasia program to end lebensunwertes Leben, "life unworthy of life." He publicly called Der Fürher an "immoral bastard," only to have his cathedral bombed in an Allied war crime. In El Salvador there was the great Archbishop Oscar Romero, who shortly before his martyrdom said, "It is my hope that my blood will be the seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality." More recently, in 2002, siding with the Pope in the lead-up to Mr. Bush's War on Iraq, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said, "[T]he concept of preventive war does not appear in the Catechism."
The Ambrosian tradition has persisted until our present times.
In Nazi Germany, there was Der Löwen von Münster ("The Lion of Muenster"), Blessed Clemens August von Galen, who protected Jews and fought Hitler's euthanasia program to end lebensunwertes Leben, "life unworthy of life." He publicly called Der Fürher an "immoral bastard," only to have his cathedral bombed in an Allied war crime. In El Salvador there was the great Archbishop Oscar Romero, who shortly before his martyrdom said, "It is my hope that my blood will be the seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality." More recently, in 2002, siding with the Pope in the lead-up to Mr. Bush's War on Iraq, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said, "[T]he concept of preventive war does not appear in the Catechism."
