October 29

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by gerryadmin
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1922 Benito Mussolini takes over Italy

Italy after World War I was in terrible shape. The economy was shattered, politic legitimacy was shaky, and hundreds of thousands of disillusioned veterans looked to radical solutions for the country’s problems. There were monarchist paramilitaries, anarchist gangs, peasant violence, Marxist attacks on industrialist and landowners, and the “black shirts” of Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini was born in 1883, the son to a socialist blacksmith. As a student, he would have fit in with Stalin’s turbulent seminary. (Instead of killing teachers, Mussolini stabbed fellow students).  He first became a teacher, schoolmaster, then a journalist. As he was growing up, he was not a fascist but a socialist, running his own newspaper called Class Struggle. He then became editor of the official Italian Socialist newspaper called Avanti. Mussolini was a very violent kind of socialist and during WWI he was expelled from the Socialist party for wanting Italy to take part in the war. He left the party and joined the army, where he was wounded.

When Mussolini emerged from the war, he was definitely not a socialist. He and a couple hundred discontents of various brands of returning veterans met in Milan and founded the first of the “Fascist fighting squads”. They banded under two symbols, one was the black shirt,  and the other, the fasces — the Roman symbol for authority, consisting of rods bound together with an axe in the middle. These “fascists” wanted an end to democracy and the institution of a totalitarianism: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

In the early 1920s there is widespread violence of the kind that fascists love — thuggery, kidnappings, beatings, murders, sabotage — and conflict between the left wing and the right wing. The fascists seized the opportunity to say that they were the solution to the nation’s disorder. In 1922, Mussolini sent out four fascist columns from different parts of Italy to converge on Rome. They announced long ahead of time that they were going to seize power but none dared hinder their advance. They marched into Rome where the constitutional democracy quickly collapsed and the king Victor Emmanuel III called on Mussolini to form a government. In the Chamber of Deputies, he gave a speech boasting about what a moderate fellow he was.

I am here to defend and enforce to the highest degree the revolution of the black shirts, injecting them intimately into the history of the nation as a force of development, progress, and equilibrium. With 300,000 youths fully armed, fully determined, and almost mystically ready to act at my command. I could have chastised all those who have defamed and tried to hinder fascism, I could have made of this sordid grey assembly hall  a bivouac for my squads. I could have kicked out parliament and constructed a government exclusively of fascists. I could have done so, but did not want to, at least not for the present.

Mussolini will rule Italy until his wartime fall in 1943.

October 26

Home / Today in Church History / October 26
by gerryadmin

statue_dalfred_le_grand_a_winchester899 Death of Alfred the Great

The only British king ever to be called “the Great” Alfred was born in 849 into the royal family of Wessex which ruled parts of southern England. As the fourth son of King Aethelwulf, Alfred was not expected to ascend the throne; he appears to have been a sickly child with a penchant for learning that was uncommon in Anglo-Saxon noblemen of the time. Unfortunately for Wessex, the king and his three oldest sons Aethelbald, Aethelred and Aethelberht all died in a short span which coincided with the invasion of England by the Great Heathen Army, a Scandinavian alliance bent on conquering the island.  Alfred became king at age 22 when most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had been gobbled up by the Vikings. For seven years Alfred battled the invaders when he could and bribed them to stay away from Wessex when he had to, but in 878 a surprise winter attack by a Danish force compelled Alfred to flee and take refuge in the marsh country. Later that year Alfred gathered an army and smashed the Danes who were obliged to withdraw and agree to the conversion of their leadership to Christianity. Despite this victory, Alfred would spend the rest of his life battling one set of Vikings or another, slowly driving them north.

To enable the English to resist the invaders Alfred built a series of forts called burhs to which his people could resort with their property and cattle, thus denying the Vikings the ability to live off the land. He also divided the men of his kingdom in two, with each half taking turns serving in the army and working the land. Alfred is considered the father of the Royal Navy, having commissioned large ships to intercept the invaders at sea.

Alfred was more than just a successful warrior. He was a legal reformer, organizing an efficient system of taxation and maintenance of infrastructure. Anglo-Saxon England would become a model of medieval statecraft because of Alfred’s efforts. He was also committed to an active and effective religious life for his nation; like Charlemagne earlier in the century he saw church and state functioning together as a Christian commonwealth. Alfred refounded monasteries, took care in the appointment of bishops, imported foreign clergy, communicated regularly with the papacy and established schools. He took part in the translation of St Gregory’s book on pastoral care, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and St Augustine’s Soliloquies. He ordered that the works of Gregory, Boethius and the History of the Church in England by the Venerable Bede be acquired by every English church.

Attempts by English kings to have Alfred canonized were not successful but he is honoured on this day by churches of the Anglican communion.

October 25

Home / Today in History / October 25
by gerryadmin

1938 An archbishop denounces “swing music”

Churches have always been ambivalent about dance music, some clergy fearing it is the devil’s tool, an incitement to lascivious behaviour; some have made use of dance music in liturgy and in Christmas carols. The waltz, where a man and a woman hold each other in their arms and sway rhythmically, was denounced in the 19th century. The bishop of Santa Fe condemned dances as “conducive to evil, occasions of sin, [providing] opportunities for illicit affinities and love that was reprehensible and sinful.” In 1938, Francis Beckman, the Catholic Archbishop of Dubuque campaigned against “swing music”.

Beckman (1875-1948) was no stranger to controversy. He was an isolationist in foreign policy and a supporter of the radical priest Father Charles Coughlin whose radio broadcasts beamed antisemitic messages to millions in Depression-era America. He believed that calls for the USA to oppose Hitler were a communist plot. In October 1938,  in a speech to the National Council of Catholic Women, he launched a crusade against contemporary dance music which he termed  “a degenerated musical system… turned loose to gnaw away the moral fiber of young people”. “Jam sessions, jitterbugs and cannibalistic rhythmic orgies occupy a place in our social scheme of things,” said the archbishop, “wooing our youth along the primrose path to Hell!” He went on to say that though the Church was zealously trying to promote and preserve the best of modern art, swing music was among “the evil forces … hard at work to undermine its Christian status, debauch its high purposes and harness it to serve individual diabolical ends.”

Archbishop Beckman’s career was curtailed during the Second World War when it was discovered that he had borrowed money in his diocese’s name to invest in a shady gold mine scheme. He was allowed to retain his post but all decisions were left in the hands of a coadjutor bishop.

Over Niagara Falls

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by gerryadmin

Doing dangerously silly things is usually the province of men, who for hormonal reasons are much more prone to teasing alligators, climbing icy mountains and trying to go fast in a rocket-power shopping cart.

Imagine the surprise of the world, therefore, when on October24, 1901 an elderly woman climbed into a barrel constructed of oak and iron and padded with a mattress and floated down the Niagara River toward the famous falls. Annie Edson Taylor, on her 63rd birthday, clutching her lucky heart-shaped cushion, was the first person to survive a trip over the mighty cataract.

Her motive was financial but she made little money from her perilous drop, especially after her manager ran away with her barrel.

Of her stunt she would say: “If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat … I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall.”

October 24

Home / Today in History / October 24
by gerryadmin
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1929 Stock Market Crash

The 1920s, “the Roaring Twenties”, in the United States was a time of booming economic expansion with new manufacturing, agricultural improvements, and labour productivity all leading to a feeling of confidence in the future. America seemed to have dodged the economic malaise that was plaguing Europe in the wake of the Great War and leading to extremist political movements. Great trust was placed in the stock market with many believing that they could profit from speculative buying on easy terms (“margin buying” allowed one to purchase stocks at a fraction of their value in the hope that a rise in price would produce a profit with little risk). “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau”, said an economist.

But by 1929 there were uneasy signs: there was a glut of produce, producing panic in the agricultural sector; markets for steel and manufactured goods seemed to be saturated; consumer debt was too high; and brokers were starting to dump shares, suppressing the value of the stock market. There was a minor panic in September which optimists thought might be just a market correction that produced some bargains. But it was not to be so. On October 24, 1929 it was “Black Tuesday”.

The stock market opened that day with a mass sell-off of shares by investors trying to get out while they could; this continued over the next few days, prompting big banks and tycoons to try to shore up the market by buying stocks at inflated prices. This confidence-building effort proved a failure as sellers greatly outnumbered buyers and some shares could not be sold at any price. The market would not return to the level reached on September 3, 1929 until November 23, 1954. The Great Depression that would devastate the world economy had begun.

October 23

Home / Today in History / October 23
by gerryadmin
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4004 BC  The world is created

The notion that the universe is not very old found its greatest expositor in James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh. His study of history led him to publish in 1650 the highly influential Annales Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, una cum rerum Asiaticarum et Aegyptiacarum chronico, a temporis historici principio usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto. (“Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabees.”) According to Ussher God created Earth on 23 October 4004 BC (it was a Saturday, around nightfall.)

Estimating the age of the world and creating a universal chronology using the Bible had occupied any number of Jewish and Christian scholars — even Isaac Newton had given it a try. There was a general consensus that the world had been created around 4,000 years before the birth of Christ: Johannes Kepler had placed the date as 3992 BC, the Venerable Bede thought it was 3952 BC, and Jose ben Halafta pegged it at 3761 BC. The trick was to use the genealogies in the Old Testament, which were explicit up to the reign of Solomon, and extrapolate from that point tying Biblical events to the reliable dates of occurrences in other cultures. Then there were astronomical calculations to pin down the date of the equinoxes and adjustments with the Jewish calendar. Then he had to fudge a little on the date of Christ’s birth, placing it at 5 BC. The results were artistically satisfying — the building of Solomon’s Temple could be placed exactly 3,000 years after Creation and 1,000 before the birth of Jesus.

Ussher’s ideas were highly influential and were taken seriously until the 19th century when geological observations began to argue for a much older universe.

October 22

Home / Today in Church History / October 22
by gerryadmin

louis_riel1844 Birth of Louis Riel

Louis David Riel (1844-85) is widely recognized as a political leader of the Metis people of western Canada, a founding father of the province of Manitoba and leader of two rebellions. Less well-known are his messianic claims and his desires to change the Roman Catholic Church.

Riel was born into a prominent Metis family in the Red River Valley which at that time was claimed by the Hudsons’s Bay Company. He showed intellectual promise at an early age and was sent to Montreal to be trained for the Catholic priesthood but his father’s death, a broken romance and the first signs of incipient mental instability caused him to abandon Montreal for the United States and eventually a return to Manitoba in 1868.

The newly independent nation of Canada was arranging to acquire the vast land claims of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a move that caused unease in the Red River where inhabitants feared for their traditional holdings. A Canadian attempt to survey the territory in 1869 was met with local resistance led by Louis Riel who declared that no takeover of the area would be allowed unless the inhabitants were consulted. He was named head of a Provisional Government, dominated by Metis, and opposed by many recent settlers, mainly white Protestants. When fighting broke out between these two groups Riel had a number of his opponents arrested and executed one of them, Thomas Scott. Though the Canadian government agreed to the creation of a province of Manitoba, Riel fled the approach of an army expedition, fearing he would be punished for Scott’s death. Riel was eventually bribed with cash and an amnesty into accepting a five-year exile from Canada; he was denied the right to take up the seat in the House of Commons to which he had been elected several times.

In 1876 Riel’s mental troubles increased; he seems to have begun entertaining notions of a divinely-appointed role for himself — he signed himself “Prophet, Infallible Pontiff and Priest-King” — and was confined to an asylum for two years. On his release he journeyed to the American West where he settled in Montana, became a U.S. citizen and married. In 1884 he was summoned back to Canada by a delegation of Metis and white settlers in what is now Saskatchewan to help present their grievances to the Canadian government. Ottawa agreed to set up a commission to consider those complaints but Riel and some Metis considered this merely a delaying tactic.

Riel was by now convinced that he had been chosen by God to lead his people and began advancing wild religious views. He called himself the “Prophet of the New World”. The papacy, he said, should be moved to Montreal; Bishop Ignace Bourget of that city should become the pope (later he claimed that the village of St Boniface would house the papacy and Bishop Taché would be pope). The sun, moon and planets should be renamed, often after his family members; the names of the days of the week were changed to eliminate their pagan origins. He advocated a return to many Old Testament practices, including circumcision, a married clergy and polygamy. When protest broke out into open warfare, Riel’s prophetic utterances were followed by his military leaders as orders coming from God, though such divine advice did the rebels no good. The Northwest Rebellion was crushed, Riel was arrested and sentenced to death in 1885. Before his execution he abjured his heretical beliefs and received the last rites of the Catholic Church.

October 22

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by gerryadmin

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2014 Islamic Terrorist Attack in Canada

Joseph Paul Michael Abdallah Bulgasem Zehaf-Bibeau was an unhappy 32-year-old ne’er-do-well. He had a poor employment history and a criminal record for larceny and drug possession. He had converted to the Islamic faith of his Libyan father and expressed support for the jihadi cause of ISIS; he seems to have wished to migrate to the Middle East. In the mosques he attended he was a disturbing and unwanted figure.

In October 2014 he came to Ottawa to apply for a passport; his request for a Libyan document was quickly turned down. He grew more agitated, talked of avenging victims of bombing, and somehow acquired a Winchester rifle, though he could not legally possess firearms. On the morning of  October 22 he drove to the National War Memorial with the gun and approached the three soldiers on ceremonial guard duty; as was customary, their weapons were unloaded. He shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo twice (he would die of his wounds) and fired on the other guards as well. Raising his rifle over his head, he shouted “For Iraq!” He then moved on to Parliament Hill, hijacked a vehicle and drove it to the Centre Block of Parliament where he ran inside. Once in the building he shot an unarmed policeman who tried to grab his gun and exchanged fire with other security officials. He was finally brought down in a hail of bullets from the guns of police and the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons.

Coming only two days after another Canadian Islamic convert had driven his car into two soldiers in Quebec killing one before he himself was shot dead by police, fears grew about the radicalization of Muslim youth.

October 21

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by gerryadmin

1096 The End of the People’s Crusade

In 1095, Pope Urban II summoned the princes of Europe to form an army to journey to the eastern Mediterranean and do battle with Islamic armies threatening the Byzantine Empire and occupying the Holy Land. Thousands of nobles and knights heeded the call and took part in what is known as The First Crusade or the Princes’ Crusade. At the same, millennial crazes were obsessing the common people of western Christendom who felt that they too had a part to play in liberating Jerusalem. Listening to itinerant preachers such as Peter the Hermit, tens of thousands of ordinary folk, peasants, soldiers, minor nobility, men women and children formed into columns and set out for Constantinople.

On the way, the People’s Crusade proved to be an ungodly menace. They perpetrated anti-Semtic massacres in the Rhineland, extorted food and supplies from the towns they passed through and attacked Byzantine garrisons who were astonished at the arrival of these motley forces. In August 1096 perhaps as many as 30,000 of these folk, drawn from Germany, Italy and France, reached Constantinople. Emperor Alexius, who had no wish to see them linger and become a worse nuisance, arranged to have them ferried across to Asia Minor, which was largely in the hands of Turks. He cautioned them not to take on Muslim armies themselves but to await the arrival of the heavily-armed knights of the First Crusade.

Once in enemy territory the People’s Crusade broke up into quarrelling factions, some reluctant to advance further, some anxious to start the battles they had journeyed so long to fight. While Peter the Hermit was returning to Constantinople to arrange for more supplies the poorly-armed crusaders engaged in several battles and were routed by Turkish forces, particularly at the Battle of Civetot which turned into a massacre. Only a few thousand made it back to the safety of the Byzantine lines; fewer still would survive the rigours of the remaning campaigns and see victory at Jerusalem in 1099.

October 20

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by gerryadmin

1939 Pope Pius XII attacks Nazi and Soviet war aims

Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (1876-1958) was elected pope as Pius XII in 1939, having spent much of his ecclesiastical career as in the Church’s diplomatic service. He was well acquainted with Germany have negotiated with its imperial rulers, its democratic regime, and its Nazi officials — Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender Sorge which condemned Nazi policy was written by Pacelli. His election took place while peace was collapsing in Europe and Adolf Hitler was plotting a continent-wide war. In September 1939, Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR collaborated to invade Poland and divide the conquered nation, an act which triggered World War II.

Summi Pontificatus was Pius XII’s first encyclical, appearing on this date in 1939. In it the pope notes the growing strength of the “host of Christ’s enemies” and the outbreak of war. These calamities he blamed on the denial and rejection of a universal norm of morality as well for individual and social life as for international relations; We mean the disregard, so common nowadays, and the forgetfulness of the natural law itself, which has its foundation in God, Almighty Creator and Father of all, supreme and absolute Lawgiver, all-wise and just Judge of human actions. When God is hated, every basis of morality is undermined; the voice of conscience is stilled or at any rate grows very faint, that voice which teaches even to the illiterate and to uncivilized tribes what is good and what is bad, what lawful, what forbidden, and makes men feel themselves responsible for their actions to a Supreme Judge.

Pius XII went on to condemn racism, totalitarianism and the rape of Poland. The Nazi government in Berlin recognized the encyclical as an attack on their policies; in neutral America, the New York Times praised the pope: A powerful attack on totalitarianism and the evils which he considers it has brought upon the world was made by Pope Pius XII in his first encyclical…It is Germany that stands condemned above any country or any movement in this encyclical-the Germany of Hitler and National Socialism. The French air force scattered copies of the bull over Germany.