by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
Here I will respond to the angry rants of Russian propagandists who claim to be U. S. Citizens and Conservatives and even Christian. I will list the rants, and reply to them:
1. To defend Ukraine is to defend a Sodomite run government
Vladimir Zelensky is a happily married man with children. And any woman with the penchant to pose images of nude men on her blog, should know that not all male porn stars are gay, some produce porn for women. That does not make them a sodomite. To claim that it does, means you have issues to deal with in your own conscience regarding not only calumny, but sexual morality and self-responsiblity.
2. To train men or urge men to fight to defend Ukraine is to throw young men into war like cannon fodder.
To train men or urge men to fight in a just defensive war is a work of virtue praised by all the Saints and done by a whole host of Saints from the times of the Crusades right through the wars to oppose the Ottoman take over of the Balkans: St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bonaventure, St. John of Capistrano, St. Bernardine of Siena, Bl. Mark of Aviano. Hence if that is immoral, the Church has failed by raising such men to the honors of the altar. And that would imply that Christ is not God and that Catholic Faith is in vain. — I detect the voice of the Serpent here in this 2nd objection …
To defend a nation in war does not mean that you are complicit in the acts of anyone else defending that nation or of anyone in the government. This is because the moral right of defense arises from the natural order, not the political order. Marxists hold that only certain political ideologies give you the right to be defended or to defend yourself. Those who advance this second position have accepted that far-left principle. They are just pretending to be conservatives.
3. Ukraine is a Nazi state.
There is absolutely no evidence of this. The constitution of the nation no where adheres to the principles of National Socialism. The economy is free, liberal and capitalistic. There are no governmental sponsored units with Nazi symbols or which espouse Nazi ideology. There is absolute;y no credible evidence of Nazi activities by the Government.
If someone, somewhere in Ukraine has a Nazi symbol in their possession, that no more redounds to the state, than that any state in the West or in the United States be Nazi, if one or more citizens of such a state carry such a symbol. Otherwise, even Buddishts in the 9th century would be Nazi’s since they used the Swastika.
3. We need to defend our own countries from Globalists, so let Russia do what it wants in Ukraine.
I have advocated for more than 2 years that we should all be doing more in our own countries against Globalism. But no one ever listened. Now, when I begin to do something for Ukrainians, I get people saying we should do something in their own country. Or that what I am doing is unjust or immoral. — I do not believe such ingenuous excuses from those who have proven that they have not done anything and probably will never do anything for anyone, let alone their own countries. Especially from those who hide under anonymous names or flee to the countryside because they won’t even take up arms to defend the innocents in their own country. This is why I understand well the psychology of hypocrisy, I have seen it for 2 years up close. These people are so black and possessed by self-interest that they even have the gall to call those with a little zeal to do good, who are actually doing good, criminals. It’s very sad that they are such addicts for jealousy and envy. You cannot get more evil than this. This is why this argument is really facetious. It’s right our of the mouth of a lowly devil, the devil of excuses posing as an angel of light.
Any sane and authentic anti-globalist would reason very differently. He would say that it is much better that the globalist who run my own country send their military arms to Ukraine to defend it from Russia, because then they will have less arms to use to genocide me and my family. But such excusers of Russia do not think this way, because they are really enablers of globalism, not defenders of Christian families.
If readers can suggest other wild claims, let me know, so I can publish a rebuttal to them.
Could you please define (or provide a solid reference source that does) of “sodomite” ? I ask because my understanding is that it is not just one type of sexual sin, but rather an entire category of sins, many of which might be attributed to heterosexuals, too – and highly likely are.
Thanks for the clarity:
“Marxists hold that only certain political ideologies give you the right to be defended or to defend yourself. ”
Does “nazi” even retain any semantic value? Is there any real difference between communist and fascist? Are we not all today, by default, Marxists to the degree we are not consciously Catholic and or desiring correction and precsion regarding what it means to be one?
Conclusion:
OMC and American Catholic party or bust.
In Catholic morals it is defined as the unnatural use of the two other parts of the body for attempted union.
“If readers can suggest other wild claims, let me know, so I can publish a rebuttal to them.”
These wild claims are derived from the materials of Russian propaganda mouthpiece, the RT, but are not necessarily articulated exactly as follows, so this is how I see their point. However, they can be inferred from the RT’s narrative:
1. The current Ukrainian government is a pro-Western regime installed by the 2014 coup’d etat and is strongly influenced by radical nationalist forces who want to ethnically cleanse Ukraine’s territory primarily of Russian ethnic minority, firstly by denying the use of Russian as official language and secondly by suppressing the right to self-determination of Russian minority, expressed legitimately and lawfully at referenda held in the Crimea and Donbas regions of Ukraine. In other words, radical Ukrainian nationalists who for 8 years have had a free reign with the present Ukrainian regime, want to exterminate or expell ethnic Russians from the territory of Ukraine, thus finishing the “project” of pre-WWII Ukrainian nationalist movements and their activities during WWII under the auspices of the Nazi Germany’s occupation of Ukraine.
2. Elements of the radical nationalist movements perpetrated two massacres of peaceful (pro-)Russian protesters in Odessa and Mariupol (both occuring in May 2014). This sparked armed rebellion of Russian minority, which had voted for independence and secession from Ukraine in March (Crimea) and May (Donbas) of 2014. The armed rebellion of ethnic Russians was a self-defense against the Ukrainian nationalists’ violence. Russian Federation began assisting this ethnic Russians’ armed rebellion financially, militarily, etc., so as to help ethnic Russians in Ukraine withstand the Ukrainian’s regime efforts at genociding them.
3. Ukraine, supported by the West (NATO and the EU), responded with brutal military operations, indiscriminately* attacking the (pro-)Russian Donbass population – combatants and non-combatants alike in a counter-terrotist operation, arresting and brutally torturing suspected members of (pro-)Russian armed rebels with West’s support (advisors, instructors, etc.) and often liquidating them without any legal proceedings. Ukrainian forces, which also absorbed radical nationalists of various backgrounds, in some instances committed mass murder of unarmed ethnic Russian civilians in Eastern Ukraine, exterminating whole villages. This brutal war to recapture the seceeded Donbas territories would then go on for 8 years, causing thousands of civilian casualties, primarily due to Ukrainian forces’ indiscriminate shelling of populated areas of ethnic Russians. Clashes between Ukrainian armed forces (pro-)Russian rebel forces were of course going on as well, adding to the overall suffering.
4. Ukraine has repeatedly violated the Minsk Agreements it acceded to, ignoring the demands of its ethnic Russian population for autonomy and recognition of their rights to Russian language, etc. and maintaining its strategic objective to recapture the contested territories at all costs, probably planning the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Russian population (by killing them, displacing them and forcibly “Ukrainizing” them).
5. Backed by the West and serving its geopolitical interests in various ways (as a base for destabilizing Russia, potential placement of various sorts of military capabilities close to Russia’s heartland, including advanced biological warfare masked in part as peaceful research), Ukraine had been planning an all-out offensive to crush the (pro-)Russian rebels and population in Donbas prior to Feb 24, 2022. The current pro-Western and nationalist regime in Ukraine is thus considered an agent of the West and an existential threat to Russia, whose military potential must be reduced by force (demilitarization).
6. The immense suffering and death of Ukrainian civilian population plus large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure are mainly caused by Ukrainian armed forces’ strategies and tactics of urban warfare by using human shields, hiding and operating from populated areas (shoot-and-scoot in urban neigborhoods), using civilian buildings as operating bases, preventing people from evacuating in time, keeping armed forces’ positions close to populated areas, etc.
7. Russia is defending ethnic Russians in Ukraine from Ukrainian nationalists’ attempts at destroying them and is trying to neutralize Ukraine as the most dangerous proxy of the West, so as to prevent West’s plan to contain and possibly destroy Russia.
My note: *Here, the context is clearly missing, as we do not know if this was provoked by morally unacceptable methods of warfare, by using human shields, i.e., hiding behind and among civilian populations, blending into them and leaving them exposed to beligerents’ counterstrikes.