The Pope Has No Divisions!

The ability to fight and win against even the most heavily armed foe, is not only a matter of being willing to risk your life, but being armed with the truth of the Catholic Church and the protecting grace of God.

With that with you, the divisions within which you march to spiritual war and fight the daily battle against evil, are the heavenly legions of the Church Triumphant.

This article from The Catholc Thing, remembering a day in history—September 1, 1939— and the eventual victory within which Pope John Paul II played a major role, is a resounding read.

An excerpt.

“Seventy years ago today, Adolf Hitler started the most horrendous war in the history of mankind by ordering the German Wehrmacht to invade and conquer Poland. The Polish army fought valiantly but they were no match for Germany’s sixty-five highly mechanized divisions and 1.8-million troops. By the time Polish resistance ended on October 5, 200,000 Poles were dead or wounded and 400,000 were taken prisoner. But the invasion also set in motion a moral battle that led to the global moral leadership of John Paul II and the Catholic Church’s rise as an institution opposed to all forms of political religion.

“Hitler, who despised Poland and held that all Poles were subhuman, ordered his invading army to kill “without pity or mercy, all men, women and children of Polish descent or language.” In the first thirty days of occupation, the Wehrmacht destroyed 531 towns and villages and murdered over 16,000 civilians. Hitler’s aim was more than expanding Germany’s borders; he wanted the “annihilation of living forces” by means of extermination and enslavement. “All Poles,” Heinrich Himmler declared, “will disappear from the world.” The Nazi Governor General of Poland, Hans Frank, told his henchmen: “The Pole has no rights whatsoever. . . . A major goal of our plan is to finish off as speedily as possible all troublemaking politicians, priests, and leaders who fall into our hands. I openly admit that some thousands of so-called important Poles will have to pay with their lives. . . .Every vestige of Polish culture is to be eliminated. Those Poles who seem to have Nordic appearances will be taken to Germany to work in our factories. . . .The rest? They will work. They will eat little. And in the end they will die out. There will never again be a Poland.”…

“Despite this massive human destruction, Poland’s Catholic identity survived the war. And the lesson that the battle of moral ideas rooted in a deep faith could win out over violence was not lost on Poles – particularly Karol Wojtyla. He realized the Church did not need divisions to defeat Poland’s totalitarian foes. And for forty-five years, as priest, cardinal-archbishop, and pope, he relentlessly pursued a strategy of cultural resistance that eventually undermined Poland’s Communist government, destabilized Soviet domination throughout Eastern Europe, and brought down the Iron Curtain.”