A Sewer Of Falsehood That Must Not Be Tolerated
Because she had sworn unending loyalty to a despot,
“Tizia” loaded a syringe with carbolic acid and injected it
into the arm of a man who had only been kind to her.
Perhaps because they feared the leader’s wrath,
maybe out of loyalty to the ruler.
In truth, we will never fully understand why –
except for his constant insistence on the equality of all people –
soldiers took the young husband from his cell,
forced him into the jungle and shot him.
First three times. Then twice.
Finally, three more times.
_____
Yes! We’re betraying our age, but in the third decade of the Twenty-first Century, some of us still remember:
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
(Mystic crystal revelation)
And the mind's true liberation, Aquarius
Aquarius
“The Age of Aquarius” from 1967 musical Hair
James Rado and Gerome Ragni – lyrics
Gait MacDermot – music
In the Age of American Neopaganism, when a failed but self-declared casino and “luxury airliner” mogul demands absolute loyalty and vows political revenge against his perceived enemies, a victim of a Dutch nurse who murdered prisoners in the Nazi deathcamp at Dachau and a Nair-caste Eighteenth Century Indian stand as models of courage and unchanging loyalty to Truth.
With his May 15, 2022 canonization, Neelakanta Pillai became the first Indian layman, the first Indian martyr and the first Tamil saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
Two-thousand years after the Apostle Thomas first preached the Gospel in India, Christianity – in all its expressions – still claims a very small minority in a population of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jainists, Zoroastrians and others.
The son of an affluent Hindu Nair family, by his early thirties Devashayam Pillai had completed a successful military career and was an officer in the court of Travancore’s Maharaja Marthanda Varma, in charge of the king’s treasury. He was introduced to Christianity by a Dutch naval officer who became his friend and, during a period of personal struggle, shared with him the Old Testament story of Job and the Christian message, before he was prepared for baptism by a Jesuit missioner. At baptism, he received the name “Devasahayam” or “Lazarus,”” which in Malayalam translates to “God is my help.”
Without fear of the consequences, the new Christian layman preached a Gospel of the Dignity and Equality of All People - despite caste differences, leading to the conversion of his wife and others and arousing the animosity of members of the higher castes.
His conversion was not well received in the royal courts or by the heads of his family religion. Four years after his conversion, he was arrested, charged with treason and espionage, divested of his post in the royal administration, dragged through the streets, spit upon and brutalized – as a warning to other Hindus not to convert to Christianity. For years his refusal to submit to Hindu rites and rituals resulted in periodic torture.
Like centuries of others who have been martyred because of their dedication to Truth, Devasahayam’s fidelity and kindness won the admiration of guards who repeatedly offered to let him escape. Offers he declined – because he knew the same guards would be punished.
Taken from prison on the night of January 14, 1752, he was shot three times. When he did not die, soldiers shot him two more times and then three times, and left his body in the jungle to be consumed by animals. His remains were finally buried in southern India’s Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier.
_____
“Tizia,” who executed prisoners on a daily basis, gave a disposition to the Church tribunal considering the life of Father Titus Brandsma, one of 1,034 priests, monks and seminarians who died at Dachau:
“When I was 16 years-old I went to Berlin as a nurse of the Red Cross. There we had to swear an oath that we viewed Hitler as our god and we had to confirm that we would never go to church. The church and all else was only deceit. The Jews would have to be completely exterminated. That was the start of our training. I was too young to understand the consequences of all…
“I was in Dachau from April till October, 1942. There I got to know Father Titus a week before his death. I was a nurse in the infirmary of the concentration camp… I visited him twice a day. Fourteen or 15 times I spoke with him briefly, about 10 minutes each time…
Barely more than five feet tall, Anno Brandsma was ordained a Carmelite priest in 1905 – adopting the religious name Titus. When Germany invaded his native Holland on May 10, 1940, he had already distinguished himself as a university rector, philosopher, journalist, one of the most popular confessors at the Magnificus Catholic University, and linguist – speaking Dutch, Italian, a German dialect, and English and able to read Spanish. He was also serving as the spiritual advisor to the staffs of more than thirty Catholic newspapers in Holland.
Five years before the German invasion he had drawn the attention of the Nazis by campaigning against Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws - “The Church, in carrying out its mission, knows no distinction of sex, race or nation,” denouncing Nazism as “a sewer of falsehood that must not be tolerated” and writing that no Catholic publication could publish Nazi propaganda and still call itself Catholic.
On January 19, 1942, Gestapo agents followed and arrested “Father Shorty” as he delivered a letter from the Dutch bishops to the editors of Catholic publications, ordering them not to comply with a new law requiring them to print official Nazi declarations. He was interned at Scheveningen and Amersfoort in Holland before being sent to Dachau – described by author Guillaume Zeller as “the largest priest cemetery in history,” where he arrived on June 19, 1942.
[Over time, 2,700 clergy – 2,400 Roman Catholics – would be incarcerated at Dachau. Martin Niemoeller, who initially enthusiastically embraced Hitler’s espousal of the importance of Christianity to German national identity and Christianity’s role in a renewal of national morality and ethics, was probably the most famous of the Protestant clergy interned there. Recognizing the anti-Semitism of the pro-Nazi “German Christians,” who embraced Nazi racial ideology and demanded that all Jewish elements, including the Old Testament, be excluded from Christian theology, Niemoller became a member of the Pastoral Emergency League and opposed the racialized theory of “German Christians.” Repeatedly arrested, he was transferred to Dachau in 1941 and remained a prisoner of conscience until the end of World War II. He is best remembered for the words:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me –
and there was no one left to speak for me.]
Within days, Brandsma’s health deteriorated, forcing him to the “infirmary.” There he became just another subject of biological experimentation, before being killed by “Tizia,” who administered the lethal “Mercy Injection” prescribed by Dr. Waldemar Wolter.
As “Tizia” – the name used in Church records to protect her anonymity - testified before the Church tribunal considering Father Shorty’s canonization:
“He would have to die… because they had a great deal of hatred towards distinguished clergy. When he arrived at the infirmary, he was already a candidate for death. That stems from the fact that the doctor had pointed him out as one of those who, after a certain period of time, would be administered the ‘Mercy-Injection.’
“…I sensed immediately that he felt… very sorry for me and asked how I could have gotten this far. Then I told him how things had come about. Once he took me by the hand and said ‘What a poor girl you are. I pray for you a lot.’
“…He gave me his [homemade] rosary, as well, to allow me to pray. I answered him that I was unable to pray and therefore did not need it. He told me that although I did not know how to pray, I could at least recite the second part of the Hail Mary: ‘Pray for us sinners.’ I started laughing then. He told me that, if I were to pray a lot, I would not be lost.”
“… He always knew how to console people. Once, I was present when a man who stood close to his bed, wept while he told his life story. I heard Titus say: ‘But my dear man, that is not so bad. It is all in the Past.’”
Devasahayam Pillai gave his life because he believed in the rights and dignity of every person – regardless of caste, personal wealth or social standing.
Titus Brandsma confronted the neopaganism of his day - the idealization of a craven political leader who demanded absolute loyalty, even above loyalty to God and Truth; the deification of a failed human being who would make marionettes of his political minions, while demanding they assert that lies are truth or simply “alternative facts.”
Together – the king’s former treasurer and the priest who would become the new Patron Saint of Journalists and those who dare to speak Truth to the morally corrupt – two new saints offer a model against which Americans can judge the worthiness of the next person who seeks their vote.
Titus Brandsma called evil by its name – “Evil.” In the final months before his arrest, the journalist/philosopher priest asked his readers “Have you been deceived?” His answer addresses the neopagan self-deification of some who would make themselves a new god:
“We live in a world where love itself is condemned: people call it weakness, something to grow out of. Some are saying: ‘Love is of no importance, we should rather develop our strength; let each one become as strong as he can and let the weak perish!’ Again, they say that the Christian religion with its preaching about love is a thing of the past… This is how it is: they come to you with such teaching and even find people who take it up willingly. Love is unknown; ‘Love is not loved,’ as Saint Francis of Assisi said in his own day; and, centuries later in Florence, Saint Mary-Magdalene de Pazzi rang the monastery bells of her Carmel [cloistered convent] to make everyone know how beautiful Love is! I, too, would like to ring the bells to tell the world how beautiful it is to love!
The neo-paganism [of the Nazis] may well cast-off love but, in spite of everything, history teaches us that we shall be victors over this neo-paganism through love. We shall not forsake love. Love will win back for us the hearts of these unbelievers. Nature is stronger than philosophy. Even if a philosophy condemns and rejects love and calls it weakness, the living witness of love will always renew its power to conquer and entrance the hearts of men.”