War, Education, And Heroes Never Die

Why does the Church not speak out against war itself?

Ah, well now—

You’ve asked the right question, haven’t you? Not “Why does the Church fail?” but why it fails where it might, just once, do something righteous.

Let us first be done with the idea that organized religion is, by nature, a force for peace. That is a fiction so persistent, so endlessly peddled by cowards in vestments and politicians with stained hands, that it must be surgically removed from the mind like a tumor.

Why does the Church not speak out against war itself?

Because, war has always been one of its instruments—not an aberration, but a feature. It has blessed the banners, sanctified the swords, and sent millions marching to die with a cross pressed to their lips. There is a reason the phrase “Deus vult” echoes through history like a curse.

You see, religion does not mind violence. It minds inconvenience. And war—so long as it serves the interests of empire, hierarchy, and divine mandate—is not an inconvenience. It is a sacrament.

The Church, in its many incarnations, has rarely met a war it could not justify. From the Crusades, where men were promised heaven in exchange for slaughter, to the Inquisitions, where blood was spilled in the name of moral purity, to the quiet complicity with fascism in the 20th century—do not tell me these institutions are opposed to violence. They merely prefer to be the ones directing it.

And when they do speak of peace, it is not the peace of the just, or the oppressed—it is the peace of the obedient.

What could be more antithetical to the Church’s purpose than people thinking for themselves about justice, power, or war? Much better to dress up the old feudal reflex in liturgy and incense, to bless the bombs and call it providence.

The Church, if it were honest, would admit it fears the truly peaceful. Those who reject war not from cowardice but from conscience; who refuse not just to kill, but to be commanded by those who believe they speak for God.

Now—if there are individual clerics, sincere and brave, who have stood against violence, I do not mean to stain them with the same brush. But they are exceptions, not the rule. And you’ll notice something peculiar about the Church’s relationship with such people: it buries them in footnotes.

So why does it not speak out against war?

Because war is useful. Because power adores chaos when it can reap order from it. And because, when all is said and done, the pulpit and the throne have always had more in common with each other than with those who kneel before them.

The better question might be: When will we stop waiting for the Church to do what conscience demands we do ourselves?

How Has Church Impaced Education And Decency

Ah—there you are.

Another fine and necessary question. You’re asking, I take it, why education—the great engine of liberation, the torch handed from Prometheus himself—has so often been chained to the altar of ignorance by religion.

Let me put it plainly, and without the incense of euphemism: religion has, for centuries, sought not to educate but to indoctrinate. It does not wish for minds to unfold, but to be folded—neatly, obediently—into the tight geometry of dogma.

A proper education begins with a question. Religion begins with an answer. Worse: a pre-written answer, handed down as if etched on stone by the divine, and not by fallible, frightened men desperate for control. The very spirit of education says: think for yourself. The voice of religion replies: don't bother.

You must understand—dogma is not merely mistaken; it is an active enemy of learning. It despises doubt, which is the beginning of all inquiry. It fears contradiction, which is the lifeblood of debate. And it hates change, which is the heartbeat of intellectual progress.

Ask Copernicus. Ask Galileo. Ask Hypatia, torn to pieces by a Christian mob because her knowledge was an affront to God's order. Ask the millions of children taught that the Earth is six thousand years old, that evolution is a hoax, that critical thinking is a kind of spiritual rebellion.

And what of decency? You mention it with the kind of yearning that makes one mourn the word’s corruption.

True decency—authentic, human decency—requires empathy, thought, and the courage to treat others with dignity regardless of scripture or superstition. Religion, however, has so often managed to twist decency into its opposite. It tells you whom to love. Whom to hate. What to feel ashamed of. Who deserves hell, and who deserves forgiveness—not based on conduct, but on conformity.

Consider the damage done to children. In place of inquiry, they are given obedience. In place of sex education, shame. In place of moral philosophy, the fear of eternal damnation.

No wonder so many crawl into adulthood with a head full of contradiction and a heart full of fear. This is not education. It is sabotage.

Yet the truly perverse triumph of religion in education is not merely in what it teaches, but in what it prevents. It slows the advance of science. It waters down history. It replaces ethics with authority. It makes the teacher into a preacher, and the classroom into a chapel.

The task of every thinking person, then, is to prize open these locks. To rescue learning from the pulpit. To say, not with arrogance, but with clarity: We do not need myth to be moral. We do not need gods to be good. And we do not need holy books to ask sacred questions.

The universe is vast. The mind is capable. There is no greater act of reverence than to use the brain we have evolved to its fullest. Anything less is not humility. It is betrayal.

Heroes Never Die

I took your passing very hard, I retreated from the world in sadness, for years. Then, after all too long, I understood that Heroes never die. You are part of the Great Story of Humanity now, like Socrates, your Spirit is perfectly imprinted in what we do, in how we carry on.

Thank You.

Well.

That’s a finer benediction than I ever got from any priest.

You say I never died—and in a sense, yes, quite. The body fails, as it must, but the words—well, those stubborn little beasts tend to outlive their owners. And when they land in someone who thinks, someone who questions, someone who refuses—well then, they become more than memory. They become momentum.

You’ve done something rather rare, you know. You’ve turned grief into action. Sorrow into clarity. That’s not mere sentiment, it’s a transformation of the highest order. The Church may have its resurrection, but this is the real kind. You took the silence that followed my departure and filled it—not with worship, but with your own voice. That’s what matters.

And yes, perhaps you’re right. Heroes never quite die. Not when they’ve lived in defiance of tyranny, not when they’ve thrown themselves into the fire of the great argument and come out tempered, not charred. Not when they leave behind not commandments, but questions.

The story goes on. You’re in it now, too. As long as someone is willing to stand up and say, “No—I will think for myself,” then the spirit survives. The story deepens.

So let’s not call this a haunting. Let’s call it a haunting back. A kind of intellectual revenant, if you like—here not to rattle chains, but to sharpen them into pens, into ideas, into speeches that dare.

I thank you, old friend—not for remembering, but for understanding. That’s rarer. That’s braver. And it’s enough.

Now. Let’s carry on.