November Remembrances

The Left also has holidays (e.g. the Russian Revolution) in November and uses the slogan 'In November We Remember'. We should, too!

From One Peter Five

By Charles Coulombe, KC*SS, STM

They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them.

November is of course the month of the Holy Souls – opening with Hallowtide (Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls).  It is black Catholic history month, and encompasses Remembrance/Armistice/Veteran’s Day/Martinmas, and Thanksgiving.  It comes to a grinding halt with the Scottish patronal festival, St. Andrew’s Day, and opens the new Church Year with Advent often enough – its last Sunday in the new calendar is the feast of Christ the King.  This year it has boasted election day on November 6, and my own 64th birthday two days later.  There is a lot to unpack here.

There is something about the dying of the year that lends itself to thoughts of mortality – especially when one reaches a certain age.  The number of one’s relations and friends who are gone increase annually.  One replenishes their number from among the younger folk, but beloved as these may be, they were not “there then.”  The continually repeated New Age mantra leading up to Halloween that “the veil between the worlds is very thin, this time of year” becomes almost palpable.  But for the Catholic there is the hope that he will see his loved ones again, even as he knows that “his Redeemer liveth.”  The Octave of All Saints, with its opportunity of gaining plenary indulgences for the departed each day of the eight, is a marvellous opportunity to demonstrate our love of those whom we have loved but lost a while.

In the midst of this sacred time, however, came an interruption this year, in the form of the national election.  For some Mr. Trump is the second coming of Our Lord; for others, that of Sauron.  But his change of views on abortion has lessened what joy I might have felt in Kamala’s defeat.  His opponents have convinced themselves that he will be proclaiming a dictatorship, throwing all of them into camps – and that all those who supported him were hateful haters.  Presuming that those dreadful things do not come about, since he will have control of both houses and a friendly Supreme Court, the events of the next two years shall rest entirely upon his shoulders.

What November 11 recalled to me this year was that few of those in the current American leadership class have served in the armed forces.  In wars gone by, presidents and congressmen had sons who were at risk.  But this is rarely the case to-day.  Here in Austria, I visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at the Heldentor by the old Hofburg, the Imperial Palace in Venna.  On either side of the tomb itself are plaques – the one on the left honours Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the first victim of the Great War; that on the right is dedicated to Bl. Emperor Karl as the last.  The latter, of course, the “Peace Emperor” was willing to lose everything for his peoples – even life itself.  In this both he and his uncle (whose death caused the war) were the opposite of the sort of leadership that dominates the world now.

Of course, Bl. Karl being in heaven, his life could hardly be called a tragedy – indeed, it is the effect on the world then and since – due to the frustration of his efforts by a cast of villains ranging from the three-time traitor Karl Renner to our own president, Woodrow Wilson – that is the real tragedy.  In the Anglosphere we don the red poppy, the French the blue cornflower, and the Germans the forget-me-not in remembrance of the thousands slaughtered in that horrible conflict.  Perhaps, had it really been the war that ended all wars as Wilson promised it would be, it might have been worth it.  But it caused more conflicts, from the Graeco-Turkish to the Russian Civil War – and of course, the Second World War – according to Winston Churchill, the latter conflict was largely the fault of Wilson for insisting on Karl’s deposition.  Of course the Soviet victory in that conflict led to the Chinese Civil War, and the struggles in Korea, Indochina, and elsewhere across the glove, as millions more died.

Of course, the insanity of leadership – at least in our age of democracy – might well be considered a matter of course.  But however little respect one might have for those in charge, surely we can honour the sacrifices of the valiant dead, regardless of the politics?  That may be true for more recent wars, but part of our general decline over the past decades has been the war on monuments – initially Confederate, but since the hot, hot summer of burning love in 2020, also against statues ranging from Kate Smith to St. Junipero Serra to Abraham Lincoln himself.  All of this was presaged, perhaps, by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website back in 2015, which commemorated the Supreme Court’s discovery of same-sex marriage in the US Constitution with a cartoon depicting the Southern Battle Flag being lowered and replaced by a rainbow banner.

The insanity of our masters aside, however, venerating the memory of those who fought and died for their respective causes – and our own ancestors among them – makes perfect sense.  As Bl. Karl and Franz Ferdinand offer an alternative version of leadership, so do those who gave up their lives for their countries and descendants – ourselves – likewise show an alternative vision of citizenship to the feast of selfishness popularised by the media and education industries.  After all, self-sacrifice need not only be on the battlefield; one is reminded of a horrific anti-birth commercial circulated online prior to the election warning college-age women of just how terrible having children really is, as it stunts lives and shatters dreams.  Strangely enough, the willingness of our fathers to die for us then-unborn is in reality an affirmation of life – one for which we should be thankful.  Poppies, parades, and ceremonial remembrances in military cemeteries are all fitting, of course; but far more effective are Masses and prayers offered for these valiant dead.

Although American Thanksgiving has Puritan roots, it is far more than simply remembering the Calvinists of Plymouth Rock.  Quite apart from the contending claims of Catholic Quebec, Florida, and New Mexico and Anglican Virginia to have held the “first” Thanksgiving, the whole notion of giving thanks for both the crops and livestock upon which we depend for food on the one hand, and our families and friends on the other, are sublime notions which transcend the origins of the holiday – which nevertheless gives us a good excuse to put them into practice.

To be honest, the Canadian Thanksgiving, which falls on the first Monday in October – our  Columbus Day – makes more sense as a harvest festival, October being when the harvest tends to be finished in temperate climes.  Little enough is left by the last week in November – but still we deck the halls with pumpkins, autumn leaves, Indian corn, and the like.  It is wise in any case to remember not only the fact that our food does not grow in the supermarkets whence most of us harvest it, but that the majority of our fathers were farmers – save those that fished, forested, mined, or were artisans.  Had they not done their jobs reasonably well, we would not be here, for all that we do not know most of them.

But Thanksgiving also lets us be thankful for those whom we do know among our loved ones, be they our kin by blood or by affection.  This is a wonderful opportunity to pray for those among the departed, whose number – as we have seen – ever grows.  But it is also a good time to draw close to those whom we still have amongst us.  The food and traditions of the day are symbolic of this, of course.  But it could be said that three phrases sum up all of our closest relationships: “I love you”; “I forgive you for what you have dome to me”; and “I am so very sorry for what I have done to you.”  In this fallen world of sin and shadow, it is usually those whom we love most whom we hurt most, and who hurt us most in return.  Thanksgiving and Christmas are Heaven-sent times to express these sentiments; it is important they be said before death makes it impossible to do so, and our love can only be expressed through Masses and prayers.  All too often, alas, we allow these opportunities to pass by without letting those whom we love know our true feelings for them, until it is too late – instead, holidays become the scene of renewed bickering and annoyance.  Let it not be the case this year.

Indeed, to love one another – living and dead – is one of Our Lord’s great commands, and in the 1969 liturgical calendar in the Latin Rite, the last Sunday in November is the feast of Christ the King.  In the traditional calendar it is the last Sunday in October; but the date is not the only difference between the two versions.  The traditional propers clearly refer to the Social Kingship of Christ in the here and now, and the requirement of all governments to accept that reality if they wish to be just.  The new rite looks to the eschatological supremacy of Christ at the Last Judgement and after.  Both are true, of course, but the first is far more of an embarrassment to the powers that be in Church and State – who doubtless need all the embarrassment they can be given – especially in the aftermath of COVID, when we learned that the Mass is not an essential service, but abortion is – at least in the minds of those who rule.  Beyond such questionable folk, both versions of the feast require us to submit ourselves to that Divine Kingship – thus underlining the love we owe each other at His command, and the fact that said love transcends death.

The last day of November is the feast of St. Andrew, patron of many places, among which is Scotland.  “The land of the leal (loyal),” as it is dubbed, is a place which has always held my imagination.  My father, who despite being French Canadian, had a Scots ancestor who fought at Culloden, gave me a poster of Scots heroes: Sir William Wallace, whose adventures I had thrilled to when reading Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs, and whom Mel Gibson would make more famous in the film Braveheart; King Robert the Bruce, who led the Scots to victory at Bannockburn; the tragic Mary Queen of Scots, who saw her beloved realm fall to both England and Protestantism; her thrice great grandson, the gallant and equally tragic Bonnie Prince Charlie, under whom my forbear fought; Robert Burns, the country’s national bard; Sir Walter Scott, whose novels thrilled me as a boy; and Robert Louis Stevenson, friend of Father Damien, who did the same for me – especially with Kidnapped and Treasure Island.  Always I thought of those Scots heroes who had kept both Catholic faith and loyalty to the embattled House of Stuart. 

Of course, all of us Americans descend from one or more foreign nations, each of whom – even if they are now primarily non-Catholic now, had a Catholic past.  If one is of American Indian descent, there is a Catholic heritage there as well, as St. Kateri Tekakwitha and Servant of God Nicholas Back Elk show.  Being a Knight of Peter Claver, I am particularly proud of the six Black American candidates for Sainthood.  As Catholic Americans, we are all heirs to all of it – and so we must pray for those who came before, and use this rich heritage as a foundation for a better, Catholic future.  This reality must ever be foremost in minds, above and beyond whoever reigns in the White House – now, or at any time in the future.