A weekly column by Father George Rutler.

We are engaged in similar challenges today. Of course, we are
aware of the crisis in the Middle East, but the strife is worldwide.
Consider Nigeria, whose Catholic population in the last century has
soared to nearly twenty million. Last week, under Muslim pressure, the
government stopped the Eternal Word Television Network from
broadcasting. I have worked with this worldwide Catholic network for
twenty-five years and have many Nigerian friends. Two days after the
Nigerian bishops objected to this censorship, a Catholic church was
destroyed by Muslims, who killed and wounded many worshipers. This seems
to be under the radar of our own government and the mainstream media.
May Saint Francis be our model in how to deal with the threats of
our own day: not enfeebled by sentimentality and relativism, but armed
with a Franciscan zeal for the conversion of souls. We may not have
Francis’ charm, but we have in our hearts and churches the same God. By
the way, the popular “Prayer of Saint Francis,” which begins, “Make me a
channel of your peace,” was actually the work of an anonymous author
who published it in France in 1912. Its vague theology and lack of
mention of Christ, express a semi-Pelagian heresy unworthy of the Saint
of Assisi. Let the last words of the real Saint of Assisi be our guide:
“I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you what you are to
do. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what
they sought.”
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