The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE (3 page)

“Our help,” the Holy Father asserts while crossing his self yet again. “Is in the Name of The Lord.”

“Who made heaven and earth,” the servers add.

All heads bow as everyone examines their conscience.

The Vicar of Christ brings his hands together. He looks at the Crucifix. The Bishop of Rome turns away from all temporal concerns. He turns his back on his congregation, on the city’s besieged walls, on the entire world and its every demanding will. He faces the reality of Calvary squarely and acknowledges that it is his sin which is responsible for the torture and death of his Lord.

The Pope bows.

“Confiteor Deo omnipotenti...”
he prays, his voice quivering softly with anguish. “I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the saints, and to Thee Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in word, thought and deed.”

“
Mea culpa
,” the Vicar of Christ insists, striking his breast. “By my own fault.”

“
Mea culpa,”
the Holy Father repeats. He strikes himself again, accusing his own heart, hidden within his breast, of being the cause of sin.

“Mea máxima culpa,”
Peter’s Successor admits to God and the world, striking his breast a third time. “By my own grievous fault.”

It is his own proud and insolent heart, he confesses, that deserves the punishment, the breaking and destroying. It should be him hanging on that cross, not the sinless Son of God. Forgive me, Father, he pleads silently; please forgive me.

“Therefore I beseech blessed Mary ever Virgin,” the Pope continues, straightening as well as his stiff spine will allow. “Blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy apostles Peter and Paul, all the saints, and you brethren, to pray to the Lord our God for me.”

“Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus...”
the younger priests answer him. “May almighty God have mercy upon thee, forgive thee thy sins and bring thee to life everlasting.”

Together, the server/priests and people, their heads bowed in perfect contrition, pour their hearts out to their Creator as they, in turn, pray the
Confiteor
.

When they’re done, the Bishop of Rome echoes the response. “May almighty God have mercy on thee, forgive you your sins, and bring you into life everlasting.”

“Amen,” all intone.

The Vicar of Christ begs of heaven, “May the almighty and merciful Lord grant us pardon, absolution, and remission of sins.”

“Amen.”

“Thou shalt turn again, O God, and quicken us.”

“And Thy people shall rejoice in Thee.”

“Show unto us, O Lord, Thy mercy,” the Holy Father pleads.

“And grant us Thy salvation.”

“Oh Lord, hear my prayer.” The Pope begs his God.

“And let my cry come unto Thee.” The young priests add their entreaty.

The Vicar of Christ turns slowly and carefully to face the pews. They are filled with priests, nuns and monks from all over the world and a good number of the laity who refused to evacuate Vatican City when they had the chance. He parts his hands and holds them, palms facing forward.

“Dominus vobiscum,”
he says. “The Lord be with you.”

“Et cum spiritu tuo,”
the faithful respond. “And with thy spirit.”

“Oremus,”
the Holy Father bids them. “Let us pray.”

Confidant in the mercy of God, the Bishop of Rome turns around again and advances up toward the altar, praying as he climbs:

“Take away from us our sins, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that we may enter with pure minds into the Holy of Holies. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Oramus te, Domine...”
the Pope pauses to pray on the top step. “We beseech Thee, O Lord, by the merits of Thy Saints whose relics are here and of all the Saints, that Thou wouldst vouchsafe to forgive me all my sins. Amen.”

The Vicar of Christ, mediating between Jesus and His Church, bows. The Holy Father kisses the altar on behalf of Christendom. The Church, the bride of Christ, through the office of the Bishop of Rome, salutes her bridegroom and Savior. The Pope offers up this most Holy Days’ Mass for the salvation of all souls and peace on earth.

Washington DC

23:51:59

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee...”

Monsignor Francis Green is hearing confessions at DC’s National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. In between penitents, he listens to the recitation of the Rosary. He hears the Angelic Salutation and, as he has done since he was a
boy, falls effortlessly into prayer. Every pew in the basilica is full. The faithful are arranged by states, each of the fifty states assigned one of the Rosary’s fifty beads. Through three revolving shifts, the Rosary crusade has been going non-stop since October 7
^th
. Another nearly fifty thousand faithful follow suit outside the Supreme Court building and at various other churches throughout the city. Three million more are similarly gathered in churches across the country and millions more around the world; every one of them praying for the survival of Christendom.

In the pews outside the confessional, Alabama leads the recitation through the first Joyous Mystery of the Rosary; the Annunciation, the meditation on Mary’s humility.

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” the young Mary answered the Angel Gabriel when he informed the young virgin that she was to bear the Child of God. “Be it done to me according to Your Word.”

With those words Mary set aside her own will and made herself the instrument of God’s. In humility, Mary said yes to God and thus His Word came into the world. Through her the Word was made flesh and dwelt among men. Her humility opened the Gates of Heaven to man.

“Blessed are Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus...”
Alabama continues the recitation.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,”
the whole congregation responds.
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

“Hail Mary, full of Grace,”
Alaska begins the second bead of the ten that make up a Rosary’s decade.
“The Lord is with thee...”

Monsignor Green has travelled cross country from California to serve tonight’s midnight Mass on the steps of the Supreme Court. The honor could have gone to a great many others of his brothers in Christ, but the recently incarcerated Cardinal Redding asked for him specifically. The media was proffering all kinds of theories as to why the Cardinal chose him, but Monsignor Francis insisted to the press that his boyhood friend, Andrew Redding merely missed his company. Serving the Mass was bound to land Father Green in jail before the night was over. The old friends would then have lots of time on their hands to catch up on each other’s lives.

“Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus...”

The thought of being incarcerated didn’t worry the priest whatsoever. It certainly wouldn’t deter him. It would not be his first arrest. He knew that a
monk’s cell could be enjoyed behind prison bars as readily as behind monastery walls. More importantly, he believed there were things worth the sacrifice of one’s freedom and even of one’s life. If honoring Christ’s birth at midnight cost him either, he would consider it an honor to hand one or both over to the authorities. And the priest took courage from the fact that there were nearly a quarter of a million Christians in town, thousands of which were ready to go to jail with him.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen…”

He would not want for good company in prison, he thought with a smile.

Father Green made the journey and was taking the risk for the same reason as the other two hundred and fifty thousand. They gathered to defend Christianity against the latest assault from the ever more secularized government of the United States.

The ACLU had recently sued the Federal government, trying again to force the removal of all religious content from the nation’s public monuments. It was a decades-long crusade which finally met with victory. In their latest thrust, the civil libertarians made themselves bedfellows with Muslim interest groups. Together they claimed that since the religious content on the country’s monuments was Christo-centric, the displays were inherently discriminatory and thus doubly inappropriate for an open, all-inclusive, secular society. They won the opening rounds of the suit in the lower courts which, pending the final Supreme Court ruling, ordered the Federal government to cover up all scripture and other ‘religious propaganda’ on public grounds. Many cities and a few states refused, insisting they would wait for the High Court’s decision. Most however, did as they were told.

“Hail Mary, full of Grace…”

DC’s splenetic mayor, the first avowed socialist to hold the office, wasted no time implementing the court order. His administration got busy duct taping over every scripture and reference to God within their legal reach. Every cross in the capital, including those on the tombstones in Arlington and the one that topped the church where the old priest now sat, was covered up, their ‘offending shapes’ draped over by formless, black, plastic, garbage bags. This redacting of the nation’s religious heritage was as surreal as it was shameless to the Monsignor. The court ruling did, however, galvanize a great response from
the American people. Concerned Christians of every denomination began to descend on the capital almost immediately after the decision was handed down in September. Positions were taken up throughout the city and prayer vigils were being held at the various monuments. The different denominations had all recently agreed to hold their respective Christmas services at midnight in a direct challenge to the law against public displays of religion.

“The Lord is with thee…”

It was that announcement that got Cardinal Redding arrested. The mayor called it an incitement to lawlessness and vowed to stop any religious ritual performed on his streets. There would be a great many people to arrest if the authorities went through with their threats. The priest prayed they didn’t have the gall in them to affront the Good Lord on Christmas Eve, but he was less than optimistic. It saddened the priest. Yet it was the least sacrilegious of secularism’s many sins. Denying the existence of God always precipitated playing God for those in power and Monsignor Francis Green grieved for the secularists’ insistence on doing just that. History was replete with examples and the government of the United States of America had proved itself to be as vulnerable to the temptation for tyranny as any other. The country made its Faustian pact five years ago when it signed on to the Shanghai Accord.

“Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…”

The signing committed America to the United Nations Population Control Initiative. Resolution 2112, as it was designated, was hailed as visionary, ‘the longest range plan for the betterment of mankind and the planet ever devised.’ The participating nations were applauded as ‘heroes in the service of humanity.’ Its celebrity-endorsed, media-championed aim was to ‘save both the species and the planet by bringing the two into a more harmonious balance through the responsible exercise of human reproduction.’ It was, in short, the most ambitious eugenics program in human history. The United States and the other ninety signatory nations agreed to lead by example in the global effort to whittle the world’s population down to the UN’s magic number of five hundred million people in five hundred years. Resolution 2112 pursued its eugenic ends primarily through prevention. Condoms, birth control and morning after pills were made free and universally available. Elementary schools began implanting birth control devices into girls at twelve years of age.

Resolution 2112 also enshrined abortion on demand as a human right that could not be infringed upon by anything as ‘frivolous’ as parental consent or ‘irrational’ as religious belief. It went as far as incentivizing the procedure by paying women for their participation in the ‘campaign against overpopulation.’ And since Resolution 2112 approached eugenics ‘holistically,’ forced sterilization and mandatory abortions were allowed for in the sweeping legislation. The practices were promoted as social duties and necessary procedures when their use could be demonstrated to be in the interest of the species and/ or the environment.

United Nations computer models were created to identify those interests for the participating nations.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen…”

Time Magazine gave its 2016 Man of the Year honor to the organization of the United Nations for taking ‘the first truly global and substantive step towards the creating of a sustainable human civilization, one that will coexist symbiotically with the planet.’ Monsignor Green thought it appropriate that the UN should receive the same honor from the very magazine that lauded that other visionary eugenicist, Adolph Hitler. The priest recognized the same hand of evil at work in the United Nations which once guided the National Socialists of Germany to their monstrous extremes of sin and depravity. He was not alone. Most Christians agreed. They balked at the changes the accord demanded of the country.

“Hail Mary, full of Grace…”

In response, secularists re-doubled their efforts to destroy Christianity.

“The Lord is with thee…”

Persecution of Christians was on the rise. Scores of churches were vandalized, attacked or burned every year. The body count of worshippers was growing alarmingly with every attack. The progressive government and their special interest proxies were assailing Christianity on all sides as well. ‘Priests,’ a pundit recently observed, ‘were spending as much time in courts these days as they were in their churches, and church coffers were being drained by legal battles rather than on the war on poverty.’ The Marriage Equality Act which legalized same-sex marriage across the country was being used by gay activist organizations as a legal pretext to shut down churches that refused to marry homosexu
als. Seminaries that refused gays and women to the ranks of the priesthood were being charged with discrimination and closed. Churches that publically criticized the new laws were fined and often shut down.