Another French RetreatOver the last

Another French Retreat

Over the last couple of months, in light of the Church's opposition to this war, I have carefully weighed and pondered every possible justification for this war that I came across. In the end, I simply cannot in good conscience take a position different than that of our Holy Father, and thus I remain morally opposed to the present war in Iraq. This worked for a while, however, even among other orthodox Catholics things have just become too uncomfortable around St. Blog's for me personally. Our town in Northern Ontario was located less than a hundred miles from the Quebec border. Over half the population in the area was French. My first memories of the faith are all in French, from the good Sisters who taught us how to pray the Rosary (in fact, I could not recite a Hail Mary in the English language until I was in college!) and all my childhood catechesis was conducted in the French language. History, geography, literature and all our other subjects were taught from the classical French-Catholic perspective. And thus I cannot continue to watch both the Church's position concerning this war and the French come under constant attack and remain charitable about it. So I think the best thing at this point would be to take a retreat from St. Blog until the war is over, and pray for a peaceful resolution to this whole crisis.