Fight Without Mercy?

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The sixth commandment of chivalry reads, "Thou shalt make war against the infidel without cessation and without mercy." This commandment may be offensive to modern ears.

In order to comprehend such a commandment, we must first understand that God, Our Lord Himself, established a total war between good and evil, between the race of the Woman and the race of the Serpent: "I shall put enmities between you and the Woman; between your race and hers. You shall lie in wait for her heel and she shall crush your head" (Genesis 3:15).

As St. Louis de Montfort explained in his masterpiece True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, "God has never made and formed but one enmity; but it is an irreconcilable one, which shall endure and grow even to the end." This enmity, the saint explains, "is between Mary, His worthy Mother and the Devil — between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and tools of Lucifer."

This war will end only at the end of time, when the second coming of Our Lord will take place, in chivalric grandeur and military magnificence, as St. John relates (Revelation 19:11–21):

And I saw Heaven opened: And behold a white horse. And He that sat upon him was called faithful and true: and with justice doth He judge and fight. ... And His name is called the Word of God. And the armies that are in Heaven followed Him on white horses. ... And out of His mouth proceeds a sharp two-edged sword, that with it He may strike the nations. And He shall rule them with a rod of iron. And He hath on His garment and on His thigh written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. ... And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies, gathered together to make war with Him that sat upon the horse and with His army…. [They] were cast alive into the pool of fire burning with brimstone. And the rest were slain by the sword of Him that sits upon the horse, which proceeds out of His mouth.

Pope St. John Paul II instructed young people on the importance of clearly understanding and communicating God's teachings. Speaking in Rome in 1981, he told them:

Learn to think, speak and act in accordance to the evangelical simplicity and clarity: Yes, yes; no, no. Learn to call white, white; and black, black. To call good, good; and evil, evil. To call sin, sin, and not to call it liberation or progress, even if fashion or propaganda are opposed to this teaching.

History is a great crusade against sin — an unceasing, truceless battle between good and evil, order and disorder, obedience and anarchy. During the First Crusade, the crusaders surrounded Jerusalem, which was held by the Turks. The Arabs of Egypt came to offer an alliance with the Christians. If refused, the Arabs would wage war against the Christians.

One knight stood up and asked, "How can this be possible? How can we have an alliance with Moslems? So we are going to see the standard of Christ mixed with the standard of the infidels?" He told the ambassadors that the Christian soldiers did not want the alliance, as they would be willing to make war against both the Turks and the Arabs of Egypt.

Catholic men are the spiritual descendants of these crusaders, charged with the duty to uphold virtue and combat sin. How can Catholic men today fulfill the sixth commandment of doing battle against the infidel?

Today's men today are not called to literally and physically wage war against non-Catholics, for "our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Ephesians 6:12).

Instead, we are called to wage spiritual war.  There are three ways to accomplish this: 

1. Develop a devotion to St. Michael the Archangel
2. Fight against the Culture of Death and the sexual revolution, including the specific evils of contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilization, euthanasia, sodomy and transgenderism
3. Defend the Catholic faith and Christian morals against those who are misleading the faithful, including clerics

Continue this spiritual fight ceaselessly, bearing in mind St. Joan of Arc's motto: "Les soldats combattrons, et Dieu donnera la victoire" — "The soldiers will fight, and God will give the victory!"

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