23Feb1941: The world does not know it, but the Church is doing at this moment what it has traditionally done through the centuries, preserving justice during war. She is doing for justice what London is doing for art. Just as in these days, when barbarians rain down fiery death from the skies, the British Government packs up its art treasures, sends them out into the country for safe hiding places until the war is over, when barbarians rain down fiery death from the skies, the British Government packs up its art treasures, sends them out into the country for safe hiding places until the war is over, when the treasures will once more be restored to galleries for a people that needs art for its culture and tradition; so too, in times of war throughout the ages, when man scorned justice and charity and settled their disputes by violence, the Church gathered to herself the immutable principles of Christ so that when wars ceased, the nations which repudiated them could once more rebuild civilizations anew upon them.
     But there is this difference between the attitude of the world to the Church now and in the past. Previously when men's passions made them forget justice momentarily, they nevertheless wanted to return to justice when their passions subsided.  They did wrong, but they never denied it was wrong. Today, on the contrary, nations not only violate the laws of justice, they even deny there is justice. Because there is a repudiation of a fixed standard of justice, men and nations have no concept of an equilibrium which should be restored after the violation of law.  The geometrician who in his inaccuracies or the slip of a pen draws an isosceles triangle with all unequal sides, can repair his error as long as he preserved his standard that an isosceles triangle has two equal sides. In the days of Christian civilization when international equilibrium was disturbed, men could always resort to the due order of things because a moral authority preserved it during their infidelities. But today where international justice is indentified with expediency, men no longer know what is right when they want to get back to it.  That makes regeneration and reconstruction well-nigh impossible.
      But whether or not they will accept a justice grounded in the objective order does not alter the fact that the Church is keeping it for them, if they want it. When this war is over, the Church which will be the only institution to survive it organically, as it has survived all wars in the past, will go to the wounded and bleeding nations and say: "Here, my sons, are the principles of immutable justice, the rejection of which brought you into war." Whether or not the nations will accept those principles as the foundation upon which they will reconstruct a just international order, remains to be seen. But they can be sure of this: IF they continue to exile morality and justice in the next post-war generation as they did in the last, they will only prepare for another dirty mess wherein new-fangled tyrannies and apostate democracies by progressive demoralization will outbid one another in the surrender of the last vestige of Christianity. The danger is that as this war goes on, men will consider peace only as a cessation of hostilities rather than the product of justice, just as presently they think freedom is the absence of law rather than the environment of duty.  The mistake the world makes is to think that peace is something directly sought. It is not. Rather, peace is indirectly achieved. It is a by-product, like bloom on a cheek. First you have health, then you have the glorious bloom. In like manner, first you have justice, then you have peace. But to seek peace without justice is only to put rouge on the international cheeks- and the first good rain storm of selfishness will wash it away.
      It is not peace we must work toward- as if peace were something static like a tree- or the maintenance of the status quo, or the preservation of the present division of wealth. Peace is not a passive but an active condition. It is balance in movement; the tranquility of order. For that reason, Our Lord never said: "Blessed are the peaceful", but "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matt 5:9).
      There is the dilemma which confronts the nations: Will they return to an ethical concept of justice or continue to confuse justice with expediency, for example, by calling Russia, as we do, "a friendly nation." There is fundamentally only one test for the dignity of nations. Shall they think that their dignity is lowered by admitting a universal moral principle, even when it goes against them?
We are living in days of fear and there is no escape from fear except trust. Everything else we have trusted has failed us: Universal education, progress, science, liberalism, totalitarianism. There is no one left to trust but the Father from whose house as prodigal children we left for a false freedom.
      I do not know whom you are going to trust, but if my personal trust has any interest for you, I shall trust the only moral authority left in the world, the Chief Shepherd and Vicar of Jesus Christ; and I shall trust in that authority to the end of my life, if God’s Truth and Justice which He gave to His Church cannot be trusted, then nothing can be trusted. I shall trust it, too, because I want a messenger and envoy of Christ who has not tampered with His message because he met a liberal or a scientist or a Bolshevik on the roadway. I shall trust it because I want an authority that is right, not right when the world is right, but right when the world is wrong. I shall trust it because "experience has taught us that no worldly calculations, no human foresights, no political expedients can bring remedy to the grave disorders from which mankind is suffering." I shall trust it because "Christ alone is the ‘corner stone’ (Ephesians 2:20) on which man and society can find stability and salvation" (Summi Pontificatus). I shall trust it because the history of the last few centuries of the wisest men. I can see no hope unless we reverse the present order and admit that instead of politics setting limits to religion and morality of Jesus Christ, religion and the morality of Jesus Christ must begin to set limits to politics.