FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Open Letter to Prince Harry

Rant Number 523    22 January 2013

So Harry, you have done it: you have killed.

Too bad you have ruled yourself out of a job: as a priest.  No one who had shed blood, even in a just war, even by accident, was deemed fit for Holy Orders. Christ, the Prince of Peace who gave his blood for the salvation of all, could not be represented by the archetypical man of violence, the killer. Canon Law was explicit. And yet, Christ never declared soldiering sinful as such.

LBC Radio James O’ Brien this morning wimpishly bemoaned your candour. Paddy Ashdown, formerly NATO Gauleiter in Bosnia – a.k.a. Paddy Pantsdown - once refused to say whether he had ever killed. Behaviour more like a gentleman’s, O’ Brien suggested. But since when is hypocrisy gentlemanly? War is war. A warrior’s job entails the necessity of being a killer. The plainest truth but nothing but the truth. Western culture and its moaning minnies seek to disguise the harshness, the violence, the brutality inherent in soldiering. They like to pretend soldiers are like social workers, ‘carers’ and the like. They lie. Soldiers are men who must kill or get killed. A man who can’t stand the heat should get out of the kitchen and a soldier who can’t bring himself to shoot the enemy is in the wrong job. That’s that.

Mind you, Harry, the priest does not wish you to feel that you should be gung-ho about fighting this war. Another prince soldier, Marcus Aurelius, the head of the Roman Empire, spent years warring against German tribes in the snows of the Eastern frontier. His musings are a monument to the humanity and the wisdom of a great soldier cum philosopher. ‘A spider seeks to entrap flies, I hunt barbarians: what is the difference?’ the noble man asked himself. Your classics master at Eaton would have done well to teach you about Marcus, my good Prince.

Or should you, perhaps better – after all, aren’t you a Christian Prince? - be like St Augustine’s sorrowful soldier? A man who fights because he has to, because the justice of the cause, the defence of the people require it? In that necessary warfare the just warrior may have to kill but, if he has to, he does it with ‘a heavy heart’. The Christian conscience demands no less. Is that asking too much?

The dogmatic men of the French Enlightenment, les philosophes, the preachers of the abstract cults of reason and humanity, the despisers of religion, thought a soldier was simply a murderer in uniform. They ruthlessly stripped the military profession of any romantic halo. Maybe not so wrong when armies where composed chiefly of mercenaries, men paid to enlist – ‘soldier’ derives from ‘solidus’, a gold coin, the money one got paid to fight – did they teach you that at Eton, I wonder? Ironically, the French revolution, and the American war of independence before that, the Enlightenment’s crowning achievement, turned that upside down. Mercenaries were out and citizens were in. Bearing arms, serving in uniform became a privilege, a prerogative of the people, a patriotic affair. Killers in uniform became the custodian of liberty and war was transformed into a patriotic duty, a passport to civic, democratic glory. Remarkable how today’s progressives and lefties of all hues seem to ignore the roots of modern, murderous warfare.

Actually, democratic, popular wars resulted in hecatombs. Mountains of dead. Napoleon, the bastard offspring of the Revolution, sacrificed millions of citizen soldiers in Russia and never game a damn. The mass, democratic and ideological wars of the 20th century have brought on the greatest human holocausts in history – that is progress for you.

The Afghan war in which you are fighting is a big blunder, dear Harry. Worse than a crime, it is a mistake. Because unnecessary and unwinnable. That means that it serves no real purpose, no ultimate end. War is intrinsically a teleological affair, an activity directed upon an end. And the end of war is victory. But what when victory is clearly not achievable, like this war? Britain has already decided to pull out its troops by next year so...what is the point of this fighting? Why do people have to die? For Hamid Karzai and his government of corrupt crooks? It is a senseless, wasteful enterprise. ‘War for its own sake would be stupid’, St Thomas Aquinas taught. How right the Saint was.

Will your frankness about your job satisfaction, taking the enemy ‘out of the game’, killing them, put your future life, any life in jeopardy? I don’t buy that. The Taliban do not need a reason or an excuse to fight and kill the infidel invaders. Still, they are fighting in their own country – you are not. They have a right to be there. They will still be there when you and other foreigners have gone back home. Remember that.

Dear Prince, I doubt you are aware of a prophecy. That of Nostradamus. A delicate affair because it regards the next person to sit on the British throne. You see, Nostradamus says it will not be your father Charles who will succeed your grandmother. Nor will your brother William. It will be you. Indeed. Believe it or not, it will be Henry IX. A warrior king.

Enough. Dear Harry, my favourite image of yours is not that of the butch helicopter gunship pilot. Or of the high jinks lad, fooling around with strumpets in night clubs or appearing drunk and stark naked at private parties. It is that of a little boy, a little child looking lost, about to burst into tears. It is you following the coffin of your mother in Westminster Abbey, back in 1997, after her sudden death. You looked so vulnerable, so desperately sad and alone. But you are not alone now. Diana your mother looks down upon you from Heaven. She loves you. She cares for you. She prays for you. Do not forget her. Be worthy to become the Prince, the good and noble person she desires you to be.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli