Father Rutler: Persistence in Truth

Fr. George Rutler

The legend of King Robert the Bruce, exiled from Scotland in a cave off the Irish coast in 1306, resembles a similar story in the Bible about King David when he was a boy. King Robert watched a spider finally manage to make a web after failing in several attempts. Thus the child’s rhyme: “If at first you don’t succeed, Try, try, try again.” Our Lord’s parable of the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-8) is about a poor widow who persisted in getting the judge to hear her case. The refined translation says that the judge wearied of her importuning, but the Greek has the judge fearing that she would punch him. That was a woman who would not give up.

To discourage is to lose heart. It is a trick of the Anti-Christ and the very opposite of Christ who encourages. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). The widow in the parable reminds one of the Damas de Blanco—Ladies in White—who are wives and mothers of political prisoners in the gulags of Communist Cuba. Mostly Afro-Cubans, they formed in 2003 to protest the large-scale arrest of their kin who included journalists and human rights activists. From then on, every Sunday, they attend Mass in Havana and then process in white clothing to a park where, despite their peaceful witness, they frequently have been beaten and jailed.

Their persistence has been an embarrassment to many outside Cuba who choose to ignore the devastation wrought by Marxism. Even some leading churchmen indulge the gossamer hope that appeasement will convert evil to good. The Ladies in White were hurt but not thwarted when a U.S. presidential executive order in 2013 lifted sanctions against Cuba, while requiring no reform of its dictatorship. “Peace for our time” was predictably delusional, and political oppression increased: there were 1,095 detainees in 2016, up from 718 in 2015. Our social media applauded the capitulation, its accompanying festivities, and our own government’s “easy speeches” that, as Chesterton said, “comfort cruel men.”

On June 16 in Miami, our President fulfilled a campaign promise by signing a directive imposing sanctions that will not be lifted until Cuba frees political prisoners and holds free elections. He also explicitly mentioned the persistence of the Ladies in White. Berta Soler, a leader of the Ladies in White, whose husband has been serving a twenty-year sentence, replied: “These days, Mr. President, when most of the world responds with a deafening silence to the harassment, arbitrary detentions, beatings, house searches, and robberies against peaceful opponents, human rights activists and defenseless women, your words of encouragement are most welcomed.” It was like the parable of the undaunted widow: “And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night?” 

Father Rutler’s book, The Stories of Hymns – The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns, is available through Sophia Institute Press (Paperback or eBook) and Amazon (Paperback or Kindle).