I have blogged before about the idea of each one of us needing to take action against societal evils; about the ideal of standing up for a worthy cause even when "there is no general enthusiasm, no great idealistic upsurge", in the words of theologian Dorothee Solle. I have just finished doing so again, in my looking askance at the OHS for their sale of the Frederick Banting homestead. While I understand that many would roll their eyes at me and dismiss me as being "too serious" (I have been told that more than once) I see every cause as a potential great one, since everything is so intertwined on our little blue planet that you never know when the mere beginning of one will turn out to be the very heart of more than one other. I see every cause, therefore, as worthy of honesty and integrity, of genuine caring involvement.
Having read my entry about Sophie Scholl and her valiant struggle to be heard in her denouncing of the evil behemoth that was Hitler's Nazism, a reader has told me about the Austrian farmer Franz Jagerstatter, who refused to fight for Hitler. In 1938, when the Nazis overran Austria, Jagerstatter took up his stance of refusing to co-operate with the Nazis. The story is told that when he was greeted with the omnipresent "Heil Hitler!" he would respond with "Pfui Hitler!".
In 1943 he was called to fight, receiving notice of his draft. He refused to report for duty, even though he was admonished to take up his duty of "obeying the authorities". This excuse is used by so many as a shelter behind which to hide from the onerous effort required to make a difference in their world. To him it was an abhorrent idea when the authorities were the Nazis. He was imprisoned, and after a military trial, he was beheaded on August 9, 1943.
Jagerstatter is another of the people I think every high school student should learn about. Since he was Catholic, I also think he is a man who should be fast-tracked to canonization - way, way ahead of the late John Paul, the I'm-Holier-than-Everyone pontiff that the church seems to be in such a hurry to make a saint.
John Paul and his gem-encrusted robes did nothing to make the world a better place. The Nazi war machine continued to roll on after '43, but it wasn't because Jagerstatter didn't try. He set an example that speaks to the ideal of caring for the downtrodden far more than any pontiff I know of has ever done. This simple farmer stood up for the right even when there was no general enthusiasm, even when the price tag for doing so would be his very life. John Paul never faced such daunting danger.
We should give honour where it is due, to people like Franz Jagerstatter and Frederick Banting. We should see in them an example of how to reach out to others and for others, and we should follow the blueprint they helped to create for the ending of terrorism in this world. We should respect them as a light against the darkness that threatens soon to engulf us all. If there is any hope for our species, it is in such people as these.