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What's Wrong with the World

October 7, 1571: Lepanto

Beneath this revolt loomed another thing, destined to remake the world and drag everything of the secular order, and much of the spiritual order in its train: the rise of the modern nation-state. Already King Philip II was subjecting the Church in Spain to his policy, through the institution of the Inquisition. The succeeding generation would witness the rise of the France of Cardinal Richelieu, that ablest of nationalists, and the final consolidation of the nation, not the church, as the source of order and stability in the Western world. Out of this cacophony of the dying mediaeval age and the birth pangs of the modern, Pope Saint Pius V, Don John of Austria, and many thousands of simple Christian sailors and marines delivered to the West a great victory, and a last hurrah for Christendom.

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- March 14, 2010 -

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