1944

“What the Catholic Church is hoping and working for… is the reestablishment… of the ‘Real State,’ a rigid hierarchical system wherein inferiors are subject to superiors. In this system each individual, like a cell in a body, must humbly submit to his fate and occupy his “natural place” which is allotted to him from birth and have no desire to get away from it.

“…the cause of all anti-Semitism springs from the denial of equal rights and citizenship to Jews in pre-Reformation Christianity… this denial was dogmatized into Christian society by the popes… It was revived in France immediately after the collapse of democracy there in June 1940, and was put into effect by the decrees of the ‘Christian’ Petain-Laval regime on October 18, 1940.

“The two main changes that came about as a result of the Protestant Reformation concerned: l) the reassertion of the true faith in Christ and His saving work; 2) a new culture of freedom in the social order.

The time is World War II. Rex Madden is an American flier in the European campaign who loses his courage after seeing his companions meet death in the skies. Fear overwhelms him.