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FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL TIME OF PRAYER AND FASTING FOR THE TRUTH OF GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE JULY 1-AUGUST 9 FAST FOOD (AD 2024): First Helping The people God chooses and creates, the Jews,…
Thank you for visiting this website, which is a compilation of all the work that Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy has done in the last fifty (50) years plus. The purpose of this website is to provide information on the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospel, which calls for a radical alteration in thought patterns, verbal patterns, behavioural patterns, and emotional patterns.
No one inside or outside the Catholic Church can reasonably call into question the good intentions of Popes who have denounced war on the world stage and who have proclaimed in encyclicals and pastoral letters the evils and destruction of war, and who have appealed for peace. So also, it can be said no one inside or outside the Catholic Church can reasonably call into question that the proclamations and pronouncements of Popes have been utterly impotent and ineffectual with regards to war. People, the press, politicians, the predator-elites, and most Catholics politely listen, politely applaud, and politely ignore them.
War’s toll on human beings today in terms of human misery and ruination cries out for the Pope and Bishops to do more than recite the same old inept, pagan-rooted, “baptized” philosophical responses to war, which have more than proven their inability to change the minds and hearts of the men and women who start wars and of the men and women who are Catholics who execute the evil that is war.
If the Gospels’ truth be told, the only definitive, efficacious, and salvific response that the Catholic Church can make to peace on earth is the one that Jesus made to peace on earth. He rejected all violence and enmity. The Church, if it is to make any difference in this world in relation to the evil of war, must truthfully teach what Jesus teaches in the Gospels about how to respond to violence and enmity, and then formally and infallibly declare that Catholics can never participate under any circumstances in war, without entering into grave evil and incurring the consequences of mortal sin.
Popes and Bishops fiddle-faddle around with more encyclicals and pastorals on how evil war is, while at the same time trying to propagate new names, new rationales, and new criteria for justifying Catholic participation in war or in new methods of war, is a waste of time. Such documents are nothing but attempts to put a new shade of lipstick on a very old pig, namely, Catholic Just War Theory.
The Catholic Church will make no real contribution to peace on earth by mechanically telling the secular economic, political, and military predator-elites of nations and their paid and trained killers, when they can go to war, how they must conduct themselves in war, etc. For the Christian and for the Church being socially responsible means, and can only mean, faithfully following and teaching the Way that Jesus lives and teaches in the Gospels. What is inconsistent with this Way is for the Christian and the Church social irresponsibility. Jesus teaches no one when or how to kill enemies. And, I would suggest it would be blasphemy to say that God incarnate was socially irresponsible!
If a Pope in his time as Pope does not want to proclaim the truth that Jesus teaches in the Gospels in relation to the momentous moral evil of the mass slaughter of war, then as Pope he has nothing realistic, effective, or salvific to offer to his fellow Catholics or to humanity on the matter of confronting the evil of war. Popes must stop deceiving themselves into believing that anyone in any of the war rooms of any nation cares a jot about how the Catholic Pope and Bishops sift the minutiae of logic and facts via the murky microscopic lens of Catholic Just War Theory in order to distinguish, say, between morally permitted defensive war and morally prohibited offensive war, or to distinguish between morally justified killing of the innocent, in utero and post-utero, under the exculpatory rubric of collateral damage and morally unjustified killing of the innocent in utero and post-utero under the rubric of collateral damage, etc.
Popes and Bishops are not commissioned by Jesus to be a coterie of “wise philosophical counselors” to the world’s operationally pagan secular power brokers. They are commissioned by Jesus to make all people His disciples, to Baptize them and then to “teach them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:16-20). Teaching them “to obey all that I have commanded you,” does not and cannot include teaching them how to morally engage in war, since the acts that war demands daily are in direct and explicit violation of the teaching of Jesus, God Incarnate, regarding God’s Will.
Popes are commissioned by Jesus to “feed my sheep,” not to “poison my sheep,” by saturating their minds and hearts, their spirits, and souls, from the moment of infant or adult Baptism onward with pseudo-authoritative teachings on how to follow Jesus and kill and maim other human beings—even fellow Christians—in war.
Hence, Popes and Bishops if they desire to be faithful to the commissions given them by Jesus must, beginning in this time, infallibly teach the following:
(1) Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances—friends and enemies—is for all Catholics the definitive and binding revelation of God’s Will;
(2) This revelation, always and everywhere, and under all circumstances, morally forbids Jesus’ disciple from ever participating in war;
(3) Because of the gross, chronic and near universal mis-catechesis on this most grave matter over many centuries past and down to the present day, it has now reached the point where “the love of Christ impels us” for the salvation of all souls, to state with maximal spiritual, moral, and ecclesiastical authority the moral impossibility of Catholics participating in war.
This must be proclaimed ex cathedra, that is, as an Infallible Theological and Moral Dogma of the Faith of the Catholic Church. If it is not infallibly stated it will be tossed off as just another statement from the Pope, which as the late Catholic Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Anton Scalia, said when Pope John Paul II declared that capital punishment was no longer needed and was therefore immoral, “That is his opinion.”
Infallible proclamations should be very rare and should only be employed when a grossly false understanding of Jesus or His teaching has become entrenched, normalized, perennial and uncorrectable by any other means. Today, approximately 1.5 billion Catholics believe that they can be faithful disciples of Jesus and simultaneously engage in the mass slaughter and maiming of other human beings in war. That figure will be 2 billion in a few years without this, ex cathedra, moral dogma.
The only legitimate reason for the Church not making such an Infallible Declaration would be, if what is being infallibly declared is not logically consistent with the infallible truth that the infallible Jesus teaches in the Gospels as well as with the oral Tradition that pre-dates the Gospels. However, such an Infallible Declaration is utterly consistent with what Jesus teaches by word and deed in the Gospels and in the Tradition that precedes the Gospels.
If the Pope and/or the Catholic Bishops refuse to explicitly and infallibly teach to their Baptized people what the Lord Jesus explicitly and infallibly teaches on violence and enmity and its application to the mass homicidal violence of war, then for the love of Christ and His people, I would ask that they please, at least, discontinue their inane talk about how to follow Jesus and do the will of God as Jesus reveals it, and at the same time be engaged in the human slaughter and carnage of war.
Neither the world nor the Catholic people need another thousand years of interminable gibbering and jabbering from Popes and Bishops on how to morally weaponize Christianity and how to morally weaponize the mind, soul, body, and spirit of a Catholic Baptized into Christ.
Theology and Spirituality of Gospel Nonviolence (GNV) were recorded on 8th June 2010 at Kimmage Manor, Dublin, Congregation of the Holy Spirit, Province of Ireland by Peter McGuinness. It discusses the inconsistency between faith in Jesus (the Prince of Peace) and war, abortion, violence, hatred etc. from GNV Team.
A reflection on the Eucharist
(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
Outside of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist has no Christian meaning. Everything about it must ultimately be referenced to Him and then through Him to Abba. The same is true of the Christian life. Jesus is the ultimate norm of Christian existence; everything must be referenced to Him…
FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL TIME OF PRAYER AND FASTING FOR THE TRUTH OF GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE JULY 1-AUGUST 9 FAST FOOD (AD 2024): First Helping The people God chooses and creates, the Jews,…
FORTY-FIRST FORTY DAY FAST FOR THE TRUTH OF GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE JULY 1-AUGUST 9 FAST FOOD, Fortieth Helping Friends, I feel like a slacker having only a picture to send out as…
Father John Hugo of Pittsburgh, gave me some tapes of your conference on the Theology of Nonviolence. The logic was so convincing that I have duplicated them and given them to friends and we have listened and studied them together.
Frank Gorgan of Redwood City, California, has ordered several sets and distributed them in his area.Gary KohlsMD
Fr. Charles McCarthy presents one of the most academically rigorous and thorough expositions I’ve encountered of gospel nonviolence and love of enemies as core teachings of the Christian Scriptures.
One may not agree with all of the practical conclusions he reaches as a result of that teaching, but it is beyond dispute that he bares a central tenet of the faith that is most often ignored or justified out of existence.
Dare to listen in knowing that you will be challenged and that your understanding of Christianity, and your life as a Christian, will be altered.
Tom Roberts EditorNational Catholic Reporter
…Barbara and I both send our greetings to you…You started me on some new ways of thinking which I deeply appreciate.
AgapeMorton (Kelsey)
Recently Candy lent me a tape she made of a talk given at a Friday night meeting by Charlie McCarthy, a priest of the Eastern Rite, who might be called a theologian of nonviolence. I was amazed at the closeness of Fr. McCarthy’s concept of nonviolence to that of Dorothy Day. The reason is obvious. Both are scriptural in origin; both base their concepts on Christ Himself. Fr. McCarthy speaks with a kind of eloquent clarity, with more than a touch of prophetic insight. Those who truly desire peace should listen to him.”
Deane MowrerTHE CATHOLIC WORKER, Oct-Nov 1983
It’s easy to say that this or that should be “required” reading/viewing/learning for people who today pose as Jesus followers, but I’m ready to say that about Fr. McCarthy’s powerful, faithful witness to the nonviolent message of Jesus in a way I won’t say it of much else.
Anyone asking why there needs to be an Every Church A Peace Church or Living Peace Church movement today can find their answer here http://www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org/data/Media/WEB_2TeachWJT_04a.pdf in Charlie’s essay “To Teach What Jesus Taught: A Call to Fidelity.”
John Stoner
Fr. McCarthy is the most powerful voice for nonviolence in the world today.
Walter WinkProfessor of Biblical Interpretation, Auburn
Of those who have challenged military service from a Christian perspective, the most emphatic to my knowledge are Leo Tolstoy and Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.
Lowell O. ErdahlLutheran Bishop Emeritus, Saint Paul Area Synod, MN
Fr. McCarthy is the best teacher on Christian nonviolence in the United States.
John DearS.J
Fr. McCarthy’s retreat was the turning point in my conversion to Christian Nonviolence.
Fr. George B. ZabelkaCatholic Chaplain to the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Crews
Fr. McCarthy’s retreat is a remarkable contribution to furthering the understanding of Christian Nonviolence—so urgent a need for Christians today. Clergy and laity owe it to themselves, to the Church, to the world and to God to take time to prayerfully ponder what is said here.
Mairead Corrigan MaguireNobel Peace Prize Recipient