Forty-Fourth Annual Time of Prayer and Fasting for
The Truth of Gospel Nonviolence
July 1-August 9
Our Lamb has conquered. Him let us follow.
FAST FOOD AD 2026, Eleventh Helping
As stated and documented in FAST FOOD 7, pacifism in the strict sense of an unconditional commitment to the total renunciation of war by an organized community of individuals is, historically speaking, original with Christianity. For tens of thousands of years before the dawn of Christianity human beings had organized themselves into violent employing groups or gangs or tribes or nations in order to survive, to feel secure and protected, to have order and to prosper materially.
From time immemorial this is the only way groups of homo sapiens existed. Because of the intrinsic capacity of all human beings to ask questions, questions like why am I here, where did I come from, how should I live, what is to happen to me after I die, the notion of the possibility of God enters into human consciousness and into the individual and collective life of homo sapiens. Eventually the God idea gets focused on what is God’s relationship, if any, to my particular group, gang, tribe or nation?
The history of God, or perhaps more accurately the history of the God idea, in homo sapiens’ history is a facet of historical reality about which every person, regardless of religious preference, should be apprised at least as fully as they are informed about humanity’s wars. All human beings are born into history and are therefore partially, but significantly, made by the history that preceded them in existence. An aspect of the history that preceded each and by which each is affected or afflicted in ways known and unknown is the history of the idea of God.
As a Christian and a Catholic I see nothing threatening to my faith, and much that is potentially enhancing of it, in being aware of the history of the idea of God. Having even some knowledge of how the idea of God was experienced and/or used individually and collectively for thousands of years by now anonymous homo sapiens and how to this day that history is shaping events in human existence is, I think, helpful in discerning the truth and significance of the Nonviolent Jesus who lived in Israel in Palestine two thousand years ago for about 33 years and in encountering the importance His revelation of Nonviolent Love of all as the Father’s Holy will, which is to “be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
An astonishing, telling, revelatory, powerful and indisputable piece of the history of the idea of God for Christians and their Churches is, or absolutely should be, that there is no known instance of total conscientious objection to participation in war by a community or of the advocacy of such objection by a community of people before the first three centuries of Christianity, which began its historical presence in obedience to and in memory of Jesus immediately after His life, murder and resurrection.
Historical presence here means existence not simply as a new and previously unheard of thought, but also as a new and previously unknown enfleshing of that thought day in and day out for three hundred consecutive years. During this time Christianity was an illegal religion in the Empire with every man, woman and child living continually under the threat of torture and death. Also, during this time there were at least three “Final Solution” persecutions instituted by the Caesars. Yet the nonviolent Christian community not only survived but flourished, growing to be the second largest religion in the Roman Empire by AD 300 and a unique entity in all of human history and existence.
So when Ambrose, Augustine and other Bishops and priests and laymen began their campaign in the fourth century to turn the Christian community into a violence employing group, gang, tribe or nation like every other such group, gang, tribe or nation that had ever existed in history, they were destroying the first, the one and the only pacifist society, community and organization that ever existed in history, whose Founder and definitive source for authentic revelation and moral truth was Jesus via His life, teaching, murder and resurrection. The horrid evil consequence of their work and false witness is spread across seventeen centuries for all to see, if they wish to see.
What is very troubling to me is why popes, cardinals bishops and priests continue to actively work to align the Church with the ancient spirits, mindsets and methods of groups, gangs, tribes and nations that rule today’s violence employing and justifying secular organizations and states, instead of with the Spirit, Mind and Method of Jesus in the Gospels and of their brother and sisters in the Body of Christ in the first three hundred years of the Church when something radically unique and wonderful and life-saving in the history of homo sapiens came into existence.
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org
https://www.youtube.com/@emmanuelcharlesmccarthy3292
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Love.
Heaven and earth are full of Your glory!
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is He, Who comes in the Name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest!”
