FAST FOOD AD 2026, Thirty-Seventh Helping

FAST FOOD AD 2026, Thirty-Seventh Helping

There is no evil of which Washington is incapable. Not one! More accurately, there is no evil of which, those who control the U.S. Government and their obedient underlings are incapable. The same is true of the British Government, the German Government, the French Government, the Israeli Government, the Russian Government, the Chinese Government, etc.

I studied in Catholic moral theology the ancient principle of Roman law, the principle of responsibility in solido, which means that each individual in a group bears total, complete responsibility for the entire moral duty or fault of the collective, rather than just a fractional share. The public knows it in terms of a proverb: ‘The one who holds the bag is as much a thief as the one who steals the money.’ When two persons conspire to commit a crime together, e.g., an assassin and the one who hires him or the bank robber and the driver of the getaway car, you hand down a full prison sentence for them both, and everyone understands that the responsibility may not be cut in halves.

A crime like that of Hiroshima requires thousands of people sharing direct responsibility: politicians, scientists, technicians, workers, pilots. Every one of them pacifies his or her conscience and says, “I am not responsible for this,” by telling himself or herself that the total responsibility is divided among them all. Thereby, my need for remorse and repentance is quite negligible.

So, we have come to this absurdity. A caveman gives someone a blow with his club, knows that he has done wrong and repents of it. A pilot fills the bomb bay of his plane with what in a short period of time will liquidate 60,000 Japanese, and he need not repent. He is just being obedient to orders. He who gives the orders is responsible, not he who executes them.

If I understand the nurturers of conscience in military obedience correctly (including military chaplains), they would have us identify individual politicians like Trump, Netanyahu, and Zelenskyy as the only ones morally responsible for the mass murders of contemporary, high-tech industrial war, when in fact tens of thousands of other human beings had to go along with the evil project for it to take place.

There is only one way to extricate ourselves from this macabre word-play, which tries to justify participation in a conspiracy to do evil. We must tell Christian youngsters that the call to obedience can be the call of temptation. Realistically recognizing how all governments operate and the moral consciences of those who generally claw their way to the top of a government, Bishops, priests, and lay people should and must educate Christian children for conscientious objection rather than conscientious obedience to government orders that are contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

Throughout history, Christian children have known all too little regarding the virtue of objection. To the children’s spiritual, moral, mental and physical maiming and destruction, and to the shame of their Bishops, priests and religious educators, they have known all too much of the theology of blind obedience.

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

For more Fast Foods, visit https://www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org/category/fastfood2026/

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!