FAST FOOD (2014): Twenty-Second Helping

FAST FOOD (2014): Twenty-Second Helping

Again, “We adore God Who is love, Who in Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, Who offered Himself on the Cross to expiate our sins, and through the power of this love, rose from the dead and lives in His Church. We have no God other than Him.” (Pope Francis, 6/21/14)

In FAST FOOD Helping Twenty-One I wrote, “A great and grave crisis of truth exists in today’s institutional Churches—and is being ecumenically and deceitfully swept under the ecclesiological carpet.” This is the case because most of today’s institutional Churches believe and teach that they “share the faith of the primitive Church,” yet they engage in the carnage and the human butchery of war and the spirits and acts that war absolutely requires. Beyond engaging in such activities and with such spirits, they justify it as in conformity with the faithfully following of Jesus and His Way and following the will of God as revealed by Him. Such teaching and belief is in obvious contradiction to what we know of Jesus “through the witness of the primitive Church,”

“A great and grave crisis of truth exists in today’s institutional Churches” and by Churches is meant the Christians, regardless of rank, who compose them. The grave crisis of truth is that over a billion Christians and most of their Church leaders and Churches are obstinately flaunting their disregard for the sine qua non governing principle for the human search for truth and for the communication of truth, namely, the principle of non-contradiction. The principle of non-contradiction simply stated is this: Between two logical and meaningful propositions “X” and “not X” there is no middle ground. If one is true the other is false. The principle of non-contradiction is that without adherence to which truthful communication between and among people is impossible. Between these two statements, “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” “There are not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” only one can be true. The principle of non-contradiction is also that without which morality is impossible. Even stronger are Pope Benedict XVI’s words regarding it,“Contradictory things cannot be means to salvation.”

In relation to the matter under discussion this means that if Jesus teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies as the Way of discipleship, then it is impossible that He teaches a Way of justified violence and enmity as the Way of discipleship. If the primitive Church’s witness to Jesus—the only witness there is by which to ascertain anything at all about Him— communicates that Jesus was Nonviolent and taught by word and deed a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies unto death, then the witness of the primitive Church to Jesus cannot communicate that Jesus was violent and taught by word and deed a Way of justified violence and enmity. If one is true, the other is false! Most of the Churches of Christianity today profess to share the faith of the primitive Church, and yet they, that is the Christians in them—with the explicit approval of their pastors as high up on the hierarchical pyramid as one can climb—maim and kill other human beings and believe they are living lives as faithful discipleship of Jesus.

If the faith of the primitive Church had no moral dimension that was directly tied to Jesus, if its faith in Jesus did not include Him as the revealer of good and evil, of right from wrong, of what God’s will is and what God’s will is not, of what the Way of righteousness is and what the way of the wickedness is, then to share in the faith of the primitive Church and to share the faith of the primitive Church with others would be sharing a faith in Jesus devoid of any unique moral content. If such were the witness of the primitive Church then Jesus would be a totally morally neutral person without any teachings or commands of a moral nature concerning the will of God and how people should think, speak and act. If such were the case there would be no problem in maintaining that one shares the faith of the primitive Church and one is faithfully following Jesus while sallying forth to slaughter and maim other human beings, even other Christians, for the greater honor and glory of Uncle Sam, Mother Russia, John Bull, or God and country.

But if the primitive Church possessed a faith that included truths communicated by Jesus about what the will of God is and therefore how His disciple must change their minds, words and deeds to live in accordance with it, then there would be a great and grave crisis of truth if a Church and/or a Christian today said they shared in the faith of the primitive Church and then proceeded to sallied forth to kill and maim people for any reason. Why? Because, “If Jesus—meaning the Jesus of the primitive Church “as faithfully handed on to us in the Gospels” (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Sec.#18,)—did not reject any type of violence for any purpose, then we know nothing of him.”

To maintain that a Church and a Christian are sharing in the faith of the primitive Church and sharing the faith of the primitive Church with others while they are justifying killing and maiming people is a breach of the principle of non-contradiction—between two logical and meaningful propositions “X” and “not X” there is no middle ground. If one is true the other is false. Such a proclamation of Jesus Christ and His Gospel would be an irrational, illogical cacophonous proclamation, to which no human being should give credence and no Christian should give credence or allegiance because it is a blatant lie, which cannot be a means to salvation.

Yet more than a billion Christians do give credence and allegiance to a “truth” that cannot be the truth because it is arrived at by way of defying the principle of non-contradiction. When Mahatma Gandhi says, “Only Christians do not see Jesus as nonviolent,” he is not making a spiritual point. He is simply and gently, and I think quite persuasively, trying to communicate factually and rationally to the Churches and to Christians that they are being illogical and irrational and therefore being untruthful to themselves about Jesus and the option of violence in the human situation.

When such Churches and Christians say, “We have no God other than Him” is this Him the same Him as the Him of the primitive Church and of the Gospels?

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy (To be continued)