“If we wish to create a lasting peace, we must begin with the children.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone* hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Mt 18: 6; Mk 9:42)
-Jesus
* [A large millstone in Jesus’ time was so heavy it had to be pulled by one or two asses.]
“Kids are not naturally violent; they are not born that way, despite what we may think. There are many factors in what makes anyone violent, but the overwhelming proof says that the entertainment industry, through violent programming and video games, is complicit in conditioning our youth to mirror the violence they see on-screen. We have become very good at avoiding the fact that this type of simulated violence has everything to do with the increasing level of violence. Much like our soldiers, children can and do become learned in this behavior, not by drill sergeants and trained military professionals, but by what they see around them. It seems logical to most of us but is artificially hotly contested by special interest groups, and especially by the entertainment industry. How can there even be any more argument when everyone in the television industry agrees that a thirty-second television commercial can change adult behavior? We feed our children and grandchildren this on-going, ever escalating, venomous diet of hundreds of horrifically violent, slash and kill videos and films 24/7/365. If rapidly moving images and inane jingles flashed on a small two-dimensional screen can get adults to do things, why would violent images watched for hours on screens large and small have no impact on the behaviors of children and teens?”
-Lt. Col. Dave Grossmann & Gloria DeGaetano
Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence (2014)
How can a young Christian man or woman after eighteen or twenty years of pleasurable and intense daily exposure to this brain altering venomous diet of vicarious violence and enmity—exposure during which a youngster’s brain is underdeveloped but still developing—rationally be expected to properly apply the standards of Christian Just War Theory? Is this not just one more example that Christian Just War Theory is, as it always has been, a moral fantasy, not a moral theory, let alone a moral dogma?
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
