FAST FOOD AD 2025: Fortieth Helping

 FAST FOOD AD 2025: Fortieth Helping

August 9 is a reality and a symbol of layered meanings. To me it is the reality and the symbol of chronic radical disobedience by Christians to the will of God, as that will was and is revealed by Jesus in the Gospels. It is also the reality and symbol of dragging the minds of Christians into the diabolical chaos of justifying in the name of Jesus, Baptized members of the Body of Christ murdering each other face to face, as well as, en masse by the tens of thousands. August 9 is also for me the reality and symbol of the consequences of people arriving in the position of Church leadership well equipped to lead a monarchical and bureaucratic organization in earthly survival, but ill equipped to lead the Christian people and their Churches into what they and all Christians are supposed to be, namely, an extension of Jesus Christ in time and space for the greater honor and glory of God and for saving of souls, hopefully the souls of all human beings.

When in 1942 on August 9, Saint Edith Stein is murdered by fellow Christians at Auschwitz in Poland, when in 1943 on August 9, Blessed Franz Jagerstatter is murdered by fellow Christians in Brandenburg Prison in Germany and when in 1945 on August 9, the Servant of God Midori Nagai is murdered along with thousands of other Christians and non-Christians in Nagasaki, Japan, by American Christians flying 30,000 feet above Nagasaki, the question should be asked, must be asked, “Why did these murdering Christians think that this is what God or Jesus approved of them doing?” Did it instantly show up in the infant’s mind when he or she was Baptized? Of course not!

It is the earthly leadership and apparatus of the institutional Church in subservient cooperation with the state who made the German-Austrian Christians murder their fellow Christian Edith Stein, who made the German Christians murder their fellow Christian Franz Jagerstatter, who made the American Christians murder their fellow Christian Midori Nagai and thousands of other fellow Baptized members of the Body of Christ. It is the institutional Church, which always means its human officials, popes, bishops and priests, who persistently and systematically, under the auspices of helping their congregations put on the mind of Christ, created the monstrosity of a Christian mind that morally permitted Christians to murder Christians, each of whom is Christ by Baptism. For a Christian to kill another Christian is to be a Christ killer. To quote St. Pope John Paul II  speaking to other Christians, “You are Christ.” The corollary of that truth of the Christian Faith is, “If a Christian kills a Christian, he or she is a Christ killer.”

Does the Church and its leaders think and believe that the Father sent His Son to earth, have Him incarnate for 33 years unto His murder by crucifixion in an act of Nonviolent Love of all always so all can see and chose this Way, and then raise Him from the dead, so that Christians can believe that they can as Christians with a clear conscience kill Edith Stein, Franz Jagerstatter, Midori Nagai and an untold numbers of other Christians and human beings, millions upon billions of times over until the end of time? This is not the Truth of Jesus in the Gospels, this is murderous absurdity.

Over a half century ago in an article in the Notre Dame Alumnus Magazine (8/69), which I cannot put my hands on at this moment, I wrote, “Would it not be a proper and the right step towards fidelity to Jesus and peace, if as a minimum standard for Baptism, each Christian before Baptism and those already Baptized, were informed, committed themselves to and thereafter were nurtured by the Church in the absolute moral prohibition of killing another Christian for any reason.” Remembering that this was written during Vietnam War times, so the idea was roundly rejected, most often with “What about the Vietnamese who are not Christian?”

My answer used to be that the prohibition of killing non-Christians as well as Christians was already taken care of by Jesus in the Gospels and by the Sacred Tradition of the Original Church. My idea is a practical, hopefully self-evident Gospel rooted step in an effort to free the institutional Church from the unbreakable death grip that justified homicidal violence has on institutional Christianity, its leaders and people. It is a step, in complete  conformity with the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels and in the Tradition before Constantine, to return the institutional Church and its leaders to their right minds, which is the mind of Christ.

Fifty-six years later I still think it is a theologically and morally sound understanding of what Baptism is and minimally entails. In my view all Baptisms in all Churches starting today, August 9, AD 2025, should formally include this understanding of the Sacrament and take the rational actions needed to proclaim it, to explain it, to implement it and to support it in word and in deed. This cannot be done without a cost, but it is not impossible to do. After all, what it says to Church members and to the nations that are perpetually raging against one another is, “Nations, you are just going to have to do your killing without Christians killing each other.”

As correct as this understanding of Jesus in the Gospels and of Baptism may be, it is seen by most to be of minimal practicality and as not much more than Christianity getting its own house in order according to the truth of its Founder.

However, be assured that the Masters of the World know how important a carte blanche violent Christianity of two billion people and a blank check violent Catholicism of a billion and a half people is to them. To see how important violent Christianity and violent Catholicism are to the economic and political elites and rulers of this world, no evidence is needed beyond the dead and deadly silence of the U.S. Catholic Cardinal and Bishops for 18 years as hundreds of thousands of Catholics and Christians went over to the Middle East and murdered and maimed multiple millions of innocent human beings on the basis of a known lie, without a peep from any of the Church hierarchy for 18 years after March 2003.

Since the Masters of the World are on the payroll of the “Father of lies who is a murderer from the beginning,” a cyclone of propaganda would be expected to sweep into the Churches, into Christian minds, into the general public mind and especially into the minds of Catholics of the “1% class” in order to bring to bear ideas hostile to the idea of Christians not killing Christians, ideas laced with derision, fear, ridicule disparagement and ad hominems, for the purpose of keeping Christians murdering Christians. Blackmail and bribery of Church leaders would be instruments of first resort for the powerful ones of the world, if the Catholic Church or all Christian Churches tried to make the moral impermissibility of a Christian killing a Christian an Article of Faith for Baptism.

So from a human perspective there is no earthly hope that the Catholic Church or all Christian Churches in an authentic Ecumenical Church Decree would ever declare as a minimal standard for Baptism that a Christian is intrinsically forbidden morally by his or her Baptism to kill a fellow Christian in the Mystical Body of Christ, regardless of the reasons presented for doing so.

However, as mentioned in FAST FOOD Helping 39, the Resurrection of Jesus opens up a new universe of boundless hope, even when the human mind can experience only hopelessness, ad nauseam and ad infinitum. The Original Bestower (Jn1:1-18) of life and all that is, the One who “makes the dead alive and calls into being things that were not” (Rm 4:17) and “who is like us in all things but sin,” “is risen from the dead” and “is with us” in overflowing care and agape for each one, “all days even until the consummation of the world.” Through Him and with Him and in Him the Church and its leadership and membership will return to their right Christlike mind and lead and teach Christian people as Jesus in the Gospels say they must be led and taught.

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

 August 9, AD 2025