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, Tenth Helping
If popes, cardinals, bishops and priests just breezily brush off Jesus’ teaching regarding violence and by extension the maximal use of violence, war, what purpose can possibly be served by bringing to light and emphasizing the historical fact of the universal pacifist Church of the first three hundred years of Christianity? After all, if popes down to the overwhelming majority of everyday Christians indifferently dismiss what Jesus, who “has the words of eternal life,” teaches about violence and enmity, why would popes or everyday Christians pay any attention to or consider it important how the Christians and Christian leaders closest in time to Jesus lived for three hundred consecutive years?
True enough, especially when it is realized that practically every Catholic on earth has been hardwired since childhood by the Institutional Catholic Church into believing wholeheartedly, as a Christian, in the Church’s justifications of violence and war, and in believing such justifications were an alternative, parallel way of salvation to Jesus’s teachings of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies in the Gospels.
The only response possible is that 2+2 does not equal 5. The truth, is the truth, is the truth. Human beings and only human beings are created with an innate desire to know, and the object of that desire is to know the truth. Perhaps knowing that the original Sacred Tradition, which was kept intact by the Christians of the first three hundred years, might cause a second thought about violence and war being consistent with Jesus’ teaching by word and deed and with being a way to their eternal salvation.
Moreover, if people who believe violence and war can be justifiable Catholic or Christian activities knew the standard that the Catholic Church has employed since 434 to verify the truth and legitimacy of an extension to Church teaching, begun only a few years after St. Augustine’s death, would they be so ready to risk their eternal salvation on the just war rupture of the three hundred year old universal Church rejection of violence and war.
The standard applied by the Church to differentiate between a true and a false development of tradition or doctrine, first enunciated by St. Vincent of Lerin, is quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, “what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” The justification of violence and war written by Augustine was believed “nowhere, never before, and by almost no one” in his time and for quite a long while after. Do you, personally, really and honestly believe that Augustine’s just war theory is consistent with what everyone everywhere always believed about the original oral Tradition and the Gospels when Augustine introduced his novel just war theory into the Church?
Even St. John Henry Cardinal Newman in the late nineteenth century in his treatise on the Development of Doctrine insist on these two criteria in his seven listed criteria for authentic doctrinal development: First, Logical Sequence, i.e., the development must flow naturally and rationally from earlier teachings, rather than appearing as a sudden, arbitrary break or a completely detached new concept. Second, Conservative Action upon Its Past, i.e., a legitimate development builds upon previous teachings, protecting and harmonizing with them rather than reversing or destroying what came before.
Tombs upon tombs have been cleverly composed by Catholic just warists to demonstrate in words how Jesus teaching of “Love your enemy” can be fulfilled by slitting the enemy’s throat, how justice not love is the saving reality in Jesus’ teaching and therefore violence and war are consistent with the teaching of Jesus or how some circumstances of injustice are so evil they rationally morally demand the abrogation of the teaching, “Love you enemies,” and the use of violence to correct them. All of these arguments for Christians returning to the ways of secular power were known to the Christians of the first three centuries who were living daily under the threat of being murdered and tortured by the Roman Government and all were dismissed as not the Way of Christ and therefore not the Way of the Christian
Remember the Father of all Just War Theories is Augustine’s Just War Theory. The issue is, was it consistent with what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all when introduced, not whether Vatican II’s just war theory is consistent with Vatican I’s just war theory. Aristotle’s insight on language and truth is pertinent here: The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold—ten billionfold, all the way to Nagasaki.
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!
