FAST FOOD (2018): Fortieth Helping
The 1700 Year Old History of Violence Justifying Constantinian Christianity:
The physical, moral and spiritual fratricidal destruction of the Body of Christ and desecration of Temples of the Holy Spirit
The murder of forty thousand Christians in Nagasaki by an entirely military bomb crew composed only of Christians, the murder of St. Edith Stein at Auschwitz by Christians in the military and the murder of Bl. Franz Jagerstatter in Brandenburg Prison by Christians in the military are not anomalies in the history of Christianity since the time of Constantine. Christians murdering Christians and justifying it as being in conformity with faithfully following Jesus has been the normal of Christian history for the last 1700 years. Indeed from the very beginnings of the Constantinian alteration of Christianity, Christians murdering Christians has been the taken for granted moral norm. The Roman government killed more Christians after the Roman Empire became “Christian” than were killed when non-Christians ruled it.
The murder of Christians by Christians in the military at Nagasaki, at Auschwitz and at Brandenburg Prison on August 9, 1942,1943, 1945 is but a symbol of what Christians in the military have done to Christians almost non-stop every day for the last one thousand seven hundred years of Christian history—with no end in sight on August 9, 2018.
Such a history of Christian savagery, justified as acceptable Christian morality by practically every institutional Church of Christianity, reveals a fundamental structural defect in all mainline institutional Churches, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. An occasional eruption of violence between two members of the Mystical Body of Christ would not call into question the validity of the structure of an institutional Church, no more than would the occasional sins of adultery or envy. But 1700 years of non-stop, justified, mass savagery aimed at Baptized Christians by other Baptized Christians, all members of the Body of Christ, represents a Church structure that has conclusively proven it cannot do what a Church structure must do, namely, make the Church an extension of Jesus Christ in time and space, that it cannot be an instrument that can fulfill an absolutely essential part of the Great Commission Jesus gave to His Church “teach them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19).
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” (1Cor 6:19)
Let us publicly hear from the Bishops of the Constantinian Churches the theology that permits one living temple of the Holy Spirit to desecrate and destroy another living temple of the Holy Spirit?
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many…you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor12:12-14, 27).
Let us publicly hear from the Bishops of the Constantinian Churches the theology that permits one living Baptized member(s) of the Body of Christ to savage another living Baptized member(s) of the Body of Christ.
The need for Bishops of the Constantinian Churches to publicly do this arises from the 1700 year old historical fact that this is exactly what the Bishops of the Constantinian Churches have been daily and unequivocally telling the members of their communities that they can do since the Fourth Century. The Christians of Nagasaki, Edith Stein and Franz Jagerstatter, along with tens of millions upon tens of millions of other Christians who have suffered homicidal violence at the hands of their fellow temples of the Holy Spirit and members of the Body of Christ have a right to know from their Bishops why they have approved and still do approve, have taught and still do teach, that one Baptized member of the Body of Christ can destroy another Baptized member of the Body of Christ and still be a faithful disciple of Jesus—Who to this moment remains the Existing Head of the Body.
Christian Just War Theory (CJWT) does not address for Christians the Temple of the Holy Spirit issue or the Body of Christ issue. CJWT is nothing but the “baptizing” of a philosophical just war theory that existed long before Jesus was born and that did not have the same understanding of a human being as Jesus does or the same understanding of God as Jesus does or the same understanding of God’s relationship to the human being as Jesus does. CJWT owes nothing at any level to anything Jesus ever said or did, lived or taught.
From natural law philosophy just war theory can be derived—providing a person posits certain “self-evident” truths as first premises that may not be disputed i.e. earthly survival of self or community is the first law of human existence. But, the “self-evident” truths by which stoic natural law can establish a just war theory, and many other understandings of right and wrong, are not the truths that Jesus teaches in the Gospels and in many cases are contradictory to the truths taught by Jesus in the Gospels as the Father’s Will and Way.
The picture of the ruined brick and mortar Church at Nagasaki after August 9, 1945 is an accurate symbol of what the Constantinian Just War Church is and has done to Christianity since the Fourth Century. It has ruined it. Edith Stein on August 9, 1942 and Franz Jagerstatter on August 9, 1943 are also accurate symbols of what the Constantinian Just War Church is and has done to ordinary Christians by the tens of millions since the Fourth Century. It has destroyed them.
The voice of God will never contradict the Word of God, who is Jesus (Jn 1:1 ff). Refuse to be complicit in the monumental mockery of the truth of Nonviolent Jesus that is Christian Just War Theory.
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
