Fast Food 2024 1st Jul to 9th Aug (42nd Anniversary)

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Second Helping

If the people of God does not do justice to its task, if instead of peace in its midst there is conflict, instead of nonviolence it works violence, instead of showing forth salvation it spreads disaster, it cannot be a blessing for the nations. Then it falls short of the meaning of its existence; then it will not only be a laughingstock for the nations but will do great harm.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

Jesus knows the reign of God has many enemies and they seem overwhelming. And yet, despite all these enemies and opponents, the reign of God will come to pass. The work of God will succeed. It will bear fruit. In the end a rich harvest will be produced. Jesus was the first to fully grasp the reasonableness of the reign of God. It is reflected, for example, in his demands in the Sermon on the Mount. Renunciation of violence (Matt 5:38-42) is the only possible way to bring about genuine peace. Jesus rejected all violence in principle and thus set in motion a sequence of effects that could not have been foreseen. He is, of course, not “reasonable” according to the standards of a society shaped by violent struggles to divide but reasonable by the standards of the reign of God.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

Jesus knows the state, with its own structures of rule. But the people of God is not a state. Therefore Jesus had no regard for the Zealots, who counted on violence and terror to make of Israel a state in the sense of the Psalms of Solomon. Of course, he probably did not think much of the Roman emperor and his ilk either. He was rather skeptical in their regard. According to Mark 10:42-45, Jesus said:

You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

These words show that Jesus regarded contemporary “world politics” realistically and soberly. He saw through the arrogance of the powerful and the manipulative mechanisms of their political propaganda (cf. Luke 22:26). They derived their self-satisfaction from the exploitation of those under them. “You know that this is so,” he says. But at the same time, Mark 10:42-45 shows how Jesus imagined the transformation: it has to come as a silent revolution from below, from a completely different perspective like a mustard seed or a grain of yeast.

Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Eighth Helping 

The only Gospel passage in which Jesus  summed  up his ministry in a single sentence is found at the conclusion  of a dispute concerning rank and place in the glory  (or reign)  of Jesus. Mark  10:42-45; Matthew  20:20-28; Luke 22-24-27 have preserved the saying. The sons of Zebedee (in Matthew, their  mother) asked for the two places next to Jesus in his glory. Jesus  assured them a portion of his cup, but not the rank requested. The petition initiated a dispute which Jesus settled quickly. He contrasted the domination of secular rulers with the attitude which his followers  should  exhibit;  the  greatest  in  his should be the diakonos, and the first in  his  group should  be the slave. In this way they will be like  him: “Just  so  the Son  of Man did not come to receive service but to render service [diakonein] and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:42-45, MT 20;2-28; Lk 22:24-27).

I have left the Greek words diakonos and  diakonein  in  the original  for the moment; the usual translations, “minister” or “deacon,” both of which have become ecclesiastical titles, which obscures the force of the original. Diakonos means a lackey,  a  menial;  when the abstract noun diakonia is translated into English by “service,” the word suffers all the erosion which the English word has suffered. This is the term which Jesus uses to describe his own mission; and he insists that this is the proper term in which those of his followers whose position corresponds to the position of the great men of secular kingdoms should think of their own mission. In the New Testament, diakonia becomes almost a technical term for the apostolic ministry;  and  the  term is traced back to Jesus himself. We shall encounter the term in our examination of the apostolic office,  and  we shall see that in the New Testament the words “lackey” and “slave” had not yet become “minister” and “servant.”

The word diakonia and its cognates appear in profane Greek literature to designate other services than those of the lackey-much as the word “service” is used metaphorically in English. John 13: 1-20 seems to be written in answer to those who forget the original  force  of  the word. In the original force of  the word,  the diakonos is  a person whose function is not determined  by  his own  will;  he is entirely at the disposal of others. Jesus not only washes  the feet of others, he puts his life at their disposal. Whatever the words of lackey and slave emphasize,  it is not dominative power.

-Rev. John . McKenzie, Biblical Scholar, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Eleventh Helping

The fourth Servant of Yahweh (ebed-Yahweh) Song (Is 52:13-53:12) is the major crux interpretum of the Old Testament. The mission of the Servant in the fourth poem is achieved through vicarious atoning suffering. The innocent through his suffering secures the deliverance of the guilty from punishment. Some modern Christian interpreters cannot accept this view, but it is obvious that the original Christian community did. In the opinion of many scholars, Jesus Himself interpreted His role in terms of the Suffering Servant.

The author of the Targum of Isaiah did not think that it was applicable to Israel, or indeed of any situation he could think of, for he transformed the passage into a statement of victory for a violent political King Messiah.

No doubt many others share his problem. Mission as the acceptance of undeserved judgment was too much for this scribe, as indeed it has been too much for most readers of the Servant Songs and of the Gospels. What the scribe of the Targum of Isaiah did see was that this song was in deadly opposition to any violent political messianism. He believed in messianism, so he rewrote the song to fit his belief. His successors live to this day.

– Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical scholar, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Twelfth Helping

For both Jews and Greeks the proclamation of the Suffering Servant was a negation of some of their highest values. For the Jews it was the annihilation of the King Messiah and the political messianic Reign of God; and to the Greeks it was a denial of the values of mind and courage on which Greek ethics reposed. The primitive  Church found it necessary to base this proclamation on a clear Biblical source (Is 52:13-53:12), which showed that the mission of Jesus was planned and willed by God.

      The early Church attributes the proclamation of the theme of the Suffering Servant to Jesus Himself, and no convincing reason has been urged to show it should be attributed to another. It is  as deeply embedded in the Gospels as anything else, to repeat what I have said in other connections, if this theme is not the work of Jesus Himself then we know nothing about His words or His person.  It is the peak of  faith in the Old Testament, the supreme affirmation of the power of God and  the  weakness of man. When we meet the theme of the Suffering Servant in the New Testament, we are at the very center of the Christian revolution. (emphasis added)

   –  Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical scholar, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirteenth Helping 

A rule or a way that abandons violence can only rely on God; it is helplessly delivered over to the powers and rulers of history. Jesus’ challenge to love of enemies was for him the consequence of the reign of God, now coming to pass. It was a consequence of the love with which God loves the world and of God’s will to transform the world by that love.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Fourteenth Helping

The power which destroys all other powers is the power of love, the love of God revealed and active in Jesus Christ. God revealed in Jesus that He loves man and will deliver him through love and through nothing else.The Christian knows that his love is the active presence of God in the world; if he lacks it, he takes away God’s presence from the only place where he can put it. He has come between his neighbor and the saving love of Jesus Christ.

The resurrection is the beginning of a new life and a new world in which Jesus is living. The revolutionary point in the Christian event is the enduring presence of God’s love in Jesus Christ, the enduring presence of the power which entered the world in the incarnation. Because of this power man is enabled in any condition to live the life of Jesus and to continue in his own person the love which is the saving act. But, if the Christian is true to his Christian love, it may kill him, impoverish him, or disgrace him. In any hypothesis he is sure to lose at least some of those goods of this world which Jesus took some trouble to point out are of no importance because the resurrection is the climax of the saving act.

Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical scholar, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Fifteenth Helping

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Sixteenth Helping 

The church is thus subject to an enormous demand unconditionally given it by Jesus Christ for a system of organization that reverses all other systems which are built on power in favor of loving service for others and rejects every kind of violence. Often, it has lived up to that demand. Yet just as often, or even much more frequently, it has fallen victim to the temptation to become a state in itself (church-state), or to take possession of the ruling structures of the state for its own ends, or to forge an intimate connection to the state (state-church). Or, still more ominously, people in the church have pretended to powerlessness and simultaneously exercised a sublime “spiritual” terror over others, worse than the physical misuses of power.

Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Seventeenth Helping 

One can conceive of two dangers to the unity and the integrity of the Church: anarchy and the secularization of power. Of the two, Jesus spoke very  little about the danger of anarchy; he spoke frequently and earnestly about the danger of the secularization of power. Jesus left no instructions on how the Church should be governed. Jesus  left instructions on how the Church is not to be governed, and that is according to the model of secular power. As long as this corrupting influence is excluded, he seemed to have little interest in how the leaders of the Church were to exercise their leadership. His teaching reveals a new conception of society and community, which must not be formed on the model of secular government, but on the mission of Jesus Himself.  

Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical scholar, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Eighteenth Helping 

Jesus’ saying that those who want to follow him must take up their crosses does not primarily refer to the many everyday “crosses,” daily annoyances, tedious details, the unending unpleasantness and embarrassments of life. It does not even mean enduring persistent illnesses and, ultimately, the death we all must die. First and fundamentally it means surrender of one’s own life for God’s cause, as Jesus did, for what Jesus lived and preached. Only when one has fully accepted that fundamental decision, do life’s troubles, small and great, become an integral part of discipleship.

Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024) Nineteenth Helping 

Jesus, just like the whole Bible, is altogether focused on Israel and, overpoweringly, on the people of God. The transformation of the world begins in a concrete place, and that place is the people God has chosen for the purpose. Only to the extent that God’s alternative is lived within this people can the new thing, the different thing spread throughout the world. That spread is depicted in the Old Testament in the topos of the pilgrimage of nations: the peoples come to Zion to learn from Israel how nonviolence and peace can become reality in the world (cf. esp. Isa 2:1-5).

For Jesus the pilgrimage of nations is a matter of course. Therefore, it means that when love of neighbor and of enemy is lived in the eschatological people of God, then it will come to be that such a self-forgetful devotion will touch many people in the world and cause them to act the same way.

Certainly we could describe the idea of the pilgrimage of nations in another way. One could say that to the extent that love of neighbor and of enemies is lived within the people of God it will spill over again and again from within to touch others who are “outside.” Then for those who are “inside” every sufferer and even every person who encounters them with hostile intent will become a sister or brother. Then love of enemies will in fact happen beyond the limits of the people of God. But for that to be possible, the resources of the people of God are needed: a people of God that is not fixated on itself but is fascinated by and surrenders itself to the all-encompassing, saving will of God.

=Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Twenty-Third Helping

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Twenty-Fourth Helping 

The conduct of Jesus defines with disturbing consistency every form of authority possible within the church. Nonviolence, renunciation of domination and consequent vulnerability are irrevocably embedded in all forms of authority in the church and its offices by the praxis of Jesus. This was the point of decision, the criterion which determined if it was the true people of God, God’s counter-society in the world.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Twenty-Fifth Helping

It is one of the church’s tragic blind spots that it again and again seeks to protect its authority through violent domination. In reality it undermines its authority in this way and does serious harm to the gospel. True authority can shine forth only in the weakness of renouncing violence and domination. True authority is the authority of the Crucified. Paul knew this better than anyone else.

Must we go on to add that service of the churches in the impotence of the cross of Christ is by no means merely a matter of inner attitude or proper disposition on the part of the office holder? It would be disastrous to interpret Mark 10:42-45 and its parallels in the other gospels merely on the basis of an individual or attitudinal ethic. New Testament texts of this sort are always concerned with the concrete form of ecclesial office, which must not reflect the world’s structures of power and domination.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Twenty-Sixth Helping

Repudiation of struggling for rights does not mean that there is no place for law within the church. That would be just as foolish as to insist that authority and institutions are not permitted within the church. In the long run such goals would lead to an invisible church, which would have nothing at all in common with the New Testament concept of church. It is obvious that there must be law within the church, for otherwise the church would not be the “people of God” or the “Body of Christ;” a socially tangible “realm of Christ’s rule in the world.” But in comparison with secular law, church law can be law only in an analogous sense. It must in every particular be transformed and relativized by the spirit of Jesus. While it can exclude neither authority nor binding quality, it cannot be supported by institutions which have to enforce this law by means of violent domination. It can only be supported by communities which in free obedience place themselves under such law and live according to it.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Twenty-Seventh Helping 

Jesus never called for a political, revolutionary transformation of Jewish society. Yet the repentance which he demanded as a consequence of his preaching of the reign of God sought to ignite within the people of God a movement in comparison to which the normal type of revolution is insignificant. Think for example of Jesus’ call for absolute renunciation of violence. This renunciation of violence was not merely a matter of inner attitude; it was concerned with concrete actions. Nor was it merely intended for individuals; it presupposed a group of people who together would take nonviolence seriously. This is even more clear as far as renunciation of domination is concerned. Nonviolence and renunciation of domination can be realized only within the complex of social reality; it is precisely this reality they seek to transform. Jesus’ call for nonviolence and renunciation of domination implies the perspective of a new society, one which stands in sharp contrast to secular societies marked by the will to power and control.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Professor of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic priest.

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Twenty- Ninth Helping

Institutions are perishable humanly fabricated structures, which came into existence at one moment in time and exit existence forever at another moment in time. They tend, however, to appear to people in a society as part of the natural, unchanging landscape of life. They are just tools devised to achieve particular ends.

As is the case with all tools, e.g., an axe, each tool must be employed according to the intrinsic logic of its construction. An axe cannot achieve the end for which it was designed, i.e. chopping wood, if the person using it holds it by the blade and hits the log with the handle of the axe. Each tool requires that the user conforms to the logic of the tool or else it cannot do what it is supposed to do. That goes for institutions as well as telephones and washing machines.

The right tool to do the job, depends on the job that is to be done. To choose a tool that cannot do the job, is to choose a means to an end that is illusionary. To choose a fly swatter to chop down a giant red wood tree is a fantasy, and it is no less a fantasy because it becomes a collective fantasy embraced by millions. So also is the case, but infinitely moreso, with choosing evil as the tool to drive out or conquer evil.

To structure an institutional church, as has been done, on the model of a secular state, where violence and domination, deception and enmity are logically and necessarily intrinsic to its operation, for the purpose of teaching about the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, and thereby converting people to Him as a Nonviolent person, as the Nonviolent Messiah, as the Nonviolent God Incarnate is to construct and choose a tool that is as incapable of accomplishing the desired task as the fly swatter is for cutting down a giant redwood.

To choose to construct an institutional church on the model of the violent secular state, whose logic and structures of domination requires it to do the very opposite of what Jesus clearly taught by word and deed, that is, to do the very evil that Jesus came to vanquish from the human condition, is to choose an illusion to achieve the end for which Jesus founded His Church. It is as self-contradictory as constructing institutions in a cannibal community to preserve, maintain and proclaim cannibalism and yet expect those who are born and bred into and through that community to reject cannibalism.

To think that a humanly designed institution, which has probably sent more of its members to kill its enemies than most of the non-state institutions that have ever existed on earth, is ever going to seriously and convincingly teach that Christians and/or all people must follow the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies is at best wallowing in a self-imposed or socially-imposed delusion. At worst it is calculated institutional deceit by church leaders to keep church members killing, dying, and hating enemies of their particular state in order that the institutional church might survive and prosper by  standard of this world. For by telling its communicants that violence and enmity, war and all the evils absolutely required to wage war are AOK with Jesus, the institutional Church ingratiating itself to the state by handing over to the state its Baptised members for killing, maiming and hating other human beings in the state’s wars. The Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels did not found His Church to be an agent for the state’s homicide programs, justified or unjustified. No structure in the institutional Church, at any level, should be designed to implicitly or explicitly do that.

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

Gandhi noted that the only people in the world who do not see Jesus and His Way as Nonviolent are Christians. Why is this? Any ordinary literate person reading the Gospels would say Jesus and His Way are nonviolent, just as any ordinary person reading a Rambo comic book would conclude that Rambo and his way are violent. So why do Christians, to the tune of 98% of them, think they can engage in the violence of war and still be following God’s will as revealed by Jesus?

The obvious answer is because they have been bamboozled. Bamboozeled by whom? There is only one answer to that question, bamboozled by their institutional Churches and those Churches’ leaders. Over the past 1700 years, the institutional Churches and the leaders have been the Big Bamboozelers on planet earth.

Billions of souls have been double-crossed by their institutional Churches and Churches’ leaders on whom they trustingly relied to show them Jesus’ Way to know, love and serve the Father of all—whom Jesus reveals by His words and deeds in this world—and be happy with God in the next.

Indeed what Christians received from their institutional Churches and Churches’ leaders is the truth of the Gospels, e.g. Jesus is the Word of God “made flesh,” He is the Messiah of Israel, He is the Savior of the world, He taught the Sermon on the Mount, He rose from the dead, etc. However, Christian Churches and Church leaders then abused the spiritual and moral status and authority they had acquired from properly proclaiming the truth about Jesus as a grooming technique to prepare Church members to believe without question that these Churches and their leaders were speaking the truth of Jesus when they finally got around to indoctrinating them in ‘the old lie’ of Cicero’s “iustus bello,” “just war,” and Horace’s  “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, “ “How sweet and honorable it is to die for one’s country.“

In other words, no rational person would interpret Jesus in the Gospels as saying or meaning what the pagan philosopher Cicero and the pagan poet Horace mean, unless he or she were blinded to the self-evident via societal conditioning  processes backed by deceiving propaganda. Just as no normal person would think that cannibalism is a good way for people to live or is God’s will. In fact ordinary people would consider it an abomination for a group to live like this. Yet, for people living their lives within the cannibal social structures and ideological networks, there is no doubt in their minds that cannibalism is a good way to live and is God’s will. Why the enormous discrepancy here?

The answer lies in the society’s structures and their concomitant nurturing processes that hardwire, deeply embed and brainwash, unto obliviousness to the obvious, all who are inescapably subject to the logic of these structures by merely living in them daily.

A Christian Church which structures itself on the model of the state has as its default position—as does the state— in matters small and large the willingness to employ sophisticated and unsophisticated  violence to get done what its rulers want to get done, up to and including the use of lethal violence. The average Catholic or Christian living in such an official Church atmosphere would be molded by it into mimicking it in matters small and large, up to and including participating in the violence of war. And, like our friend the cannibal, he or she would think they are doing good and God’s will, even though the Gospels with the Nonviolent Jesus and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies would be staring them in the face.

Unless and until Christians and their Churches can see  and proclaim what the vast majority of human beings in the world can see from the Gospels, namely, that Jesus is Nonviolent and teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies to His disciples, the Church will not only not be doing what it was founded by Jesus to do and explicitly commissioned by Jesus to do (Mt 28:20), “teach them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20), it will continue to be seen as a Big Bamboozeler, which is best to relate to as one relates to the other Big Bamboozeler on the planet—the state.

– Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-First Helping

Jesus teaches, “No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into new wineskins” (Mk 2:22; Mt 9:17; Lk 5 :37-38).

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-Second Helping

“Jesus commissioned His Church to find new forms and new structures for an entirely new idea of human association, a community of love.”

-Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical Scholar, Catholic priest*

(*All quotations in these Fast Food Helpings from Rev. John L. McKenzie have had the Catholic Church’s Imprimatur bestowed on them before publication,1965-1968.)

There are many tasks with which the Church must concern itself and undertake. However, there is no task more urgent or important than for the Church “to find new forms and new structures for an entirely new idea of human association, a community of love.” Love here means Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances rooted in the model of Jesus in the Gospels. Until such community structures are put into place, the institutional Church will continue addressing the tasks before it via the ways, means and logic of the state on which it is presently institutionally structurally patterned. Until such community structures are put into place, the very structure of the institutional Church will be an incarnational, concrete rejection of Jesus and His teaching in the Gospels visible for all the world to see—regardless of the theological and liturgical embroidery with which this obvious denial is gilded.

A Church that chronically says, “Lord, Lord,” but then premeditatively, calculatingly and structurally creates for itself excuses, loopholes, justification and methods of operation for “not doing the will of the Father” as revealed definitively by Jesus the Christ in the Gospels, is an institution living by old pagan forms, old pagan structures and old pagan ideas about human beings and how they are to associate. To believe that a Church structured in such a pattern is going to respond to the tasks it undertakes as would a Community structured on Christlike Love is exotically fanciful and historically proven invalid. To believe that the results or consequences of decisions made in a state-like institutional structure will reverberate in humanity as decisions made within a community structured in conformity with Christlike Nonviolent Love is self-evidently self-deception.

Putting new wine into old wineskins is attempting to defy the laws of nature. Putting the proclamation and teachings the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies into state-modeled institutions for purposes of evangelization is attempting to defy what Gandhi calls “the iron laws of the moral universe,” which for him meant, “the means are the ends in embryo, as you choose your means you get your end.”

Jesus’ Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies cannot be authentically or properly proclaimed and taught by or  through institutions (means) that are integrally violent. The results or consequences will be radically different than if their proclamation and teaching were done through a Nonviolent Christlike Community of people struggling to live in accordance with Jesus and His Nonviolent Way of Love.

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal 6:7). A violence based structure used to proclaim Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies is folly. It would be the exact equivalent of the Papal Army, the Swiss Guard, the oldest standing state army in the world with all men trained as Swiss soldiers to the level of the U.S. Seals, armed from an arsenal of the best weapons and killing apparatus that money can buy, standing on the steps of the Vatican and proclaiming that Jesus is God Incarnate and the Messiah of Judaism and therefore His Way of Nonviolence must be followed by all Jews and Christians! This would be material for a tragicomedy stage play in the theatre de l’absurde, but for the fact that relatively recently the legal Commander-in-Chief of the Swiss Guard of the Vatican City State did exactly that!

If Christian Churches and their leaders are being honest and serious about proclaiming the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospel—the only Jesus there is, was or ever will be—and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, it really is long past the time that popes, patriarchs, bishops, priests, ministers, deacons, religious and laity get on with the task of doing what Jesus said must be done, finding new forms and new structures for an entirely new idea of human association, a community of love. This is a moral imperative for the Church, its leaders and its membership, if the Church is to be for Jews, Christians and all humanity what it should be and can be within the Mystery of God’s Salvific Will and Plan.

– Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-Third Helping

Jesus stands firmly and absolutely against violence, against any kind of lust for power, against every untruth. Everything, then, depends on whether world society will follow him, imitating his fundamental stance, or not. More precisely: everything depends on whether the church will follow him with renewed obedience, because only in that way can the world follow him.

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-Fourth Helping

– Rev. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink, Prof. of New Testament, Tubingen University, Catholic Priest

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-Fifth Helping

Pilate, as the ultimate authority of the state, i.e., “the beast,” in Jerusalem, officially, legally and actually killed Christ. So why do Christians not call states “Christ killers?” Have they not been? Are they not at this moment? Are not the Ukrainian State and the Russian State at this hour Christ killers, as they kill each other’s people daily and in large numbers? Are not practically all Russians and Ukrainians Baptized Christians, Orthodox or Catholic?

A Baptized Christian according to the Orthodox and the Catholic Church and the New Testament is by adoption what Jesus Christ is by nature. When he or she is Baptized, as St. Pope John Paul II states in Veritatis Splendor, “they become not only Christians, but Christ.”  If physically attacking and/or killing a Baptized Christianis physically attacking and/or killing Christ, then states like Russia and the Ukraine are Christ killers.

Why else would Jesus say to Paul on the road to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul before that moment on the Damascus Road never met Jesus, never was in His presence and never touched Him. Saul, however, was a zealous persecutor of Christians and the Christian community. This question from the Risen Jesus to Saul only makes sense if the Christian is Christ and therefore “whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me.” As was declared at the Council of Narbonne in France, in 1054  “Christians killing Christians spill the blood of Christ.”

Why are not the Patriarchs, Bishops, Priests and Deacons of the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches not telling their Christian people who are killing their fellow Baptized Christians, that they are Christ killers? The same must be asked of the Pope and the Catholic Bishops and Priests in regard to Catholics in the Ukraine and Russia. My answer is that they are not just trying to stay in the good graces of the economic and political power elites of their respective states. My answer is that they do not believe what the New Testament teaches, what their Churches teach, what the Gospels teach  and what they teach about the Holy Mystery of Baptism (the Sacrament of Baptism) and Jesus.

This “Christian agnosticism” is a major spiritual impediment that prevents the Churches of Christianity and their leaders from proclaiming the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Nonviolent Way of Love as irremovable and essential to the salvific message of Jesus. Lack of clarity in the words and deeds of the Nonviolent Word of God (logos) Incarnate, Jesus, has never honestly been the obstacle. It is now and always has been an absence of lived trust in the Nonviolent Messiah Jesus of the Gospels, despite all pious theological, liturgical and conceptual protestations that, ‘We believe.”  As St. Edith Stein has written, “If you believe in God, then trust Him.”

If a person or a Church believes the Jesus of the Gospels is God made flesh, the Messiah of Judaism and the Savior of the world, then an absolute lived trust in Him and also in His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies is essentially intrinsic to that belief . Absolute trust is the only trust that is possible or pertinent where God is concerned. Partial trust of God means one is trusting in someone or something that is not God but is being called “God.”

 Absolutely trusting in the Nonviolent Jesus  of the Gospels as the Messiah, the Savior of the world and God Incarnate means absolutely trusting in the Way and Means of Jesus—which are always Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances in imitation of Him.

– Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-Sixth Helping

The comic book character, Superman, never existed. Therefore human beings can make any content they choose essential to his character and bestow on him any attributes or deficiencies, they please. Being only a fictional person, humans can change his essential character and remove or add attributes according to their whims or needs at the moment.

Jesus, unlike Superman, is not a fictional character who never existed. He is a person of history who is known by His words and deeds in a particular historical setting as are you and I, e.g., riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. There is an irremovable and essential historical content, facticity, to the person Jesus, as there is to you and me. Remove that historical content and replace it with a non-historical content and Jesus becomes, like Superman, a linguistic symbol for a fictional character who never existed in history, and to which fictional person we can add or subtract content according to our personal or social desires.

For example we could change Superman’s character and attributes into the character and attributes of a cruel and demented dictator and he would still just be what he is, a fictional person. But, if we change Jesus’ character from the Nonviolent person who is presented in the Gospels who teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies by word and deed unto His own murder on the Cross, into a person with the character and attributes of Rambo, then we have moved Jesus from historical reality to a figment of someone’s imagination. Jesus gunning down people with an Uzi and hacking them to pieces with a machete, or morally endorsing such activities by His disciples is a fantasy, a mere figment of the human imagination; although these and comparable acts are the normal acts in war that Christians have to engage in when they go to kill for “God and country” with the moral approval of their Church and Church leaders. A Jesus morally validating as God’s will the slaughtering of people via some just violence or just war theory is a trumped-up, non-real, fake Jesus—as non-existent as Superman.

To put one’s faith in such a fabricated, non-historical Messiah-Jesus and to become a disciple of his, to pray to him and to worship him as Lord, God and Savior is possible, but it is also radically absurd. It is idolatry, the worship of a sham Jesus and a nonexistent God, if one identifies his or her contrived non-historical Jesus with God. To put one’s hope for eternal life in such a humanly concocted, non-historical, violence justifying Jesus instead of in the historically verifiable Nonviolent Messiah Jesus of the Gospels is a tragedy of the highest order. No person is Baptized into Christ to deceive other Christians and the world by proclaiming a fictitious, non-historical, violence approving phantasm, conjured up in the human brain and dubbed with the name Jesus Christ.

Superman cannot save from evil and death, nor can a nonexistent, imaginary and mythical violence justifying Jesus.

– Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-Eight Helping

FAST FOOD (AD 2024): Thirty-Ninth Helping

In the New Testament and in the Deposit of Faith, Christ Jesus is “the image of the invisible God. In Him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together” (Col 1:15-17).

The Catholic Church and most other Churches teach that there is no separation between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history. The Jesus of history is the Christ of faith, and the Christ of faith is the Jesus of history. If a Church or a Christian alters the presentation of the Nonviolent Jesus in the Gospels and changes the historical Jesus into a non-historical supporter, endorser, justifier and user of violence, they thereby automatically change the meaning of everything Jesus is, said and did. Since Jesus is the “image of the invisible God,” such a change by a Church or a Christian would change the understanding of what kind of God that God is and what God desires and expects of people, as well as the meaning that Jesus’ words and deeds carry.

When a fairytale Jesus who endorses, supports, justifies or uses violence proclaims in His person, words and deeds, “God is Father” and “God is love,” He is no longer proclaiming that God is a God of unconditional nonviolent love towards all, but is instead proclaiming that violence is intrinsic to God. In other words, if there is violence in Jesus there is violence in God and if there is violence in Jesus it is because there is violence in God.

The Jesus of history is the God of faith. If He supports, endorses or justifies violence, or supports, endorses or justifies His disciples using violence, He is violent. To endorse, support or justify violence is to promote and propagate violence as being in conformity with the will of God.  A violence supporting, endorsing, justifying or using Jesus would be proclaiming and teaching “Violence is Holy!”

For us Christians this would mean that violence can be the Way to Eternal Life with God. Eternal Salvation would then come by way of doing violence to others, instead of Salvation by suffering with nonviolent love the violence committed against oneself. Love as Holy violence and Holy violence as love would be the truth of God because that would be the message of a non-historical violence supporting, endorsing, justifying or using Jesus, who is proclaimed as “the image of the invisible God.”

For the Christian, God is the ultimate norm for discerning what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. If God is not, then who or what is a superior norm of morality for the Christian or for the Church?

Jesus for the Christian and the Christian Churches is God Incarnate. He is therefore the ultimate norm for discerning good from evil. If there is violence in Jesus, God Incarnate, there is violence in God. If God is violent then a Christian, made in God’s image and likeness and a disciple of Jesus, can morally be violent. However, if Jesus, God Incarnate, is nonviolent, then God is nonviolent and interpreting God and His Love as permitting violence would be impossible and violence as moral would be a contradiction in terms.

Jesus teaches “God is love,” and what is meant by “love,” and whether it contains violence or never contains violence is determined by whether the Jesus of history is violent or nonviolent, because He is the “visible image of the invisible God.”

When Ambrose and Augustine introduce into the institutional Churches of Christianity a pagan philosophy’s justifications for using violence and declared that these justifications made using violence an act in conformity with following Jesus, they and the institutional Church by this open the door to the long, brutal and horrid history of the Churches and Christians participation in war. They also altered the historical content of the image of Jesus as Nonviolent Love toward all, friends and enemies, to the image of Jesus as someone who found violence morally acceptable in some circumstances, thereby altering the Christian understanding of the kind of God that God is, what God expects of human beings, as well as, what God morally prohibits and permits in the discerning and living of His Holy Will.

So, my fellow Christians, whether you be a pope, bishop, priest, deacon, minister or lay person, I ask: “Is there any violence, any supporting, endorsing, justifying or using of violence in Jesus? Is there any violence, any supporting, endorsing, justifying or using of violence in God? “Yes” or “no” are the only responses available. An answer that says, “God is nonviolent, but there are exceptions,” is a “yes” answer. So, which is it? Is there any violence in God? Is there any violence in Jesus?

How do you know with moral certainty?

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION
ON DIVINE REVELATION
DEI VERBUM
SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED
BY HIS HOLINESS
POPE PAUL VI
ON NOVEMBER 18, 1965

“#18. It is common knowledge that among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have a special preeminence, and rightly so, for they are the principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our savior.

The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the Apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed on to us in writing: the foundation of faith, namely, the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

#19. The  Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation.” 

Homily at the Mass for  the Close of

The Annual Forty Day Fast for the Truth of Gospel Nonviolence,

July 1-August 9, AD 2024.

Brockton MA, 2024

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

If the institutional Churches, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, did not have the institutional structures that nurtured their communicants into believing that they could engage in the wholesale butchery of war and simultaneously be doing the will of God as disciples of Jesus, Edith Stein, Franz Jägerstätter, and Midori Moriyama Nagai and sixty thousand other Catholics and Christians would not have been murdered on August 9 at Auschwitz, at Brandenburg Prison and at Nagasaki. The murderers of these Christians were without doubt members of the Catholic Church or some other Christian Church that nurtured its members in the absurdity that they could be good and faithful followers of Jesus as long as they were killing other beloved sons and daughters of the “Father of all,” Pro Deo et Patria. 

We will never know in this life the gravity of the moral responsibility that each of the killers of August 9 bears before God. We do know that the institutional Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Churches are gravely culpable because they molded the consciousnesses and consciences of the killers of August 9 so that their destruction of other beloved sons and daughters of the Father of all, other Temples of the Holy Spirit, was for them totally consistent with being a good Catholic, good Lutheran, good Baptist, good Episcopalian, good Methodist, good Orthodox, good Pentecostal, etc. And, indeed, it might be a moral stance consistent with being a good religious institutionalist. But, it is also a monstrous betrayal of the One they worship as Lord, God and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

Without the Catholic and Christian Churches nurturing their members, via their institutional  structures and personnel, in “justified” Christian participation in the human carnage of state wars, the Temple of  God, Edith Stein could not have been gassed by her fellow Christians on August 9, 1942,  the Temple of God, Franz Jägerstätter could not have been beheaded by his fellow Christians on August 9, 1943 and the Temple of God, Midori Moriyama Nagai and thousands of other Christians could not have been evaporated on August 9, 1945. And, the devastated brick and mortar physical temple of God in Nagasaki, the largest and probably the most beautiful Church in all the Orient, St. Mary’s Cathedral, would not be today a symbol of what the Church has become and done to itself since altering and dismissing the teaching of the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels 1700 years ago.

Catholic and Christian Churches and those Churches’ leaders who perennially nurtured, molded and formed “righteous Christian killers” for the wars of the politically and economically powerful who rule states are the sine qua non for indefinitely perpetuating the radically false witness of the “morally justified” Christian killers of August 9—and of the other 364 days for the last 1700 years—and for the ruined physical temple of God in Nagasaki being a dead-on icon and symbol of the spiritual and moral condition of most of the institutional Churches today and for the last 1700 years,

St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, Nagasaki, August 9, 1945

The institutional Church and its leaders are more morally responsible for the murders of Saint Edith Stein, Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, Midori Moriyama Nagai and thousands of other Christians in Nagasaki than the Christians who actually ‘pulled the trigger’. But for the Churches and their leaders catechizing and nurturing these men to wholeheartedly believe that killing in war was in conformity with being a follower of Jesus, they never would have ‘pulled the trigger’ or even been in the position that such an option was available to do in their lives.

August 9 is but a symbol, the tip of the iceberg, of the evil that the Christian Churches and their leaders have wrought on the Christian people and on the world, since the rulers of the Churches decided to make the institutional Church—founded by the Nonviolent Jesus Christ to Baptize and to teach His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies to all nations—into a never ending assembly line producing a never ending supply of  expendable and exploitable Christian cannon fodder for the rulers of all nations. August 9 is but an accurate historical symbol of the tip of the iceberg of the current and past history of institutional Church violence, Church support of violence, and Church fostering of violence—for to justify an evil is to foster that evil.

By altering and/or dismissing Jesus’ explicit, consistent and infallible teaching by word and deed of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies in the Gospels, the institutional Churches and their leaders are playing with fire, the fire of hell. Jesus as the Messiah of Judaism and as Savior of the world came to conquer evil and death for Jews, for Christians and for all humanity and to open up to all human beings for all eternity participation in the life of God, who is love. To believe that one can alter the teaching of Jesus and thereby replace Jesus’ teaching with something just as good as or better, namely, their own teaching, e.g., just war theory, and that their own teaching will also be able to conquer evil and death and authentically open up the Divine life of love for all to participate in is just nonsense— the status in the Church of the person professing such senselessness notwithstanding. It is tragically irrational! If human beings could figure out how to vanquish evil and death by their own reasoning, there would be no need for a Messiah or Savior, as there would be no need for a Nonviolent Messiah and Nonviolent Savior if a violent Messiah or violent Savior could defeat evil and death. Violent Messiahs and violent Saviors are legion in Judaism and in humanity.

But, neither Jews nor humanity in general can conquer evil and death by their own wits. Human history is conclusive evidence of that. So, wherein lies the reasonableness, indeed the sanity, in altering the teaching of the Nonviolent One believed in and proclaimed as the Messiah and Savior in order to fit what some human  creature has concluded by his or her own wits is a better way to subjugate evil and death?

The mystery of evil and its presence in the human situation and the depth to which it goes in the human condition are unfathomable to human consciousness and comprehension. What the human mind can grasp is that whatever evil is, its magnitude and its power are incalculably beyond what the eye can see in a given moment. We see only the tip of the iceberg here and now. The enormity of evil’s perduring presence operating in and below the visible surface of human existence can be sensed, but is unplumbable by the human being. Hence, altering the salvific teaching of the Messiah and Savior of Nonviolent Love of all who is sent by God, in order to teach something considered more realistic, more effective and more in line with some human’s limited perception of reality makes no sense. No person in fact knows the details of the vastness and hideousness of the power of evil that lurks below the tip of the iceberg of any evil we can choose or observe. No human being has more than a speck of awareness of the immensity and insidiousness of that infernal reality named evil. But, God knows and knows what He is about in sending a Messiah and a Savior of Nonviolent Love towards all, always and everywhere. In the conquering of evil and death it is God’s Way or no way, and God has revealed His Way in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of Judaism and the Savior of humanity.

Mark Twain noted, “We are all ignorant, except in different areas.” It is quite morally and spiritually acceptable for a Christian to alter, dismiss or reject what Plato or Aristotle teach for they are mere human creatures of limited perspective like ourselves. Churches, Church leaders and Church members altering, dismissing or rejecting the Messiah’s and the Savior’s teaching of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies in the Gospels, however, is, I say again, playing with fire. Is it not obvious why? Altering, dismissing or replacing the teachings of  the Creator’s specifically chosen and ordained Messiah and Savior of the world, in favor of the teachings or the ideas of some human creature, ignorant of most of what is in existence, and most of what constitutes the enormity of the power and hideousness of evil is just irrational, It is folly.

The options are straight forward. If you do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah of Judaism and Savior of the world, then respond to him as you would respond to Aristotle or Plato or any other human being: accept or reject or alter his thoughts as your very limited perspective on reality and on evil suggest , or as need, fancy, whim of self-interest  directs. But, if you do believe Jesus is God’s choice to be the Messiah of Judaism and the Savior of all humanity, then commit yourself from the rising of the sun to its setting, morning, noon and night, in life and in death, for all time and for all eternity to wholeheartedly saying from the core of your being,

 “Jesus I trust in You, and because I do trust in You, I trust only in Your Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies as You reveal it by your words and deeds in the Gospels. Amen.”

Then, having put all your eggs in this basket, live your Great Trust in Jesus and His Way of Nonviolent Love of all for the remainder of your time on earth, through the hour of death and unto eternity. For this Jesus, God Incarnate, chose you to be His disciple and follower.