Pope Leo, Peter, Arise!

Please, Pope Leo,

Don’t You Drag Out and Don’t Permit the U.S Catholic Bishops to Drag Out their House Just Warist Catholic Media Theologians and Give Them carte blanche general access to Catholic Media Outlets as in the Past, in Order to Tell Ordinary Catholics How Murdering 175 Elementary School Girls and the murdering of All the Other Iranian Civilians in an Offensive Pre-emptive War is Morally Acceptable Because it is Only “collateral damage” under Catholic Just War Theory.

And, there is more.

Can a U.S. Catholic morally participate at any level in Trump’s war on Iran? What does your local Catholic Bishop say?  Or, has he been too busy to take the time to address, as Bishop, his people on this grave, immediate and urgent moral problem of mass murder? What does the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishop say?  Or, are these fellows all going to sit in pompous silence on their hands, as they did for 18 years as Americans slaughter the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? What do you say, Pope Leo?

Since the U.S. Catholic Church, unless prevented from doing so by its Bishops and Pope, will send the largest number of Church members 6,000 miles away to Iran to kill and be kill, to maim and be maimed, by sea, air and land, is it not simply sanity, basic human decency and the love of Jesus and His people, which should compel hierarchical clarity, before Mrs. O’ Brien is asked to send her precious child into the path of the teeth of Iran’s ultra sophisticated, uber high tech military-industrial mass homicide machinery “for the everlasting glory of God, the USA and Israel.”

“When, O Lord, when, will quislings to intrinsically grave government evil cease to be installed in and occupy the Chair of the Apostles in diocese after diocese of the United States?”

But the primal spiritual, moral and pastoral question is, “When will the Pope, the Vicar of Christ,  with an infallible proclamation teach what Jesus in the Gospels infallibly taught, namely, that members of the Catholic Church are morally forbidden to participate in the required evil activities of war whether as Baptized boots on the ground, as the Baptized brains in the back rooms designing and manufacturing the weapons of war or in any capacity in between. It is the only power the Pope or Church has to stop or significantly mitigate war in the human condition. The day that the Pope permanently removes the Catholic Church and its communicants from any possible participation in any or all of the evils of war is the day that the Catholic Church will make a history altering, humanity saving choice of Chritslike love for the temporal and eternal good and well-being of all humanity.

For 1.5 billion Catholics out of eight billion people to withdraw perpetually from any association with the evil activity of war is not utopianism. It is, on the one hand, a most practical step. On the other, it is fidelity to the Will and Word God, to the Power and Wisdom of God as revealed by the One, who Catholics publicly believe to be God Incarnate, Jesus of  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

It would be a witness against all false God and a witness to the true God, the Father of all and His saving Will that can only be made by those who believe that Jesus is their Lord, God, and Savior, the  Eternal Word of God ‘made flesh‘ and is risen from the dead. The consequences of such an act of Gospel fidelity are infinitely incalculable, but we know the power motivating such a choice and the power forever emanating from such a choice will be the power of love, the love that raised Jesus from the dead and was and is and always will be the power, the only power, on earth or in the heavens that can vanquish completely evil and death, namely, the power of Nonviolent Love of all at all times, as made visible in the person and message, life and teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.

So, Pope Leo, what say you? Shall Catholicism in your Pontificate have another day, or year or decade or century of the erroneous Catholic “moral” teaching that engaging in the throat-slitting carnage, hate and deceit of war and doing what no sane interpreter of the Gospels, simple or sophisticated, could ever see Jesus doing, is consistent with following Jesus and His Way of conquering evil and death? Or, shall you, Pope Leo, end the Catholic Just War Theory moral fiction, remove Catholics and Catholicism in perpetuity from the wars of the raging nations and the libido domanadi of their rulers, and get on teaching and helping people by word and example to love as the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels  loves.

It is all about trust, Leo. Trusting that what God Incarnate teaches by word and deed as the Way to love by which “all things will work for the good of all” is the truth. You and I know Pope Leo, as Jesus would have known in Gethsemane, all the reasons that the mind can conjure up not to trust in the Father’s will in this matter. But, the love of God and the love of His fellow human beings who are trapped and enslaved in the chains of unconquerable evil, compelled Him to love as God desired Him to love throughout His Passion and murder. The consequences of that fidelity to the love that saves, as asked by God who is love of Jesus, reverberate every minute throughout the human condition to this very minute—because that love is the power of God to save, the only power that can or will ever save.

As our fellow Catholic St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, Pope Leo: “A means that cannot achieve its end is an illusion.” Catholic Just War Theory is an illusion. It is just another in the long line of philosophical just war theories that go back to ancient China with the name Catholic dump on top of it. The activities of war which it morally approves are devoid of Christlike Love, are not activities in any way congruent with Jesus’ New Commandment “to love one another as I have loved you.” Whatever ends a Catholic Just War Theory is meant to serve, they are not the ends that Jesus asked His Church or His disciple to serve, namely ,”to glorify the true God as revealed by Him and to participate in the eternal salvation of souls as He showed His Church and His disciple the Way by which to do this.”

Leo, you as the successor of St. Peter, and only you because you are the successor of St. Peter, can steer the Barque of Peter back onto the course Jesus set for it. The course for the Church as decided by Jesus is clear and clearly presented in the Gospels. All that is left for you is to fight the war between trust and fear.

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy