1. Introduction
This section lists all the reflections, essays and meditations by Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy over the last 50 years plus of his life.
5. Letters to The Bishops Titled ‘Do Your Job’ Series Were Written Between November 2016 And April 2017)
In the U.S. the most successful professional football coach by far is a man named Bill Belichick. He is an intelligent man. Over the thousands of football pre-game and post-game press conferences he has had across the decades, he has talked about nothing except his team and the recent or up-coming game of his team. This has not made him a darling of the press. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Even when there has been another one of those daily “breaking news” social scandals in the nation or in the National Football League—social scandals being the meat and potatoes of what is passed off as journalism today in North America—Belichick will not speak to the press about them, even if the people involved are on his team. He just says, “My job is to be a football coach. All that other stuff will be handled by the League Administration.”
His approach to his vocation, “My job is to be a football coach,” is humble, rational and practical. It is humble because many people, who get a mere photon or two of media publicity start pontificating in areas outside their expertise, as if they were Aristotle, Plato or Thomas Aquinas, when in fact their expertise in what they are now pontificating on probably does not rise to the level of Joe the bartender, if that…
38. Reclaiming Jesus —But Not— The Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels
It is difficult, if not impossible, to figure out which Jesus is being reclaimed in the recent much-ballyhooed document, Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis (attached below).
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39. Holy Communion and Unholy Communication
An introduction:
When cars continue to drive the wrong way down a One Way street causing serious injury and death, it is important to get out on that street and try to stop the cars going in the wrong direction at the present moment. It is also important, that when the eventual catastrophe occurs, to get out on that street and attend to the broken and bleeding victims, regardless of whether they were going in the wrong direction or in the right direction. Pain is pain, and as human beings and as Christians we must do whatever we can to alleviate it in a fellow human being who is suffering.
But does there not come a time when it is morally demanded to go beyond the tragedy of the day and figure out why so many people are driving in the wrong way down a One Way road, while simultaneously thinking they are going in the right direction?
We drive our vehicles from point A to point B by utilizing a system of symbols, e.g., “Stop” signs, “Do Not Enter” signs, “One Way” signs. If a person, under the influence of some kill-joy, lying and murderous spirit, were to alter the signs, making the “Stop” sign a “Go” sign, removing the “Do Not Enter” sign, reversing the “One Way” sign, catastrophe would ensure. And, while there would still be an imperative moral demand to attend the the immediate needs of the victims of this lethal fraud, there would equally be an imperative moral demand to get rid of the untruthful signs and replace them with signs that clearly communicate the truth; this is “One Way”, “Stop,” “Do not Enter”.
To engage in healing the immediate wounds of those deceived by untruthful symbolization is in utter conformity with the Gospel. To ignore the continuing untruthful symbolization, that ceaselessly and inevitably leads to such human carnage, is in flagrant disobedience to the Gospel. It is not Christic love for a Christian to ignore an untruth that is causing the continual destruction of people. Likewise, a lie does not morph into Christic truth or Christic love because a Christian is deceiving others out of love for God, country, Church, corporation or any subdivision of these. And above all, it is not Christic love to be indifferent to the victims in the street or to the mis-communicating symbols that led to their victimization.
Indeed, until the symbols communicate what they are supposed to communicate about this being a One Way road, pain and sorrow, wretchedness and death will be the required fare in life for traveling the down this road the wrong way.
May the God of love never allow the symbol-changers to know the suffering and horror they are responsible for pouring down upon their fellow human beings by their choice to transpose symbols and their meaning.
40. The Nonviolent Eucharistic Jesus: A Pastoral Approach
What would Christianity or the Church mean for the Christian if Jesus’ Way or teachings were made subject to, or were measured for correctness by whether Plato, Hugh Hefner, or the local emperor happen to agree with them? Since for the Christian Jesus is the Word of God, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Self-revelation of God: “The one who sees me sees the Father” (JN 14:9), since for the Christian He is “the Way and the Truth and the Life” (JN 14:6), it is senseless to maintain that the Christian life can ultimately be modeled on anyone or anything except Jesus. Even the saints must be measured against Jesus and His teachings to determine what in their lives is worthy of Christian honor and what is not.
The Eucharist is not only a mystery to consecrate, to receive, to contemplate and adore. It is also a mystery to imitate.
—Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M.Cap.
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41. Eucharist Is ``God's Absolute 'No' to Violence``
The Sermon, Eucharist Is “God’s Absolute ‘No’ to Violence,” was the third in a series of weekly Lenten meditations delivered by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the Preacher to the Papal Household. In the sermon, he states that “Christ defeated violence, not by opposing it with greater violence, but suffering it and laying bare all its injustice and uselessness.” He also affirms that “The Eucharist is the sacrament of non-violence.”
42. The Nonviolent Eucharistic Jesus: A Scholarly Approach
The Nonviolent Love of Jesus for both friends and enemies is historically at the heart of His passion and death, it must therefore be communicated as being ineradicably at the heart of the Eucharist…The passion narrative is about the Lamb of God, who goes to His death rejecting violence, loving enemies, returning good for evil, praying for His persecutors-yet conquers and reigns eternal…The sacrifice of Christ is not about salvation through mere physiological pain. It is about salvation through the Nonviolent Suffering Love of Jesus toward all and for all, even lethal enemies. It is about revealing the true nature of Divine love, the true and authentic Face of God. As the United States Catholic Bishops teach in their Pastoral, The Challenge of Peace (1983):
In all of his suffering, as in all of his life and ministry, Jesus refused to defend himself with force or with violence. He endured violence and cruelty so that God’s love might be fully manifest and the world might be reconciled to the One from whom it had become estranged.
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43. Muhammad Ali as Moral Hero
The tributes and accolades began as soon as the news of Muhammad Ali’s death was made public. But what is the reality behind the media hype? I can in no way buy into the media’s presentation of Mr. Ali, who had the reflexes and the strength to inflict great damage on other human being’s brains (even as he was so injured by others). He was a creation of the media and big money interests (legitimate and illegitimate) from the early 1960s with his appearance—under his given name, Cassius Clay—in the film Requiem for a Heavyweight), in the same way that Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama—whom we all think we know so well—are little more than media-generated characters.
It’s important to be clear: The U.S. Supreme Court did rule in favor of Muhammad Ali after he was denied conscientious objector (CO) status, but Ali was not a pacifist. His official statement about refusing to serve in the military reads as follows: War is against the teachings of the Holy Qur’an. I’m not trying to dodge the draft. We are not supposed to take part in wars unless declared by Allah or the Messenger. We don’t take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers. His famous remark to the media—I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. They never called me a nigger—is not the reason behind his application for CO status, despite the fact that the media has suggested as much for the past fifty years. That was just another scripted, PR-generated, mass media sound bite. He would have killed the Viet Cong if he believed that Allah or the Messenger told him to do that, and all eight Supreme Court Justices involved in the case recognized this.
Hence arose the need for the Supreme Court to find some contrived, procedural, legal technicality on which to acquit Ali, because only someone who was committed to pacifism under all circumstances could receive CO status during the Vietnam War. SCO, selective conscientious objectors, could not be exempt from military service. So the Court intentionally refused to judge the case on the merits of whether or not Mr. Ali was a CO. Instead, Justice Potter Stewart crafted a procedural legal loophole, was enough to overturn his conviction.
In reality, therefore, the media’s suggestions that his sacrifice was any greater or even equal the sacrifices made and endured by thousands of other COs (or of those denied CO status) is based solely on the cultural value that the loss of money and prestige are the greatest of all losses. I personally know many men and families who paid a far higher price for refusing to participate in that war than did Muhammad Ali. None has had his story persistently marketed and celebrated in the media as this man who was concussing the brains of other human being on a world stage for hundreds of millions of dollars before and after his media ballyhooed court case.
And after Viet Nam? Muhammad Ali publicly campaigned for Ronald Reagan in 1984, when everyone knew Reagan was turning Latin America into an ocean of blood. Surely, this fact speaks loudly and clearly about Ali’s values. Did he have a quarrel with the people of El Salvador? Did anyone in El Salvador ever call him nigger? Ali may or may not have been a nice person to his friends, and to the occasional “little guy” who gained brief access to him, but he was a man of great violence in spirit, word, and deed, who surrounded himself with other people of great violence. The only Muhammad Ali we have knowledge of demonstrated extensive public violence in the boxing ring and extensive public dehumanizing of people through vicious, mocking, dissing language directed at specific persons. If he is an icon, he is an icon of ostentation, braggadocio, and of evil made legitimate, legal, honorable, and praiseworthy. He is an icon of just what humanity does not need for its redemption from evil and death! By the standards of the Gospel, not only is he not a hero to be glorified, his witness to God and truth must be rejected as false.
When I was growing up in Boston in the 1940s, Ted Williams was my sports hero above all others. The belief that he was a great man, someone to look up to, was hardwired into my brain, and it stayed that way for a long time. Then I read, in several places over a short time, that he was socializing with George H.W. Bush when Bush was involved with systematically killing people throughout Latin America. The newspapers reported that Williams said to Bush, I am behind you one hundred percent. Kill all those “gd” troublemakers in Nicaragua. And in an instant, the sports hero evaporated. Here was a human being propagating evil, suggesting that it was consistent with the Gospel, and using his celebrity status to do it. Yes, it is true that he did a great deal to assist children with cancer. And for this he should be lauded. But this work was not his calling card, leading to fame, fortune and iconic hero status. Baseball was. But baseball was only a game, while supporting the killing of the oppressed, broken, enslaved people of Nicaragua was cooperation in murder. When iconic celebrity is used to support violence it must be brushed over and out of the Christian’s consciousness and conscience.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn has written that the great evil of our time is superficiality. I remember watching Christian nonviolent peace-and-justice folk run in droves to support Kerry in 2004 and then Obama in 2008 and 2012. I was saddened by the fact that they refused to see the obvious, that is, that uber-violent, uber-greedy, uber-vicious people, from inside and from outside the U.S., were orchestrating and financing each man’s billion-dollar campaign and each man’s climb up the bloody mountain to be king of the hill. Mass media gave these peace-and-justice folk Kool-Aid in the persons of Kerry and Obama, and they believed the lie and drank it, and with that act poisoned their own lives and the lives of countless others for who knows how long into the future. Such is the consequence of glorification via superficiality—and of the glorification of superficiality.
Here is a more recent example of the evil of superficiality in U.S. and Catholic culture: this year’s Commencement at the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame is a Catholic university that never ceases to advertise—in gold, neon lights—that it is a Christian institution. Surely this should mean that Notre Dame (which means the people who run it and staff it and govern it) is willing to struggle to follow the Way of Jesus Christ of the Gospels. Instead, this year it gave its Laetare Medal to Joe Biden and John Boehner, naming them the year’s two outstanding American Catholics. Both Biden and Boehner have supported Obama’s murderous agenda in the Middle East for the last eight years and have not stopped voting for the war since 2003, despite its toll of death and destruction—millions of civilians killed and maimed. And, as if that were not enough glorification of the evil of superficiality applied to Christianity, at the 2016 Commencement ceremony, Notre Dame invited General Martin Dempsey to give the keynote address and then gave him an honorary degree. General Martin Dempsey has been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the last four years, the last four years of U.S. slaughter of the innocent by land, sea, air, and now by drone, in the Middle East and in other parts of the world (to say nothing of his prior homicidal achievements). I am sure most of the people at the Commencement drank the glory Kool-Aid Notre Dame concocted for them as wholeheartedly as the followers of Jim Jones drank his deadly poison.
No human can ever judge another’s moral life: Only God can judge whether someone is a sinner. Nevertheless, Christians must decide whether they believe that what someone has done is good or evil by the standards of Jesus, the Word of God in the Gospels, before they endorse him or her. Only on that basis should Christians decide whether a media celebrity is worthy of praise, honor, glorification, and imitation. What champion of the good, what good Muslim, would ever want a man who murdered 400,000 Muslim children under the age of twelve to be the major eulogist at his funeral, as Bill Clinton was at Mr. Ali’s funeral?
And there is more—much, much more: Muhammad Ali trying to pressure Chuck Wepner—a white man about to fight him in a heavyweight championship match—to publicly call him “a nigger.” Wepner refused. Nevertheless, Ali told the press Wepner had called him that despicable name. Fortunately for Wepner, witnesses heard him refuse. But the media did not report that piece of information until years after the fight. I could go on and on: For example, practically every piece of poetry for which Mr. Ali is famous he did not write—most of it was written by Gary Belkin, his ghostwriter. In addition, Belkin wrote literally one hundred percent of Ali’s hit record album of poems, I Am The Greatest, released by Columbia Records a few months before he won the championship, when Sonny Liston sat in his corner and refused to go out for the seventh round, even though his manager told him (truthfully) that there was nothing wrong with him and that he should get out there. Even Ali’s famous tagline, I am the greatest, was written for him by Gary Belkin.
Muhammad Ali is a sinner—but then so are you and I, so are Clinton, Trump, Obama, Boehner, Biden, Dempsey, et al. In fact, for all you and I know, he and Clinton and Trump and company may be far less sinful in the eyes of God than I am or you are—that is the strictest truth, not phony humility. But it is also irrelevant to the Christian living on earth, precisely because God’s judgment is unknowable. What a Christian can know is that The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word (Heb 1:3), and that The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image (icon) of God (2 Cor 4:4). Cannot see that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:11). Such glory never shines forth from a closed fist or a barrel of a gun directed against a human being.
All that is not a reflection of the glory of God made visible to humanity in Jesus is “ichabod,” i.e., inglorious—and no amount of media cosmetics and puffery can change that eternal truth. The motto of the Jesuit order is AMDM, Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, “For the Greater Glory of God,” and the same should be the motivation for all that the Christian thinks, says, and does with his or her life. What is not in conformity with the person and message of Jesus—and the person and message are one in Catholic theology—cannot glorify God. It must be ichabod. The public presentation of Muhammad Ali does not conform to the image, person, and message of Jesus in the Gospels, and therefore, in my judgment as a Christian, he cannot be given a speck of validation or approval as an iconic moral hero. Remember, this does not mean that the Father of all does not love him infinitely and eternally. He does. It means that his PR celebrity media image and all it was, is, and communicates is ichabod today, tomorrow, and forever:
44. Gospel Nonviolence: Option or Obligation: Keeping before one’s eyes the supreme law of the Church
Here are two questions, which for forty years, I have been trying to get every Catholic Bishop, including Popes—not their clerical public relations surrogates— to publicly answer with a straight, “Yes,” or “No.” One: Does Jesus in the Gospels, who comes “to do only the will of my Father,” teach by His words and by His deeds a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies unto death for those He has chosen to be His disciples? Two: If He does, is following Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies unto death intrinsically essential for the salvation of souls?
45. January 15, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday: An Accurate Remembrance
“To separate Martin Luther King from this central piece of his theology is like separating Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. It is to fictionalize him. Human integrity and ordinary decency require that what a person gives his or her life for be united with that life whenever it is called to mind. Dr. King always gave voice to his great truth without equivocation:
I’m committed to nonviolence absolutely. I am just not going to kill anybody, whether it’s in Vietnam or here…If nonviolent protest fails this summer, I will continue to preach and teach it…I plan to stand by nonviolence…(because) only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead toward community where people live together without fear.”
Excerpt from, Who is Your King? Who is your God?,
46. Serving those who serve us…military chaplaincy…collection for the military
October 2013 – Here is the poster that has been sent out for every Catholic diocese and parish in the U.S. to display on behalf of the coming first-time-ever National Collection for the Catholic Military Archdiocese. The buzz phrase to entice people to contribute to the collection is “Serving those who Serve.”
How can we, as witnesses to the Gospel, be there for those who put so much on the line to defend our nation and empire
by killing and maiming other sons and daughters of the ‘Father of all’ and even killing and maiming fellow Baptized members of the Body of Christ, whom they have never met but whom they have been told are their enemies?”
47. Ad 2013- The First Christmas Present: “Give It A Way.”
“Where are you from, Charlie?” “Malden.” “Where are you from, Jack?” “Wellesley.” And so it was with scores of other strangers who became classmates at Notre Dame in 1958, and so it has been in normal introductory conversation throughout all of recorded history. Even Jesus’ identity is tied to the question, “Where are you from?” He is from Nazareth: He is Jesus of Nazareth.
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48. Benedict XVI’s Resignation: Life in a System Made to Fail Jesus
Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation was but another example of the problem that the phenomenon of authority is inextricably intertwined with the phenomenon of power. Benedict was crushed by the way in which this problem is theologically, operationally and morally resolved in today’s Petrine Ministry. He was crushed because he saw clearly the inherent dissonance between the authority granted to him and the power he was structured into exercising. He well-knew this was not a mere technical issue, but an issue that directly related to faith and trust in Jesus and the salvation of self and humanity. Without making noise, he tried to communicate during his tenure as the Successor of Peter that the present resolution of this problem in the Petrine Ministry was spiritually and morally unacceptable. But, there were no listeners. So, he was ensnared in a system made to fail Jesus.
49. Refusal to Volunteer for Military Service on the Basis of Conscience
Do you refuse on the basis of conscience to volunteer for the military? If you would like to proclaim your refusal publicly, we invite you to use our website. You may send us a letter expressing your conscientious objection, and we will periodically
63. Vocations and Prayer Issue 50 – The Spirit of Christmas As it was in the beginning, is now and…?
80. Abortion and War
This is an up-date of a reflection written soon after Iraq War I commenced. Neither the political-religious right nor left is interested in publishing it for very different reasons. The left because it does not want to draw attention in any way to the evil of abortion. The right because it does not want to face its gross moral inauthenticity in simultaneously opposing abortion absolutely while endorsing with jingoistic enthusiasm the mass-murder operation the U.S. is executing in Iraq. However, whether acknowledged or not, the evil discussed in this article exists on a grand scale and is daily sowing-for future harvest-the seeds of evil in Iraq and in the U.S. on a grand scale. Church, bishop, priest, minister or deacon would find it helpful (spiritually necessary) to have the issue, herein discussed, brought to explicit consciousness.
81. August 9: Ave Crux, Spes Unica
This homily was delivered by Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, at the close of the Forty Day Fast for the Truth of Christian Nonviolence at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City, August 9, 1997. The end of the fast commemorates the date in 1942 that marks the execution Edith Stein (Sr. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross) by the Nazis at Auschwitz.
Sr. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross is Jesus’ prophetic gift to His Churches because she voluntarily gives up all the accouterments of worldly power and wholeheartedly embraces the “powerless,” unrealistic, vulnerable Cross of Christ-like love. She says, “Ave Crux,” “Welcome Cross,” not out of ignorance of alternatives nor out of defeatism. She exclaims with open arms, “Ave Crux” because she knows it is “spes unica,” “our only hope”-the only power that can help, that can save.
82. Baffled
It is baffling-considering the fact that the justifications for the war currently raging in Iraq have proven to be fraudulent and that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed-to know that the spiritual and moral leadership of Christian Churches in the U.S. are not screaming “bloody murder.” The only possible way this war cannot be bloody mass murder is if it meets the standards of the Christian Just War Theory. (It is certainly in direct contradiction to Jesus’ teaching of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, which is the only other ethical option available to Christians.) But, it doesn’t come close to meeting Christian Just War standards either in the jus ad bellum or the jus in bello dimension of the so-called Christian Just War Theory. Beyond any reasonable doubt, it does not!
83. A Cardinal Evil: God My Weapon, My Agent of Violence, My Instrument of Fear and Terror
Swearing an oath is as commonplace among Christians as killing the enemy in war. However, in Christian minds it is nowhere near as significant as going to war. In fact in Christian minds and Churches swearing an oath is so taken-for-granted that Church Canon law as well as state civil and criminal law utilize it ceaselessly without any spiritual or moral qualms or misgivings. The following essay is meant to address this perilous, yes, perilous, problem in the Christian Churches and in Christian consciousness. It is perilous because for the Christian-regardless of his or her status in the Church-oaths, whether secular or religious, rely for their efficacy on explicitly defying Jesus and implicitly giving false witness on behalf of a false God.
84. Christian Just War Theory or Christian Just War Fantasy
How much time needs to pass before a theory-that says the sun will rise in the West-ceases to be regarded as a theory or even as a hypothesis, and becomes self-evidently a fantasy? Is not “Christian Just War Fantasy” the accurate and truthful term that should be employed? Is it not grave evil to use fantasy to evaluate whether the mass destruction of human beings is justifiable in the eyes of Jesus?
86. Corruptio Optimi Pessima
Corruptio optimi pessima.” This is what Constantinian Christianity represents, is, has been for its 1600 years, and always will be so long as the Churches cling to it as their way of “being an extension of Christ in time and space.” “Corruptio optimi pessima.” This is what has become of the great gift of religious consciousness that the Logos has bestowed upon human beings by way of the brain given to them…Religious consciousness and the human brain that makes it possible are given so that human beings, unlike dogs or dinosaurs, can access the beauty and grandeur of the Holiness, Love and Truth that is their Source and Destiny, that is the “Father of all, over all, through all, and in all” (Ep 4:6).
87. Dead Right Dead Wrong: Notre Dame, Obama, D'Arcy | PARTS I-IV
I wish there were a sound-bite way of presenting this material, but there isn’t. A large part of the reason that this is the case is that fixed opinions have long since been held and hardened on all sides here — Notre Dame, Bishop D’Arcy, President Obama, Professor Mary Ann Glendon, and their followers and supporters. Yet, these held and hardened moral opinions have never been subject to serious, sincere, and intense public scrutiny and examination within the Churches in terms of the issue raised here — and the issue raised here is morally primordial for the Christian and for the Churches. Long-held, hardened, taken-for-granted truth, passed on mimetically generation to generation, cannot be easily exposed as untruth, not only because of the heavy personal, emotional, psychological and financial investment a person or institution has made in it, but also because the false premises from which it is derived are usually hidden by a nurtured sense of cultural normality.
Hopefully the attached will serve as a clarification of Gospel truth through the lens of the Notre Dame-Obama-D’Arcy-Glendon public dispute over the truth content of Catholic and/or Christian morality and its application. Sometimes the best way to expose a universal lie and reveal a universal truth is by examining a specific micro-event. But, unraveling untruth to which people, individually and communally, have emotionally committed themselves takes time. So the question is, Is this truth worth the time it takes to bring it out of the shadow of the big lie and into the light?
Each of the four reflections is understandable on its own. However, I think the sum of the four parts taken as a unit offers more access to truth than the parts taken individually.
Download ALL or each individually:
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
88. Eulogy for Edward J. McDonough, C.Ss.R.
The Eulogy was given at the Mass of the Resurrection for Edward J. McDonough, C.Ss.R., at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Boston, Massachusetts, February 16, 2008. Fr. McDonough was perhaps the most well-known Marian healing priest in the world. He died on what in the Catholic calendar is the World Day for the Sick, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, that apparition of the Mother of God from whence has flowed an uncountable number of healings.
89. Fr. George Zabelka: A Military Chaplain Repents
In August of 1945 Rev. George B. Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Army Air Force, was stationed on Tinian Island in the South Pacific. He was assigned to serve the Catholics of the 509th Composite Group, which was the Atomic Bomb Group. In that capacity he was the priest for those who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After 22 years as a military chaplain he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.
I want to expose the lie of ‘Christian’ war. The lie I fell for and blessed. I want to expose the lie of killing as a Christian social method, the lie of disposable people, the lie of Christian liturgy in the service of the homicidal gods of nationalism and militarism, the lie of nuclear security.
91. Franz Jägerstätter: The Man Who Chose to See
Franz Jäggerstäter, an Austrian martyr, is among the new Blessed announced by the Vatican.
The life of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter was a simple life. An Austrian peasant from the village of St. Radegund, he was a devout Catholic, a daily communicant who prayed the rosary while doing farm chores. Sexton of his parish church, he married and had three children. On August 9, 1943, Franz Jägerstätter was killed by the German Military for refusing to kill for the German Military.
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92. General George Patton and the Christian Churches
This reflection is a request for those Christians, who see that the Jesus of the Gospel is Nonviolent and teaches by word and deed a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, to honor their Baptismal total immersion into Christ, their Baptismal commitment and their Baptismal grace of a prophetic vocation on behalf of the Spirit and the Truth of Jesus Christ and speak-up and speak-out in their parishes and Churches for that truth.
Further, this reflection is a presentation of how Constantinian ecclesiastical major-domos and bureaucrats will continue to drag the Churches of Christianity down paths that Jesus never would have taken His beloved brothers and sisters, if this prophetic charism is not exercised by those who are Baptized into Christ and who know that both Jesus and His Way are irremovably rooted in a Nonviolent Love of each and every son and daughter of our mutual Heavenly Parent.
93. The Grand Betrayal in Microcosm
The ethics of the state are the ethics of survival. The state lives in a moral jungle. Retaliation justifies anything. The supreme good of the state is that it continues to exist; and no other good can be maintained if that good threatens survival. The New Testament sees no redemption of the state. It must disappear with Sin and Death, which make it possible for the state to exist. One man who is assured of no lasting achievement is the statesman.
THE POWER AND THE WISDOM:
AN INTERPRETATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
John L. McKenzie, S.J.
Imprimi Potest, Nilhil Obstat, Imprimatur
March 8, 1965
94. Holy Week: A Dangerous Memory
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” —Milan Kundera
96. Holy Week—The Triumph of the Spirit of Cain
For Christians, Holy Week is the most meaningful and most significant week of the liturgical year—most meaningful and significant because the events of that week actually took place some two thousand years ago, and most meaningful and significant because they are every year somewhat liturgically remembered. The primal spiritual encounter of Holy Week—between Satan and God, evil and good, the lie and the truth, death and life, total destruction and total salvation—takes place on the historical plane as an encounter between violence and nonviolence, violent hate and nonviolent love, violent justice and nonviolent righteousness…
97. Homily at the Eucharist of the Resurrection
In Memory Alden Poole
Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church
Quincy, MA
October 23, AD 2015
98. Homily: Mass of the Resurrection for Audrey Santo
Published 04/18/07
From all over the world people have journeyed to the home of Audrey Santo and have witnessed the miraculous. Perhaps they came to see consecrated communion hosts that have bled, the religious statues and pictures that have wept tears of blood or shed streams of oil. Possibly they came with the hope of receiving a miraculous cure. But most of all, they came to see to little Audrey whom God chose to surround with these miracles.
Audrey was the tragic victim of a drowning accident at age three. She lived for 20 years confined to her bed in a coma-like state known as akinetic mutism. She received around-the-clock care from a staff of nurses and family. For some reason, God used her life in a special way. From what appeared to be the Sacred Stigmata, to claims of prayers miraculously answered through Audrey’s reported intercession, this silent, suffering child became a testimony of life in a culture of death.
99. Inaugurating a Millennium of Mercy
A proposal to have the Pope grant general absolution to all repentant Christians on January 1, 2000 or early in the Third Millennium.
100. An invitation to participate in the ANNUAL FORTY-DAY FAST For the Truth of Gospel Nonviolence
This is the kind (of unclean spirit) that can be driven out only by prayer and fasting.
—MARK 9:29
The test of the sincerity of one’s prayer is the willingness to work for that for which one prays.
…
The test of the sincerity of one’s work is the willingness to pray for that for which one works.
—St. John Chrysostom
101. Joan of Arc
The Issue: “What of Joan of Arc and Jesus’ nonviolence? She is a saint, yet she was a soldier who engaged in homicidal combat. Therefore, lethal violence on behalf of a state or king is consistent with the Way of Jesus to eternal life, isn’t it?” This question, which is raised at almost every extended introductory conference on Gospel nonviolent love that I direct, is what the attached reflection responds to. It is not a trivial question nor is it a question that only pertains to the Catholic Church. Just about every mainline and Evangelical Church in practice is subject to the awful reality that Joan of Arc represents.
This reflection is an attempt to bring good out of evil, life out of death, truth out of untruth, the Spirit of Christ out of the spirit of Cain, nonviolent monotheism out of violent theism.
102. Just War, As It Was and Is by James Turner Johnson
The past forty years have brought a recovery of the idea of just war in Christian ethical discourse, and this has invigorated a larger engagement with the just war idea in policy debate, in the military sphere, in philosophical thought, and in dialogue between moral reflection and international law. As a result of these developments, just war debate is more robust and widespread than in any period since the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century, the age of Vitoria and Suarez and Grotius. But important elements of…
103. Lent 2011
This year, Lent starts one day short of the latest date on which it can begin: Ash Wednesday falls on March 9. Lent is a word derived from the German, Lenz, and the Dutch, lente, both of which mean spring. In the West, Lent is an official part of the liturgical year of the Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches, and it may be a formal part of the spiritual year of other churches of which I am unaware. Although few Western Christians are aware of the fact, observance of Lent was a point of controversy at the time of the Reformation.
Generally, Lent is considered a time of repentance. The English word “repentance” is a common translation of the Greek word metanoia, which literally means “change of mind.” “Change of mind” to what during Lent? To putting on the mind of Christ. Why put on the mind of Christ? Because, if one does not put on the mind of Christ, one will be unable to do Christ-like deeds. One will be unable to obey Jesus’ new commandment to “Love one another as I have loved you.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the “new commandment” is the commandment of Jesus that “contains the entire Law of the Gospel” (#1970), and that it “expresses the entire the will of the Father,” which is to be done on earth as it is in heaven” (#2822).
104. Prayer to Live Mercifully
Since every moral act begins in the mind, and since a great deal of our time has been spent becoming who we were not created to be, the first and indispensable step to becoming who we were created to be, is metanoia, change of mind. The Prayer to Live Mercifully, may serve as a way to begin to fast as God wants us to fast this Lent — so that we may live as God wants us to live beyond this Lent. If prayed with perseverance, with a sincere desire that God transform us and our Christian communities — if it should prayed as a Lenten communal prayer-God promises that one’s voice “will be heard on high.” And, God is faithful to His promises.
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105. Litany of Christ the Prisoner (English)
Center for Christian Nonviolence
Christ, a person captured,
Have mercy on us.
Christ, a person interrogated,
Have mercy on us.
Christ, a person jailed,
Have mercy on us.
Christ, a person tortured,
Have mercy on us.
Christ, a person prosecuted,
Have mercy on us.
Christ, a person found guilty by the judicial process,
Have mercy on us….
106. Letanía de Cristo el Prisionero (Spanish)
Center for Christian Nonviolence
Cristo, persona capturada,
Ten piedad de nosotros.
Cristo, persona interrogada,
Ten piedad de nosotros.
Cristo, persona encarcelada,
Ten piedad de nosotros.
Cristo, persona torturada,
Ten piedad de nosotros.
Cristo, persona juzgada,
Ten piedad de nosotros.
Cristo, persona que el proceso judicial declaró culpable,
Ten piedad de nosotros….
107. Mass on the Feast of Saint Stephen
In case you participated in Mass on this Feast of Saint Stephen or read the official Roman Catholic readings for the Mass this day, this is just a heads-up to keep you from being misled by an intentional omission in today’s readings.
The first reading is from the Acts of the Apostles and tells the story of the martyrdom of the Nonviolent Saint Stephen, ACTS 6:8-10; 7:54-59. It concludes at VERSE 59 with the words, “As they were stoning Saint Stephen, he called out, ‘Lord Jesus receive my spirit’ ” (ACTS 7:59)…
108. Memorial Day's Source: The Will to Kill Other People's Children
War is the creation of individuals not of nations.
Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War (2008)
From King David (or from one of his “best and brightest”), we hear:
Fair Babylon, you destroyer,
happy those who pay you back
the evil you have done us.
Happy those who seize your children
and smash them against a rock.
—PSALM 137:8-9
109. Mother's Day Meditation, 2012
This mediation is a mother’s pledge to and covenant with every other mother on Mothers’ Day.
110. The Nonviolent Palm Sunday and the Nonviolent Holy Week of 33 AD
Just in case your Palm Sunday and Holy Week liturgies do not communicate it clearly, or just in case your priest, minister, bishop, preacher or pastor do not tell you it from the pulpit, Palm Sunday and Holy Week are 100% about the victorious and salvific Nonviolent Coming of God into His Nonviolent Kingdom through the Nonviolent Messiah Jesus.
111. On the Revolution of Love It ``Changes the World without Making a Noise``
It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the “Christian revolution,” a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God, that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise.
….and a commentary on Pope Benedict’s address:
112. Revolution: Without Making a Noise
This is one superbly crafted statement on the importance, indeed the centrality, of Jesus’ teaching of nonviolent love of friends and enemies, and on this being “the nucleus of the Christian revolution” and hence axial to a correct understanding of the Gospel. For those who spend the time with it that it deserves, it will be an illumination of a truth hidden or obscured, perhaps since their Baptism.
113. The Passion of The Christ: A Meditation on A Film
The Passion of The Christ, produced and directed by Mr. Mel Gibson, is the single finest cinematic representation of the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies ever presented to the consciousness of humanity…
…The Passion of The Christ was about love-not Caesarian love, not Aristotelian love, not Platonic love, not nationalistic or ethnic love, not Hollywood love. It was about Christic love. That is, it was about the love that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, was ordained by Love Itself to reveal and to bestow on humanity by His words and deeds, for its temporal good and its eternal salvation. It was about the only kind of love, the only kind of power, that can conquer evil, vanquish death, bring peace and lead one and all to an eternally graced union with God…It was about the omnipotence of Christ-like love and the omnipotent God who is love (agapé)
114. Pilate Lives! Boston College Washes Its Hands of the Blood of the Innocent
Can there be greater compounding of spiritual laxness for a Catholic institution than going beyond silence about the killing of over 100,000 civilians in Iraq and the maiming of hundreds of thousands more, to explicitly honoring the perpetrator of what is gravely intrinsically evil, i.e., unjustified homicide-murder? Condoleezza Rice, who is to speak at graduation and receive an honorary degree, is one of the people primarily responsible for the planning, the execution and the propagandizing-as just-a war that has led to the large-scale destruction of the civilian population of Iraq.
115. Pope Benedict XVI's Last Word to the Church
Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation was but another example of the problem that the phenomenon of authority is inextricably intertwined with the phenomenon of power. Benedict was crushed by the way in which this problem is theologically, operationally and morally resolved in today’s Petrine Ministry. He was crushed because he saw clearly the inherent dissonance between the authority granted to him and the power he was structured into exercising. He well-knew this was not a mere technical issue, but an issue that directly related to faith and trust in Jesus and the salvation of self and humanity. Without making noise, he tried to communicate during his tenure as the Successor of Peter that the present resolution of this problem in the Petrine Ministry was spiritually and morally unacceptable. But, there were no listeners. So, he was ensnared in a system made to fail Jesus.
118. Preemptive Truth: ``What did they know and when did they know it?``
He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.
—1984 (George Orwell)
The intentional presentation of historical falsehoods as historical truths is the evil of lying. The use of historical untruth to cover-up a person’s or institution’s participation in another evil makes the historical lie doubly evil. When that historical lie is passed on by nurturing to a new generation of innocent children, then the historical evil and the historical lie meant to cover it up become a spiritually venomous virus with innumerable awful mutations within its range of possibilities-mutations that can reach to the third and fourth generation, and beyond.
Recognizing that it is impossible for Satan to drive out Satan, for evil to drive out evil, this brief reflection might be of assistance in discerning truth and the choices consistent with truth in your Church and within the various human communities with which you are associated. Being unheeding of evil in one’s midst-because evil has become normalized-does not reduce evil’s power to destroy in the present or in the future.
119. Remember: August 6
Throughout the world August 6 is rightfully remembered as the day that humanity entered into a never-before-seen form of homicidal violence-the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Unlike the Fourth of July in the United States, Independence Day, or the Fourteenth of July in France, Bastille Day, August 6 is a planetary day of remembrance. What is done on that day in 1945 is utterly new in human history-death finds a new doorway into life.
But, we forget. We forget that on August 6, 1890 another never-before-seen form of homicidal violence entered human history-death by the electric chair. On that day William Kemmler, age 30, an illiterate alcoholic from the slums of Buffalo, NY and a convicted murderer is executed by electricity at Auburn State Prison. Something utterly new enters human history—death finds a new doorway into life. But, we do not remember. Why?
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120. Rorschach Jesus: The Ignorant Messiah
Could Jesus have been wrong and still have been the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Word of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Savior of the world? If Jesus is “like us in all things except sin” (Phil 2:7; Heb 4:15; Rom 8:3), then does it not follow that He was fallible, since humans are universally fallible. Ignorance, making mistakes, speaking untruth believing it to be truth may be many things but it is not sin.
How else is it possible to explain that the vast majority of Christians today, who believe that Jesus is Lord, simultaneously and vigorously repudiate His teaching on the rejection of violence and enmity?
121. Sacerdotal Flagism
Should the Flag Be Permanently Displayed in Church Sanctuaries or Other Explicitly Christian Environments?
The more zealous a person is for uniting the flag and the cross as complementary and compatible realities and symbols, the more important it is that he or she be made aware of the problems involved in holding such a view. And, the more important it is to begin a dialogue with those holding this view. This essay could serve as the basis of such a dialogue.
This should not be dismissed as if it were a trite matter. If it were such a minor matter why are so many so incensed and hostile when the issue is raised or when people by their actions refuse to acknowledge the unity of the flag and cross. Remember in 1943 at the height of WW II the government tried to impose a pledge of allegiance to the flag on students and did it with the backing of Church officials of practically all denominations. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that enforcing such a pledge in a classroom was unconstitutional because “Here it is the state that employs the flag as a symbol of adherence to government as presently organized. It requires the individual to communicate by word or deed his acceptance of the political ideas it bespeaks. Objection to this form of communication when coerced is an old one, well known to the framers of the Bill of Rights.” [FN 13]
[Footnote 13] “Early Christians were frequently persecuted for their refusal to participate in ceremonies before the statue of the emperor or other symbols of imperial authority.”How strange that judges on a secular court see the power, the moral-theological seriousness and the religious dimensions of the symbol of the flag of a nation-state, but bishops, priests and ministers remain oblivious to it-or if they do see it then they persist in the irrationality of insisting that the symbols of the flag and the cross communicate compatible truths.
122. Serving Those Who Serve
The American Bishops have made the decision to ask every Catholic diocese and parish in the U.S. to participate in a first-time-ever National Collection for the Catholic Military Archdiocese (11/9–10). The buzz phrase to entice people to contribute to the collection is “Serving Those Who Serve.” This is a heart-grabbing, marketing-speak sound bite that purports to say everything that needs to be said, but in fact communicates nothing except, “Open your wallet.” It especially does not communicate the life and teaching of the Nonviolent Jesus as do statements recently made by Pope Francis that clearly reject the use of violence: “The true force of the Christian is the force of truth and of love, which means rejecting all violence.” “Faith and violence are incompatible!”
123. Stop the PopePosted September 2016
A Papal Document on Gospel Nonviolence, written by a man who is a life-long just warist and who proclaims as the Gospel, the Good News, “No Justice, No Peace,” is problematic, if not suspect.
It would lend the culturally nurtured spiritual and moral authority of a celebrity Christian personage and office to untruth masquerading as the Gospel truth. It would be a document befogging and muddling the truth of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies for a long, long time into the future.
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124. The Sword of Peter
Christ ordered Peter to put up his sword and yet today the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of Peter possesses the oldest continually-active military corps in the world-the Papal Swiss Guard.
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126. To Teach What Jesus Taught: A Call to Fidelity
Thoroughly enter into the depth of the issue of Gospel Nonviolence by pondering this reflection
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127. A True Hero of the Vietnam War
“Hero” in reference to a person, who unjustifiably kills people, serves as part of the indoctrination process for normalizing the evasion of truth, the denial of reality and the manufacturing of facts that allows those, who planned and executed the mass murder (unjust destruction) of hundreds of thousands of human beings in both Vietnam and Iraq to be called “hero.”
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128. Who is Your King? Who is Your God?
A meditation on the eternal contribution and challenge to Christianity and to humanity made by the servant of God-the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is the address that was delivered between five and six o’clock by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy on April 4, 1993 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated there at 6:02 P.M., twenty-five years earlier on April 4, 1968. The Lorraine Motel is now the National Civil Rights Museum.
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129. Reclaiming Jesus But Not the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
It is difficult, if not impossible, to figure out which Jesus is being reclaimed in the recent much-ballyhooed document, Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis (attached below). But, what is clear is the Jesus that the document presumes to reclaim is not the Jesus of the Gospels who was Nonviolent and who teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies. Not once in the entire Reclaiming Jesus document is Jesus’ rejection of violence by word and by deed in the Gospels mentioned, although the document gives a list of things that must be rejected based on Jesus’ teachings and His being Lord. Nor is it mentioned that His disciples are called to follow Him and reject violence. So, the document communicates that a Christian, whether American or British, who has reclaimed Jesus as the document prescribes could join the American or British military and bomb the be-Jesus out of human beings designated “enemies” or designated “collateral damage” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
130. Roger LaPorte
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
Roger La Porte immolated himself on November 9, 1965, as his response to the high tech and financially profitable massacre of the people of Vietnam that the U.S. politicians and military were conducting 7200 miles from the borders of the U.S.—and to which most of the U.S. citizenry at the time were indifferent. The sacrifice of his life was his response to this wickedness and to the mass media deceit that was calculatingly covering up the daily fare of atrocities that men in the U.S. military were committing against the Vietnamese.
When news of his death, the manner of death and the motivation for his self-immolation became known, few in the Church had a good word to say about him, and most had clever, subtle, demeaning and dismissing innuendos when asked to comment on Roger. I was appalled then and remain appalled to this day at the way my fellow Catholics from Cardinal Spellman to Thomas Merton to Dorothy Day and most other Catholics threw Roger overboard.
Yet, I remember the aura of religious heroism, the almost reverend adulation, with which some of these same people treated the self-immolation by the sixty-six-year-old Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc’s, two and a half years earlier in Saigon on June 11, 1963—although they disagreed with self-immolation as a form of protest for themselves. Yet, where Roger was concerned, it was a radically different response, tenor and tone that was adopted.
But, to his eternal credit, Rev. Daniel Berrigan stood by Roger to the end and beyond, and in my mind rightly interpreted Roger’s act, motivation and witness. Dan did not and would not—nor would I— counsel Roger to choose such a witness. Dan, however, left no doubt after hearing Roger’s death bed confession that Roger was following his conscience and was not trying to commit suicide, but rather, was voluntarily accepting suffering and possibly death so that others might have their sufferings relieved and their deaths avoided. Dan paid a price for standing by Roger publicly and privately, having the cruel wrath of Cardinal Spellman and his own Jesuit Order immediately come down on him.
Regardless of how we die, we all die totally dependent on the mercy of God. No one dies saying, “Lord, have justice on me.” In relation to the Vietnam War, Roger made his choice and others made theirs. Roger’s act resulted in him being burned to death. The acts of other U.S. Catholics and Christians resulted in tens of thousands of Vietnamese being burned to death. Remember the DOW Chemical Napalm Holocaust in Vietnam? Imagine the agony of that! That was Roger’s agony multiplied tens of thousands of times over. Indeed, Dan Berrigan after visiting Vietnam during the war called it “The Land of the Burning Children.” But one will search in vain for evidence that the wrath of Cardinal Spellman or of the Jesuit Order came down on any of the Catholics who set tens of thousands of human beings on fire in Vietnam, or on any Catholic institutions that taught Catholics to obey those who ordered them to burn Vietnamese people to death.
God only is the ultimate judge of the moral quality of each act and of each soul. But, on a human level “washing their hands” of Roger by so many of his fellow Catholics and Christians, who often were utterly indifferent to U.S. Catholic and Christian politicians and military personnel burning people alive in Vietnam, is blazingly revealing of how out-of-touch the institutional Churches of Christianity and their leadership—Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant—are from being faithful and truthful agents and servants of Jesus and His teachings—then, and today.
131. Roger LaPorte, November 9, 1965
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
Roger Allen LaPorte
Roger LaPorte is long dead, long gone and long forgotten. His name, like the names of most of the non-warrior victims is not to be found on any wall of remembrance in Washington, DC, nor in any high-end television documentary. Nor, have I ever seen the slightest memento or symbol that would call to mind the non-warrior Catholic victims, home and abroad, of U.S. wars in any U.S. Catholic Church. Yet, the overwhelming majority of victims of war are not military men and women but are rather non-combatant non-warriors. Do not these billions of non-combatant war victims deserve human and Christian recognition and prayers as much the dead violent combat veterans? Roger LaPorte is just one of the billions of the lost-to-recorded-history non-warrior victims of war.
Roger, a Catholic Christian, immolated himself on November 9, 1965 at the United Nations in New York City in order to bring to light and to protest the savagery of the evil that the U.S. economic, political and military elites and their trained and paid professional killers had been pouring down on the Vietnamese people for years with hardly a peep from anyone in the U.S.—including the Bishops of the Catholic Church. His immolation was a last resort, desperate act, of a young man who was trying to love his brothers and sisters in Vietnam and in the U.S. by laying down his life for them, that is, in order to move the consciousnesses and consciences of the economically powerful, their political puppets and the media Novocained citizenry to stop their murderous carnage against the people of Vietnam.
What and who brought him to the point, where he perceived that this is what he wanted to, should do, must do, will forever be unknown in this world. The moral quality of his act before God will also be forever unknown in this world. Did he intend to do God’s will as revealed by Jesus? Was he following his conscience? Was he making his choice in a state of non-culpable ignorance? From whence did he derive the idea that he could be doing God’s will by killing himself to try to save the earthly life of others? Was it from a logical extension of the Catholic moral theory of justified homicide, that is, if a person could morally kill another person to try to save an earthly life, why should it not be morally permissible a person to kill him or herself to try to save an earthly life? Why is killing another human being to save a life a morally neutral or good act and killing oneself to save a life an intrinsically morally grave evil act? If taking another life to save the life of an innocent person is a good act in conformity with Jesus’ teaching, “No greater love has a person than to lay down his life for his friends,” then why doesn’t the same apply for taking one’s own life to save innocent people? Isn’t this exactly what is being done when a soldier intentionally falls on a hand grenade to save his buddies’ lives? The moral difference between that soldier and Roger LaPorte is what? And, who is responsible for placing into Roger’s mind the idea that any kind of homicidal violence for any purpose could be morally squared with Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels on violence?
Finally, what brought Roger to the point, where he perceived that this is what he wanted to do, should do, must do? That self-immolation by Buddhist monks in Vietnam was spiritually glamourized and celebritized in significant parts of the anti-war peace movement, including the Christian peace movement, at this time is more than likely a piece of the puzzle of what moved Roger to immolate himself. For example, on June 11, 1963, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, immolated himself at a Saigon intersection as a way of protesting the intolerable persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam by its Catholic President and U.S. surrogate, Ngo Dinh Diem. With specific reference to that Buddhist’s witness, an 82 year old Jewish pacifist in Detroit on March 16, 1965, Alice Herz, and a 31 year old Quaker in Washington, DC, on November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, followed the Buddhist monk in his choice of self-immolation as a way to try help the people of Vietnam who for years were daily being torn to pieces by high tech and low tech U.S. Military killing gadgets and personnel. Morrison even took his one year old daughter, Emily, with him to a place outside the Pentagon about forty feet from the window of Secretary of “Defense” Robert McNamara’s Office, handed his daughter to someone, then doused himself with kerosene, burning himself to death. His wife said that the reason he brought his daughter with him was “[S]he was a powerful symbol of the children we were killing with our bombs and napalm—who didn’t have parents to hold them in their arms.”
Seven days later on November 9, 1965, Roger LaPorte burned himself to death in front of the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the United Nations. He lived for a short while after and in a state of complete lucidity made what the Catholic priest who administered the Sacrament of Reconciliation to him said was “a perfect confession.” In the only public communication he left explaining his action he said, “I did this as a religious act.”
In 1965 the overwhelming majority of Roger’s fellow Catholics, laity, clergy and hierarchy were in support of the war in Vietnam or just indifferent to the slaughter of Vietnamese men, women and children that was taking place under the auspices of the U.S. military. The most prominent and powerful Cardinal in the U.S. at the time was literally aping Stephen Decatur’s words of nationalistic jingoism, “My country right or wrong,” as justification for Catholics slaughtering by the car loads Vietnamese people, 7000 miles away. A Cardinal-to-be was writing a book, using all the paraphernalia of Catholic moral theology to endorse this overwhelming atrocity, which book the Commandant of the Marine Corps would send to all his chaplains and officers to read. There can be little doubt that this serious, informed and empathic twenty-two-year-old Catholic young man in 1965 was affected by support for the Vietnam War shown by the leadership of his Church.
The post-mortem histories of the four who immolated themselves to help the people of Vietnam are quite different. Thich Quang Duc is revered by Vietnamese Buddhists as a bodhisattva, the intersection where he set himself afire has a monument and park dedicated to him and his intact heart is preserved as a relic of the spirit of compassion in a glass chalice. Alice Herz, who was also a refuge from Nazi Germany, has a plaza named after her in Berlin. Shingo Shibata, the Japanese philosopher, established the Alice Herz Peace Fund in her memory. Norman Morrison has a road named after him in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang. In Hanoi a street is named after him and the Government of Vietnam has issued a postage stamp in his honor. An HBO film about him has been made and poems and books have been written about him. The charred dry bones of Roger LaPorte—long dead, long gone and long forgotten—lay in the ground of Section 1, Row 11 of Saint Alphonsus Cemetery in Tupper Lake, NY, “unwept, unhonored and unsung.” Indeed, he was almost instantaneously abandoned by his Church and by those who played a significant role in raising his perception and conscience in relations to the horror and raw evil of the Vietnam War. The above-mentioned Cardinal excoriated the priest who heard Roger’s confession as he lay dying and who had the audacity to say a good word about him publicly. As for those who knew Roger and who after his death went the way of Peter (Mt 26:71-74) protesting vigorously, “I do not know the man,” all that can be said of them is that they made the abandonment complete.
And so, it should be for Roger LaPorte, for such is the case for just about all of the non-combatant, non-warrior victims of war. Those who obediently go off to kill people in other lands, the warriors—whether now dead or alive—are lavishly fawned over as “heroes,” but the billions of noncombatant non-warriors they destroyed in body, mind, soul and spirit must be kept out of sight, out of mind and out of memory, lest they reveal from the grave the immensity of the evil our hero-warriors and their most honorable puppet masters have done to fellow human beings who did nothing harmful to them and who intended to do nothing harmful to them.
Roger LaPorte—“May his memory be eternal.”
132. Voting: A Charade of Hope
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
“Voting is a deeply moral act for me—in rebuilding confidence and encouraging an intelligent and hope-filled society. It is also a decisive act of Christian faith that I matter, society matters, justice matters, and others matter. Not to vote is to hand our power and our dignity over to people who fear actual freedom, honest intelligence, and faith in the very goodness of humanity.”
Richard Rohr
While I agree with Richard on most of what he has written and stood for over the decades, he is dead wrong on the above: dead wrong about the Christian morality of voting, the reality of voting, the efficacy of voting and that voting “is a decisive act of Christian faith that I matter, society matters, and others matter”. Dead wrong that “not to vote is to hand our power and our dignity over to people” who are less intellectually honest, more fearful and less full of faith in the goodness of humanity than ourselves.
ECM
Voting: A Charade of Hope
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
I have shown in detail that every state is founded on violence and cannot maintain itself save by and through violence.
Jacques Ellul
In spite of the unceasing efforts made by men in power to conceal this and to ascribe a different meaning to power, power is the application of a rope, a chain by which a person will be bound and dragged along, or of a whip, with which he will be flogged, or of a knife, or an axe with which they will cut off his hands, feet, ears, head—an application of these means or the threat they will be used. Thus, it was in the time of Nero and of Genghis Khan and thus it is even now, in the most liberal of governments.
Leo Tolstoy
Voting in a governmental election is participation in an intrinsically violent process. This is fact, not theory. What each candidate is promising each voter is this: “Vote for me and I will put the power of governmental violence behind your ideas about virtue, right and goodness, and force people under threat of pain or death to live by them.”
Voting presents no spiritual or moral problem for the person who believes that God endorses homicidal violence. The only question for such a person is when God approves of it. However, if one happens to believe that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Word of God made flesh, the definitive revelation of God and God’s Will to humanity, whose Way must be followed by those given faith in Him, then participation by voting in an intrinsically violent process is unacceptable, unnecessary and unmeaningful.
The moral and spiritual issue facing the Christian can be encapsulated as follows: If all nation-states require and employ homicidal violence to survive, if all human laws are backed-up by enforcing clauses, i.e., by the threat and willingness to use violence, even homicidal violence if necessary, to get done what they want to get done:
- if Jesus is nonviolent;
- if Jesus teaches a Way of nonviolent love of friends and enemies,
- if Jesus expects those He has chosen, i.e., the baptized, to follow Him and His Way,
and if it is morally impermissible for a follower of Jesus to enlist another human being to execute an evil which the disciple of Jesus is morally prohibited from doing, then is not a Christian betraying his or her baptismal commitment by voting for other people—presidents, legislators, judges—to do on his or her behalf what the Christian him or herself is forbidden to do, that is, use homicidal violence against another son or daughter of God?
Daniel Berrigan, S.J., said on many occasions, “If people think they can participate in major league politics and be Christian, they either don’t know what major league politics is or they don’t know what Christianity is.” Homicidal violence is the built-in modus operandi of governmental politics. However, it is only the most blatant inconsistency between Jesus’ Way and the way of the “raging nations.” Lies, fraud, CIA-Mossad-MI 6 black opts operations, greed and enmity are as ineradicably tied to governmental politics as homicidal violence is. As Carl J. Friedrich, former Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University writes: “Our analysis has, I hope, shown that politics need all these dubious practices; it cannot be managed without violence, betrayal, corruption, secrecy and propaganda.”
The Christian has no more business selecting the best or the most “Christian” homicider, deceiver, black-ops leader or powermonger, than he or she has in selecting the best or the most Christian prostitute or most Christian Mafia Godfather. This should be blatantly self-evident. Voluntary participation in such processes legitimates and empowers spirits that are innately and irreversibly hostile to the mission of Jesus and hence to the salvation of humanity. Voting for who can best activate these diabolical powers on behalf of “my cause” is an enterprise that no follower of Jesus should be party to.
For the Christian, there is no hope outside of the Will of God as revealed by Jesus. All of the Christian’s hope must be placed in Jesus and His Way–even if the powers of this world and the wisdom of this world dismiss and demean His Way as folly. Why this exclusive commitment to Jesus and His Way? Because Jesus is God incarnate and hence His Way is “the power and the wisdom of God” (1 Co 1:24). His Way is Reality! For the Christian to participate in what Jesus explicitly rejects as God’s Will and Way is for the Christian to waste his or her life on an illusionary hope. It is to dribble away existence in the service of “the sound and the fury signifying nothing”—or worse.
The Christian knows that his or her final judgement rests and the salvation of all humanity rests on using every means available to serve suffering humanity (Mt 25: 31)—every means that is consistent with the Way of Jesus. But the Christian also knows, should know, that evil can never and will never serve the salvation of the individual or the salvation of humanity or entrance into Communion with God. This is true regardless of all the governmental, religious and mass media lies about the realities of governmental politics and all the governmental, religious and mass media brainwashing into deceitful myths of sacral, noble, heroic, necessary and good governmental violence notwithstanding.
The Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels authorizes, indeed commands, no disciple of His to substitute—even for a second—violence for loving as He loves (Jn 13:34, 15:12). If the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Word of God made flesh, then not a single act of violence is needed for any person and for all humanity to “be all they can be.” Indeed, any voluntary participation in an act of violence, whether it be personal, commercial, or governmental is radically hostile to a person or to all humanity reaching the goal of “being all they can be.” So, says the Nonviolent God Incarnate, the Nonviolent Jesus Christ. He may be wrong—in which case He would not be the Messiah or God—but He is not unclear.
133. DOW-CIA: November 18, 1969-November 18, 2004
This document includes a letter written in November 2004, by Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy to the students who were expelled from the University of Notre Dame in December of 1969 for nonviolently protesting the presence on the Notre Dame Campus of DOW Chemical and the CIA, who were both were actively recruiting students at the height of the Vietnam War.y (also a lawyer) and the ten expelled students-which was used in their defense.
134. Edith Stein - 'Miracle' Did Auschwitz Victim's Intercession Save Benedicta's Life? By Church World, Maine's Catholic Weekly (v57, no43) 14 May 1987.
Teresia Benedicta McCarthy is a happy, healthy little two-year-old named after a Jewish Carmelite nun killed at Auschwitz by the Nazis in 1942. A few weeks ago, Benedicta was literally at death’s door from accidental poisoning. Many who know the child, including doctors and nurses who were caring for her, believe that her complete recovery is due to a miracle. Her family and the legion of friends who prayed for a healing are convinced Benedicta is alive today through the intercession of Blessed Teresia Benedicta (Edith Stein) who was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Cologne, Germany on May 1, 1987.
135. Edith Stein - Some Guiding Reflections on the Icon of the Servant of Yahweh: Blessed Teresia Benedicta of the Cross
Posted 02/2005
An icon is meant to be a manifestation of the living God. It is meant to bring forth a reverent awe of God through contemplation of his inscrutable mercy at work in the life of a person or of persons for the benefit of all humanity.
To contemplate a holy icon is to ponder, with the heart of faith, God who is love. It is to see Divine Mercy acting in ways that are as far above our ways as the heavens are above the earth. It is to feel infinite Love creating some great end which is quite beyond human comprehension. It is this God, made flesh in His Word, Jesus, to whom a person shows reverence, love and gratitude when he or she bows down before or kisses an icon. It is this God to whom people say ‘Yes’ when they cross themselves in front of an icon. Blessed Teresia Benedicta of the Cross is the instrument of this God, made in His image, born into His Chosen People, baptized into His Chosen Servant. This icon is an image of her within her patently Providential history, revealing to ‘those who have eyes to see’ the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and always and unto ages of ages.
136. Edith Stein - Pondering a Miracle and The Living Mystery Beyond It
Posted 05/2005, Originally published in Vocations and Prayer Today, April/June 1999, #36 vol. 7 no. 2.
Things were in God’s plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that—from God’s point of view—there is no chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God’s divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God’s all-seeing eyes.
—Edith Stein