Reflections

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…

Mark Twain wrote that Christianity took all the peace out of death. Strictly construed the statement is erroneous.

Nevertheless, Jesus in the Gospels and in some forms of Christianity keep before the mind what, perhaps, a person would prefer to suppress from explicit consciousness, namely, that time and its choices are tethered to eternity. For Christians and others, human existence as lived on earth is not just a meaningless conglomeration of choices in an eternally insignificant game in a sandbox. A human being is not merely “a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.” Jesus reveals that the conceivable connection between life on earth and in eternity is a fact of human existence (see Mt 25:36ff, “When the Son of Man comes in all His glory…”). It is called judgment. He also makes clear what the standard of judgment will be when the Book of Conscience for each life is read: “For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you measure, it shall be measured to you again” (Mt 7:2, 6:13; Mk 4:24; Lk 6:37), “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy” (Mt 5:7), “Whatever you do unto the least, you do unto me” (Mt 25: 40, 45).

The funeral liturgy for Antonin Scalia at the Immaculate Conception Basilica was imperial. It was the social-political event for this year in D.C., so far. The glitterati of politics, the media, finance and the military were there in all their glory. Of course, the one person not in the pews or in the sanctuary was Antonin Scalia. He was with the community of the dead. He was face to face with Ricky Ray Rector, Lionel Herrera, Willie Brown, Karla Faye Tucker, Warren McCleskey, Lynda Block, Willie Darden, Amos King and newly arrived on February 17, 2016, Travis Hittson, as well as 1272 others in whose homicide he participated. In almost all of the 1282 death penalty cases during his time on the Supreme Court, he was positioned to mercifully stop the destruction of each of these human beings. But he publicly, and vigorously or silently, refused to be merciful. A large percentage of the victims of his mercilessness were afforded a funeral far removed from the garishness of his funeral. They were simply thrown into a pauper’s grave with the rest of “the least.”

On the several nationally televised live broadcasts of Antonin’s funeral—and on the days before and after his funeral—the U.S. public was inundated with non-stop laudatory commentaries about him via U.S. corporate media. So be it. People can say what they want, or what they are paid to say as they wish. But let us not be infantile. All praise of any kind originates in some value system, which holds “this or that” is worthwhile in reality. In the Mafia, the road to praise and glory is being an obedient enforcer for the godfather. In Jesus’ understanding of reality, and hence of what is worthwhile, such activity would not be praiseworthy. It would be spurned as evil. What good does it do a person to be a highly praised and honored Mafia enforcer and lose his immortal soul, would be the view from Jesus’ understanding of reality.

Supreme Court Justice Harold Blackmun, a Jew, could easily have supported the death penalty by following the lex talionis found in the Mosaic Law and other codes of law:

“The rest will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such an evil thing among you. Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Dt 19:20-21; Lev 24:19-21; Ex 21:23).

But, Blackmun did not. When he announced his intention to no longer support the death penalty in any case, he said, “When I sit on a Court that reviews and affirms capital convictions, I am part of the machinery of death.” Antonin Scalia a Catholic Christian believed that Jesus was Lord, God, Messiah, the Word of God Incarnate and Savior. He knew that according to His Church’s doctrine, “The commandments of Jesus, preeminently the Sermon on the Mount, are the standard of Christian conduct, not the Mosaic law, except where some of the Mosaic commandments have now been invested with the authority of Jesus.” He also knew Jesus did not “invested with His authority” the lex talionis, but rather totally rejected it: “You have heard it said of old, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ but I say to you…” (Mt 5:38-42). But, he chose to live a significant segment of his life by the letter and spirit of lex talionis.

Yet, Antonin Scalia was lionized in the official Catholic press and among the Catholic hierarchy for his Catholicism, even though by a premeditated decision he chose to be only a part-time disciple of Jesus—something Jesus called no one to be. By his own admission, he parted company with Jesus at the doorway to his job. In other words, he followed not the Way of Jesus but the Way of Mafia Catholicism—family values, excessive tithing, tenacious patriotism, reception of all the Sacraments, a pedestal-like respect for nuns and an appetite for liturgical theatre. But when it came to the organization’s business, Jesus and His teachings were left on the doorstep and locked-out.

What concerns me is the eternal and temporal lethal frivolousness of Mr. Scalia’s Christian witness, indeed his false witness, to others of the Jesus of the Gospels and His teaching. What is equally disquieting are the leaders of the institutional Churches exuberantly aggrandizing his part-time, les talionis Christianity. But, what is spiritually alarming in the extreme is his perception of God and reality that would lead him and like-minded Christians to continuously and heedlessly pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Again, time and its choices of thoughts, words and deeds are tethered to eternity.

The full version of this article can be read here:

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Over the last few days we have been subjected to a non-stop laudatory commentary via U.S. corporate media on Antonin Scalia, who died on February13, 2016. So be it. People can say what they want, or what they are paid to say as they wish. For my part I only wish Antonin Scalia, a fellow Christian and human being, the best in his future existence.

The glitterati of Washington’s political and media society fought like the devil to get a ticket into the Immaculate Conception Basilica for his Catholic funeral liturgy. The greats of the corporate world and Wall Street were well represented in the great Church for the event. Prelates and military men of status and power were very much part of the scene. The Scalia funeral liturgy was the social-political event of the year in D.C. so far. Of course, the one person who was not in the pews or in the sanctuary was Antonin Scalia. He was with the community of the dead. He was face to face with Ramon Hernandez, Willie Brown, Karla Faye Tucker, Warren McCleskey, Lynda Block, Billy Ray Williams, Esequel Banda, Kimberly McCarthy, Willie Darden, Lisa Coleman, Walter Williams, Lionel Herrera, Suzanne Basso, Amos King, Terry Lyn Short and newly arrived on February 17, 2016, Travis Hittson, as well as 1266 others in whose homicide he participated.

His accomplishments in one of the kingdoms of this world, the United States, were remembered and much ballyhooed at his funeral, but are of no interest to me. What concerns me is the spiritual and temporal frivolousness of his witness, indeed his false witness, to the Jesus of the Gospels as a prime advocate, practitioner and executioner of the death penalty, wearing his Christianity on his sleeve for everyone to see, even as he sent person after person to his or her death. Over his thirty years on the Supreme Court—the court of last resort and hope for a person pleading to be saved from the application of the merciless eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth, death-for-death lex talionis of Judaism (Lev 24:19-21; Ex 21:23; Dt 19:20-21) —1,282 human beings were killed under a death penalty law. In almost all cases he was positioned to stop the homicide, but he publicly and vigorously or silently refused. What concerns me is the Church of Jesus Christ, which by definition is supposed to be “an extension of Christ in time and space,” validating, endorsing and indeed glorifying his homicidal activity as consistent with the person and/or teaching of the Jesus of the Gospels, and thereby misleading other Christians and non-Christians about the truth that Jesus taught in the Gospels as the Way and Will of God for His chosen disciples.

Machinery of Death

Here, in a University of Chicago speech, is how Antonin Scalia justified his participation in the killing of helplessly bound men and women prisoners, who by some application of some state method of determining legal guilt, were designated guilty of unjustly killing a human being:

“But while my views on the morality of the death penalty have nothing to do with how I vote as a judge, they have a lot to do with whether I can or should be a judge at all. To put the point in the blunt terms employed by Justice Harold Blackmun towards the end of his career on the bench, when he announced that he would henceforth vote to overturn all death sentences: ‘When I sit on a Court that reviews and affirms capital convictions, I am part of “the machinery of death.’ My vote, when joined with at least four others, is, in most cases, the last step that permits an execution to proceed. I could not take part in that process if I believed what was being done to be immoral.”

“I could not take part in that process if I believed what was being done to be immoral.” Therein lays the spiritual and temporal, lethal and frivolous witness of his Christian witness to the Way taught by Jesus in the Gospels for His chosen disciple. It is true that the Mosaic Law along with numerous other codes of law state approximately what Deuteronomy 19:20-21 declares:

“The rest will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such an evil thing among you. Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

It is equally true, however, that Jesus declares for those who believe He is Lord, God, Messiah, the Word of God Incarnate and Savior, “You have heard it said of old, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ but I say to you…” (Mt 5:38-42), which is an exposition rejecting even proportionate retaliation. So how, pray tell, does a Christian acquire the requisite degree of moral certainty to become “part of the machinery of death” that executes people under the auspices of one code of law or another? Can a Christian judge in a country whose code of law beheads a woman legally designated an adulteress vote for her execution, become part of the “machinery of death” that legally cuts her head off?

Antonin Scalia, a Baptized Christian, justifies his participation in the “machinery of death” that burns people to death in an electric chair this way:

“The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead—or, as I prefer to put it, enduring. It means today not what current society (much less the Court) thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted. For me, therefore, the constitutionality of the death penalty is not a difficult, soul-wrenching question. It was clearly permitted when the Eighth Amendment was adopted (not merely for murder, by the way, but for all felonies—including, for example, horse thieving, as anyone can verify by watching a western movie). And so it is clearly permitted today.”

A Method of Interpretation as the Highest Good to be Followed

In the shifty and slippery language of legalese this method of interpretation is called strict constructionism. If a constitution or some other primary legal code of a state says and has said since its composition that a particular act is legal then this is what a Christian strict constructionist judge must accept as his or her duty to support and enforce via the police power of the state. Hence Antonin Scalia, Christian, is just doing his job, in following precedent over the teachings of Jesus, sending people to death that the law designates should be killed. How this differs from the following reflection by Thomas Merton is beyond my rational power to discern:

“Adolph Eichmann and others like him felt no guilt for their share in the extermination of the Jews. This feeling of justification was due partly to their absolute obedience to higher legal authority and partly to the care of an efficiency that went into the details of their work. This made the big business of death all the more innocent and effective because it involved a long chain of individuals, each of whom from bottom to top could feel himself absolved from responsibility and each of whom would salve his conscience with the meticulous efficiency he put into his part in the operation.”

Two points concerning the above: One, Antonin Scalia was lauded among his judicial peers for the exceptionally meticulous effort he put into his personal strict constructionist’s Constitutional interpretation upholding the death penalty. Two, in exterminating the Jews, Hitler and other Germans like him broke no laws. Everything they did was legal. This is why the ex post facto law of so-called crimes against humanity had to be created. Anton Scalia broke no laws in the way he participated in the killing of people.

Are all Occupations Open to Christians to Pursue?

But the issue is, can a Christian in good faith morally take a job that requires him or her to do what Jesus never did, would never do and taught His disciple they should not do? Can a Baptized follower of Jesus join a group, that regularly as a normal part of being a group, engages in activities that Jesus could never be imagined doing, and that in no way could ever be interpreted as obeying Jesus’ “new commandment” to “love one another as I have loved you”? Where does Jesus give His Baptized disciples divine permission to substitute the law and rules of a group for His revelatory teaching regarding the will of the Father, which He comes to earth to do and to teach by His words and deeds? Nowhere! He does not grant such permission to any disciple!

The Irrelevancy of Catholic Christianity to the Workplace

Yet, Antonin Scalia, so lionized in the Catholic press and among the Catholic hierarchy for his Catholicism, said in a 2007 address at a Villanova Law School conference, “The bottom line is that my Catholic faith seems to me to have little effect on my work as a judge. Just as there is no ‘Catholic’ way to cook a hamburger, I am hard pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic.” Despite the fallaciousness of his hamburger analogy, his position is clear. The Jesus of the Gospels has nothing pertinent to say to him regarding killing people that other people say should be killed.

I can only ask again, “Where does Jesus give His chosen, Baptized disciple divine permission to substitute a group’s rule or decision made by mere creatures for His revelation of the moral will of the Creator? Where does He present the option of being a part-time disciple? The Greek word from which baptized is derived means total immersion. From the moment of one’s Baptism, there are no time-outs. Antonin Scalia’s Catholicism as he relates it to his job is comparable to Mafia Catholic morality—staunchly Catholic in family values, excessive in tithing, receiving all the Sacraments, an exuberant respect for nuns and good liturgical theatre, but when it comes to the organization’s business, Christianity and Catholicism are shut out completely. To repeat what I said in the beginning, “What concerns me is the eternal and temporal lethal frivolousness of his witness, indeed his false witness, to the Jesus of the Gospels and His teaching, while wearing his Christianity on his sleeve for everyone to see.” And as also said in the beginning, what concerns me equally is the institutional Church aggrandizing his Christian witness to his fellow Christians and to the world. But then, laying aside the Gospel to pick up the gun is the entire history of Constantinian Christianity and its anti-witness to the truth of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels for 1700 years. This, however, does not mean that the rulers of the institutional Church should be permitted to go forward unimpeded and unprotested—especially in view of the ultimate end that is at stake, specifically the eternal salvation of each and all.

Mosaic Law and State Law

In countering the anti-witness of Antonin Scalia to Jesus’ teaching, it might be pertinent to be acutely aware of the commentary attached to the concluding verse, Mt 28:20 of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, in the official Bible of the Catholic Church, The New American Bible:

‘All that I have commanded you;’ that is the moral teaching found in the Gospel, preeminently that of the Sermon on the Mount. The commandments of Jesus are the
standard of Christian conduct, not the Mosaic law, except where some of the
Mosaic commandments have now been invested with the authority of Jesus.

Obviously the Mosaic Law’s lex talionis has not been invested with the authority of Jesus for Christian conduct, since He explicitly repudiated it in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:38-42), as well as, by His entire life and on the cross—where He did not retaliate by calling down curses of death on those killing Him, but instead mercifully loved, prayed for and forgave His enemies who were His murderers.

Now although it is blatantly evident, it probably needs to be explicitly mentioned here, that Jesus also did not teach His Church or its leaders to substitute philosophy, liberal or conservative, as the standard of Christian conduct or as a way to downgrade, supersede, alter, transmogrify or otherwise render operationally nugatory His commandments and His Sermon on the Mount. It also should be patently evident, but equally in need of mentioning, that if “the commandments of Jesus are the standard of Christian conduct, not the Mosaic law,” then “the commandments of Jesus are the standard of Christian conduct” and not some secular state law put together by post-Original Sin men and women.

Examination of Conscience and the Beam in One’s Own Eye

Antonin Scalia wrote regarding his unalterable support of killing human beings that have been designated by some process of law to be no longer worthy of life that, “If the system that has been in place for 200 years (and remains widely approved) ‘shocks’ the consciousness of the dissenters [to the death penalty], perhaps they should doubt the calibration of their consciences, or, better still, the usefulness of ‘conscience shocking’ as a legal test.” The accepted mythology behind such a statement by a Christian would take volumes of exegesis to unpack. But what is clear and spiritually staggering in the face of the teachings of Jesus is that Antonin does not seem to think he needs to doubt the calibration of his own conscience. To a literate outsider who has read the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, to hear a Christian—who participates in the name of some code of law in legally killing helplessly bound and gaged prisoners—maniacally maintain that those Christians who disagree with him must consider re-calibrating their consciences, not him, must seem mind-boggling.

Time Choices and Eternal Consequences

The gigantic, unknown and unfathomable reality that a person enters after his or her last breath may or may not be tethered—as far as one can humanly see—to anything a person has done on earth. In faith, the Gospel reveals to us that there is a connection and that what we do on earth makes a difference in eternity. Human existence as lived is not just a meaningless conglomeration of choices in an eternally insignificant game in a sandbox. Believing “Jesus is Lord” makes a difference in time and in eternity. “Whatever you do unto the least you do unto me,” (Mt 25:31-46) communicates an unbreakable link between an act in time and one’s eternity. Praying to God to, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” is not merely an oft-repeated mindless mantra, which is unrelated to human choices in time, the state of soul of a person and the process of eternal redemption. “For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you measure, it shall be measured to you again” (Mt 7:2, 6:13; Mk 4:24; Lk 6:37) is the absolute, infallible truth of the Word of God Incarnate Himself in the Gospels regarding an ineradicable dimension of reality beyond death. How these truths mentioned immediately above play-out in eternity is beyond human comprehension. That they are operative in eternity is certain truth because Christ-God teaches that they are.

The Integral Unity of the Will of God in Heaven and on Earth

The Catholic faith is clear. Under the heading Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2822 proclaims, “His commandment is that ‘you love one another; even as I have loved you, you should love one another.’ This commandment summarizes all others and express the entire will of the Father.” This new commandment of Jesus not only informs the Christian with the standard of right and wrong that he or she must adhere to in all his or her choices on earth, but also tells the Christian the relationship between people that exists in heaven, since the new commandment ‘expresses the entire will of the Father’ that is to “be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Hence, anyone who is invited into heaven by the Father and who desires to be in heaven and who freely accepts the Father invitation must irrevocably choose, as his or her Way of being, becoming and doing for all eternity, life in conformity with the new commandment. This is the choice one must make to enter into the Kingdom of God. Heaven, like God’s Will, Way and Love, is imposed on nobody. Nor, is it entered into simply by repetitive, private or public incantations. Heaven for the Christian is a Trinitarian Reality. It is a freely accepted insertion into the Love that exists among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is active incorporation in, participation in and communion with the love (agapé) that is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the never-ceasing sharing of that love with all other human beings who are in heaven. Heaven is loving God and neighbor for all eternity as Jesus loves God and neighbor. If a person does not want to do this, even towards a single brother or sister, he or she does not want heaven. For in heaven, by the free choice of God and by the free choice of every person in heaven, there is not a scintilla of non-Christlike love, not a mustard seed of mercilessness.

So, must the 1,282 people toward whom Antonin Scalia acted mercilessly on earth—by the standard of “new commandment” merciful love—now be merciful to Antonin, if heaven is where they want to be for eternity? It seems so, because there is no place or option for anything else but “new commandment” of Christlike merciful love in heaven. And, if one does not show Christlike merciful love towards the person who needs mercy, who is the Christian in heaven or on earth going to be mercifully loving towards?

And what of Antonin Scalia? Does he now have to love as Jesus loves the 1,282 victims of his un-Jesus-like mercilessness in order to enter into the Kingdom of the God, who is love? Does love as taught by Jesus require admitting evil has been done to some one and seeking forgiveness from and reconciliation with the person to whom you have done evil, e.g., destroying his or her life on earth by obeying a code of choices written by men and women rather than obeying the Word of God Incarnate?

Is being merciful toward the merciless the sacrament through which the merciless come to recognize Jesus and His truth, repent and become merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful?

Let us with purity of heart pray:

May the All Merciful Father somehow grant to the soul of your son, Antonin, and to all your sons and daughters, a merciful rest with the merciful saints in a place where mercy reigns supreme, and where there is no fear, no pain, no sorrow, no sighing, but only eternal Communion in the Love of God and with the God of Love. Amen.

—Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

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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?

Canon §1752, the final words of the final canon in the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law state, “the salvation of souls, which must always be the supreme law of the Church, is to be kept before one’s eyes.” The eternal salvation of one and all is the reason for the Incarnation and everything else that follows in the life of Jesus of Nazareth up to and including His Resurrection. The eternal salvation of human beings is therefore the reason the Church exists. It is the essential mission of Jesus and therefore must be the essential mission of the Church. Hence it must be “the supreme law of the Church,” against which everything the institutional Church and its official personnel do must be measured in order to judge whether it serves or detracts from the particular and universal salvific mission of Jesus.

So in Jesus’ teaching, is His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies intrinsically essential for the chosen disciples of the Christ to follow for the eternal salvation of each and all? If not, why not? If not, which of His teachings are essential for salvation, if any, and why? Why did He even bother teaching and living unto being tortured and murdered the Way of Nonviolent Love of enemies, if it had no essential relation to His mission of saving each and all from evil and death and bringing each and all into eternal Communion with the eternal God “who is love” (agapé)?

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through me” (Jn 14:16). The mystery of salvation is as deep and as incomprehensible as the mystery of God, the mystery of life, the mystery of evil and the mystery of death. There are countless options in faiths and opinions in philosophies on how to understand and cope with each and all of these perpetually abiding mysteries within human existence. Jesus and the Way He teaches by word and embodies by deed is just one of the many options available from which to choose. So, why choose Jesus and His Way, especially in light of His so called “hard sayings,” e.g., “Love your enemies”; “Put up your sword”; “Do good to those who hate you”; “Pray for those who persecute you”; Bless those who curse you”; “If a person strikes you on one cheek, offer the other as well”; “I give you a new commandment; love one another as I have loved you”; “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me”; “Forgive seventy times seven times”; “Before Abraham was, I am”; “This is my body”; “This is my blood”?

There is only one authentic and sane and reasonable answer to the above question. It is the answer Peter gave to Jesus when His disciples were abandoning Him because His sayings were “hard.” As a result of this, many of His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer followed Him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, ‘Do you also want to leave?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘Master to whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life. You are the Holy One of God’ (Jn 6:66-69).

“You have the words of eternal life. You are the Holy One of God.” Those are the words of faith in the absolute spiritual and moral authority of Jesus, because He is “the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God,” who comes into this world, with the Word of God and as the Word of God, to save the people of Judaism and all people from the wickedness and death in which they are endlessly entrapped, bringing them unto the eternal Kingdom of God. Do those “words of eternal life” from the “Holy One” include the above noted “hard sayings” of Jesus? Yes or No? Let us for once have a straightforward, unequivocal, public answer from those who dare to stand before God, the Church and all humanity and represent themselves as the ultimate and definitive teachers of the Way of eternal life taught by Jesus.

If Bishops believe that those words spoken by Jesus are not “words of eternal life,” are not intrinsically essential for carrying out the supreme mission of Jesus and His Church, the salvation of souls, then let them forthrightly say so. If they believe those words of Jesus quoted above are only words of good advice to be followed when convenient, let them publicly tell that to God, the Church and all humanity. And let them—not their surrogates—explain what in the teaching of Jesus permits them to downgrade some or all of His “words of life” to suggestions that may or may not be applicable in some situations. It would also be fitting and right to hear from the official teachers what words take primacy over “the words of life” of “the Holy One of God” in the process of the eternal salvation of each and all. Perhaps, they believe Aristotle’s ‘golden mean’ does? Or, the orders of a president or the commands of a general do?

At the risk of sounding absurd, we have to ask Bishops and ourselves as Christians—and insist that we get a plain-spoken, uncontrived answer from both parties—do those “words of eternal life” quoted above from Jesus mean not only what they logically communicate but also mean that their logical opposite is a Way of eternal salvation for each and all, e.g., “Hate your enemies”; “Take up the sword”; “Do evil to those who hate you”; “Do not pray for those who persecute you”; “Curse those who curse you”; “If a person strikes you on one cheek, strike him on the other”; “I give you a new commandment, love one another as politicians, mass media and moguls tell you how to love one another”; “Ignore or use “the least” of this world, for whatever you do or do not do to them is irrelevant for they are the nobodies of human existence and have no meaning, purpose or lasting place in history”; “Forgive when it is in your interests to do so and get even when it is in your interests to do so”; “Jesus is to Abraham no more than Moses, David, Phineas, and Caiaphas are to Abraham, namely, a Jewish person in the Abrahamic historical faith lineage”; “This is not my body”; “This is not my blood”?

The principle of non-contradiction that governs all rational thought and communication states, “Between two logical and meaningful propositions, ‘X’ and ‘not-X’ there is no middle ground. If one is true the other is false.” Can this principle of rational thought and communication simply be set aside when it comes to the “hard sayings” of Jesus? Where would the justification be found in the teaching of Jesus for doing such a thing? It is not there! Yet, it is done and approved of by Bishops, their institutional Church administrators and congregations daily, as the normal way for understanding the “hard sayings” of Jesus. If this method of interpretation were employed with the declarative and imperative sentences of any other piece of literature, it would be universally denounced as Orwellian doublespeak.
Let those, who are the ultimate and definitive teachers of Jesus’ Way of eternal salvation—not their surrogates—explain how the most important words ever spoken in human history regarding the most important matters confronting all human beings—evil, death, eternal salvation—communicate not only what they clearly say is true, but also communicate that their logical opposites are true, e.g., loving your enemies as Jesus loved His enemies includes the possibility slitting enemies’ throats or incinerating enemies with a flame thrower and napalm on some occasions. For, this is what the Bishops of the Churches are teaching, have been teaching and/or allowing to be taught by their silence as a way to eternal salvation in those venues under their control. Venues—pulpits, Catholic (Christian) newspapers, TV and radio, Catholic (Christian) schools, religious education programs and seminaries—where Jesus’ “words of life” unto the eternal salvation of each and all must be the supreme law governing all that is said and done in them.

Is throat slitting, which is the logical opposite of what “love your enemies” means and which is an everyday act in a so called “just Christian war” as it is in all wars, a way to fulfill the supreme law of the Church or a way to fulfill the supreme commandment of Jesus, His “new commandment; love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34, 15:12)? This utterly unique and “new commandment” of Jesus the Church declares “is the new Law of the Holy Spirit,” which “contains the entire Law of the Gospel,” and “expresses His entire will” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1970, 2823, 782). It is the Way Jesus taught by His words and deeds unto eternal life. The new commandment is why, from the beginning, Jesus is called both the Way and the Life. Its logical opposite is, “Do not love as I have.” Is not loving as Jesus loved, e.g., killing and maiming enemies, also a way to eternal life? Is teaching a Catholic just war theory, with the approval of the Bishop from a Catholic pulpit or in a Catholic school, keeping before one’s eyes the salvation of souls, which must always be the supreme law of the Church? Eternal salvation through throat slitting?
Can there be a spiritually more dangerous evil than defying the Holy Spirit of Truth by toying with the salvation of souls by teaching what Jesus calls evil as “good,” by teaching as an alternative to Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies the way and words of self-reverential, self-referential and self-justifying violence? Violence—whether designated by humans as legitimate or illegitimate, legal or illegal, just or unjust, sanctioned or unsanctioned, romantic or sordid—as the Way of Jesus or as a Way endorsed by Jesus to eternal Communion with God for each and for all is a lie. It is the “Big Lie” of the institutional Churches and those who control their avenues of communication to the flock and to the humanity in general.

If bishops, priests, ministers, pastors and deacons do not want to teach the Way of eternal salvation of souls, all souls, taught by Jesus, and want instead to teach some humanly contrived alternative way to eternal salvation, e.g., killing other beloved sons and daughters of the Father of all because some politicians order them killed, then they have no business passing themselves off a ministers of Jesus’ mission on earth—the eternal salvation of all people.

Human beings, Christians and otherwise, are paying dearly and beyond all human calculation for Bishops and their institutional Churches continuing to cleverly sabotage the salvific teaching of Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies as the Way of discipleship. Jesus by His words and deeds reveals to humanity the love that is the only power that saves from evil and death and that brings human beings unto eternal life with God. It is the only power that saves because to “love as Jesus loves,” is to love as the God of love Incarnate loves. Such love is union with and participation in the very power of God, which is the only power that can vanquish evil and death and guarantee eternal life in Communion with God who is love (agapé). Christic love is the sole means of eternal salvation for each and all. Such love in thought, word and/or deed in any given moment of one’s life is always as small as a mustard seed and as powerless as a mustard seed appears from the outside. But such love and only such love contains within it the power of God. Such mustard-seed love and only such mustard-seed love is the Way of the eternal Kingdom of God. It is by planting little mustard seeds of Christlike love that Kingdom of God “springs up” (Mk 4:30-31; Mt13: 31-32; Lk 13:18-19). There is no other option!

And because God Incarnate, Jesus, taught and lived a Way of Nonviolent Love towards all—friends and enemies—the love that saves is as intrinsically and essentially nonviolent, as it is intrinsically and essentially non-adulterous and merciful. Neither violent love nor violent hate, regardless of their consequences in time, is an option if the desired end is the eternal salvation and happiness of one’s wife, children, grandchildren, mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, et al. Redemptive violent love, regardless how humans justify it, is not an option; it is an illusion—a non-reality.

Parenthetically, and for purposes of being as clear as possible, nonviolent external behavior, nonviolent tactics, nonviolent strategies, nonviolent programs without Christlike love are also not redemptive. Nonviolent external behavior is quite compatible with hate, envy, revenge, spite and every one of the capital sins. When external nonviolent behavior does not arise from Christlike love, it is, like violent love, just another “gong booming” (1 Cor 13).

Christlike love, which includes Jesus’ Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, is first, foremost and above all else the Way by which each and all can enter into the eternal Kingdom of God. It may or may not serve other purposes in time, e.g., a means for altering evil behavior in others or in institutions. But, regardless of its efficacy in accomplishing some end we desire to achieve on earth, it is always efficacious in moving each person and all people toward an existence in eternal Communion with God. How the small mustard seed of Christlike love, which love intrinsically includes the Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, works to accomplish this end God Incarnate, the Messiah Jesus, does not tell us. Jesus just tells us by His words and deeds this is the Way to the eternal Kingdom of God, to Eternal Life.

Within the unfathomable mysteries of existence and within the mystery of salvation is Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, as presented by Jesus in the Gospels, mere good advice to be followed unless we can think of something better, or is it a mandatum for the salvation of all? Is it an option or an obligation? In truth before God and before all humanity, what say you Pope Francis, what say you Cardinals, what say you Bishops—Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant—what say you my fellow Christian?

—Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE- OPTION OR OBLIGATION- Keeping before one’s eyes the supreme law of the Church

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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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.

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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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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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:

“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?,

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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?”

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“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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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.

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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

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The Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, includes a verse that, for decades, has made me pause—even outside the Christmas season—to ponder its ineffable meaning and astonishing implications:
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

The State is not a Person
The State is Mindless
I am not Responsible
Following the crowd or following Jesus

The Violence of the Tongue

O God,
Teach me
Not to envy,
to hate,
to justify,
to imitate,
to support,
to ennoble,…

Long before Jesus, the Christ, appeared on earth, the Prophet Jeremiah exclaimed: The cry, “Peace! Peace!” But there is no peace (Jer 6:14, 8:11).

It is Finished A Priestly Vocation of Mercy: Fr. Edward J. McDonough’s healing ministry stretched over forty years. He was a faithful servant of Christ like mercy, and a hero of Christ like merciful love.

A Layman Picks Up The Cross of His Primary Vocation to Be a Follower of Jesus, not Simply an Admirer of Jesus.

Reflection on the Pope’s Message: Revolution Without Making Noise

Encountering Pope John Paul II

The Passion of the Christ A Film Review

“Ecce, Lazarus!” Where There is No Vision The People Perish

The Agonia of the Petrine Ministry: Year Twenty-Five of Pope John Paul II

Witness to Truth

The Spirit of Christmas As it was in the beginning, is now and…?

Padre Pio: There is No One Like Him! Or is There?

When the Church prays for an increase in vocations, it is praying that more of those people whom God calls will say, “Yes!” to his call.

A Christian Response to Terrorism
Violent Monotheism – Truth or Falsehood?

To See God Face to Face:The Root of the Vocation Crisis

Secularism or Heroism: The Crux of the Vocation Crisis

Vocations and Prayer Issue 42 – He Does Not Break the Crushed Reed

Vocations and Prayer Issue 41 – Our Lady and Our Future

Vocations and Prayer Issue 40 – The Holocaust, The Holy Land and The Jubilee Year

Vocations and Prayer Issue 39 – Nonviolent Lamb of God

Jesus proclaimed the Commandment of love by words at the first Eucharist and by example at the Sacrifice of Calvary.

Jesus does not die of a heart attack. He dies when His heart is attacked by human
beings inebriated with the diabolical spirit of justified, religiously endorsed homicide—
and He dies giving a definite, discernible, and consistent response to that satanic
spirit.

“It is precisely because sin exists in the world, which God so loved, that He gave His only Son, the God who is love, cannot reveal Himself otherwise than as mercy.” – Encyclical Dives in Misericordia

“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

“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?,

Martin Luther King, Loving Your Enemies

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.

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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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?

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This year’s Christmas Reflection: AD 2013—The First Christmas Present: “Give It A Way.”

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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.
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• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV

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.

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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.

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As we look at the human situation on this May 13, AD 2017, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima,
Of the saddest words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these,
‘It might have been.’
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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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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.

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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

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“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” —Milan Kundera

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Holy Week—The Triumph of the Spirit of Cain and the 6 Meditations (Monday–Saturday): –>Download

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…

In Memory Alden Poole
Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church
Quincy, MA
October 23, AD 2015

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.

A proposal to have the Pope grant general absolution to all repentant Christians on January 1, 2000 or early in the Third Millennium.

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

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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.

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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…

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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).

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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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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….

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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….

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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)…

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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

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This mediation is a mother’s pledge to and covenant with every other mother on Mothers’ Day.

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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.

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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.

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—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.

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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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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?

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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]

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.

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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.

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.

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.”

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.

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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.

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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

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