Creative Thinking

Like you, I am mystified and saddened by the wierd failure of Catholics to grasp evil of torture and the danger of unlimited government power, as lately evidenced by comments on the above post in your comments box. I started to add a comment, it got out of control length-wise, so I’m inflicting it on you directly via email:

Here’s an idea:

The key story, as far as being Catholic in a anti-Catholic world, is what happened from Pentecost to Constantine: a tiny, powerless, inconsequential group of people talked up what they had experienced to anyone who would listen, many giving great examples of holiness, fearlessness and joy. And, to a large extent, it worked!

This stands in sharp contrast to Islam, whose first centuries consist of the violent conquest of half the area of the Roman Empire, the murder of hundreds of thousands, and the crushing of the remnants of a great culture. This ‘worked’ as well – from a strictly demographic POV, our present state is a draw.

So, sure, I agree that we should definitely not fall for the current fad of thinking of Islam as just another expression of the human desire for spirituality – hundred of thousand of Christians have died by the Muslim sword, and vast areas of formerly Christian Africa and Europe – not to mention the Holy Land – have fallen to Islam. This is just a straightforward statement of history.

But here’s the crux: how do we respond today? Personally, I see the collapse of our own culture as a far, far greater threat to us as individual Catholics and to the Church as an institution than Islam. I fear Islam might some day swoop in to clean up the wreckage of our civilization once we’re done imploding – similar to what happened to Ancient Rome – but, until and unless we implode, direct conquest is not much of a threat.

For the present threat, I think we’d need to fight back, not as the world fights (they’re always going to better at it than a serious Christian anyway – things of this world, and all that) but with the heroism that comes from a trust in God.

I think that, while doing all that is prudent and just to protect ourselves, we should be prepared to be martyred for our belief that there are simply some things we will not stoop to, rather than letting violent men have their way in the darkness for our supposed benefit. Rather than arguing over what torture means, we should simply treat prisoners as well as possible under the circumstances. Our treating them well becomes a weapon in the war we really want to win. (Aside: I heard a counter-terrorism expert once say that a good strategy in Iraq would have been to round up all suspects, but simply hold them for a couple days, treating them well, no interogation or anything, then publically thank them for their cooperation and let them go – the other terrorist would never trust them again! That strikes me as a Christian approach, likely to work out in the long run at least as well as what we’ve been doing.)

Striking back out of fear and anger is never the right thing to do for a Christian. We are all called to be prepared to suffer personally for doing the right thing.

I like the whole “Thanks for your invaluable assistance” idea. 🙂