Catholic and Enjoying It!
This will undoubtedly set off the perpetually dyspeptic, but I think his encomium to one of the greatest Catholic philosophers of non-violence in the most violent century in history is well-chosen. Long after all the apologists and glorifiers of bloodlust in the Name of God–the death penalty zealots, torture apologists, partisans of “preventive war”, and gun rights uber alles fanatics–have gone to dust, Girard’s recovery of the primal Catholic teaching on non-violence will still be standing. On this day when we recall the immense toll in sacrifice and blood inflicted on our troops by the powers and principalities in the past century, let us spare as well some memory for those who have reminded us that “Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risks of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death.”(CCC 2306).
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