The Killing Fields. Genocide and mass atrocities. The horror<\/a> that was Cambodia under Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime.<\/p>\n Pol Pot was one of the world\u2019s bloodiest dictators, bent on restoring an agrarian society based upon Marxist principles<\/a>:<\/p>\n An estimated 1.5 million people living in Cambodia were killed during the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge \u2013 History.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Others claim that there were many, many more victims in this tiny country of only 7.3 million people at the time the Khmer Rouge\u00a0seized power:<\/p>\n A U.N. investigation reported 2\u20133 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed \u2013 Wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But this brief post isn\u2019t really about Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about all of us. It\u2019s about choices that we make. It\u2019s about evil.<\/p>\n We have understandably recoiled in\u00a0horror\u00a0over recent terrorist events<\/a>\u00a0here at home. But none of us, thank God, is ever likely to personally face the brutal genocide\u00a0and\u00a0mass murder\u00a0that is now raging throughout the Middle East <\/a>and elsewhere. And it\u2019s certainly difficult for\u00a0us to ever imagine ourselves actually participating in such extraordinary brutality, death, and destruction.<\/p>\n And yet, deep down we may recognize that there is a certain ordinariness <\/em>that all too often seems to\u00a0accompany these horrors.<\/p>\n Bear with me for a moment. I\u2019ll come back to that thought.<\/p>\n I came across a fascinating historical detail yesterday that compelled me to write on this\u00a0subject.<\/p>\n I was\u00a0watching Fr. George Rutler\u2019s EWTN series entitled Christ in the City<\/em>. At one point, Fr. Rutler told the story about the man who\u00a0was known as\u00a0The Jewish Cardinal, <\/em>Jean-Marie Lustiger. Cardinal Lustiger was born in Paris in 1926 to Jewish parents who had owned a hosiery shop.<\/p>\n At age 13, Lustiger converted to Catholicism. His sister did as well a bit later. Two years after Lustiger\u2019s conversion, their mother was captured by the Nazis. She would later die at Auschwitz. Although appointed Cardinal of Paris by St. John Paul II in 1983, Lustiger maintained throughout his life that<\/p>\n I am as Jewish as all the other members of my family who were butchered in Auschwitz or in other camps \u2013 NPR<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Considered a possible successor to the throne of St. Peter, he dismissed the possibility by\u00a0joking that \u201cfew things would bedevil bigots more than a Jewish pope.\u201d<\/p>\n And in one final note of levity NPR, in the link above, reported upon his death:<\/p>\n There used to be a joke in Paris. What\u2019s the difference between the chief rabbi of France and the cardinal of Paris? The cardinal speaks Yiddish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It was said of the Cardinal<\/a>:<\/p>\n To meet Jean-Marie Lustiger was to meet a man of God: He was a wonderful human being intelligent, caring, funny in a wry way because he had been transformed by the power of God, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So what does Cardinal Lustiger\u2019s\u00a0holy, extraordinary, authentically Catholic yet authentically Jewish life have to do with the murderous Pol Pot?<\/p>\n Simply this: a brief intertwining of their lives.<\/p>\n It seems that\u00a0in the 1950\u2019s Cardinal Lustiger and Pol Pot simultaneously attended some of the same political science lectures at the Sorbonne<\/a>.<\/p>\n Over here sits\u00a0one man, a\u00a0direct\u00a0victim of Nazi genocide and murder. A\u00a0man of the\u00a0light\u00a0who would later go on to become a Prince of the Church, healing wounds and saving untold thousands of souls. Over there sits another man, one of the darkness who himself would later engage in war crimes and atrocities against humanity, offering only murder and destruction on a scale rivaling Hitler.<\/p>\n It\u2019s even possible that these two ordinary students\u00a0\u2013 two very young men with\u00a0seemingly average and ordinary lives ahead of them \u2013 sat next to each other\u00a0in the same classroom, where they learned the same geo-political lessons, asked the same questions, sought the same answers, and perhaps even searched for the same basic\u00a0truth. All so very ordinary.<\/p>\n And yet, not.<\/p>\n At\u00a0its core, this dual-life\u00a0vignette\u00a0is about choice and free will. About how we choose to live and govern our lives.\u00a0About the\u00a0decisions we make and why.\u00a0About\u00a0the questions\u00a0 we ask ourselves.\u00a0And, ultimately, about whether we live in the dark or seek the light.<\/p>\n Yes, it is all that. But there\u2019s also something\u00a0more\u00a0at play\u00a0here.<\/p>\n Certainly, the Cardinal and Pol Pot made radically different decisions about\u00a0their lives. Probably small, everyday choices, step-by-step, day-by-day. And they ultimately ended\u00a0up taking profoundly different, violently clashing paths.<\/p>\n But why? Were these two stark paths inevitable? What compelled such a radically different\u00a0departure, coming as they did from at least one similar starting point?<\/p>\n Evil. Plain and simple.<\/p>\n We are free to ignore\u00a0and dismiss the reality of evil. It\u2019s all too easy to believe that\u00a0evil acts and atrocities are isolated incidents,\u00a0mere aberrations, rather than some supernatural, transcending oppositional force\u00a0operating\u00a0throughout the\u00a0world.<\/p>\n We can easily pretend that evil doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n But we do ourselves no favors, we avoid no pain, we win no battles, we compel no hearts and minds, by ignoring reality.<\/p>\n A brief blog post can never do justice to this vast subject. And I certainly know my limitations so I won\u2019t labor on.<\/p>\n But the\u00a0Catechism, I think, sets out a good working framework for our better understanding. Note the natural and the supernatural<\/em> assumptions:<\/p>\n <\/a>311<\/a><\/b> Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil<\/i>, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ordinary, everyday\u00a0wrong choices and\u00a0\u201cpreferential love\u201d\u00a0can lead\u00a0us\u00a0astray. Which can<\/em> lead us into sin. Which inevitably\u00a0does<\/em> lead us to corruption, destruction, evil, and eternal death.<\/p>\n We need only look to the story of the Cardinal and the killer for proof. One looked evil in the eye and spit into its face. The other embraced it. One sought eternal life. The\u00a0other appealed to physical death and destruction.<\/p>\n These two\u00a0men are role models of a sort. Perhaps we look at them and see only extremes \u2013 we believe that we\u00a0will never be as evil as Pol Pot, nor as holy as the Cardinal. I\u2019m not\u00a0so sure that we can ultimately avoid becoming one or the other. But they certainly provide clarity.<\/p>\n Christ left us with now familiar words that remind us to think carefully about our every day, ordinary\u00a0choices, and our everyday, ordinary\u00a0actions.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s regularly take a few moments\u00a0to call these words to mind:<\/p>\n And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Peace<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Killing Fields. Genocide and mass atrocities. The horror that was Cambodia under Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime. Pol Pot was one of the world\u2019s bloodiest dictators, bent on restoring an agrarian society based upon Marxist principles: An estimated 1.5 million people living in Cambodia were killed during the brutal regime of Pol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1976,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evil"],"yoast_head":"\n