With all the discussion about the horrible crimes against humanity which have been and continue to be done in the Sudan, I thought it would be interesting, appropriate, and even important to read and learn from the wisdom of Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI. How do they describe the situation? What do they think should be done? (more…)
Eric Reeves takes aim at President Carter’s shameful statement that genocide has not taken place in Darfur. Here’s a taste:
Carter got one thing right–that there is a legal definition of genocide, embodied in the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide–but that’s it. The “atrocities” Carter refers to have included, over the past four and a half years, the deliberate, ethnically targeted destruction of not only African tribal populations, but their villages, homes, food- and seed-stocks, agricultural implements, and water sources. People die now in Darfur primarily because of this antecedent violence, directed against not only lives but livelihoods. Here, the Genocide Convention is explicit: You can commit genocide not only by “[k]illing members of [a] group” but also by “[d]eliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The destruction in Darfur clearly meets that test.
Christians, who condemn the communists for their godlessness and anti-religious persecutions, cannot lay the whole blame solely upon these godless communists; they must assign part of the blame to themselves, and that a considerable part. They must be not only accusers and judges; they must also be penitents. Have Christians done very much for the realization of Christian justice in social life? Have they striven to realize the brotherhood of man without that hatred, and violence of which they accuse the communists? The sins of Christians, the sins of the historical churches, have been very great, and these sins bring with them their just punishment. Betrayal of the covenant of Christ, the use of the Christian Church for the support of the ruling classes, human weakness being what it is, cannot but bring about the lapse from Christianity of those who are compelled to suffer from that betrayal and from such a distortion of Christianity.
–Nicolas Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism. trans. R.M. French (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1962), 171.
Charles Taylor, Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University and winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize, has a new book out entitled A Secular Age. Michael Perry over at Mirror and Justice notes some of the positive reviews Taylor’s work is receiving. This looks like a wonderful and insightful read. (more…)
Context. The zeal of some to bomb countries in the name of some general “war on terror” lacks all context, with grave implications. In other words, the use of arms is producing evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated, all due to a Gnostic-Manichean dualism that has proven stubbornly immune to complexity and nuance. Indeed, there seems to be a competition in some quarters for who can espouse the most simple, dumbed-down, context-free foreign policy. For such uncomplicated strength is seen as virtuous. It’s simply us-versus-them, the good guys verus the bad guys, in this “global war on terror”. Except life is never that simple, and this has nothing to do with moral equivalence or justifying immoral acts of violence. It has everything to do with context.
Part Seven (conclusion): Appalachia today in the midst of new forms of “imperial capitalism”
Acting
These insights from the “new ecclesiology” and from the past decade’s radical social movements suggest that, in terms of action, the trajectory started by At Home in the Web of Life could be continued and radicalized. The Church should devote more resources to alternative social and economic experiments and should learn to see itself as the “experiment” of God’s new community, the “new thing” that God is doing in the world. Part of this new vision of Church would be the fostering of a new spirituality and vision of Christian discipleship that involves, as liberation theologians advocated, the conscientization of the people, but would emphasize an ecclesial dimension to the process of conscientization. That is, in addition to raising people’s consciousness to see themselves as subjects of history and as agents of their own liberation, the Church itself must learn to see itself as a “subject” in history as opposed to the privatized, and indeed marginalized, reality that it has become under the modern nation-state. The People of God, as subject, must then network with the larger “movement of movements” that seeks to reclaim space for alternative economies and structures that liberate the human family from the logic of capitalism and the nation-state.[74]
These alternative social experiments should be connected more clearly with parish life and the local Church (diocese). At this time, some projects are underway in Appalachia but they take place largely out of sight of actual parish communities. Interested parishioners would have to dig to find out about these projects which are sometimes marginalized by more “mainstream” aspects of parish life. I will list here some possibilities for the embodiment of ecclesial alternative structures and experiments, some of which are already taking place but also others that would be completely new: (more…)
This from Jacques Maritain’s Reflections on America (link):
One happens sometimes to meet people who think that a primary condition of tolerance and peaceful co-existence is not to believe in any truth or not to adhere firmly to any assertion as unshakeably true in itself. May I say that these people are, in fact, the most intolerant people, for if perchance they were to believe in something as unshakeably true, they would feel compelled by the same stroke to impose by force and coercion their own belief on their fellow men. The only remedy they have found for their abiding tendency to fanaticism is to cut themselves off from truth. As a result, they insist that whoever knows or claims to know truth or justice simply cannot be a good citizen “because he cannot and is not expected to admit the possibility of a view different from his own, the true view.”
Needless to say there are not numerous organizations stepping forward to say that child sex offenders are not being treated fairly or wisely. Human Rights Watch has recently issued a report, “No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the US“. Before one dismisses them as apologists for sex offenders or pollyannas who don’t recognize the difficult choices society must make, one should understand the HRW does believe that the protection of children is a legitimate goal; they also believe that community notification and registration can be an effective and just means of accomplishing this goal. (more…)
The defenders of the Iraq war sometimes try to have it both ways. Saddam was a brutal dictator who terrorized the Iraqi people on a daily basis. So, despite the violence in the aftermath of his overthrow, Iraq simply has to be better off without him. On the other hand, the violence in Iraq is so great (some are even mentioning “genocide”) that, absent the US, all hell would break loose. So which is it: better or worse than under Saddam?
I think the answer is pretty clear. Let me give the floor to Bishop Warduni of Baghdad, who has so eloquently voiced the suffering of the Iraqi Christian people:
“Saddam there was dictatorship, the wars… but the people lived fairly well. Today there is the total insecurity, one can’t be sure in the morning of coming home in the evening, it seems absurd but that’s how it is.”
Yes, Saddam was a thug. But was he any worse, on a daily basis, than the kinds of venal leaders we observe in so many countries? Should the US invade and depose each one of them? How about Kim Jong Il, who about as bad as one can get. But nobody seriously proposes a war against North Korea, suffering though the Korean people are. Why not? Could it possibly be because of a little thing the Church calls the “disproportionate evils” that may arise? Some people need to realize that true and final justice is for God alone. The US is most certainly not God.
In the comment box of Nate’s meditation on the U.S. response to 9/11, our own Alexham asked the following questions with regard to the motivating factors that led to President George W. Bush’s orders for the invasion, conquering and occupation of Iraq:
Could it be that the United States also took into consideration that Iraq was being ruled by a brutal dictator who had (and still was) committing genocide against his own people? And what are we to do in those circumstances? Turn a blind eye?
Christopher Blosser wrote sardonically of Alexham’s comment with seeming approval:
Come now, that’s crazy talk.
Since the invasion of Iraq, and especially since our government has come to the realization that no discernible link between Saddham Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda and no trace of weapons of mass destruction other than the chemical weapons (of which we already aware) were found, the apologists of the Iraq War have made continual reference to the removal of a “brutal dictator” who continuously committed “genocide against his own people” both to support the the U.S. invasion and to bolster the image of the benevolence and global conscience of the Bush administration. And while the brutality of Saddham was frequently mentioned by Bush in the months and weeks leading up to the invasion and was listed as one of many justifications for that invasion, it was never cited as a definitive reason for war. Indeed, if we take a brief look at U.S. foreign policy since World War II, Bush’s alleged compassion for the Iraqi people can hardly be taken as anything more than mere tokenism. (more…)
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In