Note: To be sure, we are called to be the most earnest peacemakers and never to stop working hard towards peace. Yet, alas, in our own time, World War II showed again why it is not wrong to thrust out violent invaders when earnest efforts towards peace have failed. However we are taught that we… Read More St. Joan Confronts Utopia
Justice and War. The Catholic Church distinguishes between two types of justice concerning war: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Most of the time, when people discuss just-war theory, they mean jus ad bellum (justice before the war). Jus ad bellum refers to those four conditions described by Saint Augustine through which we determine whether a war is just before we… Read More Catholic Teaching on Proportionality in War
Tertiaries, i.e., the Third Order. By Robert Ludlow and James Meyer. Editor’s Note: The following article was adapted from Robert Ludlow’s “St. Francis and His Revolution,” which appeared as an editorial in THE CATHOLIC WORKER (January 1953, and reprinted in Thomas Cornell and James Forest [eds.], A PENNY A COPY, New York: The Macmillan Company,… Read More The Breadth of Catholic Thought: St. Francis’ Revolution
Opinion. Amed Khan describes himself as a human rights advocate, political activist, financier and philanthropist. He goes to the front lines of humanitarian crises on his own and uses his personal wealth and networks to deliver whatever the communities say they need. Amed has two decades of experience working in conflict zones and humanitarian relief.… Read More Amed Khan and the Children of Gaza
If Christian leaders of most denominations won’t speak up for Christians enduring great suffering across the world, he asks, why have them? And government leaders? “How does the government of Israel treat Christians? In the west, Christian leaders don’t seem interested in knowing the answer. They should be. Here’s the view of a pastor from… Read More Tucker Carlson: Standing Up for Christians Not Allowed in Modern Wars?
“A major area of distress for [Dorothy Day] in the 1970’s was what seemed to her the erosion occurring in the spiritual life of her fellow Catholics, including those in the Catholic Worker movement. More than ever Catholics seemed attentive to social issues she had been raising for forty years, but they were increasingly neglectful… Read More The Real Dorothy Day
Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, proportionality and preemptive strikes. Fr. Charles McCarthy, a Melkite Catholic priest in Massachusetts, argues that it might be a “mortal sin” to vote for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in this 2024 Presidential election, since each, he says, are in various ways complicit in “grave evil” by supporting and enabling… Read More A Melkite Catholic Priest Bound to Infuriate Many.
Updated. “The popular understanding of The Crusades in the West is that they involved barbaric, violent Christians invading the peaceful and enlightened Islamic world. Films like Kingdom of Heaven and Mankind: The Story of Us reinforce this narrative. But the truth is the reality of the Crusades is much, much different. In fact, it’s the… Read More “Why the Crusades Were Awesome, Actually”
Opinion. Peter Robinson and Douglas Murray. The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, was published by Bloomsbury in May 2017. It spent almost 20 weeks on The Sunday Times bestseller list and was a Number 1 bestseller in non-fiction. It has subsequently been published in more than 20 languages worldwide and has been read and… Read More October 7, Gaza and the Case for Israel
Or… Donald Trump and World War III. “Trump shook hands with Kim Jong Un on June 30, 2019 after crossing 20 steps into North Korea from South Korea at the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Special Agent in Charge Anthony Ornato accompanied Trump as he walked into North Korea, according to The Associated Press (AP). Trump and Kim Jong Un held a joint… Read More Donald Trump: “Have you talked with them?”
*|* What’s next for Syria’s Christians After Assad’s Fall? (Opinion) Opinion. The other side of the story: Robert Spencer: The Roots of the Hamas-Israeli War. What the Left doesn’t care to Face. “Robert Spencer was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and joined the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in 1984.[21][22] Spencer has stated that, under the reign of President Mustafa Kemal… Read More Israel Has Been Facing Much Backlash from the Western Left. But History is Long & Has Its Warnings.
The American Solidarity Party is based in the tradition of Christian democracy. We acknowledge the state should be pluralistic while upholding a vision of the common good of all and of each individual conscience informed by Christian tradition and acknowledging the primacy of religion in each person’s life. Our Principles 1. Sanctity of LifeHuman life… Read More An Alternative to Trump-Biden-Harris. The American Solidarity Party.
The need to be in a state of grace to receive Communion (CCC 1385) Leila Miller: … Christ said marriage is a one flesh union. So anytime you’re ripping that living flesh apart, something is dying. I mean, something pretty serious is being lost. Trent Horn: Yeah, because we think about divorce, it’s always so… Read More Trent Horn on the Evil of Divorce and the Way to Healing.
No food, no water, no electricity, no escape as attacks intensify overnights Pope Francis repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza and called on Hamas to release hostages, invoking God, in a series of tweets addressing the conflict on Sunday. “In God’s name, I beg you to stop: cease using weapons,” Francis said. “I hope that avenues will… Read More Pope Francis has called for an immediate halt to the conflict in Gaza
The Palestinian Argument Today. Context, 2004. Dershowitz: The Case for Israel and Palestine. Debate: Norman Finkelstein vs. Alan Dershowitz (2003). Image Source: Politico “The Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair was a public controversy involving academics Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein and their scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005. Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein… Read More Israel and Palestine Today. Dershowitz–Finkelstein.
Displaying Rainbow bullets and fighting whomever they’re commanded to fight. Marine Corp Goes Full Woke 2022. U.S. Marine Corps Goes Woke, Celebrates ‘Pride Month’ with Rainbow Bullets… Read it all * Sarah ArnoldDecember 22, 2022 10:00 PM Jae C. Hong In a world where everything that was once normal is now woke, it’s no surprise… Read More Serving [the Masonic] “God,” Country and Corps: Marine Corp Goes Full Woke
Medea Benjamin Russia’s brutal February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has attracted widespread condemnation across the West. Government and media circles present the conflict as a simple dichotomy between an evil empire and an innocent victim. In this concise, accessible and highly informative primer, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies insist the picture is more complicated. Yes,… Read More War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict
The Imaginative Conservative.Victor Orban interview excerpt. “… the Hungarian position was that there was hardly any chance that there could be a winner in this war. It will have losers, but it won’t have winners. “Russia is coming up against a brick wall, and as NATO is supplying Ukraine with weapons and money, it’s simply… Read More The Ukraine War, the Pope, & the West
Rand Paul decries adding $45 billion more to a military budget that exceeds the next 10 nations combined improving US national security? “I have ‘shocking’ news for conservatives, big-government Republicans are really secretly tied at the hip to spendthrift Democrats. The Republicans differ only in where they wish to spend the money.” “Conservatives are often… Read More Big Government Repub- licans Out of the Closet
A stoneis not an individual.You can make little onesout of big ones. A treeis an individual.It comesfrom a germ.“Only Godcan make a tree,”says the poet. A horseis an individual.The horse is notan individualthe way the treeis an individual.It has animal life. Man is an individualand has animal lifelike the horse.Man has also reason.which the horse… Read More On Personalism. Peter Maurin.
Thomas Merton on Moral Chaos, and “the worst insanity” (below). Thomas Merton: Nuclear Weapons and Sanity: “The generals and fighters on both sides, in World War II, the ones who carried out the total destruction of entire cities, these were the sane ones. Those who have invented and developed atomic bombs, thermonuclear bombs, missiles; who… Read More Tucker Carlson and Thomas Merton on the Nuclear Option
No Conceivable…Justification” for aerial warfare, “dreadful weapons”. Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII and John XXIII, wrote in 1947: “The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished… Read More What Could These Men Possibly Have Had in Common?
Thomas Reeves, the author of “America’s Bishop,” a biography of Fulton J. Sheen, tells of Sheen’s concerns regarding what he saw as the accelerated secularization occuring during WWII. Reeves mentions in particular the bishop’s 1944 book Seven Pillars of Peace where the subject is treated. This secularization involved the breakdown of the family which Sheen… Read More Bishop Sheen, Rosie the Riveter, and the War’s Greatest Casualty
It’s not about personalities, he insists. “We have stupid people running our country now” and if we don’t change, he says, “you’re going to have no world.” [Full disclosure: I am Politically Independent. I will vote for Right or Left candidates, or not vote at all, depending on the truth of the issues and the… Read More Trump: Change or “The World is Going to Blow Itself Up”
Statement on the Ukraine conflict – A Call to Peace and End to War. Los Angeles Catholic Worker. “We are anti-war. We believe war is a moral failure stemming from our unwillingness to actively work for peace. From the individual to the collective national level, the prioritizing of shortsighted self-interest has created this crisis. Victims… Read More The Russia – Ukraine Tragedy
Prayer For Peace by Pope John Paul II. O God, Creator of the universe, who extends your paternal concernover every creature and guides the events of history to the goal of salvation, we acknowledge your fatherly love when you break the resistance of mankind and, in a world torn by strife and discord, you make… Read More Saint John Paul II Prayer for Peace
Just and Unjust Wars The Catholic Church distinguishes between two types of justice concerning war: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Most of the time, when people discuss just-war theory, they mean jus ad bellum (justice before the war). Jus ad bellum refers to those four conditions described by Saint Augustine through which we determine whether a war is just before… Read More Justice and War
Catholic Critique 