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
As Witness: Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bob Dylan. Antisemites (even Christian ones) and Jihadists both call him a fraud. After all, he is not always on their side. And God knows he can’t think for himself! Opinion Courtesy of Electronic Intifadah 2016: Controversially, musical genius Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize for literature last week.… Read More When Times Change Many Change.
Proportionality in all conflicts is to be desired as I have stated many times over many years. War is hell. Hamas knew what it was doing. It was deliberately trying to provoke a war by a vicious sneak attack in a period of relative stability. Proportionality is the ideal, but history shows it is seldom… Read More The Consequences of Hamas’ War
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
On February 26, 1950, a couple of years before I was born, Leonard Bernstein premiered his second symphony, The Age of Anxiety, in New York City. It was based on W. H. Auden’s 1948 Pulitzer Prize winning poem which had used the metaphor to describe the spiritual, psychological, and political milieu after World War II.… Read More The Age of Anxiety
Trump’s Middle East envoy says he’s heading to Qatar as hostage deal nearing NDTV. US President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he understands the Russian feeling with NATO being on their doorstep. “You know, a big part of the problem was Russia for many, many years, long before (Russian President, Vladimir) Putin said, you… Read More Trump Says He Could Understand Russian Feeling With NATO On Their Doorstep
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?
+ Where they would take us. Ingenious in ephemeral things and foolish in Eternal things. By Msgr. Charles Pope. We live in times of great ingenuity. We have a lot of clever smarts. We have been to the moon and back. Our computers never cease to amaze, as we make them smaller and more powerful.… Read More Technological Giants, Moral Psychopaths
American University Speech, delivered just months before he was gunned down in Dallas, remains more relevant and challenging than ever. Many believe it was this speech which sealed his fate.. “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons… Read More JFK American University Speech More Relevant Than Ever.
Updated Nov. 24. President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use a powerful American long-range weapon for limited strikes inside Russia in response to North Korea’s deployment of thousands of troops to aid Moscow’s war effort, according to two senior U.S. officials. The move precedes by two months the return to the White House of… Read More Biden approves Ukraine’s use of long-range U.S. weapons inside Russia
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.
I wish all those responsible would just go back to the Church, confess, and get their sins forgiven by Christ. Then we can all do quiet penance to make the world better, begin anew, knowing that God is more desirous to forgive us all than we ourselves could ever conceive. Cf. Matthew 12:31: “And so I… Read More Iraq and Sleepless nights
Opinion. By Karel van Wolferen.* In a famous exchange between a high official at the court of George W. Bush and journalist Ron Susskind, the official – later acknowledged to have been Karl Rove – takes the journalist to task for working in “the reality-based community.” He defined that as believing “that solutions emerge from your judicious… Read More Through The American Looking Glass. “We Create Our Own Reality,” He Said
By AFP – Agence France PresseJune 28, 2024 Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he was drawing up a “comprehensive plan” for how Kyiv believes the war with Russia should end. There are no public talks ongoing between Ukraine and Russia and based on public statements by Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the… Read More Zelensky Says Preparing ‘Plan’ To End War With Russia
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?”
Updated. See Thomas Merton on Moral Chaos, and “the worst insanity” below. Tucker Carlson criticizes the United States foreign policy and the persecution of Christians in the world. The Guardian 2019: Persecution of Christians ‘coming close to genocide’ in Middle East – report Patrick Wintour in Addis AbabaThu 2 May 2019 17.00 EDT Pervasive persecution of Christians, sometimes… Read More Carlson: A Consistent Theme Of American Foreign Policy: Christians Suffer
Most truly moral people are shocked at the thought that leaders of a nation could engage in unnecessary wars, kill many hundreds of thousands of people, very likely millions (1) in the process, and still sleep at night and smile on the golf course for the cameras. Leroy Fletcher Prouty (January 24, 1917 – June… Read More Malthusian Wars. Fletcher Prouty.
Note: To tell you the truth I don’t think much of the “Catholic Worker Movement” these days. Even Dorothy Day herself was becoming somewhat discouraged by the naivete and moral incoherence of not a few of her admirers near the end of her life. Her own pain and understanding of the Gospel had made her… Read More Dorothy Day and Taxes in a Nuclear Age
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.
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.
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
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
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
The Weston Institute for International and Public Affairs The Watson Institute, Brown University, R.I., is a community of scholars, practitioners, and students whose work aims to help us understand and address these critical challenges. It is dedicated to meaningful social science research and teaching, and animated by the conviction that informed policy can change systems… Read More Ukraine: A Terrifying Scenario
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”
… very reasonably. — America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign — The Guardian “What does the administration have to show for eight years of fighting on so many fronts? Terrorism has spread, no wars have been “won” and the Middle East is consumed by more chaos and… Read More What Concerns Millions
Must it really be viewed as the thin end of the wedge,”Progressivist,” a diminution of our Pro-life convictions? And what of political Parties, Civil Rights and the greater Common Good? The following discussion shows the current state of the issues involved and is posted for educational purposes. Opinion Social Justice, War, and Housing: How many… Read More Can A Traditional Catholic Adopt a ‘Consistent Ethic of Life?’
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
The Spectator, UK “Over the last nine weeks Vladimir Putin has moved more than 90,000 troops to the borders of Ukraine and, according to US intelligence, ordered his military planners to draw up detailed blueprints for a full-scale invasion. Putin insists the build-up is defensive. Russia is acting only in response to a ‘growing threat… Read More Putin is more rational than Nato realises
Was the Afghan War a disaster? Well, don’t ask Afghans, including the seven children who died in the final U.S. drone strike of that war, how they’re doing, or those about to go hungry as that land suffers a devastating drought while food prices soar, or t lolhe possible one million of them who might… Read More The Profits of War by William D. Hartung
Cardinal 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 and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent… Read More “No Conceivable…Justification”. Aerial warfare’s “dreadful weapons”.
Catechism of the Catholic Church Avoiding war 2307 The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war. 105 2308 All citizens… Read More Traditional Just War Teaching
Catholic Critique 