by Fr Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
Friends,
Here is a letter to the editor by a friend, Ben Jimenez, S.J., to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 3. Plus a brief commentary by me.
-ECM
Marine should quit the fight
I express my sympathy for brother alumnus Kevin Midgley and his parents. Despite our best efforts at St. Ignatius High School to teach Gospel values, some insist on picking up the gun and delivering ”a high volume of firepower” (”Former St. Ignatius football player on duty as a Marine in Afghanistan,” Sept. 11, Cleveland Plain Dealer). Instead of imitating the gentle and meek Lamb of God, our brother has joined the wolf pack.
Pope Francis recently said, ”Where there’s an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underscore the verb ‘stop.’ I’m not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war,’ just stop.”
Brother Kevin, and all brothers and sisters in the military, remember you are under no obligation whatsoever to obey an order contrary to the laws of God. I urge you to put your weapons down and use your considerable talents to promote life rather than destroy it.
Ben Jimenez, S.J.
Ben,
Excellent letter!
Of course we always have to first make an accurate determination with the highest degree of moral certainty regarding who exactly is the aggressor*. For example, if the U.S., in a divide and conquer middle east strategy aimed at procuring de facto sovereignty over the land, water, oil and people of that region, were supplying ISIS with the money and weapons to kill and maim (https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Global+Research+on+ISIS/148931411f5a412f) who would be the aggressor?** Does one have to consider the level of order and stability this region knew before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 in order to determine who the aggressor is? Does one send the child abuser to rectify a situation of child abuse which he is responsible for and which he is perpetuating? Who is the aggressor is?*** I would submit it is all but impossible to honestly and truthfully determine, even with a low degree of moral probability, who is the aggressor in the activities in which nation-state are involved, that are pathologically deceitful and have such organizations as the CIA, NSA, the Moussad, MI6, etc. clandestinely interfering in the life of any nation they want to use or conquer for their purposes. I think this would be an important question to ask your fellow Jesuit, Pope Francis: “How can one determine with the necessary moral certainty required where homicide is involved, who is the aggressor before deciding who is to be “stopped?”.
Think of the poor misguided, or U.S. Government stooge, Catholic Archbishop of Atlanta, Georgia, who led his Catholic flock into war, death and murder in 2003 by telling them that they do no have to wait to invade Iraq and to kill, and maim the people of Iraq, until Catholics in his diocese wake up some morning and see a mushroom cloud in their backyard! In a society with a long history of the government, the military and the mass media chronically lying whenever it serves their interests to do so, in order to deceive the public by saturation propaganda, it is either stupidity, gross negligence or chosen complicity with evil to even suggest that in matters of homicide the government, the military and the mass media be given even the slightest presumption of truth, regarding who is at fault or who is the aggressor in homicidal activity. Of course, this issue is mute if a Christian is following the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent of Love of friends and enemies, who is the only Jesus there is to follow. But, “Who is the aggressor?” is an axial moral issue where any application of Christian Just War Theory is the moral validation for a Christian participating in a war. Personally, I am still waiting to hear how it is possible, if—as is universally known—truth is the first casualty of war, the presumption of truth can be given to any king, queen, dictator, president, prime minister. parliment or government once war is on the horizon. They all lie with abandon, saying whatever is necessary to get innocent young Christians, whose brains are not even fully developed yet, like Kevin Midgley, to kill, to die and to be maimed for them. If you are not killing the aggressor in a war, you are engaged in in unjust war and hence the unjustified killing of human beings. he proper name in Catholic moral theology for the evil of the intentional unjustified killing of another human being in war or in the womb is the same: murder. I can only assume that the Jesuits at St. Ignatius High School thoroughly apprise their students of the level of evil they are entering into if they participate in an unjustified war by Catholic Just War Standards. If they have not, then they themselves are engaged in grave evil.
Keep up your good work for the Good News, Ben.
Charlie
**http://www.globalresearch.ca/bidens-admission-us-allies-armed-isis/5406539
Catholic Scout 