Current Issues – Page 37 – About Things That Matter

Syria: The Snowden, Manning (and Godfather) Connections

Well, we’re coming up for another vote about attacking a far off country over weapons of mass destruction. This time the target is not Iraq, but Syria. This time the “new Hitler” is not Saddam Hussein but Bashar al-Assad. This time it’s not Colin Powell, but John Kerry who assures the world that it can “trust us” and the secret evidence that can’t be fully shared for reasons of National Security.

Remember the last time a vote like this was taken? It was three days after 9/11. Then Congress passed a resolution for the Authorization for Use of Military Force. It sailed through with only one dissenting vote – that of Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

Before registering her brave dissent, the Congresswoman spoke on the House floor. “As we act,” she said, “let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

President Obama would do well to heed those words this time around. However I’m not merely referring to the fact that we already are the evil we ostensibly deplore. After all, we supported Saddam Hussein in his deployment of chemical weapons against Iran in 1988. We have repeatedly used chemical weapons ourselves – for example, Agent Orange in Vietnam and white phosphorus in Fallujah. (I’m not sure how to classify depleted uranium.)

Instead, I’m referring to the Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden cases and the Obama administration’s position that the former Army, CIA and NSA employees deplorably (1) revealed state secrets, (2) violated their constitutional oaths, (3) failed to go through the proper channels, (4) aided the enemy, (5) endangered American lives, and (6) did all of this for reasons of personal advancement.

Ironically, these are the very “crimes” the Obama administration is committing relative to Syria. In effect, Obama is a more deplorable whistle-blower than he considers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning to be. That is, by confirming the Manning and Snowden revelations, he’s unwittingly blowing the whistle on himself.

Consider the Manning and Snowden parallels one-by-one. In the run-up to the Syria bombing:

• Obama has revealed state secrets: The big “state secret” in question is the most devastating one disclosed by Manning and Snowden. It is that the U.S. is a completely out-of-control rogue state. Its army is not only routinely guilty of “collateral murder.” Its CIA and NSA act like a world police force spying on and attempting to control not only designated enemies but even “friends.” The embarrassment caused by Manning and Snowden’s irrefutable revelations on those scores is what has so enraged the Nobel Peace laureate who resides in the White House. Nevertheless, Obama’s own posturing as World Policeman and Mad Bomber relative to Syria confirm what Manning and Snowden have told us so clearly. Our president and Congress are completely out-of-control.

• Obama is violating his constitutional oath: The State Department has repeatedly accused Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden of violating their constitutional oaths to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. But the president, of course, and his congressional enablers are doing the same. According to the Constitution, treaties have the same force as domestic law. As a signatory of the United Nations treaty, the U.S. is bound to get Security Council approval before attacking another nation. Yet it refuses to go that route, because it knows that Russia and China will support world opinion which stands overwhelmingly against U.S. intervention in Syria (as does U.S. opinion).

• President Obama declines to “go through the proper channels”: In prosecuting Chelsea Manning and going after Edward Snowden, a constant accusation of the Obama administration has been that the two have failed to go through the proper channels and procedures which the administration claims are adequate and necessary to avoid catastrophe. Yet nowhere is international law clearer than in defining the proper channels that must honored before launching acts of war. Once again, those channels centralize the United Nations and its Security Council. The Obama administration ignores U.N. procedures because they would inevitably determine U.S. intentions to be criminal.

• President Obama is aiding the enemy: In its prosecution of Chelsea Manning and pursuit of Edward Snowden, the State Department has insisted that the two have “aided the enemy.” Even people giving donations to charitable causes perhaps tangentially connected to al-Qaeda run the risk of having similar accusations (and prosecutions). Yet, by all accounts the opposition to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad includes forces tightly allied with al-Qaeda. So by siding with the rebels, President Obama is directly aiding the enemy in ways that absolutely dwarf anything Manning and Snowden (and charitable donors) could even think of doing.

• President Obama is endangering American lives: Iran and Syria correctly claim the right to self-defense recognized by the U.N. Charter. As allies, they promise retaliation against the United States and its principal regional ally, Israel. Will Israel or the U.S. stand aside in the case of such retaliation? Of course not. As Obama himself has said, once the bombs start flying all bets are off. Events simply take on a life of their own. Will Israel itself retaliate using its atomic weapons? How irresponsible can our “leaders” be?

• President Obama is pursuing this insanity for reasons of personal gain: Obama clearly made a mistake in drawing a “red line” and promising “action” in the case of using chemical weapons in Syria. He made another mistake by jumping to the conclusion that the al-Assad government was responsible for their use before all the data was in. Now it fears appearing weak should it follow the lead of British Prime Minister David Cameron who in effect admitted his mistake in not honoring the will of the British people and its Parliament. So like a Mafia Don, in order to maintain “credibility” and save face, Obama feels compelled to break some legs and spray some restaurants with machine gun fire. Otherwise who knows how many congressional seats might be lost next year? Make no mistake: this round of blood-letting will be done for political gain and to save the president’s reputation as a credible “Godfather.”

So the substance of the Manning and Snowden revelations has been confirmed from the highest possible source. The U.S. is indeed a rogue state. It not only spies on the world, it has set itself up as its lone judge, jury, and executioner. It is a supporter of al-Qaeda. It cares not a bit for American lives or anyone else’s for that matter. In fact it is willing to risk a World War to avoid losing face. As such “America” is an outlaw state with “leaders” who routinely violate not only their oaths of office, but the U.N. Charter, world opinion, and the most elementary moral principles.

Not only that, but the procedures used by Manning and Snowden have been validated by Obama’s intentions towards Syria. Evidently he agrees with the whistle-blowers he deplores that the channels and protocols the world has established to avoid catastrophe are not adequate or workable. Like Bush before him, his will alone determines what is right and wrong.

The only thing left to do is award Manning and Snowden the Nobel Peace Prize – not as worthy successors of Barack Obama, but to atone for the mistake of previously giving it to a Mafia Don.

War Again!

So we’re going to war again – this time in Syria.

And the reason? We’re outraged by the killing of innocent civilians through the use of the “weapons of mass destruction” that we so famously abhor. That is we abhor them when used by others. And these days everything qualifies for the category – even a pressure cooker filled with nails.

Meanwhile, the drone is never described as a weapon of mass destruction. Nor is the white phosphorus used to slaughter masses in Fallujah considered a chemical weapon. And what about the Agent Orange and Agent Blue “we” used in Vietnam and which is still claiming lives and causing horrendous birth deformities fifty years later? How about the depleted uranium that has caused not only deaths but an epidemic of child deformities wherever it has been used?

Have you seen those pictures? No, they’re too “graphic” for our sensibilities. But sensibilities be damned when it’s a question of our enemies atrocities instead of our own which absolutely dwarf the latter.

And where’s the outrage about our cooperation with Saddam Hussein in targeting Iranians, when Hussein was still our friend and ally? Just yesterday it came out that the CIA supplied him with targeting information for his famous use of chemical weapons . We were his collaborators in that crime! But that’s ancient history — way back in 1988.

And yet we rend our garments over this “unspeakable” crime that may have been committed by Bashar Assad – the latest personification of Hitler and evil itself just ahead of Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Slobodan Milosevic, and Muammar Gaddafi.

No one asks “Can we afford this?” Where are the millions (billions?) necessary for this intervention coming from? What has Syria to do with us? How is it connected with U.S. problems of unemployment, income gaps between the super-rich and the ever-expanding ranks of the poor, failing schools, overcrowded prisons, voter suppression, crumbling infrastructure?

To address those problems we have no money. But for war, don’t ask. There’s always money for war.

And so our newscasters and pundits take John Kerry seriously when he wrings his hands over Syria’s use of chemical weapons. We have no option but to intervene militarily, Kerry assures us. And he’s the head of our “Diplomatic Corps!”

Where’s the diplomacy? Where’s the call for a cease fire, for U.N. peacekeeper intervention, for talks between the admittedly al-Qaeda-affiliated “rebels” and the Assad regime? What are we paying these guys for – these so-called diplomats?

And the mainstream media goes along with all of it. Putting on their most solemn faces and using their most serious voices the newscasters intone: “We have ‘undeniable circumstantial evidence’ that Bashar Assad is the one responsible for chemical weapons deployment. And there’s no time to wait for a fuller investigation.”

Sound familiar? When was the last time such certainty moved us to “shock and awe” an enemy, meanwhile killing untold innocent civilians in the process?

So our brave military stands ready to fire Cruise Missiles into population centers to retaliate for the killing of innocent civilians. The strikes will be as surgical as possible we’re reassured.

Have we learned nothing from recent history?

Which Side Are You On? (Sunday Homily)

Readings for 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time: JER 38:4-8, 8-10; Ps. 40: 2-4, 18; HEB. 12:1-4; LK. 12: 49-53. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081813.cfm

I think we all might agree that today’s United States is marked by deep divisions – a concept raised in today’s gospel reading. Some say our country is more divided now than at any time since the Civil War. I’m talking about conflicts of:

• Conservative against liberal as anywhere you tune in on the AM dial, you’ll hear harsh and threatening words vilifying those who stand for social justice, equality and tolerance.
• Rich against poor as the income gap widens and the poor and immigrants are identified as lazy freeloaders.
• White against black as Stand Your Ground laws and voter suppression measures gain ground, while Trevon Martins are killed with impunity and their brothers are “stopped and frisked” by racist cops.
• Men against women, as the “War against Women” finds expression around issues of contraception, rape, abortion and women priests.
• Straight against gay as the LGBT community still struggles for domestic partnership benefits and recognition of the legitimacy of their love relationships.
• Christian against Muslim, as the United States continues its brutal wars in Afghanistan and throughout the Muslim world with daily drone strikes killing innocents along with those who resist the U.S. War on the World and are branded as “terrorists” for doing so.
• Old against young as twenty-somethings like Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, and Aaron Swartz are harshly punished for exposing the crimes of their elders.

And Jesus is deeply involved in all of those conflicts. He is routinely invoked as endorsing conservatives, the rich, whites, men, straights, Christians, and the geriatric patriarchal establishment that rules the world. More specifically, a “devout Catholic” like Paul Ryan invokes his Catholicism to endorse social Darwinism as he crafts and promotes budget cuts that favor the wealthy and militate against single mothers, their children, and undocumented workers that increasingly form the backbone of our economy.

Even kindly Francis I invokes Jesus to continue the exclusion of women from the priesthood and the control of women religious by the male hierarchy which by church law remains strictly segregated from intimate contact with women. This same hierarchy finds some of its members deeply implicated in what Pope Francis himself calls a “gay lobby,” all the while denouncing homosexuality.

Such forces and movements embrace a Jesus who endorses conservative values and the status quo.

We get a different picture of Jesus from today’s gospel reading – and from the Christian Testament in general. This Jesus is anything but conservative. He’s not even liberal. He is deeply radical – an enemy of the temple establishment and the Roman Empire. Rather than supporting the status quo, he calls for fire to consume it. He can’t wait, he says, till it’s all gone – to be replaced by God’s reign. Jesus’ words this morning are fierce. No doubt, Jewish insurgents against the Roman occupation of Palestine found them congenial.

Closer to home, today’s Jesus even seems to endorse family strife. Luke has him say, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

In the light of our own divisions, Jesus seems to be calling us to take a stand even if it means opposing our nearest and dearest. Maintaining family peace is less important for Jesus than the radical change demanded by God’s Kingdom. Standing with Jesus means taking sides. In the light of our divisions, it means for me:

• Standing with the poor and immigrant communities and recognizing corporate “persons” as the enemies of the world’s majority.
• Tuning out the hate ranting of the Limbaughs and Hannitys and recognizing that their values are antithetical to those of Jesus.
• Combatting Stand Your Ground Laws, racial profiling and efforts at voter suppression.
• Recognizing the absurdity of men attempting to control and pass legislation about women’s bodies – and of the church patriarchy contradicting virtually all biblical scholars in its chauvinistic exclusion of women from the priesthood.
• Saying clearly that the Bible teaches nothing about homosexual orientation – a totally modern understanding of a perennial human reality whose conformity with nature has been nearly impossible to understand for most in the West so thoroughly indoctrinated by a homophobic version of Christianity.
• Recognizing that the United States is the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire which Jesus resisted along with all patriotic Jews of his time. This implies that Muslims resisting U.S. Empire and occupation of their lands have more in common with Jesus than with us Christians who live in the belly of the beast. What our government calls terrorists are the analogue of the Zealots of first century Palestine. And Jesus’ inner circle of 12 incorporated Zealots. Think about it.

In its most specific terms, today’s gospel reading also asks us to think about the conflict of old against young. Jesus himself, of course, was a young man – barely 30 when speaking these words: “They will be divided father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Notice that the conflicts named by Jesus are generational. They pit the old against the young and the reverse. (There’s not talk here of brother against sister or sister against brother.) This seems to be a call then for elders to respect their juniors. Are we doing that with Manning, Snowden and Swartz? We should, it seems, if we’re attuned to Jesus’ words this morning.

As for practical responses to Jesus words . . . . How about:

• Staying out of the Big Boxes as much as we can.
• Listening to “Democracy Now” or “All Things Considered” rather than to Limbaugh or Hannity.
• Going door-to-door to register voters in minority neighborhoods this fall.
• Withholding church contributions till our church reverses its stand on women’s ordination.
• Supporting the LGBT community in any way we can.
• Phoning the White House and congressional representatives about ending drone strikes
• Supporting the campaign to award Bradley Manning the Nobel Peace Prize.

What I’m saying is that the gospel call today is to become more deeply radical and determine which side we are on.

Can you think of anything else we might do “take sides” in the spirit of Jesus?

(Discussion follows)

Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic: Reflections on a Reunion of Former Priests

The Catholic Church is a sinking ship. So are its orders of priests and nuns. The “reforms” presaged by the election of Pope Francis are like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They’re busy work for those whom history has rendered superfluous.

Similarly, for all the good will behind them, efforts at reforming orders, congregations and societies of priests and religious are doomed from the start. Typically they endorse the hierarchy’s negligence by failing to address the substantive causes of the crises that afflict the sinking church and its semi-submerged sub-organizations.

These are the conclusions I drew after attending a joyous reunion of priests and former priests (and their wives) belonging to the Society of St. Columban. That’s the Irish-founded missionary group I joined in 1954 (when I entered the minor seminary at the age of 14) and which I left in 1976. I had been ordained in 1966 (ordination photo above — taken by my classmate, Tom Shaugnessy).

The reunion took place in Bristol, Rhode Island over a three-day period just last week (July 21st-23rd). It was great getting together with friends, colleagues, teachers, former priests and their spouses. It was wonderful to see so many of my one-time missionary friends with their beautiful wives from Ireland as well as Japan, Korea, Chile and other “fields afar” (as the title of one missionary magazine used to put it). Several men’s spouses were former nuns. I can only imagine the wonderful love stories each of those couples might tell.

As with all reunions, there were the usual reminiscences from years long past. We made wisecracks about how all of us have aged, and observations about how quickly time has flown. There was catching up to do about retirement, children, grandchildren, illnesses, deaths of former colleagues, and plans for our declining years – and always in a light-hearted spirit. We even went for a cruise around the Newport Harbor. Great fun!

On the final day, things turned more serious. The newly-elected Regional Director of the Columbans spoke to us about the Society of St. Columban today. After introducing himself, this comparative youngster of 51 years informed his appreciative audience of recent efforts to update the Society in the face of zero vocations over the last number of years in Ireland, the U.S., England, and Australia. The situation is aggravated by the advancing ages of the 400 or so priests who remain in the Society – so many of them over the age of 75.

In response, we were told, the Columbans have made efforts at recruiting seminarians from the “mission” territories. As a result, Columban ordinations have taken place in the Pacific Rim – in Korea, Fiji, the Philippines, and also in Latin America. The Society’s directorate has changed accordingly. With its headquarters now located in Hong Kong instead of Ireland, the current directing council is a rainbow blend of Irish, Latin American, and Philippine “superiors.” Additionally lay associates, both men and women have become more prominent in the Columban scheme of things.

Besides such developments, there have been efforts at dialog with Muslims, especially in Pakistan and the Philippines. Social justice for the poor and ecological concerns have become central themes of documents recently authored by Society “chapters” or long-range planning sessions. Above all continued emphasis on brotherly love and legendary Columban hospitality continue as hallmarks of this group about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding as the “Maynooth Mission to China” in 1918. (“Maynooth” was the name of the Irish National Seminary back then.) With China now open, Columbans are currently making efforts to reintroduce themselves into that continent-sized country thus reclaiming the Society’s original focus.

All of that seemed encouraging. Such updating demonstrates the good will, generosity and continued vitality of men and women still intent on doing good in the world and serving the God their faith envisions. Columbans remain for me the most inspiring community of its kind I’ve ever known.

However questions surfaced for me about the reforms just mentioned. And unfortunately there was little time to raise – much less probe – them during the discussion period that followed the new Regional Director’s fine presentation. For instance:

• What does it mean that Pacific Rim Catholics are more open to the priesthood and mission than Europeans and North Americans? Is faith stronger in the former colonies? Are candidates European wannabes? Or has a pre-Vatican II brand of Christianity been introduced in the Pacific Rim that avoids the crises of the celibate priesthood that emerged following that historic Council whose 50th anniversary we’re currently celebrating?
• Does the incorporation of women and laymen as associates give them equal voice and vote in Society matters? Will there soon be a woman Superior General governing the Society of St. Columban?
• What is the point of Columban-Muslim dialog? Is it conversion of the Muslim dialog partners? Is it enrichment of all conversation participants? Is it collaboration and cooperation? If so, what is the shared project?
• For that matter, what’s the point of missionary work itself? After all, Vatican II recognized the value in God’s eyes of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and other faiths. Are missionaries still trying to convert faithful people whose culture seems so distant from a Christianity so long and fatally associated with empire and exploitation?
• What specifically are Columbans doing about ecology and care for the planet? It’s easy for organizations nowadays to claim “green” commitment, but where does the rubber meet the road? Are Columbans encouraging vegetarianism as spiritual and ecological discipline? Are they cutting back on air-conditioning? Are they mandating that their cars be hybrids or have targeted miles-per-gallon ranges? Are they mounting campaigns focused on global warming and the introduction of genetically modified seeds in Latin America and Asia?

Those are some key questions that necessarily remained un-discussed at our Columban reunion. But I did get the opportunity to pose one whose answer led me to draw the conclusions I shared at the beginning – about the Columbans, organizations like them, and the Catholic Church itself being sinking ships. I asked:

• The great Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, has observed that the Holy Eucharist is constitutive of the church. Without Mass, he said, there simply can be no church. Therefore it is positively sinful on the part of church leadership to deprive Catholics of Eucharist because of an artificial priest shortage caused by blind commitment to mandatory celibacy and an all-male clergy. What are the Columbans doing to lobby for fundamental change in the church to make the Eucharist more available to the communities Columbans serve?

Understandably, the Regional Director gave the expected answer – the only one possible, I think. “Of course,” he said, “where 2 or 3 Columbans get together those questions are always discussed. However, we’re such a small and relatively insignificant organization, we have so little clout. So, no, we haven’t discussed petitions or protests on those matters.”

In other words, the sin of mandatory celibacy for priests, the sin of an all-male clergy will continue until the Vatican repents. But even Francis I is not about to don sack cloth and ashes in that regard.

That institutional obstinacy was underlined for me in the Mass that concluded our magnificent reunion. Two male priests stood before a congregation of “priests forever” – the latter adopting subservient positions in the pews instead of concelebrating. No woman had any role in the Mass. Additionally, the recently mandated pre-Vatican II Latinisms reminded me that the church is actually regressing:

• “Consubstantial” (instead of “one in being”)
• “And with thy spirit” (rather than “also with you”)
• “Shed for you and for many” (not “all”)
• “It is right and just” (instead of “fitting”)
• “Come under my roof” (rather than “receive you”)

The Latinisms are not trivial. They represent subtle messages that the signature liturgical reform of Vatican II is over. In the context of the Columban reunion, they demonstrated how hemmed in good people are by decisions from above.

Talk about rearranging deck chairs . . . . I could almost hear the water bursting through the Ship’s gaping hull.

President Obama Should Have Said: “George Zimmerman Could Have Been Me!”

Last Friday President Obama startled Washington reporters and the world by expressing his thoughts about the Trayvon Martin verdict. That decision acquitted George Zimmerman of criminal guilt for killing an unarmed teenager in Sanford, Florida.

In his remarks, Mr. Obama spoke sentimentally of his own experience of racism, and about the dangers of Stand Your Ground laws. He cited the need to consider context in order to understand African-American rage over the Zimmerman verdict. Famously he said Trayvon Martin could have been him 35 years ago.

In fact, the President would have spoken more honestly had he identified with George Zimmerman.

Professor Cornel West (Union Theological Seminary) suggested that in an interview on “Democracy Now.” True, he found the Zimmerman verdict disturbing not simply because Trayvon Martin’s death went unpunished, but because it revealed what has been termed a “George Zimmerman Mentality.” That mind-set shaped by racism, fear, suspicion, and vigilantism has long afflicted our country in general and whites in particular even in this supposedly post-racial era.

More specifically, West charged that Stand Your Ground laws based on States Rights are ultimately aimed at controlling the black community. I would add that they are the modern equivalent of legalized lynching. In practice, the laws permit armed whites who feel themselves threatened by dark-skinned people to shoot those they deem threats to their security. Whites standing their ground have no legal requirement to retreat from the situation even if an escape route is available. The Zimmerman mentality represents lethal violence as a preferred option rather than a last resort.

Ironically, the Stand Your Ground, shoot-first attitude happens to be a key element of Mr. Obama’s own drone program. Sharing Zimmerman’s attitude of fear and racism, its “signature strikes” have been responsible for the deaths of at least 221 totally innocent dark-skinned children who happened to be nearby when Mr. Obama chose to fire his own weapon at those merely suspected of being or associating with “terrorists.” In effect, all of those children were Trayvon Martins who would be alive today had they not been in the wrong place at the wrong time when a man with a weapon perceived a threat from a profiled target.

Such observations made me wonder what key passages in Mr. Obama’s remarks would have sounded like if they were slightly altered to substitute references to Muslims, suspected terrorists, and innocent victims of drones for his original words about Trayvon Martin and African-Americans.

With those substitutions key sections of Mr. Obama’s text would have read as follows (I have placed my additions in italics to distinguish them from the President’s actual words):
______

“The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week, the issue of the 221 children I have recently killed by my drone policy. . .

“First of all, you know, I — I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the families of the drone victims, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation. I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s — it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it. . .

“But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. On second thought, I would have done better to identify with George Zimmerman. Another way of saying that is that I am George Zimmerman today.

“And when you think about why, in the Muslim community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the Muslim community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away. . . .

“And you know, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the Muslim community interprets what happened one night in _________ (Name the country – Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia . . .). And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. . . .

“Now, this isn’t to say that the Muslim community is naive about the fact that Muslim young men are disproportionately involved in resistance to U.S. policy, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact, although Muslims do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.

“We understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor Muslim communities around the world is born out of a very violent past in relation to the United States, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.”
______

Now the substitutions I’ve made may strike you as awkward. But I’m sure you get my idea.

The point is that Mr. Obama has no moral ground to stand on in lamenting George Zimmerman’s violence or the ridiculous nature of Stand Your Ground Laws. Rather than identifying with Trayvon Martin, the President would have done better to note his similarities to George Zimmerman. Rather than wringing his hands over Stand Your Ground laws, the President should have recognized the identical logic that informs his own drone murders.

Mr. Obama thinks like Zimmerman; he profiles like that vigilante; he patrols the world with Zimmerman’s lethal intent. Even more to the point, the President pulls the trigger even more quickly and irresponsibly than the armed vigilante from Sanford.

President Obama is the poster child for the George Zimmerman Mentality, for Stand Your Ground and its disdain for dark skinned people.

Why I’m Not Celebrating July 4th This Year

I remember in 1972, I was asked to give a 4th of July speech in some church context which I’ve since forgotten. I was a 32 year old Roman Catholic priest then. And my remarks were critical of the U.S. role in Vietnam and in the Third World in general.

Before I began however, an officer from the local VFW led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance. I remember how he prefaced his part with a long July 4th introduction. He praised the flag for being “unsullied in emblemizing mankind’s struggle for freedom, unparalleled in standing in defense of human rights and the pursuit of justice, blessed by God above all others as the flag of his New Chosen People.”

It was enough to turn my stomach.

My nausea was induced by what I knew the U.S. was doing in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Like everyone else, I knew about Mai Lai, Agent Orange, the Phoenix Program, the Pentagon Papers and merciless illegal bombings of civilians.

My revulsion was also fired by my growing awareness of what the United States was doing in the Third World in general and especially in Latin America where the liberation theology I was studying was powerfully shaping consciousness throughout the hemisphere. Its insistence on historical and structural analysis had caused a paradigm shift in my own perception. Increasingly, I was seeing the United States as the Sandinista Anthem would later phrase it, “the enemy of mankind.”

Somehow I got through my speech without having anyone walk out. I still wonder why.

These days I’m feeling even more alienated than I did more than 40 years ago. Contemporary realities have actually turned me against July 4th celebrations.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib and the use of drone technology to execute U.S. citizens and anyone in the world without due process are only part of the syndrome this time around. It’s what we’ve recently learned from Ed Snowden, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange that make flag-waving and Pledges of Allegiance so repulsive. Now when I see fireworks, I can only think of Dick Cheney and the “Shock and Awe” pyrotechnics we all saw on CNN when Our Great Country used lies and false pretenses to attack a sovereign nation that had never done us any harm. As Allen Greenspan said in effect, Iraq’s curse and crime was having huge supplies of high grade crude.

As for celebrating our Great Constitution, Snowden’s revelations coupled with a mere reading of the Fourth Amendment are enough to give anyone pause: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Yes, the Constitution’s fine; but increasingly it’s a dead letter.

Similarly, my willingness to celebrate American democracy is tempered these days by memories of the 2000 “election” of George W. Bush through the intervention of his brother who happened to be governor of Florida with the power to deliver the White House to his dear sibling. The machinations of brother Jeb and a crony Supreme Court would have been comical in any Banana Republic scenario. Having it occur in the United States was more than embarrassing. Subsequent insistence on our privilege to monitor and invalidate elections elsewhere in the world has made us the international laughing stock we’ve hoped to make countries like Venezuela and Iran.

And then there’s Republican redistricting, voter suppression, Citizens United, and the recent SCOTUS evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. What’s that you say about free elections?

The crowning glory of all this embarrassment is our country’s willingness to end life as we know it on Planet Earth by blocking every serious attempt to reverse climate change. President Obama’s recent tepid declarations notwithstanding, the U.S. persists in catastrophic denial of what every serious scientific study reiterates: we are on the road to destruction with the “America” blazing the trail.

Our country’s willingness to end life as we know it on our marvelous planet (not to mention our wars and arms industry) is reason enough to believe that Mother Earth would be better off if the U.S. just dropped off the map. Think about it: the earth would be better off without the United States’ pollution, wars and “Way of Life.”

That’s why I’ll do no flag waving or banner display. I’ll recite no Pledges of Allegiance, nor stand for the Star Spangled Banner. Patriotic speeches and other jingoistic claptrap will draw no applause from me.

It’s all gotten so bad and such a matter of public record that it might even make my VFW friend turn over in his grave.

Rios Montt Is a Born Again Christian! A Prominent ‘Christianist’ Cleric Supported His Genocide. Should He Be Droned Next?

In all the analysis of the Rios Montt trial and conviction for genocide, it is rarely even mentioned that the General was a born again Christian. He was directly and vocally supported not only by Ronald Reagan and Elliot Abrams, but by prominent clerics like Pat Robertson.

Robertson’s support of Montt was not casual. Nor was it ignorant of Montt’s tactics. In reference to those atrocities, Nikolas Kozloff of Counterpunch writes:

“Far from denouncing such practices, Robertson rushed to defend Rios Montt. ‘Little by little the miracle began to unfold,’ he wrote of the regime. ‘The country was stabilized. Democratic processes, never a reality in Guatemala, began to be put into place.’ Robertson also praised Rios Montt for eliminating death squads, despite recent estimates that tens of thousands were killed by death squads in the second half of 1982 and throughout 1983. Most damning of all, even as Rios Montt was carrying out the extermination of the Mayan population, Robertson held a fundraising telethon for the Guatemalan military. The televangelist urged donations for International Love Lift, Rios Montt’s relief program linked to Gospel Outreach, the dictator’s U.S. church. Meanwhile, Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network reportedly sponsored a campaign to provide money as well as agricultural and medical technicians to aid in the design of Rios Montt’s first model villages.”

Hmm. . . . Aid and comfort to a perpetrator of genocide, defense of its practice, fund-raising on its behalf, concealment of concentration camps as “model villages” . . . Those sound like the crimes that justify the droning of “Islamist” clerics. But there’s been not a word about this connection in the U.S. mainstream press, much less from our government officials.

The hypocrisy of it all is not surprising to me. It is exactly what I’ve come to expect from personal experience of Guatemala and of Central America in general. There during the ‘70s and ‘80s Evangelicals and the U.S. media supported dictators throughout the region. Moreover, far from being seen as the accomplices of terror, the Evangelicals were favored by the U.S. government in its fight against Roman Catholic liberation theology. Remember, Montt’s atrocities occurred during what Chomsky calls “the first religious war of the 21st century” – the war of the United States against the Catholic Church in Latin America.

My personal experience makes all of this unforgettable for me. For the last 20 years and more, I’ve been associated with an evangelical term-abroad program for North American students in Central America. My job was to teach our students about liberation theology.

Each semester we would take students to Guatemala to visit the killing fields there. For a period, Rios Montt was always among the speakers interviewed by our students. So were professors at the Evangelical Seminary in Guatemala City. To a man, they supported Rios Montt amid the charges of genocide that always swirled around him. They echoed Robertson’s defense and/or denial of the on-going genocide. They spoke glowingly of Montt’s quasi-sermons delivered with great passion each Sunday morning as he explained his policies in terms of the Bible.

On one occasion, a student of ours summoned the courage to ask “President” Montt the question that was on everyone’s mind: “There are charges,” he said, “that you were behind mass killings of Mayan Indians. Now that it’s over, do you have any regrets about your policy?”

The ex-president’s face grew angry. He stepped from behind the podium and shook his finger at our student. “Listen,” he thundered. “I did what I did because God told me to do it! To ‘regret’ my actions would be a sin against God!”

That’s the kind of man Christianist clerics like Robertson supported. That’s the kind of Christian jihadist outlook that motivated genocide.

Now imagine what would happen to “Islamist” clerics responsible for aiding, advising and supporting Muslim acts of terrorism exactly like Montt’s, in exactly the way the Christianist cleric, Pat Robertson did.

In fact, little imagination is required. Think of the fate of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen and Muslim cleric who recently was listed as droned by the Obama national security state. His “crimes” in relation to Islamic terrorism allegedly mirrored those of Robertson in his support of Rios Montt. The C.I.A. not only killed Awlaki, but later murdered his 16 year old son in the same way.

Could it be that Rev. Robertson and some members of his family will be droned next? Hmm . . . .

Leaving the Priesthood: Why Priests? Why God? (Sunday Homily)

Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ: Gn. 14: 18-20; Ps. 101: 1-4; I Cor. 9: 23-26; Lk. 9: 11B-17. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060213.cfm

Today is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. I can’t review the prescribed readings without relating them to the question of the Roman Catholic priesthood which I embraced as my vocation from the age of 14 when I entered the junior seminary to my ordination on December 22, 1966, to when I finally the formal priesthood ten year later.

The readings remind me of why I entered the priesthood, and why I left. (If interested, see my blog entries on the topic under the “Personal” button just below the blog masthead.)

My reasons for entering the priesthood are connected with the vision of Melchizedek referenced in today’s first reading from Genesis and in the responsorial Psalm 101. Melchizedek was the first one called “priest” in the Jewish Testament.

The idea of a great priesthood going back to early biblical times was the one impressed on me when I first became aware of priests at St. Viator’s Catholic grammar school on Chicago’s Northwest Side. There I was taught for nine years by the wonderful Sisters of St. Joseph who were responsible for my earliest ideas about priests and God. (I remember those sisters each by name – Helen Clare, Mary Jane, Loyola, Rose Anthony, Mary Paul, Rita Marie, Cyril, Irma – every morning in my prayers.)

Those good sisters encouraged me to attend Mass each day, and to become a “Knight of the Altar” eventually advancing me to the exalted rank of “Vice Supreme Grand Knight.” That had me “serving Mass” regularly and watching the priest at close range rehearse each morning the narrative Paul recalls in today’s second reading. “On the night before he died,” Paul says, “Jesus took bread into his hands, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying ‘Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body, which will be given up for you’.”

The St. Joseph sisters told me that those words transformed bread into the very body of Jesus. Similar words changed wine into Christ’s blood. The Mass, the sisters taught, was a “sacrifice” – the re-presentation of Jesus death on the cross. It was the “holy sacrifice of the Mass” making present for us each morning Jesus’ heroic act which his Father’s justice demanded because of the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve.

Priests not only had the power to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, they could also forgive sins in the Sacrament of Penance. Moreover they participated in Christ’s “sacrifice” by giving up marriage and family in order to imitate Jesus and dedicate themselves more completely to the service of God.

I believed those things with all my heart. I wanted to please God. Nothing else could possibly be as important. I loved the sisters who taught me; I admired fathers Burke and Fitzpatrick. It all made me want to be a priest. That’s why I decided to enter the seminary.

My reasons for leaving the priesthood are connected with Luke’s account of the feeding of the 5000 related in today’s gospel reading.

You see, during 13 years of preparation for the priesthood – four in St. Columban’s high school seminary in Silver Creek New York, four in the Columban College in Milton, Massachusetts, one in our “spiritual year” (a kind of novitiate) in Bristol, Rhode Island, and four more years of theological training also in Milton – my ideas matured.

Especially those final years in the major seminary, with their daily classes in biblical studies, raised questions for me. So did the Second Vatican Council, which ran its course (1962-1965) just as I was approaching ordination in 1966. The Council and the debates surrounding it seemed to call into question everything the sisters had taught me. Those questions were sharpened for me when I was sent to Rome for more study (1967-’72) following ordination.

The Rome I found was still electric with the aftershock of Vatican II. The questions I had vaguely become aware of in the seminary were now shouting in my ears each day as I attended class and widened my study and reading to include Protestants and non-Christians including atheists. And besides, my uncertainties within spread as my own experience of life outside stretched beyond the hothouse atmosphere of the seminary where I had lived during my most formative years.

How exactly was the Mass connected with Calvary and Jesus’ sacrifice? After all, what Paul recounts was a final meal shared by Jesus and his friends, not some kind of sacrifice. And why did God require the death of his son anyway? That didn’t seem very loving or God-like. And by the way, why mandatory celibacy for priests? (I had learned that the reasons had more to do with protection of church property from the potential claims of pastors’ heirs than with the following of Jesus who might well have been married anyway.)

In the end, I realized that “priesthood” and sacrifice are misplaced in Christianity. True, the early church used the imagery of “sacrifice” to make sense out of Jesus execution by Rome. But that was an image – a metaphor – which the church subsequently and inappropriately took literally – just as it did the words attributed to Jesus at the Last Supper.

In fact, I concluded, that was the root of so much of what was wrong with the church – taking metaphor and interpreting it literally. Metaphor, image, myth and story I realized, were beautiful and necessary elements of human expression. They are the only language we have at our disposal for thinking and speaking about the Transcendent, the divine. But to take metaphors literally distorts and misleads.

And that brought me to the question of God himself. First of all I realized that God was not a “himself;” that too was imagery bequeathed by the extremely patriarchal culture found in the Bible. And so were the ideas I had inherited which put God “up there” as a person in the sky. God was not a person, I realized. “Person” is a category completely wrapped up in human experience. “Existence” was similar; it was too human and finite to apply to the divine. I found myself agreeing with the theologians I was reading who observed that it is truer to say God does not exist than that “he” does. Was I becoming an atheist?

Not really. I was coming to embrace the truth of Paul’s words about God’s subtlety and omnipresence: God is “the one in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We live in God. We are part of God just as we are of our parents. We best relate to God in meditation and contemplation rather than as Knights of the Altar.

What then of the Mass? Today’s gospel reading gives us a clue about its nature. “The Lord’s Supper” is a recollection of the fact that when human beings share bread and wine, God happens. That’s what Jesus meant by those words at the Last Supper as recalled by Paul this morning.

Sharing food and the most palpable experience of God is what the feeding of the 5000 in today’s gospel s about. It’s what church is about. When strangers gather in small groups intimate enough for everyone to introduce themselves and get to know one another (in today’s reading, Jesus put the number at 50), Church happens. Sharing happens. God happens.

In the end, then, since there is no need for sacrifice, there is no need for priesthood. We ourselves are the body and blood of the Lord for each other. The Lord is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Jesus provides the example of the consciousness of unity with God that each of us can make our own. Jesus’ example of sharing and self-giving shows us how to get from here to there.

Coming to those realizations caused me to leave the priesthood – and to continue my vocation in its present form.

Have you made a similar journey? What were its steps? Please share.
(Discussion follows)

Second Thoughts about Pope Bergoglio: A Liberation Pope or Just More Blah, Blah?

I’m still trying to figure out the new pope, Francis I. Initially, I was very skeptical and even negative about his election. After all he was carrying all that baggage from Argentina’s “dirty war.” And some incidents there made me see Francis as just another right-winger in the tradition of his immediate predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Tongue partly planted in cheek, I called for his resignation.

Gradually however, I’ve come to question my rush to judgment. True, the new pope faltered with early missteps regarding women. He seemed to reiterate Benedict XVI’s admonition to U.S. women religious to focus more on the issues of contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage, rather than on social justice for the poor and electoral politics. He even warned a group of sisters against becoming “spinsters” or “old maids” (depending on the translation) rather than fruitful celibates.

But then he went to that women’s prison on Holy Thursday and drew fire from conservatives for including women among those whose feet he washed that day. I concluded that the jury is still out concerning Francis and women. Like most of us males, he clearly has room to grow.

As I wait for the jury’s verdict, two recent incidents have led me towards a more positive evaluation in the court of my own mind. To begin with, Leonardo Boff, a leading liberation theologian who had been silenced by the Ratzinger-Wojtyla team, surprised me by his own positive assessment. He even identified the new pope as a “field” liberation theologian as opposed to a “desk” theologian. Despite his reservations in the past about liberation theology, Bergoglio, Boff said, was truly committed to the poor. Boff was hopeful that the Argentinian might change the direction of the Vatican policy of suspicion and rejection over the last 30 years towards the “preferential option for the poor” so central in the thought of activists committed to the welfare of the world’s poor majority.

Then a couple of weeks ago, a second occurrence made me think Boff might have a point. The pontiff made some surprisingly critical remarks about capitalism and ethics to a group of new ambassadors to the Vatican.

Here are some excerpts. They are worth quoting at length:

“. . . We must also acknowledge that the majority of the men and women of our time continue to live daily in situations of insecurity, with dire consequences. . . The financial crisis which we are experiencing makes us forget that its ultimate origin is to be found in . . . the denial of the primacy of human beings! We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old (cf. Ex 32:15-34) has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.

The worldwide financial and economic crisis seems to highlight . . the gravely deficient human perspective, which reduces man to one of his needs alone, namely, consumption. Worse yet, human beings themselves are nowadays considered as consumer goods which can be used and thrown away. We have started a throw-away culture.

This tendency is . . . being promoted! In circumstances like these, solidarity, which is the treasure of the poor, is often considered counterproductive, opposed to the logic of finance and the economy. While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good. A new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules . . . The will to power and of possession has become limitless.

Concealed behind this attitude is a rejection of ethics, a rejection of God. Ethics, like solidarity, is a nuisance! It is regarded as counterproductive: as something too human, because it relativizes money and power; as a threat, because it rejects manipulation and subjection of people: because ethics leads to God, who is situated outside the categories of the market. God is thought to be unmanageable by these financiers, economists and politicians, God is unmanageable, even dangerous, because he calls man to his full realization and to independence from any kind of slavery. . . I encourage the financial experts and the political leaders of your countries to consider the words of Saint John Chrysostom: “Not to share one’s goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life. It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs” (Homily on Lazarus, 1:6 – PG 48, 992D).

. . . There is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone. . . Money has to serve, not to rule! The Pope . . . has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them. . . .

The common good should not be simply an extra, simply a conceptual scheme of inferior quality tacked onto political programs. . . . In this way, a new political and economic mindset would arise that would help to transform the absolute dichotomy between the economic and social spheres into a healthy symbiosis. . . .Are you surprised by those words? Here the pope is saying that:

1. The wealth gap between the rich and poor is completely unacceptable.
2. It is caused by unfettered markets which reduce people to consumers subordinate to material production.
3. Free markets are heartless, inhumane and idolatrous.
4. Remedying that problem necessitates government interference in the marketplace.
5. . . . based on an ethics of solidarity taking its lead from the poor and prioritizing human welfare and the common good over untargeted economic growth.
6. Solidarity ethics find their origin in God who calls all humans to liberation from slaveries and idolatries of all kinds.
7. So governments must overcome their reluctance to correct the wealth-concentrating tendencies of free markets,
8. . . . and the attitude which sees ethical and theological concerns as counter-productive when they
prioritize the needs of the poor over the profits of financiers and the moneyed classes.
9. Avoidance of these responsibilities makes governments complicit with the crimes of robbery from the poor who (rather than the rich) are the true owners of the resources of God’s creation.
10. Economics and social justice should not be understood as standing in opposition to one another, but as mutually nourishing.

I find the pope’s words encouraging and quite promising. True, most popes (even J.P.II and Ratzinger) made isolated statements in tune with the comments just quoted. And taken as a body, the social teachings of the Catholic Church from Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891) to Vatican II’s “Church in the Modern World” (Gaudium et Spes, 1965) are progressive enough though they remain the church’s “best kept secret.”

Yet, the words I’ve quoted come from a new pope who (as Boff notes) has demonstrated his concern for the poor in practical ways, and has embodied a preference for simple living, And that might be sufficient reason for hope the pope’s words will define his papacy rather than simply being more papal “blah, blah.”

The jury’s still out.

Announcing a New Wednesday Series on Critical Thinking: is anyone interested?

During the last couple of weeks my blogs have addressed the Boston Marathon bombings. I’ve suggested the application of elementary principles to clarify thinking about such tragedies. One of them I’ve termed the “principle of reciprocity.” The meaning I’ve assigned the term has to do with the application of a single standard to all cases involving response to tragedies like the Boston bombing on the one hand and U.S. drone attacks on the other.

Reciprocity is related to judgments about nuclear weapons. If the U.S., Israel, Pakistan, and India are allowed to possess them, so should North Korea and Iran. The principle of reciprocity holds that what I judge as good for me should be good for you as well; what is bad for me is bad for you. Any child can understand such a guideline. It’s what we learned in Kindergarten and Sunday school.

Yet our “leaders” seem incapable of grasping what is perfectly clear even to children.

The principle of reciprocity and its implicit challenge to “American” exceptionalism has elicited energetic response on the part of some who have read the blogs as anti-American, insensitive and judgmental. Those responses in turn have led me to perceive a need on my part to explain in a more detailed manner just where I am coming from. The idea would be to help others come to grips with their own principles of critical thought. (We all have them whether we’re aware of it or not.)

You see, over my 36 years of teaching at Berea College in Kentucky, I’ve taught many courses on critical thinking. And this has led me to bring to consciousness my own approach to the discipline. That approach has centralized what I’ve learned in my years of study under Third World thinkers – especially under liberation theologians in Brazil, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Zimbabwe.

If you’re wondering what I mean by “liberation theology,” just click on the entries in that category located just below the masthead of this blog site. In a single sentence, “liberation theology” is reflection on the following of Jesus of Nazareth from the viewpoint of those committed to the liberation of the world’s poor and oppressed. I consider it the most important theological development of the last 1700 years and the most important intellectual movement of the last 150 years – going back to the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

I guess what I’m saying is that my understanding of critical thinking comes from a faith perspective.

In any case, inspired by what I’ve learned, my teaching has led me to develop ten principles for critical thinking. I’ve used feature film clips to illustrate what I’m talking about. I’d like to share those principles and clips with readers in bite-sized portions, in Wednesday blogs over the next several weeks.

I hope there will be an audience out there to follow along. If so, please make a simple “I’m on board” comment below. If there’s no audience, at least my entries will serve as a vehicle for talking to myself in order to clarify my own thinking.

The same holds true for my observations about Hitler, his victory in what liberation philosopher,Enrique Dussel calls “the Second Inter-capitalist War,” and the resurfacing of Hitlerism in the United States over the last 35 years. During the coming weeks, on Fridays, I’d like to give an account of that sad and highly threatening process and its relevance to our own day. Is anyone out there interested in following a series on the topic? I wonder.

None of this would change what I consider the anchor of this blog site. In my view, what holds the whole thing down are my Sunday homilies. My project there is to do my small part to rescue interpretation of the Christian tradition from the political right and religious fundamentalists, and to provide reflections on Sunday liturgical readings from the viewpoint of liberation theology as referenced above.

If any of this interests you, please sign up as a “follower” of this blog, so that you’ll receive automatic notification of the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday posts. If you’re reluctant to sign on as a “follower,” do something to remind yourself to check in from time to time. Your critical feedback will be greatly appreciated.

I await responses.