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PDF versionJesus and the falling towers
by John Dear SJ on Sep. 07, 2011
At that time, some people who were present there told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those 18 people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them -- do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!"
Ten years ago, I was having breakfast with my parents in a Central Park hotel when news came of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. My folks left town, and I walked downtown to see how I could help. I remember the clear blue sky and the million people walking uptown toward me. The subways, bridges, tunnels and roads had all been closed.
When I reached St. Vincent's Hospital, I found hundreds of doctors, nurses and stretchers standing silently along 12th Street, waiting for the wounded to arrive. I offered my services as a chaplain, and they invited me to wait with them. After several hours, we finally realized: no one was coming.
As I made the long walk back uptown to the Jesuit Community, I wondered what the nonviolent Jesus would say about this terrorist attack. Only the month before, I had told a large audience in Los Angeles that our own terrorist violence around the world would surely one day come back upon us.
This was not some prophetic, doomsday prediction; just a simple observation. What goes around, comes around. You reap what you sow. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
Violence in response to violence always leads to further violence; terrorist attacks always lead to further terrorist attacks. War is terrorism and we’ve been engaged in war in the Middle East and Afghanistan almost non-stop since 1991.
You can see this in Los Alamos, N. M., where we prepare diligently to threaten the entire planet with our nuclear arsenal. Los Alamos and the Pentagon are the flip side of al-Qaida. In the end, we're all using violence and death in various forms to gain and maintain power.
According to UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Vatican and other organizations, during the 1990s the United States, along with the U.N., killed half a million Iraqi children through our economic sanctions on Iraq.
Our funding of the Israeli occupation killed, injured and oppressed thousands of Palestinians. These grievous injustices naturally infuriated countless millions.
In the age of suicide bombers, it's no wonder that a handful of people went insane and planned violent revenge. The terrible violence we brought upon Iraqis and Palestinians was bound to ricochet back upon us. Any peacemaker could read the writing on the wall.
And so the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not a surprise to me or my friends. The only surprise was that they had not happened sooner. Today, I'm amazed that we have not suffered further attacks, despite the billions spent on "security."
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We bomb people from Libya and Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have more than 700 military bases around the planet and we maintain thousands of nuclear weapons ready to vaporize any nation that threatens us. With our drones flying in the skies and unleashing death upon children, we turn millions against us.
We are not exemplifying creative nonviolence to the world; we are imperial masters of war. This cannot go on forever. Our weapons cannot protect us. Only God and God's way of nonviolence can protect us.
But what would the nonviolent Jesus say about the fall of the towers, I wondered that night 10 years ago. Surely, he advises universal love, active peacemaking, justice for the poor, liberation for the oppressed, and an end to empire. When I got home to my community, I opened my New Testament and came upon a rarely discussed passage in the Gospel of Luke (13:1-5). There I reread his comments about the collapse of a nearby tower which killed 18 people:
"If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!"
I remember how shocked I was, on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, when I read this text. Where is the spirit of compassion in these words? Where is the magnanimous love for which Jesus is so famous? Is this nonviolence? To me, the words sounded cold, harsh and pessimistic.
I believe in the nonviolence of Jesus, and follow him precisely because his nonviolence makes all the difference. He teaches us to break the cycle of violence through our nonviolent resistance, through love, justice and truth. He points toward the God of gentleness, love, compassion and peace. He gives me hope for another way, another world.
And so, I decided to give the Gospel a chance. I stayed with the text for days.
I carried it around inside as I walked back down to Lower Manhattan at 6 a.m. that Thursday morning to volunteer at the new Family Assistance Center opened in the old Armory on Lexington Avenue. Within minutes, the head of the Red Cross asked me to help counsel any grieving relative who needed assistance. Some 10,000 people lined the street outside waiting to come in.
That day, I kept to the Gospel as I listened to more than a hundred distraught relatives. Around 6 p.m., the Red Cross leader asked me to help coordinate the chaplain's program at the Family Assistance Center. The next day, I stood at Ground Zero and listened to dozens of grieving rescue workers who lined up to talk. I knew the words of Jesus came from a gentle, humble heart, and there, as I stood before the seven story "pile" of burning ruin, I found an opening.
"If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!" These are words of compassion and nonviolence, I realized at Ground Zero. There, in the face of the unspeakable horror, I saw that if we do not repent of our violence, our greed, our wars, we will all suffer and die in mindless terror. He wants us instead to live in his peaceful way of loving nonviolence, resist the culture of greed, war and empire and go to our deaths in a peaceful spirit of universal love, generous forgiveness and trusting surrender.
Jesus is like the awakened Buddha, perfectly centered, mindful, alive and at peace, gently telling us:
Do not continue on your present course! Your global destructive violence ensures your own destruction! Renounce your greed and war making. Stop your wars, dismantle your nuclear weapons, stop funding terrorist regimes, cut all funding for Israel's occupation of Palestine, spend billions to feed the world's starving, build new schools and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, overcome evil with good, love everyone on the planet, reverse your violence and become people of global nonviolence. If you do not do this, you as a people will be destroyed. It will not be God's doing. Your own violence will come down upon you.
His message was hard to hear 2,000 years ago. It's hard for us to hear it today. The crowd must have presumed that those brutally killed by the Roman procurator deserved death, and that the 18 people who died from the tower at Siloam died as punishment for their outstanding sins.
It's not because of their sin, Jesus says. It's because of the foolish greed that led to the hasty building of an unsafe tower, and their cooperation with that greed. If you do not repent of your complicity with greed -- and with the Roman Empire, with war, with the Zealots -- you too will die as they did, stuck in the foolish greed of building an unsafe tower, instead of my loving peace.
Just before this exchange, Jesus tells the crowd that he has come to bring division, to set the earth on fire. He asks two potent questions: "Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Luke 12:56-57) These questions help explain his reaction to the accidental deaths from the falling tower at Siloam.
Deal with reality! he says. See what is happening, judge what is right, and do the right thing!
I hear the nonviolent Jesus asking us those same questions today: "Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?"
We do not know how to interpret what is happening to the world right now, and we certainly do not judge for ourselves what is right or wrong. We are as ignorant as the crowd he addressed. We let our blind political and religious leaders tell us what is right and wrong, and ignore the path of greed and war that leads toward our destruction.
It does not need to be this way. We can wake up, change our lives, disarm our hearts, turn back to the God of peace, renounce greed and war, and build a global grassroots movement of nonviolence for the coming of new more just, more peaceful world. That is what the present time requires. That is the right thing to do. That is God's will for us.
Sept. 11 is a good day to repent of our violence, greed and war making, a good day to return to the God of peace, a good day to prepare anew to live and die in peace with all humanity. Life is short, we suddenly remember. Let's turn from our common foolishness and embrace Jesus' wisdom of peace, love and nonviolence.
***
From February-April 2012, John Dear will undertake a national book tour for his forthcoming book, Lazarus Come Forth!, which portrays Jesus as the God of life calling humanity (in the symbol of the dead Lazarus) out of the tombs of the culture of war and death. To host John for an evening talk and book-signing at your church, send an e-mail through www.johndear.org. John's latest book, Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (Orbis), and other recent books are available from www.amazon.com. To contribute to Catholic Relief Services' "Fr. John Dear Haiti Fund," go to: http://donate.crs.org/goto/fatherjohn. For further information, or to schedule a lecture or retreat, visit: www.johndear.org.
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I hope that this slide show
I hope that this slide show meditation which will be used at our church next weekend helps to proclaim the same message as this column.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUUBGtA6Me0&fmt=18
"It's not because of their
"It's not because of their sin, Jesus says. It's because of the foolish greed that led to the hasty building of an unsafe tower, and their cooperation with that greed. If you do not repent of your complicity with greed -- and with the Roman Empire, with war, with the Zealots -- you too will die as they did, stuck in the foolish greed of building an unsafe tower, instead of my loving peace."
John Dear's reflection is very good. May I suggest a way to apply it to Catholic Education?
The key to the "New Evangelization" is: PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH. Or, to use the words of Pope Paul V1: "Modern people listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are Witnesses."
For an example, the following should apply to our Catholic Schools:
A "preferential option for the poor" should be maintained in our Catholic
Schools. If we find that we cannot afford to keep our schools open to the
poor, the schools should be closed and the resources used for something else which can be kept open to the poor. We cannot allow our Church to become a church primarily for the middle-class and rich while throwing a bone to the poor. The priority should be given to the poor even if we have to let the middle-class and rich fend for themselves.
Practically speaking, the Catholic Schools must close and the resources used for "Confraternity of Christian Doctrine" and other programs which can be kept open to the poor. Remember, the Church managed without Catholic Schools for centuries. We can get along without them today. The essential factor is to cultivate enough Faith to act in the Gospel Tradition. THE POOR GET PRIORITY. The rich and middle-class are welcome too. But the poor come first.
You continue to espouse this
You continue to espouse this position: punish everyone because we cannot help everyone. The "preferential option for the poor" does not mean that we can only help the poor, that everyone else should be cast adrift.
Christ did not minister solely to the poor, neither should His Church.
I am always amazed at your
I am always amazed at your vision. I feel very cowardly because sharing what I have learned and now understand will divide my friends and family just as the Gospels tell us. Little by little I will share my findings and try to discuss them in a nonviolent way.
"If you do not repent, you
"If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!" These are words of compassion and nonviolence, I realized at Ground Zero. There, in the face of the unspeakable horror, I saw that if we do not repent of our violence, our greed, our wars, we will all suffer and die in mindless terror. He wants us instead to live in his peaceful way of loving nonviolence, resist the culture of greed, war and empire and go to our deaths in a peaceful spirit of universal love, generous forgiveness and trusting surrender.
The words of John Dear are a wonderful source of meditation as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 draws near. His words are wisdom for a world in pain and crisis. Instead of hatred in our hearts, we must have a nonviolent heart, a forgiving heart, a heart like Jesus.
It does not need to be this
It does not need to be this way. My own experience of being born during WWII and spending my childhood in the crucible that is war almost 70 years ago, brought me to the same conclusion that you state in this article. I also know that you will probably receive many replies to this article refuting your thoughts, observations and your warnings. There will be many people who will be angry with you and accuse you of being un-American. Some of us are able to read the signs of the times. The effects of violence, the consequences of trauma gives some of us different lenses, different eyes through which we are often forced to see the stark and brutal reality before us. Some of us come through it knowing that it does not need to be this way and try to work for peace and embrace non-violence because we know that war/violence/terrorism is not the answer.
Thanks, John, for this moving
Thanks, John, for this moving and inspiring reflection.
I applaud Father Dear for
I applaud Father Dear for being willing to sacrifice his time and talent in aiding the first responders and all those who came, looking for help, for comfort, to various centers in the days following 9/11.
Even as I say that, though, I find entirely disgusting his "blame the victim" mentality in this commentary. I find his attempts to equate the US military with terrorists to be offensive in the extreme. That his right to spew such garbage is protected and guaranteed by the very men and women in uniform that he disdains so much is an irony not lost on me.
Moreover, in his haste to criticize the United States and her allies, and to legitimize and rationalize the events of 9/11, he fails to remember basic truths.
First, the US and the UN imposed sanctions on Iraq, not out of a sense of imperialism, but rather as a means to convince the former Iraqi dictator, Hussein, to abandon his pursuit of weapons, to allow inspectors in to view the factories wherein he created WMD, and to insure that Iraq would not invade another neighbor as it did Kuwait in 1990. The sanctions would have lifted immediately had Hussein agreed to cooperate with the demands of the UN Security Council. If innocent Iraqis suffered as a result of the sanctions, the blame is not ours, but Hussein's. He caused the suffering of his people by refusing to cooperate with the United Nations.
Second, the US supports Israel because it is the only democratic government in the region, and because, without our support, the State of Israel would be conquered by an alliance of the other Arab nations who have, as an announced goal, the eradication of the State of Israel. How many more people would be killed if we ceased intervening? Moreover, if the Palestinians are suffering, they should elect a better leadership, one that will not actively target Israeli civilians in acts of terrorism. Again, blame lies, not with the US and her allies, but with the Palestinian and other Arab terrorists in the region.
Additionally, Father should not be surprised that we have not been attacked again. The strategy of the War on Terror developed by President Bush, fighting these cowards in their countries rather than fighting them here at home, has worked. In making sure that they are kept busy fighting "over there", they do not have time to plan and carry out attacks here at home. Moreover, in the fighting, we have the added opportunity to capture or kill many of the leaders. Thus is the head decapitated and the body kept busy. This strategy, along with the Bush Doctrine of preventive attack and the clear choice every nation faces: "with us, or with the terrorists", and active surveillance of possible terrorist cells and persons of interest, has worked for ten years.
Finally, despite Father Dear's best efforts to rationalize the attacks of September 11, the reality is that the nearly 3000 Americans and other civilians killed on September 11 were innocent men and women and children. They had committed no other crime than to go to work, at the Pentagon or World Trade Center, or to board a plane. This was the cold-blooded work of 19 cowards who chose to murder nearly 3000 innocent people, and had hoped to murder many more (had the attacks occurred a few hours later, there would have been more than 40,000 people working in the Twin Towers and Pentagon).
That, Father, is the difference between us and the terrorists. When innocent civilians are killed as a result of our military actions, it unintentional and much regretted. When innocent civilians are killed as a result of terrorist attacks, it is intended and celebrated by the terrorists.
The war in Iraq did nothing
The war in Iraq did nothing to frustrate Al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with bin Laden. They could have caught bin Laden in Afghanistan but didn't. The Neocons needed a boogeyman for hate week. You don't fight an organization like Al Qaeda with conventional armies and wars of occupation. it's like Donald Duck swinging a pitchfork at the bee. He only ends up poking himself in the rear.
I'm sorry for the victims' families and think they deserve a commemoration privately for themselves. But, frankly, I think the public attention given to this tragedy has been so misused for imperial warmongering and adventurism that I will spend as little time as possible thinking about it over the next week. For the families, it is real, for the rest of us it is a bathetic indulgence.
Clint crows: "Even as I say
Clint crows: "Even as I say that, though, I find entirely disgusting his "blame the victim" mentality in this commentary. I find his attempts to equate the US military with terrorists to be offensive in the extreme. That his right to spew such garbage is protected and guaranteed by the very men and women in uniform that he disdains so much is an irony not lost on me."
You were also wrong on Braxton, Clint, and absolutely wrong on this: "That, Father, is the difference between us and the terrorists. When innocent civilians are killed as a result of our military actions, it unintentional and much regretted."
Have you heard of our troops collecting "trophies" (body parts)? Ever heard of My Lai, Hiroshima (of which our massacre of countless innocent civilians, women and children, intentionally and indiscriminately we loudly celebrated, and still do, with no regrets), Nicaragua, El Salvador, etc.?
Have you read Chaput's address a year ago at the Air Force Academy?
"I want to offer you just four quick points tonight. Here's the first. Military service is a vocation, not simply a profession. The word “vocation” comes from the Latin word vocare, which means to call. In Christian belief, God created each of us for a purpose. He calls each of us by name to some form of service. No higher purpose exists than protecting other people, especially the weak and defenseless. This is why the Church, despite her historic resistance to war and armed violence, has held for many centuries that military service is not just “acceptable.” It can also be much more than that. When lived with a spirit of integrity, restraint and justice, military service is virtuous. It's ennobling because – at its best – military service expresses the greatest of all virtues: charity; a sacrificial love for people and things outside and more important than oneself. It flows from something unique in the human heart: a willingness to place one's own life in harm's way for the sake of others. The great Russian Christian writer Vladimir Solovyov once said that to defend peaceful men, “the guardian angels of humanity mixed the clay [of the earth] with copper and iron and created the soldier.” And until the spirit of malice brought into the world by Cain disappears from human hearts, the soldier “will be a good and not an evil.” (i) He expressed in a poetic way what the Church teaches and believes. And you should strive to embody this vision in your own service."
This is not what our church teaches and believes, but every word which the Reverend Father John Dear SJ here writes. Read and listen and take to heart that we may be converted to living our Gospel in Truth and in Light, in Love and in Peace, as we are called to live by this Prince of Peace.
Charles, you cite the acts of
Charles, you cite the acts of a tiny minority of soldiers as if it were the norm. Collecting of "trophies" is illegal under the Code of Uniform Justice, and those caught doing that were prosecuted, and rightly so. Yet that was a tiny minority of our soldiers; even you have to realize that even in the most noble of professions, bad people sneak in at times. I know it doesn't serve your campaign of calumny aimed at the brave men and women of the US military to acknowledge this, but there it is anyway.
Again, 26 soldiers were charged with the killings in My Lai. It was a tragic event, but again, even in the most noble of professions, bad things still occur thanks to bad people.
The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was done in order to convince the Japanese to surrender, while at the same time limiting the loss of life of American and Allied soldiers, as well as Japanese soldiers and civilians. Far more lives would have been lost had the Allies been forced to invade Japan. A tragedy that so many lives were lost, but a tragedy in the service of a greater good, the saving of far more lives.
Yes, I did indeed read His Grace, Archbishop Chaput's address. I agree with it wholeheartedly. The Archbishop is correct when he says that military service, when lived properly, can be virtuous since it is all about sacrificially protecting the weak and innocent from aggressors. I have cited this before, but will do it again:
"Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2265).
That is the teaching of our Church, not the pacifistic absolutism of Father Dear.
"The pacifist thinks that the alternative to war is peace; it is not.
Sometimes the alternative is oppression. Sometimes certain God-given
rights and liberties can be preserved only by resistance to that which
would destroy them. And to defend certain basic God-given rigths and
liberties is not immoral but righteous." (Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen)
Perhaps it would interest you
Perhaps it would interest you to know that there are not a few Israelis who are thoroughly disgusted by their leadership's treatment of those we call Palestinians .
Zionists had a slogan ," A land without people for a people without a land " in spite of the obvious reality that untold generations were living for thousands of years in what was to become the state of Israel .
These families had their homes commandeered as well as their businesses , farms and orchards , schools and hospitals . They were not monetarily compensated .
Any lands they were "given " are just like those we "gave " the American Indians . Much to our shame we all know what that means .
As for democracy one has to be Jewish to have the full protections of citizenship .
Palestinians live behind high walls with military guarded gates which are seldom unlocked and not on any schedule . They cannot perform the most simple of daily tasks nor are they able to get their sick to necessary treatments for serious illnesses like leukemia .
After ten years of war our military need to be withdrawn . The toll on these men and women and their families is unjust and availing absolutely no good purpose . The blessing of peace is not the fruit of war .
Military might and truth never walk hand in hand . Unintended consequences presume the good of the initial act . Not the other way around .
What are you saying here
What are you saying here Clint? You don't address what Fr Dear is saying about the words of Jesus. Is Jesus wrong about compassionate non violence, and Bush right about vengeance and retribution? Or is is that Americans are not subject to the teachings of Jesus when it comes to American self interest?
Until we all learn that Jesus was right, and violence only breeds more violence, we will all continue to pay the price for not learning that lesson.
If you took the time to read
If you took the time to read the citation from Luke, and consider it, you will find that Fr. Dear did not engage in a 'blame the victim' action. It's more along the lines of karma. Do evil, act on evil intent, forget the humanity and dignity of your fellow humans, and you should not be surprised if those 'others' adopt a similar attitude towards you, with the horrific results we saw on 9/11.
Jesus reminds us that our actions towards others and the origin of those actions, reverberate beyond the immediate moment. Eventually we meet up with the unintended, un-looked for consequences, and are horrified because we never considered them possible, or that we were vulnerable.
My departed Mother used to needle me when I wanted to follow the crowd and in a way Jesus is doing the same. Just because the other guy acts badly does not give us permission to act badly. Evil acts do have consequences as do good ones. But we are delusional if we think all the evil we engage in, in the name and intent of doing good, won't find us again. We must learn how to truly behave as good, loving people, even in the face of great evil, rather than fall into the trap that evil invites us into.
Amen Fr. John, and well said.
Amen Fr. John, and well said. So perfectly and at the same time, so very simply. Those words are so beautiful. They cannot be denied. But they are. We see that denial all about us. A few of the deniers are even on this site. Yet the greater portion of us hang on as best we can. We can only send up our pain to The Most High. Hoping for HIS all knowing and all wise understanding at they who persist in their war/death/kill agenda. But isn't that exactly what happens as they give themselves over to what they call American Exceptionalism and their idea of democracy at the end of a cowboy gun barrel. They will perish by their worship of violence and wealth. Unfortunately, they are likely to take the rest of us with them. Truly, it is not a matter of IF but only a matter of WHEN or HOW SOON.
They are besotted with greed and consumed by it. They are besotted with fear and consumed by it. They are besotted with empire and most assuredly will be consumed by it. They speak endlessly of their passions. They have given themselves completely over to their lower reptile brain passions. The serpent IS THEM. Surely, they know not what they do.
How many towers must fall before they learn the truth, that violence only begets more violence.
This is really good, Father
This is really good, Father John. Well said.
Thank you, John, for
Thank you, John, for beautiful article
Nothing can justify the evil act of destroying the twin towers in New York. But the world's media has forgotten the reason why Bin Laden attacked New York's towers in 2001, after first unsuccessfully attacking them in 1993
Just as Hitler's evil was born of great injustice to Germany at the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, so Bin Laden's evil was born of great injustice to Lebanon by the US-suported Israel invasion of 1982 which caused the deaths of 17,000 civilians with 30,000 others injured...and wrecked the country's infra-structure.
Bin Laden's own words:
“Allah knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers but after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed – when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way (and) to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.”
Osama bin Laden, 2004 - (put "bin laden lebanon towers" into www.google.com )
I am not justifying what Ben Laden did....just trying to stop the cause of what he did...otherwise, sadly, as John points out, there will be more terrorism
We each stand in crisis
We each stand in crisis beneath the tower at Siloam, at the crossroads and must choose to repent, as in Nineveh, and to beg forgiveness of this entire world, of our neighbor, of ourself, of our God, who is Love, and turn to Love, not hate, not indifference, not death, not war, not violence, not the false and fatal security of arms at the ready, but to Love, without measure, without arms, defenseless, courageous, to Love without distinction, no limit, to Love, minus zero, to Love, and thereby to build the absolute Peace in the middle of this killing violence we cherish like a bottle, and thus to discover the Reign of God among us, and within us, through Love, who is our God Incarnate, the one who brings Peace, with justice, and dignity, and respect, and hope, by Love, unarmed, with arms wide open, for Love.
I am always struck (or,
I am always struck (or, perhaps, dumbstruck)at the passage in which Jesus weeps over the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Who among us could ever weep or feel compassion for the fate of a city the leadership of which has been striving to impede us at every turn and, ultimately, is plotting our murder? It is easy to say "what goes around comes around" as a synonym for "you get what you deserve", but to say it with a broken heart is taking it to a whole other level of nonviolence. Reading Fr. John's column today puts me in mind of a scene from the great Clint Eastwood movie "Unforgiven" in which the boy traveling with Clint murders his first human being and being completely upset about it tries to justify by saying "he had it coming" and Clint's character answers back with that raspy voice of his: "Kid, we all have it coming."
Presidente Salvador Allende,
Presidente Salvador Allende, presente, killed as our planes bombarded his presidential offices on September 11, 1973, losing the future of peace and justice in his land to fascism, torture, disappearance, poverty and death.
I hope Father Dear gets the
I hope Father Dear gets the chance to deliver a similar sermon in Gaza, or Teheran,or Cairo,maybe even Mecca itself. While he is citing the wprds of Jesus,maybe he should also remind Muslims of some of their own Scriptures.eg. Quran 5:51;8:29;9:34;9:122 and 9:29. Almost every dispute in the world today involves Islam in one way or another. Maybe Muslims need the peace activists rather than Christian or Jews. (Yes, I am aware we Christians have a litte Scriptural baggage to to work on,e.g. 1Thess2:15-19 and Titus 1:12. We've worked on these texts. Most Cretans are Christian and I am always proud to point out that I leanred most of my Hebrew in the synagogue of Thessaloniki,Greece,where the Rabbi,a Holocause survivor,took an interest in me.) The one-sided naivete of "liberals" never ceases to amaze me. Why is it that Westerners are always the guilty ones? If Father were ever to give such a sermon in a Muslim country,what would be his fate? Beheaded?
You are right, John. It's
You are right, John. It's all our fault. Let's call Barack and and tell him that we should just surrender. Why, if not for the evil United States, peace would reign on earth forever.
"we have more than 700
"we have more than 700 military bases around the planet"
Where does this number come from?
"According to Gelman, who
"According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands."
Here is a link
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564
Father Dear's fertile
Father Dear's fertile imagination, where he gets most of his "facts". The 2010 Base Structure Report of the US Department of Defense lists 662 foreign sites in 38 countries (http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR2010Baseline.pdf). "Sites" may include pieces of land that are owned by or leased to the Department of Defense, but that no buildings or structures have been constructed upon; so that does not mean there are 668 bases, as much as there are 668 parcels of land either owned by or leased to the Dept of Defense. The majority of those are in Germany, Japan and South Korea (419 sites total).
I'm sure that Father Dear didn't bother consult any authoritative source in giving a number of "over 700". It's obvious he didn't bother to consult the Department of Defense's own documents.
It's these types of absurd hyperboles and easily debunked fallacies that lead one to doubt Father Dear's opinions and statements. In his haste to make the US look like the bad guys, he distorts or misrepresents the truth, leading one to wonder, if we cannot trust him to even get this simple fact right, how can we trust him to properly pass on the teachings of the Sacred Scriptures and Mother Church?
As a non American reading
As a non American reading CWG's comment I can well understand why so many people around the world hate America.
God bless you, Father
God bless you, Father Dear!
For me, today, you was like a voice claiming in the desert. I was wounded, and you healed me! I was despairing, and you gave me hope! The evil empire is everywhere, harming all the creatures and all the Creation. And I'm suffering with the poor, just like you, and thinking that Jesus' Peace is the only way. But, sometimes, I feel so lonely... Today, you put a blanket over my soul, like a spiritual Mother, and I'm so grateful!
How can you quote Jesus as
How can you quote Jesus as saying this?
"It's because of the foolish greed that led to the hasty building of an unsafe tower, and their cooperation with that greed."
The Gospels don’t stat this. Jesus never gave an explanation as to why the tower fell.
Do you think the average Catholic is so biblically illiterate that you can say Jesus said what ever you want and they won’t know any better?
You make a compelling case. That is until you making up stuff that Jesus says or that the bible says when it doesn’t. This makes you loose credibility. Be honest with what the Gospels truly say.
Dear Father John: In what
Dear Father John: In what regards peace and justice, this is the best interview with a US President I've ever read. It shows you are not alone or out of touch with reality...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/11/president-jimmy-carter-inter...
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