Thursday, December 8, 2011

Comment to Religious Isolationism and Pearl Harbor

Mark Tooley's article at American Spectator on1930's pacificism is offered up as a backdrop to the 1941 Pearl Harbor event. My take follows:


Mark30339| 12.8.11 @ 9:25AM

There is no doubt that the Sermon on the Mount precepts on non-violent confrontation with evil are difficult to apply when two of the largest economies in the world (i.e. Japan and Germany) orchestrate systems of confiscation, displacement, torture and death on millions of people.

One of the most serenely Christian men we have ever known, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had inside knowledge of the horrors inflicted by the German SS in Poland and elsewhere and aligned himself with the efforts to kill Hitler. Yet he considered this decision to be a profound human failing and clearly understood it risked his own salvation, and correctly so.

A most interesting aspect of Bonhoeffer's life is his escape to the US just before 1939. After arriving, he was troubled by the shallowness of leading protestant communities here -- to him, the only bright spots were negro churches where he sensed a profound faith in Christ. He chose to reject offers to teach in the US and returned to resistance work in Germany.

It is disappointing that 1930's Americans had so little compassion and understanding for the crimes committed against the Chinese, the Poles and the Jews. It was not until the attack of a legitimate military target, Pearl Harbor, that Americans chose to confront Germany and Japan with military force.

The saddest effort of all, however, was the unsolicited bid by Chamberlain to make peace with Hitler in 1936. At that time, resistance to Hitler in Germany was profound, and overwhelming majorities opposed any return to armed conflict. The resistance was ready to use Hitler's eminent call to war in 1936 to depose him. When Chamberlain butted in and GAVE Hitler territory, it irrevocably raised Hitler's stature in Germany and gutted the resistance movement.

Christ does not call us to pacifism. He calls us to CONFRONT evil -- but to do so without violence (and at the risk of own lives). Appeasement and enablement of evil is not a virtue, Christian or otherwise.

Further, military force is not per se wrong. The fact that we stationed troops in Japan, South Korea and West Germany protected communities from radical elements and nurtured great societies there. But on the other end of the spectrum, using robotic planes to blow up residential neighborhoods is seriously flawed -- especially when our supposedly Christian nation fails to mourn the loss of life and acknowledge the tactics as a human failing.

Perhaps the best example of non-violent confrontation rooted in Christ is the 50 years of suffering in Poland to resist totalitarianism. A bloodless collapse of the entire Soviet Union was the result. And that is the challenge Jesus Christ gives us, can our love of the other as a creation of God be so profound, that we will persevere in absorbing the violence rather than propagating it. It is understandable that there may be circumstances when humans fall short of this standard, but let us not delude ourselves into being proud of those moments.



Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Patheos.com: A Humanist on Catholic Leadership


Wow. In 7 paragraphs you've elected to so completely shred Rome that one wonders how it lasted 2 years, let alone 2,000. I think there is profound hurt among many existing and lapsed Catholics, and I would agree that the institution does too little to heal those hurts. Yet the complaints you raise today would find no support a few decades earlier -- in 1950 most, if not all, prominent Christian denominations would have the same posture concerning birth control, abortion, sex outside of marriage, and female ordination. Just how did people get by for those 19 centuries under these seemingly oppressive false norms?

Your implication is that we in the 21st century are the first generations to be afforded far more liberal and enlightened standards -- yet we tend to be indulgent, self-absorbed people who are readily crippled by our own psyches. Perhaps this sense of rightful repudiation of old standards makes it more difficult to humbly discern our individual brokenness. There must have been some wisdom to the old traditions that call us to be open to life, and to be profoundly respectful of sexual union. Is it so difficult to simply confess our times of indulging in behavior that was less than ideal, and to disclose what conditions pulled us into those behaviors -- and to do so again and again, if necessary?

To me Church authorities can seem flawed and over invested in self preservation and self-aggrandisement -- but human authority structures are always beset with problems of ego inflation. I don't think we will find one that isn't. At least the Roman Church has acknowledged its problems with child molestation and has vigorously implemented multiple levels of alerts to vastly improve child security. Clearly there are different ways to reconcile oneself to the flaws and failures that are inherent to institutionalized religion. The Protestant Reformation was one, but it proved that new institutions still have the same problems inherent to the old institutions.

My comfort comes from these facts: it is the person of Jesus Christ who refuses to condemn the woman caught in adultery, who urges us to understand why the father celebrates the return of the prodigal son, and who innocently absorbs the terror and shame of crucifixion without calling for holy wars of reprisal. Unfortunately, His Church is a shameful emulator in general -- but it has AMAZING saints on the frontiers. Gandhi was inspired by the Sermon on the Mount to deploy non-violent resistance in India, as was MLK in Dixie -- as was John Paul II in confronting the Polish State as a bishop and later as counselor to the Solidarity movement. And it was Mother Teresa who deployed love of neighbor like so few others have done -- a feminine giant who took no notice of the petty Church factions that want to keep a gal down.

Like the Church, the human race in general is a shameful emulator (with shining exceptions on the frontier). The whole point of us being here in this life is for each of us to set aside our prideful egos and embrace our natural connectedness, to overcome differences, to find more ways to include and fewer ways to exclude, to come to the aid of the needy, to generously apply forgiveness and mercy, and to confront wrongs respectfully and nonviolently. No doubt this is enormously challenging -- but it is the noble calling for which we were created. I will continue this quest, and out of my own free will, I choose also to remain in relationship with Jesus Christ, with the Creator, and even with the Roman Church.