Weigel blasts the LCWR.

My comment to National Review's "The Pope and the Sisters"

George Weigel would have served us better by co-authoring this article with one of the sisters affected, and discussing the procedural due process (or lack thereof) available, and perhaps comparing how the Vatican has handled other straying organizations (like the Legion of Christ).  No doubt there are doctrinal issues, but the real contaminating element is not the sisters' umbrella organization but the inability of the authority structure to integrate women into leadership roles and authority roles in the Church.  It is so petty for George to imply that street-clothed sisters living in apartments has led to their diminished vocations while saying nothing about the decline of male priestly vocations and the complete abandonment of faith in Europe under the male leadership there.  If the Church were to follow its scriptural roots and accept women to be ordained as deacons, there would be an explosion of vocations among women.  It is a dedicated denial of this latent truth that motivates George and his bishop friends to be so disproportionately strident on LCWR.

Good Friday

Spectator.org has an interesting post on Good Friday. My comment is rooted in Ted R's comment. below.

Ted R.| 4.7.12 @ 3:13AM

Who do I say he was? Jesus of Nazareth was a well-intentioned, often insightful man, who (like many gurus) had an inflated sense of self-importance (and, he probably had a martyr complex, besides).

For sure, he didn't deserve to die; his execution served no purpose. At All.

Mark30339| 4.8.12 @ 12:12PM

THANK YOU TED! Finally, we get to the heart of the matter. Yours is the enduring question. While much of the commenting above may be interesting, it seems mostly rooted in prideful division. We Christians seem to be the last to recognize that we resemble Jesus so terribly little -- our discourse here is so invested in ego and pride . . . and so divested of concern for the other.

Ted, I am grateful that you ask your question and please, keep asking it. For decades I have been agonizing over why this amazing person of Jesus was horribly tortured and killed. Why did God fail to protect him, why did he not protect and raise a defense for himself. I know my life is precious, shouldn't his life be infinitely more precious?

I don't think that words answer the questions. I think they are answered in the experience of raw suffering -- especially if one endures the suffering for something greater than oneself and if the suffering is embraced as a means to identify with the experience of this holy man named Jesus.

Jesus's feeble and ignoble death is so contrary to our sense of what is right, that it gnaws at us. Jesus himself doubles down and asks each of us,

Who do you say that I AM? The person of Jesus Christ lifts me up when he refuses to condemn the woman caught in adultery, when he urges me to understand why the father celebrates the return of the prodigal son, and who commands me to love my neighbor as myself. The glaring incongruity is his innocently absorbing the terror and shame of crucifixion without calling for holy wars of reprisal. When we are entirely rooted in human logic, it is thoroughly illogical -- yet this incongruity is part of the cross we are called to bear.

Are Drone Attacks Defensible?

[Responding to National Review's Defense of Drones]

"And it is true that some drone strikes against terrorists have led to civilian casualties. However, on balance, drones represent the best opportunity to limit collateral damage."

As a conservative and a Christian, I condemn the celebration of drones and I urge a full accounting for the civilian casualties associated with them. The US government is very secretive about the operations. It is interesting that US citizen Awlaki was hunted down and killed without being in combat and with no judicial process. It is also telling that Awlaki's companion and ally, Samir Khan, was a US citizen and is just as dead - and the US State Department actually apologized to Khan's family. Apparently there is some kind of CIA/DoD death warrant document that excuses the killing of Awlaki but not of Khan. Our government is now deciding in secret what citizens have rights and which ones don't -- and this is 10 years into a war that has no mechanism for truce.

These drones are always killing or wounding bystanders. Celebrating drones and celebrating the deployment of kill squads displays America as the great and terrifying killer in the world. But our author, Nathaniel Botwinick, has no problem with this. Ten years into war he embraces the Patton adage: “no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Are there any followers of Christ weary of the war-making and embarrassed by the callous disregard for life?

Christian Ethics and the Iraq War

My comment to Mark Tooley's piece in American Spectator:

I think there are profound questions over the merits of going to war in Iraq. Army War College Professor Codevilla writes [see http://claremont.org/publicati.....tail.asp]:

"During the decade that began on September 11, 2001, the U.S. government's combat operations have resulted in some 6,000 Americans killed and 30,000 crippled, caused hundreds of thousands of foreign casualties, and spent—depending on various estimates of direct and indirect costs—somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion dollars. But nothing our rulers did post-9/11 eliminated the threat from terrorists or made the world significantly less dangerous. Rather, ever-bigger government imposed unprecedented restrictions on the American people . . . ."

The professor fails to mention that our response to 3,000 dead on 9/11 led to at least 150,000 more deaths in Iraq. This 50 to 1 body bag multiplier is precisely what the Gospel tells us NOT to do. As a Christian who supported forceful regime change in Iraq, I am embarrassed and humbled by the results of what I advocated. In retrospect, the number one response to 9/11 should have been to convert Americans from oil to natural gas, and thereby cripple oil-funded terror. Believe it or not, your car can run reliably on US produced natural gas, and the switch requires no Americans to go to war.

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.

Patheos.com: A Humanist on Catholic Leadership

Comment to Catholic Leadership Needs a New Focus

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.

Osama's Kill Squad Story

Former Navy Seal Chuck Pfaffer has released a book which presents the details of the Osama bin Laden killing from the point of view of the US military participants. He says he will not name the participants but reports based on information received from them. The story is here.

The enlightening point he makes is that these assault squads are not kill teams, and that they fire only in self-defense. His information is that Osama was suddenly confronted by the squad, he dove for his rifle, and was shot in the head and chest.

Note however that the CIA Head indicates that a kill authority was present:

On rules of engagement:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Did the President's order read capture or kill or both or just one of those?
LEON PANETTA: The authorities we have on Bin Laden are to kill him. And that was made clear. But it was also, as part of their rules of engagement, if he suddenly put up his hands and offered to be captured, then-- they would have the opportunity, obviously, to capture him. But that opportunity never developed.

Read more: http://thepage.time.com/2011/05/03/panetta-public-likely-to-see-obl-picture/#ixzz1d3xTb1DD

It is puzzling to me why Osama wasn't shot in the leg and taken alive -- just for the intelligence opportunities. It is also puzzling that the body was not presented for a a thorough and accurate autopsy (so lethal wounds and shooting ranges could be confirmed).

It remains my opinion that Osama should have been taken into custody alive at all costs and incarcerated at Guantanamo for the remainder of his natural life -- not because he deserved it, but because a superpower has the means to stand for something better than cycles of killing. This would have been the perfect opportunity to stop "being at war" because this war posture will continue (and will continue to posture America as a prominent and emulable killer in the world) until the leadership demonstrates otherwise.