The feast of Christ the King presents me with a problem. Websters online dictionary defines king as “a male monarch of a major territorial unit.” Likewise, it defines kingdom as “a politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a king or queen.” Some people get around the kingdom bit by substituting kin-dom with kin defined as “a group of persons of common ancestry.” Continue reading →

The LORD is a God of justice,
who knows no favorites.
Though not unduly partial toward the weak,
yet he hears the cry of the oppressed. (Sirach)
God is a God of justice, a God of peace that comes from justice. United for Peace and Justice reported that 100,000+ marched in 11 cities on October 27, 2007 for peace and justice. The media establishment gave it very little coverage. There was a large march of 45,000 in New York; however, I could not find a report in the NY Times online. Nor in the Washington Post. Hmmm! I did find an Associated Press report that focused on San Francisco. There was also a Reutter’s report. Continue reading →

AL Gore is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the media goes into a frenzy. What does ecology have to do with peace? Later in the day, one reporter found the justification to end all justifications. If people do not have enough water, they become refugees. People who lack the necessities of life may take up arms to get what they want. This would threaten world peace. The true bottom line—saving the environment is our best defense. Continue reading →

Golden Calf

One of our great problems is to see clearly what we have to resist. I would say that at the moment we have to understand better than we do the Cold War [War on Terrorism] mentality. If we do not understand it, we will run the risk of contributing to its confusions and thereby helping the enemies of man and peace. The great danger is that under the pressures of anxiety and fear, the alternation of crisis and relaxation and new crisis, the people of the world will come to accept gradually the idea of war, the idea of submission to total power, and the abdication of reason, spirit and individual conscience. The great peril of the Cold War [War on Terrorism] is the progressive deadening of conscience. (Thomas Merton, Cold War Letters, pp. 47-48) Continue reading →

As people who are involved in our world and who are committed to bringing the light of the Christian Gospel to our world, it is easy to get caught up in the tyranny off endless activity (Merton’s “laziness of action”)—another meeting, another issue, another campaign. Merton invites us to take an inner pilgrimage—a journey to nowhere, a trip into nothingness. In our affluent world would anyone in their right mind want to take a trip into nothingness? Continue reading →

Those who think there can be a just cause for measures that gravely risk leading to the destruction of the entire human race are in the most dangerous illusion, and if they are Christians they are purely and simply arming themselves with hammer and nails, without realizing it, to crucify and deny Christ. . . . We are reaching a moment of great crisis, though the blindness and stupidity of our leaders and all who believe in them and in the society we have set up for ourselves, and which is falling apart. Continue reading →

How long, O God?
How long, O God? Continue reading →

For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. (Phil. 3:18-21)
But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. (Eph. 5: 3)

These selections from Paul contain powerful messages for peacemakers. I am beginning to get worried because Paul is starting to make sense to me. When I read the scriptures in terms of the “socio-political” message that has been hidden for so long, the words take on new meaning.
It started a few months ago when I was reading Ephesians. I noticed that Paul ranked greed right up there with immorality (porneia) and impurity. Greed is so much at the heart of what is taking our world in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, greed drives all of us. Somehow we are all complicit in the greed system of consumerism. We are afflicted with what Daniel Maguire calls “The Imperial Comfort Syndrome.” Continue reading →

What happened in 1945 is history; however, it does provide instruction for us today. In 2002, the United States opted out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. The United States is still a signatory to the Nuclear Anti-Proliferation treaty. Under that treaty, the United States may continue to maintain and upgrade its nuclear weapons. The 2007 budget requested $2.4 billion for nuclear weapons. These funds will upgrade our nuclear capabilities. There is also a push for a new core pit facility which would make the triggers for the bombs. Why do we have to spend $2.4 billion to upgrade our nuclear arsenal when already have enough fire power to destroy the world many times over? Continue reading →