MERCY IS loving kindness, compassion and forbearance shown to someone who sins against us. To the natural law (moral principles discernible by right reason) we must add divine revelation, God's gracious manifestation of himself through his sacred Word and through the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church established by Jesus Christ. God has revealed his divine will for mankind through his Word and Church. All these divine instruments (the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass being paramount) prepare us for lives of mercy, fidelity and eternity.
VIRTUE OF JUSTICE
WITHOUT THE virtue of justice--giving another what he is properly due in the eyes of God--the remaining six virtues stand in danger of being privatized by the individual; this could lead to great selfishness and greed under the guise of morality or goodness. Without the virtue of justice--and this virtue commonly understood--nations are reduced to barbarism. Moreover, apart from the virtue of justice, it is possible that a nation (or political block) could provoke a future world war by a self-serving pacifism which tolerates aggression against every other nation but itself.
AMERICA NEEDS to know, and all nations deserve to know, that justice is possible and that it is vitally necessary in international relations. The peoples of the world deserve to know what justice means. They need to know that there is such a thing as virtue and that virtue has its reward. They need to know that nations of the world are accountable for their deeds--whether deeds of largesse or menace. They need to know that promises and commitments are prized among nations. The United States and world nations need to work for shared values and a shared vocabulary. These are good things when one nation gives to the other what it is properly due in the eyes of God. We do not mourn the passing of the Twentieth Century, the most murderous era in human history. The Twentieth Century's models of war and genocide will not be missed.
MERCY'S DEFENDER
OUR NATION has twice fought world wars to restore shared values and a shared vocabulary among nations. We have invested heavily to maintain their meaning. In the absence of shared values and a shared vocabulary, what is the purpose of politics and diplomacy? Or, for that matter, national self-criticism? None, really. What is more humane, therefore, than shared values and vocabulary to keep the world's nations from the jaws of barbarism?
JUSTICE IS the cardinal virtue of mercy applied, revealing that we are bound by Christ to give every individual what he is properly due in the eyes of God. Justice is the defender of mercy! What is one properly due but life and liberty, freedom to worship as one chooses, a prosperous family, and a stable and peaceful nation in which to live? To these let us add mercy, righteousness and the grace of God!
WEAK AND INNOCENT
GOOD WORDS must be transformed into good deeds. No nation, therefore, including its elected leaders, can morally justify legislation or government actions for the good of the many if this means that its weak and innocent members are sacrificed; helplessness is not synonomous with irrelevance or worthlessness. We have no right to harm the lives of anyone, and no innocent person deserves his life to be taken by another person more powerful or stronger than he.
THE FIVE thousand plus innocent lives slaughtered in the twin WTC towers attack of September 11, 2001 testify to this. As well, their nation knows this. But many nations, including some first world nations, have deemed these our dead to be expendable and their memories irrelevant. I, for one, do not. Many third world nations have as little regard for these or any other lives as they do for their own impoverished and long-suffering people.
UTMOST CONTRIBUTION
IT IS my conviction that the United States genuinely sought justice in the world wars, Korea, and Vietnam, fighting against tyrannical hegemonic powers. It is my conviction that the United States has never been a nation that glorified military conquest. I understand, too, the reality that any super-power ipso facto will be hated by many, especially if this status is exclusive to one nation. We have only to remember the many baseless and scurrilous attacks against the Roman Catholic Church and its leaders in recent years to realize the price one pays for size, prominence and influence in the Christian world.
I DO have serious issues with regards to our nation's headlong pursuit of global economic conquest or, shall I say, its encouragement of international conglomeratism whose ill-regard for Third World nations is legendary. (Think of the devastation being wrought by American tobacco companies in the third world.) The United States has a right to defend its economic interests even if those interests are large-scale. (But if this is the motivation of our government in the present crisis, our leaders have been patently dishonest in their public statements.)
THE WORLD has rested from global conflict for fifty years. I pray fervently that its respite may continue. From our nation and its leaders, I expect the utmost contribution to the grueling work of peace. Am I convinced that our government has only one option, that being the posture of militarism? Certainly not! Are we mindful that the great leaders of our Church have declared our religion opposed to any nation's adventurism and high-handedness, in any form, under any pretense? Yes! The United States of course, is not excluded from this admonishment!
FREE-FOR-ALL
THE ABOVE considerations, of course, are made vastly more complicated on the geopolitical scale--especially since we are witnessing the emergence of poor third world nations who are arming themselves with weapons of mass destruction. Recall the proverb that poor nations are made all the richer in pride.
AND ONLY a handful of years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, history's most brutal regime, we find it hard to remember the extraordinary difficulties involved in negotiating our way through fifty years of cold war with the Soviets. The tightrope of geopolitics has now been replaced by the free-for-all of regional and provincial politics: impoverished neighboring countries--historically and perpetually at war with one another--who demand the right to exterminate each other's civilian population while, at the same time, demanding the full prerogatives of geopolitical power when they have never borne and can never bear the burden of geopolitical leadership. What will happen when weapons of mass destruction emerge in the third world nations of our own hemisphere?
WILLY-NILLY MERCHANT
SPEAKING OF our own nation's record, my complaint is that the United States has accepted willy-nilly the role of the world's most prolific arms merchant--for complex and some compelling reasons--but I fear we are going to pay a very high price for arming nations to the teeth for decades and thereby creating and exacerbating conditions of conflict--as a possible example, the estimated 1.75 trillion dollars that Israel has cost the United States since 1973 in direct and indirect assistance, the bulk of it being military. That breaks down to approximately $5, 500 per US citizen considering our nation's present population. Yet our United States has bound its destiny to this tiny nation--itself one of the Middle Easts agonistic societies--which represents a fraction of the world's grand total of only 14 million Jews.
FUNDAMENTALIST FERVOR
I HAVE no reason to disparage any nation's leaders or class or tribe of leaders--still less my own nation's leaders--for an inherent lack of virtue. Israel is militarized by its perpetual need for survival. Other Middle Eastern nations, particularly those militarized by resurgent Muslim religious extremism, view the words of the QURAN with increasing fundamentalist fervor and fealty. They are true to what they read and to what they are taught. Muslim leaders, like ours, must face political realities. But the United States is an old hand at military and political affairs; rightly speaking, much more should and must be expected from us than from any third world nation. The world has a right to expect sound, stable and prudential leadership from the United States of America at all times.
INFIDELS AND SLAVES
AS A Roman Catholic priest, however, my judgment forms on the issue of religious tolerance and my 12 years of diligent awareness of what Christians--primarily Catholics--in other nations must endure in the way of persecution, oppression and death. I have raised these important issues and awareness on numerous occasions at Sunday Masses, weekday Masses, and ecumenical prayer services. What I have said numerous times, I write here.
PRESENTLY, CHRISTIANS are universally persecuted and/or murdered under Muslim regimes--for no other reason than for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ--on a scale unimaginable to Americans who receive sanitized news via the mainstream media outlets. (The mainstream media news is hardly synonymous with faith let alone reason.) A population of Christians equivalent to a city of 100,000 or more perish yearly due to state sponsored or state tolerated pogroms. (This total includes Christians living under Muslim and communist regimes. More Christians died for their faith in the twentieth century than in all nineteen previous centuries combined.)
NO ARGUMENT can overturn this world reality. The evidence is overwhelming. The QURAN curses Christians, declares us to be infidels, and orders faithful Muslims to convert or slaughter us. And militant Muslim governments and warlords are doing precisely that. Each year the number of Christian dead and terrorized increases. Christians worship at their peril in Muslim nations and in communist regimes. Moreover, more persons (mostly infidel women and children forcibly converted to Islam) are enslaved today in Arab nations than during the whole of colonial history. These slaves are principally Hindu and Christian in origin.
WHITE-PAINTED CHURCH
THE OPPRESSION and slaughter of Catholics in the name of Allah in the past fifteen years coalesces in one stark image representative of Catholics, their homes, businesses, schools and Churches being attacked. You may remember the ongoing conflict in East Timor in Indonesia. Not too long ago, professionally and heavily armed young Muslim men surrounded a white-painted wooden Catholic Church. They demanded that all of the refugees step outside.
A PRIEST in a white cassock stepped out onto the Church's porch. He begged for mercy and was answered by a hail of automatic gunfire. Another priest stepped out, and he too was murdered. Then the young Muslim "warriors" stepped over their bodies and burst into the packed Church. They slaughtered everyone who had sought sanctuary. What terrible enemy had sought sanctuary in the Church? Only Catholic mothers and children and pregnant women! After murdering the entire number in the Church, they surprised the pastor in his office and slaughtered him there. These are the silent martyrs who beg for remembrance.
IN COUNTLESS instances, no one is left in a family to mourn the dead nor is their Church left standing. They deserve to be included in someone's notion of justice. They deserve to be included in someone's notion of the good of the many. Yet there was none, and there is none. Nor has there been justice for Christians in many nations of Africa, particularly in the Sudan. There the Muslim regime crucifies Christians if time permits; otherwise, Christians are shot or burned alive. Most recently, Christians have been crucified in Angola and the Sudan.
NEWS, TRUTH, PRAYER
IF YOU would like a recommendation for a trusted news authority, I would suggest http://www.zenit.org/index.php?l=english. This is the news from Rome. After many years of experience, I can vouch for this excellent news source. Zenit is free and the news is delivered every day to your e-mail. You will receive Catholic news from the world over and occasionally the full text of a Vatican speech or document. Very often the Holy Father's texts are published by Zenit. This Catholic news source will not only provide you with the truth you seek, it will give you a marvelous day-by-day education into the life and activities of the universal Church and its people.
PLEASE REMEMBER the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church each October. More often than not, this ecumenical world day of Christian prayer is announced for the second Sunday of October. You may refer to this world-wide annual event at "International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church" ( http://www.persecutedchurch.org/ ). Also of important interest is "The Voice of the Martyrs" which you can find at http://www.persecution.com/and "International Christian Concern" at http://www.persecution.org. These websites will also provide you with titles and authors of hardcopy literature on the subject.
MANY OTHER sources exist, of course, but the above are excellent for an introduction to the heroic lives of Christians for whom justice is only a frail hope or tenuous shadow across a landscape of militaristic, religious hatreds. You may consider subscribing to a satellite dish for the purpose of receiving the Eternal Word of Truth television broadcasts. Last, I would invite you to read "Epic Tragedy" which you can find on this website: http://www.adventuschristi.org/AdventusChristi/Ordinary_Time_Week_29_Year_C.asp?SnID=1711541870
LIFE AND LIBERTY
IF CATHOLICS would repent of their own sins against life and judge this nation and its leaders on the issue of right to life, our nation and its families would be significantly stronger, more stable and confident. If we as a nation repent of our sins against faith and religion and judge the world on the issue of liberty--living and worshiping as one freely chooses--the world will be substantially improved and the prospects of shared values and a shared vocabulary among nations made possible for this new century. This is why we must seek out our nation's veterans who have firsthand experience in war as well as parents who have lost a child in military service. We must hear their stories. We must ask them what they value. We must regard highly the words of our religious leaders.
