My friend, Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, from the Center for Creative Nonviolence, is sending out emails with reflections on war and peace for a forty day period. Tonight using a number of quotes he makes his point clearly.

“War is the creation of individuals, not of nations.”
-Sir Patrick Hasting,1948

Wars: Rich people decide to initiate them and profit from them. Poor and middle class people kill and die in them. That’s fact, not opinion! “Rich men’s wars, poor men’s blood,” is a cliché as old as war itself.

Why is this truth never presented as even a partial description and explanation of war by Christian leaders to those in their spiritual care in order to afforded the Christian community, especially its Christian young people, a more informed consciousness with which to make the best Christian moral decision before God they possibly can, on whether to participate in the eternally hellish world of war? Is it because that what is said above is not true? Or, too true to risk mentioning?

Why is it that bishops, priests, ministers and pastors continue to propagate among ordinary Christians in their spiritual care “that attractive rainbow, which rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye, which charms to destroy,” namely, the myth of military glory? Is it because the myth is true and Jesus’ teachings on violence and enmity are false? Or is it that the myth is compatible with the teachings of Jesus? Or is the myth the antithesis of Jesus’ teachings but necessary in order to have the poor and middle class primed to fight the wars of the rich and to have the rich generously approve of the Church’s work in support of their interests?

“I am reminded of something I read years ago in the depths of the Second World War. A reporter interviewed a hotel manager on the French Riviera.The manager observed that the rich as a class are indestructible. In spite of what had happened since 1939, he said, business at his Riviera hotel was about as good as it had ever been.”
-Rev. John L. McKenzie

True or False?

The history of war is the history of wealthy individuals willing to sacrifice thousands upon thousands of other people’s lives for personal gains.

“All this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of lives and hopes, has been brought about because a set of mostly stupid gentlemen, living luxurious lives, have chosen that it should occur.”
-Betrand Russell, 20th century English philosopher

Again and again, where war is concern we witness a dereliction of spiritual duty, a prostitution of ministry and ecclesiastical office, along with a squashing of known and verified historical truth and Gospel truth by bishops, priests, ministers, and pastors, in order to curry favor and not offend the operatives of those satanic blood brother idols, Mars and Mammon.

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