[Announce] Fw: WAR ON IRAQ AND THE U.S. CATHOLIC BISHOPS

[Robert Waldrop]

I will send the attachments referenced below as separate emails.  They are from Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, a Melkite Catholic priest.

Robert Waldrop, Romero House, Oklahoma City

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Emmanuel Charles McCarthy 
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 10:37 PM
Subject: WAR ON IRAQ AND THE U.S. CATHOLIC BISHOPS


Friends,                                                                                               November 1, 2006 



Here is another news story that reports another moment in the work of the U.S. Catholic Military Archbishop acting as a teammate on behalf of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld slaughter that is being endured by the people of Iraq. The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders have not been as extravagantly supportive of their football team as this Archbishop has been of this atrocity in Iraq since day one. The difference being that the cheerleaders are only motivating a football team to win a game, while the Archbishop is using the person and teachings of Jesus Christ and the prestige of the religious office he was given to support, and thereby motivate, Catholic men and women to enter into an arena, which has become a cauldron of war-induced atrocities leading to the destruction of human life on a grand scale--over 650,000 Iraqi deaths to date. He is the primary agent in the U.S. Catholic Church for putting this mega-evil under divine patronage. Yet, the facts about this war that have come to light expose beyond a reasonable doubt that he does not have a theological or moral leg to stand on in traditional Catholic moral theory or in traditional Catholic unjust/just war theory. 



Attachment #1 is a news story on what the Archbishop of the U.S. Military diocese was saying in Rome last week (October 23-27). I showed it to a combat veteran and his response was, "The best you can say for it is that the Bishop has significantly lost touch with reality." Attachment #2 is an article entitled THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE REQUIREMENT OF MORAL CERTAINTY. To comprehend the degree of moral failure and hence the degree of false witness the U.S. Catholic Church's Bishops have enmeshed themselves in, a thorough reading of this attachments is necessary--including, especially including, the endnotes.  



If what the military's Catholic Archbishop had been about since the beginning of this offensive invasion was simply accessing every resource possible to proclaim and derive support for his personal crusade on behalf of Catholic Americanism or Catholic militarism or some aberrational Catholic view U.S. Manifest Destiny, then, perhaps, he could be ignored--provided the remainder of the U.S. Episcopacy were clear as to their rejection of his views, assessments and use of Catholic moral theology. But, they have not been. Therein lies the terrible moral and spiritual disaster for the U.S. Catholic Church. The military's Catholic Archbishop is out there daily with a mega-microphone presenting what cannot be rationally sustained as being in conformity with traditional Catholic moral teaching, while all other U.S. Catholic bishops, archbishops and cardinals, except two, sit passively, acquiescently and silently by letting this erroneous application of Catholic moral theology be bullhorned across the U.S. Catholic world.   Where more is morally required, silence is evil.



Does the U.S. Military have a better recruiting tool to con young Catholic men and women into killing and being killed, maiming and being maimed in this murderous Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld scheme than the consent-giving silence of the U.S. Catholic Episcopacy, especially in the face of one of their own publicly stomping for its moral licitness in the name of the traditional principles of Catholic moral theology? Please read both attachments diligently. More than emotional moral repulsion over this war or a red-blue political fight is at issue. The calculatingly designed strategy of silence of the U.S. Catholic Episcopal leadership to this political and pathological savagery in Iraq is damaging the U.S. Catholic Church and the worldwide Catholic Church as a moral authority that knows the true God, His way and will. The silence of the U.S.Catholic Bishop, individually and as a body, is therefore anti-evangelical. It is Bishops doing the polar opposite of what they were ordained to do, namely, to show people and help people along the Way to eternal salvation through the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. 



What threat to institutional or to personal self-interests is gagging our Bishops for these past three years--while over 650,000 Iraqis are killed and millions of other ordinary people, American as well as Iraqi, are permanently maimed in mind and body--is unknown at this moment. What is self-evident is that it requires some extraordinary motivational fear to initiate such a course of active inaction and to sustain it over three and a half years, while a Himalayan succession of facts are revealed that make one's stance irrational and immoral before planetary humanity.   



In a couple of weeks, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting in general assembly in Baltimore  (Nov. 13-16). According to their Website their agenda for discussion and voting over these four days consists in addressing the following problems in the U.S. Church and in the U.S.:



  1.. Approval of a reorganization plan for their national conference; 
  2.. Approval of a revision of the Lectionary for Mass for selected days in the season of Advent, and a directory for music and the liturgy for use in the dioceses of the United States; 
  3.. Approval of two documents from their Doctrine Committee--a proposed statement on receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist worthily, and proposed guidelines for ministry to persons with a homosexual inclination; 
  4.. A document from the Pro-Life Committee offering pastoral guidance on the Church's teaching concerning contraception, linked with a culture of life. [ Emphasis added.]


That's it. These are considered the important issues in need of being addressed by a general assembly of U.S. Catholic Bishops at this time. Stunning in light of reality. Unconscionable in terms of the degree of misery so many U.S. Catholics are bringing to human beings in Iraq by their participation and support of this war in the belief that it meets the Catholic conditions for a just war. The enormity of the human misery being perpetrated and ignored leads one to wonder how so many men with fine minds could be so corralled and held in silent lockstep for so long. 



Question: Is there a need for significant numbers of Catholics--right, left and middle--to go to this upcoming meeting in Baltimore in order to communicate to the body of bishops a fundamental moral fact: YOUR SILENCE IS EVIL AND IS PERPETUATING EVIL. If this message is not delivered simply and clearly how will they ever be rescued from this utterly destructive spiritual strategy with which they have chosen to "ride-out" this war--a strategy that is costing other sons and daughter of our Father in heaven a million tears a day and will cost millions of Americans and Iraqi billions of tears for the rest of their lives. 



In Christ-God,



Charlie



P.S. For those of you receiving this who are not Catholic consider this: the Catholic Church, explicitly withdrawing spiritual and moral support from this war and therefore insisting that its membership in the military remove themselves from participation in it or else leave the military, and that its membership who are not in the military not enlist until the U.S. has stopped its killing in Iraq, would have an effect that would dwarf Walter Cronkite's famous withdrawal of support from the Vietnam war.



Also, while it is reasonable and proper ecumenical etiquette to address this problem of the abuse of Just War Theory and moral theology in general in my own Church, what I said above and say in the enclosed attachment is drop dead pertinent to the leadership of any 501(c)(3) Constantinian Church, where the powerful temptation to be a Quisling institution is never absent and always beckoning. Historically, it has shown itself to be awfully hard to accept in faith the grace to resist it. 



P.P.S. If anyone would like a booklet copy(ies) of the attached essay for religious, education, discussion, etc. purposes,   just contact www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org or phone 1-302-235-2925—or make your own.   


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