Monthly Archives: July 2016

The New “American Dream?”

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It ain’t what it used to be.

Leon Panetta spoke at the DNC over antiwar chants by protestors and said the following:

“I’ve lived the American Dream. My parents were immigrants from Italy. They came through Ellis Island, made their way to California, and opened a restaurant in Monterey.

I can still remember standing on a chair in the back of that restaurant washing glasses. Never could my immigrant parents have dreamed that their son would grow up to be Secretary of Defense of the most powerful military in the world.”

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Mr. Panetta is a Roman Catholic according to Wikipedia. But in addition to his state idolatry there is this:

“The university fails to mention that Panetta, a member of Santa Clara’s board of trustees, not only has a strong pro-abortion voting record from when he served in the U.S. House of Representatives, but was also the co-sponsor of the federal Freedom of Choice Act. Later, as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, Panetta defended Clinton’s veto of a bill that would have banned partial-birth abortions.”

from CNA:

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/jesuit_university_honors_cosponsor_of_federal_freedom_of_choice_act/

All American Catholics should get out of the Democratic Party now as fast as they can. It is now clearly the Party of War and the Party of Abortion. The prominent role of “abortion rights” supporting Catholics such as Panetta, Joe Biden and now Tim Kaine only serves to underline that fact rather than disguise it.

It is not certain yet that the Republican Party is a morally viable alternative but at least it remains pro-life on paper and of greater importance is the fact that Donald Trump has routed the warmongers and neo-conservatives who formerly controlled the levers of power. Perhaps now is the time for Catholics to migrate to this Party and fight for their beliefs and principles under new ground rules.

Catholic Military Chaplaincy

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The above video was produced by the Catholic News Service. Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy is interviewed therein. While he provided over an hour of commentary, only a few soundbites were included. Below is an introduction to an independent taping of the same thing that was provided to the Catholic News Service. You can hear Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy’s thoughts in three parts.

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The Christian Military Chaplaincy: An Orwellian Ministry.
Part One 
A Ministry of the Ministry of Truth
by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

Friends,

July 29, 2016 is the anniversary of the U.S. Military Chaplaincy. There will be, indeed there already has been, a parade of kudos in the Catholic and Christian press legitimating and glorifying the Catholic and Christian U.S. Military Chaplaincy. A few months ago Catholic News Service asked me to speak on camera about the Catholic Military Chaplaincy as a piece of an eight part series it was creating. What I had to say lasted for over an hour. a small segment of which was used in Part V of the series which I sent to you recently in Fast Food Helping Twenty-One. Since I knew extensive editing would be done to what I had to say, two days later in exactly the same location that the CNS interview took place I restated my position on the Christian Military Chaplaincy almost verbatim on another camera. CNS, I guess, owns the original reflection I made for it. But if that presentation and the presentation I made two days later were placed side by side there would not be a jot of significant difference.

I have broken the hour plus presentation into three logically-ordered, consecutive parts under the general title The Christian Military Chaplaincy: An Orwellian Ministry.

Over the next three days, one per day will our Fast Food Helping. Since each segment is about thirty minutes I am sending one per day in both video and audio-only format via Dropbox. This is the only way the video and audio format could be transmitted together and still be received on a normal computer. I am sending the audio only, an mp3, along with the video because at a length of thirty minutes you may prefer to put the presentation on your iPhone etc. and listen to it in some other place, e.g., bus, car, plane, walking, etc., than in front of a computer screen. To open the Dropbox and access both formats simultaneously, just click on the URL below. Then click on mp3 for audio only or mv4 for video only. If you have any problems with the Dropbox let me know.

I have also attached an Christian Military Chaplaincy Part Three. The caveat here is that this is a transcript of a verbal presentation and will not read like an essay. But, it is totally accurate.

I hope this is helpful to you in some way in fathoming the depth of the false witness to the teaching of Jesus on violence and enmity in the Gospels, which the U.S. Military Chaplaincy presents to Christians and to the non-Christian public in general with the backing of tens of millions of dollars each year from the U.S. government.

Do send a video, audio or print copy—or all three— to your Bishop, priest, minister and to any military chaplain you may know.

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Presuming Integrity

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The following was written by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy:

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34th ANNUAL FORTY DAY FAST for the TRUTH OF GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE; July 1-August; FAST FOOD: TWENTY-SECOND HELPING (2016)

“We don’t cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate, regular-stock, Established Church religions, but we can´t allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.” -Mark Twain

There is nothing that ISIS has done or is doing under the auspices of “God’s will” today that Christians, their Churches and their Church leaders have not first done or are not doing under the auspices of  “Deus vult.” 

The Telegraph, London, 19 July, 2016

“U.S. air strike killed more than 85 civilians, including children, in Syria on Tuesday. Pictures of the aftermath of the dawn strikes village of Tokhar near Manbij in northern Syria showed the bodies of children as young as three under piles of rubble.” 

America Magazine, 4/7/03

“The head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, said in a letter to his priests on March 25 that members of the armed forces should carry out their duties in good conscience, because they can presume the integrity of the leaders who decided to go to war in Iraq.”

[For the record, the specific people to whom O’Brien says a Catholic can give a presumption of integrity regarding the truthfulness of what they are saying, which then morally permits a Catholic to kill and maim designated enemies, are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, Feith, etc.]

 

Truth is universally understood to be the first casualty of war. The Greek poet Aeschylus (525BC – 456BC) wrote, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” The evidence of the historical record since 500BC incontestably validates  this statement. Those leading a country into war lie without limit or reservation. How then can a Bishop, any Bishop of any diocese, logically and in conformity with the extremely high and strict standard of moral certainty that must be met before engaging in killing people or causing people grave suffering hold and communicate to those in his moral care that the politicians leading a country into war can be presumed to be telling the truth? He can’t. That is fact, not opinion. This is why no Bishop ever even tries to lay out to his people in detail the Catholic moral principles and their logical application on which he is morally permitting them to go to Iraq etc. and kill and maim other people. So as regards Catholic Bishops, it seems, that neither the moral teaching of Jesus in the Gospels nor the moral teaching in Natural Law Catholic Just War Theory applies to them.

Their personal and collective silence gives moral consent—and they know this— to the Catholics of each of their respective dioceses, to go to the Middle East and continue killing and maiming people by the truck load daily. It is more than past time to stop mouthing the U.S. media mantra, “Why don’t moderate Muslim cleric speak out against ISIS terrorism” Straighten out first your own house of God; war is terrorism. Ask why Catholic Bishops for the last thirteen years have not spoken out against American Catholic military terrorists roaming about and ravaging the Arab population and the Arab countries of the Middle East, thousands of time beyond what ISIS has done?

But then, “We don´t cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate, regular-stock, Established Church religions, but we can´t allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.”

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

The only question worth asking

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John Dominic Crossan (b.1934) is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity and former Catholic priest, who has written twenty-eight books both scholarly and popular. Crossan is a major scholar in contemporary historical Jesus research. He earned his Doctor of Divinity in 1959 at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the Irish national seminary. He then completed two more years of study in biblical languages at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. In 1965 Crossan began two additional years of study (in archaeology) at the Ecole Biblique in Jordanian East Jerusalem. In the fall of 1969 he joined the faculty of De Paul University, where he taught for twenty-six years until retiring in 1995. Crossan also served as president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research in 1978–1979, and as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2012.

“Is the God of the Christian Bible violent or nonviolent? It is really the only question worth asking.”—John Dominic Crossan

This video is 16 minutes long.

Walking the Way of Nonviolence: Is the God of the Christian Bible Violent? from University Congregational UCC, S on Vimeo.