***The following was written by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy***

Pope Francis could not be more correct: “the spirit of war comes from our own hearts* Indeed, “the wars, the hatred, the hostility aren’t products we buy at the market: they’re right here, in our hearts.” But, how does such a spirit get into our hearts? Does it come from being exposed to Christlike love as the most important, honorable, noble, heroic and valuable act that a person—young or old, male or female—can desire, imitate, choose and participate in with others?

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An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the old saw goes. With his Petrine faculty of universal jurisdiction, Pope Francis  could end tomorrow the terrible child abuse, mind manipulation and anti-mind of Christ practice in Catholic universities and high schools of recruiting and training Christian young men and women for war, that is, he could terminate all ROTC and JROTC programs at all Catholic educational institutions—starting, for the sake of good example, with his own Jesuit community’s educational facilities which are mired in these anti-Gospel change of heart, change of mind, pedagogical operations. It is not God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit that puts the spirit of war into the hearts of Christians. Si vis pacem, para bellum, “If you want peace, prepare for war,” is not the teaching of Jesus. This is contrary to the teaching of Jesus. For a Catholic high school or university to entice young men and women into that spirit or to foster that spirit under the auspices of Christian symbols, liturgy, sacramentals, authorities figures, etc. is blasphemous. Such a school, or Church drives the spirit war like a stake deep into the Sacred Heart of Jesus which the person received at his or her Baptism into Christ.

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

*Psychic activity is usually associated in the Bible with various organs. The chief of these is the heart. The Biblical idiom differs from the modern idiom in considering the heart as the seat of intelligence and decision, whereas today we would use mind and will. In the Biblical idiom the heart is the source of thoughts, desires and deeds. Thus a man is what his heart is. “The spirit of war which comes from our own hearts” is not only a personal spiritual problem for the individual Christian, it is equally, perhaps primarily, an institutional Church problem.

Dictionary of the Bible, ‘Heart’, Rev. John L. McKenzie