Nonviolence Resource Center
Nonviolence Resource Center
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Abortion & WarExpanding the moral conceptualization of abortion, Published 10/2004(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy This is an up-date of a reflection written soon after Iraq War I commenced. Neither the political-religious right nor left is interested in publishing it for very different reasons. The left because it does not want to draw attention in any way to the evil of abortion. The right because it does not want to face its gross moral inauthenticity in simultaneously opposing abortion absolutely while endorsing with jingoistic enthusiasm the mass-murder operation the U.S. is executing in Iraq. However, whether acknowledged or not, the evil discussed in this article exists on a grand scale and is daily sowing-for future harvest-the seeds of evil in Iraq and in the U.S. on a grand scale. Church, bishop, priest, minister or deacon would find it helpful (spiritually necessary) to have the issue, herein discussed, brought to explicit consciousness. | ||
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A True Hero of the Vietnam WarDistinguishing a true hero from the propagandizing "hero"(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy "Hero" in reference to a person, who unjustifiably kills people, serves as part of the indoctrination process for normalizing the evasion of truth, the denial of reality and the manufacturing of facts that allows those, who planned and executed the mass murder (unjust destruction) of hundreds of thousands of human beings in both Vietnam and Iraq to be called "hero." | ||
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August 9: Ave Crux, Spes UnicaHomily in memory of Edith Stein, 09/1997
Posted 02/2005
This homily was delivered by Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, at the close of the Forty Day Fast for the Truth of Christian Nonviolence at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City, August 9, 1997. The end of the fast commemorates the date in 1942 that marks the execution Edith Stein (Sr. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross) by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Sr. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross is Jesus' prophetic gift to His Churches because she voluntarily gives up all the accouterments of worldly power and wholeheartedly embraces the "powerless," unrealistic, vulnerable Cross of Christ-like love. She says, "Ave Crux," "Welcome Cross," not out of ignorance of alternatives nor out of defeatism. She exclaims with open arms, "Ave Crux" because she knows it is "spes unica," "our only hope"-the only power that can help, that can save. | ||
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Baffled
Revised 01/2005
It is baffling-considering the fact that the justifications for the war currently raging in Iraq have proven to be fraudulent and that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed-to know that the spiritual and moral leadership of Christian Churches in the U.S. are not screaming "bloody murder." The only possible way this war cannot be bloody mass murder is if it meets the standards of the Christian Just War Theory. (It is certainly in direct contradiction to Jesus' teaching of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, which is the only other ethical option available to Christians.) But, it doesn't come close to meeting Christian Just War standards either in the jus ad bellum or the jus in bello dimension of the so-called Christian Just War Theory. Beyond any reasonable doubt, it does not! | ||
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Blessed Are the Meek, for They Shall Inherit the Land
Homilies in the Papal Household, 2nd Lenten Sermon, March 16, 2007, in the presence Pope Benedict XVI, Posted 04/07/07
The beatitudes are a self-portrait of Jesus and thus, we should not only imitate them but also make them our own. Father Cantalamessa's Lenten reflections have focused on the Eight Beatitudes; today's was: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." To understand the full meaning of meekness, the Pontifical Household preacher underlined two constant associations of the Bible and ancient Christian exhortations: meekness and humility, and meekness and patience. One shows the interior dispositions from which meekness springs; the other the attitudes one should have toward one's neighbor: affability, gentleness, courtesy. The Gospels are the demonstration of Christ's meekness, in its dual aspect of humility and patience. The maximum proof of Christ's meekness is in his passion. There is no wrath, there are no threats: When he was reviled he did not revile in return, when he suffered, he did not threaten. But Jesus did much more than give us an example of meekness and heroic patience; he made of meekness and nonviolence the sign of true greatness. | ||
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Christian Just War Theory or Christian Just War Fantasy
Revised 12/2004
How much time needs to pass before a theory-that says the sun will rise in the West-ceases to be regarded as a theory or even as an hypothesis, and becomes self-evidently a fantasy? Is not "Christian Just War Fantasy" the accurate and truthful term that should be employed? Is it not grave evil to use a fantasy to evaluate whether the mass destruction of human beings is justifiable in the eyes of Jesus? | ||
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"Corruptio Optimi Pessima"The corruption of the best is the worst(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy "Corruptio optimi pessima." This is what Constantinian Christianity represents, is, has been for its 1600 years, and always will be so long as the Churches cling to it as their way of "being an extension of Christ in time and space." "Corruptio optimi pessima." This is what has become of the great gift of religious consciousness that the Logos has bestowed upon human beings by way of the brain given to them...Religious consciousness and the human brain that makes it possible are given so that human beings, unlike dogs or dinosaurs, can access the beauty and grandeur of the Holiness, Love and Truth that is their Source and Destiny, that is the "Father of all, over all, through all, and in all" (Ep 4:6). | ||
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Dead Right & Dead Wrong: Notre Dame, Obama, D'Arcy | PARTS I-IVFour Reflections on the Notre Dame, President Obama, Bishop D'Arcy Controversy
Published 05/2009
I wish there were a sound-bite way of presenting this material, but there isn't. A large part of the reason that this is the case is that fixed opinions have long since been held and hardened on all sides here -- Notre Dame, Bishop D'Arcy, President Obama, Professor Mary Ann Glendon, and their followers and supporters. Yet, these held and hardened moral opinions have never been subject to serious, sincere, and intense public scrutiny and examination within the Churches in terms of the issue raised here -- and the issue raised here is morally primordial for the Christian and for the Churches. Long-held, hardened, taken-for-granted truth, passed on mimetically generation to generation, cannot be easily exposed as untruth, not only because of the heavy personal, emotional, psychological and financial investment a person or institution has made in it, but also because the false premises from which it is derived are usually hidden by a nurtured sense of cultural normality. Hopefully the attached will serve as a clarification of Gospel truth through the lens of the Notre Dame-Obama-D'Arcy-Glendon public dispute over the truth content of Catholic and/or Christian morality and its application. Sometimes the best way to expose a universal lie and reveal a universal truth is by examining a specific micro-event. But, unraveling untruth to which people, individually and communally, have emotionally committed themselves takes time. So the question is, Is this truth worth the time it takes to bring it out of the shadow of the big lie and into the light? Each of the four reflections is understandable on its own. However, I think the sum of the four parts taken as a unit offers more access to truth than the parts taken individually. Download: | ||
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Eulogy for Edward J. McDonough, C.Ss.R.(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy The Eulogy was given at the Mass of the Resurrection for Edward J. McDonough, C.Ss.R., at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Boston, Massachusetts, February 16, 2008. Fr. McDonough was perhaps the most well-known Marian healing priest in the world. He died on what in the Catholic calendar is the World Day for the Sick, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, that apparition of the Mother of God from whence has flowed an uncountable number of healings. | ||
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Fr. George Zabelka: A Military Chaplain RepentsAn interview in which Fr. Zabelka categorically rejects the moral legitimacy of war and the Just War Theory(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy In August of 1945 Rev. George B. Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Army Air Force, was stationed on Tinian Island in the South Pacific. He was assigned to serve the Catholics of the 509th Composite Group, which was the Atomic Bomb Group. In that capacity he was the priest for those who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After 22 years as a military chaplain he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. "I want to expose the lie of 'Christian' war. The lie I fell for and blessed. I want to expose the lie of killing as a Christian social method, the lie of disposable people, the lie of Christian liturgy in the service of the homicidal gods of nationalism and militarism, the lie of nuclear security." | ||
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Franz Jägerstätter: The Man Who Chose to See
Revised 10/21/2007
Franz Jäggerstäter, an Austrian martyr, is among the new Blessed announced by the Vatican. The life of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter was a simple life. An Austrian peasant from the village of St. Radegund, he was a devout Catholic, a daily communicant who prayed the rosary while doing farm chores. Sexton of his parish church, he married and had three children. On August 9, 1943, Franz Jägerstätter was killed by the German Military for refusing to kill for the German Military. | ||
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General George Patton and the Christian ChurchesPurveyors-in-arms of the grand illusion as the path of glory(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy This reflection is a request for those Christians, who see that the Jesus of the Gospel is Nonviolent and teaches by word and deed a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, to honor their Baptismal total immersion into Christ, their Baptismal commitment and their Baptismal grace of a prophetic vocation on behalf of the Spirit and the Truth of Jesus Christ and speak-up and speak-out in their parishes and Churches for that truth. Further, this reflection is a presentation of how Constantinian ecclesiastical major-domos and bureaucrats will continue to drag the Churches of Christianity down paths that Jesus never would have taken His beloved brothers and sisters, if this prophetic charism is not exercised by those who are Baptized into Christ and who know that both Jesus and His Way are irremovably rooted in a Nonviolent Love of each and every son and daughter of our mutual Heavenly Parent. | ||
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Homily: Mass of the Resurrection for Audrey SantoSt. Paul's Cathedral, Worcester, MA
Published 04/18/07
From all over the world people have journeyed to the home of Audrey Santo and have witnessed the miraculous. Perhaps they came to see consecrated communion hosts that have bled, the religious statues and pictures that have wept tears of blood or shed streams of oil. Possibly they came with the hope of receiving a miraculous cure. But most of all, they came to see to little Audrey whom God chose to surround with these miracles. Audrey was the tragic victim of a drowning accident at age three. She lived for 20 years confined to her bed in a coma-like state known as akinetic mutism. She received around-the-clock care from a staff of nurses and family. For some reason, God used her life in a special way. From what appeared to be the Sacred Stigmata, to claims of prayers miraculously answered through Audrey's reported intercession, this silent, suffering child became a testimony of life in a culture of death. | ||
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Joan of Arc
Posted 01/2006
The Issue: "What of Joan of Arc and Jesus' nonviolence? She is a saint, yet she was a soldier who engaged in homicidal combat. Therefore, lethal violence on behalf of a state or king is consistent with the Way of Jesus to eternal life, isn't it?" This question, which is raised at almost every extended introductory conference on Gospel nonviolent love that I direct, is what the attached reflection responds to. It is not a trivial question nor is it a question that only pertains to the Catholic Church. Just about every mainline and Evangelical Church in practice is subject to the awful reality that Joan of Arc represents. This reflection is an attempt to bring good out of evil, life out of death, truth out of untruth, the Spirit of Christ out of the spirit of Cain, nonviolent monotheism out of violent theism. | ||
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LENT 2011The Only Guide that Will Serve You Well Is Mercy(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
Prayer to Live Mercifully(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
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Mother's Day Meditation, 2012Posted 05/2012 This mediation is a mother's pledge to and covenant with every other mother on Mothers' Day. | ||
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Memorial Day's Source: The Will to Kill Other People's ChildrenMyth or Reality, which to live by?(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy | ||
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Mother's Day Proclamation: A Day of Peace, Nonviolence & Reconciliation
Posted 05/2007
Take a moment to contemplate the real origins of Mother's Day: the belief that women can create peace and justice through nonviolent love and community rooted in humanity rather than in geographical gangs. The movement to set aside a day for women's peacemaking began with two women: Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe. Jarvis, a West Virginia mother of 11, worked to improve rural sanitation and healthcare before and during the Civil War. When the war ended, she worked to reconcile Union and Confederate families in her state. Julia Ward Howe, the author of Battle Hymn of the Republic, witnessed the atrocities committed by both sides during the Civil War. Howe was appalled, not only by the fatal casualties of violence, but by the other effects of war: economic devastation in both the North and the South, disease, and physical and mental disability. She devoted herself to building an international community of women creating peaceful resolution to conflicts. | ||
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The Nonviolent Palm Sunday and the Nonviolent Holy Week of 33 ADThe events and revelations of Holy Week are united with the Nonviolent Jesus
Revision Posted 04/05/07 [21:51 EST]
Just in case your Palm Sunday and Holy Week liturgies do not communicate it clearly, or just in case your priest, minister, bishop, preacher or pastor do not tell you it from the pulpit, Palm Sunday and Holy Week are 100% about the victorious and salvific Nonviolent Coming of God into His Nonviolent Kingdom through the Nonviolent Messiah Jesus. | ||
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On the Revolution of Love It "Changes the World without Making a Noise"Vatican City, February 18, 2007 Pope Benedict XVI It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person's way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God's love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the "Christian revolution," a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God, that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise. ....and a commentary on Pope Benedict's address: Revolution: Without Making a Noise(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy This is one superbly crafted statement on the importance, indeed the centrality, of Jesus' teaching of nonviolent love of friends and enemies, and on this being "the nucleus of the Christian revolution" and hence axial to a correct understanding of the Gospel. For those who spend the time with it that it deserves, it will be an illumination of a truth hidden or obscured, perhaps since their Baptism. | ||
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The Passion of The Christ: A Meditation on A Film
Film review, Published 04/2004
The Passion of The Christ, produced and directed by Mr. Mel Gibson, is the single finest cinematic representation of the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies ever presented to the consciousness of humanity... ...The Passion of The Christ was about love-not Caesarian love, not Aristotelian love, not Platonic love, not nationalistic or ethnic love, not Hollywood love. It was about Christic love. That is, it was about the love that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, was ordained by Love Itself to reveal and to bestow on humanity by His words and deeds, for its temporal good and its eternal salvation. It was about the only kind of love, the only kind of power, that can conquer evil, vanquish death, bring peace and lead one and all to an eternally graced union with God...It was about the omnipotence of Christ-like love and the omnipotent God who is love (agapé). | |
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Pilate Lives! Boston College Washes Its Hands of the Blood of the InnocentPosted 05/2006 Can there be greater compounding of spiritual laxness for a Catholic institution than going beyond silence about the killing of over 100,000 civilians in Iraq and the maiming of hundreds of thousands more, to explicitly honoring the perpetrator of what is gravely intrinsically evil, i.e., unjustified homicide-murder? Condoleezza Rice, who is to speak at graduation and receive an honorary degree, is one of the people primarily responsible for the planning, the execution and the propagandizing-as just-a war that has led to the large-scale destruction of the civilian population of Iraq. | ||
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Preemptive Truth: "What did they know and when did they know it?"War in Iraq Revisionists
Published 05/04/07
"He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future." 1984 (George Orwell) The intentional presentation of historical falsehoods as historical truths is the evil of lying. The use of historical untruth to cover-up a person's or institution's participation in another evil makes the historical lie doubly evil. When that historical lie is passed on by nurturing to a new generation of innocent children, then the historical evil and the historical lie meant to cover it up become a spiritually venomous virus with innumerable awful mutations within its range of possibilities-mutations that can reach to the third and fourth generation, and beyond. Recognizing that it is impossible for Satan to drive out Satan, for evil to drive out evil, this brief reflection might be of assistance in discerning truth and the choices consistent with truth in your Church and within the various human communities with which you are associated. Being unheeding of evil in one's midst-because evil has become normalized-does not reduce evil's power to destroy in the present or in the future. | ||
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Remember: August 6A reflection on Hiroshima and the "Killing Chair"
Published 08/2004
Throughout the world August 6 is rightfully remembered as the day that humanity entered into a never-before-seen form of homicidal violence-the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Unlike the Fourth of July in the United States, Independence Day, or the Fourteenth of July in France, Bastille Day, August 6 is a planetary day of remembrance. What is done on that day in 1945 is utterly new in human history-death finds a new doorway into life. So we remember. But, we forget. We forget that on August 6, 1890 another never-before-seen form of homicidal violence entered human history-death by the electric chair. On that day William Kemmler, age 30, an illiterate alcoholic from the slums of Buffalo, NY and a convicted murderer is executed by electricity at Auburn State Prison. Something utterly new enters human history-death finds a new doorway into life. But, we do not remember. Why? | ||
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Rorschach Jesus: The Ignorant MessiahTransforming Jesus into a Rorschach inkblot-a transcendental justifier of violence
12/2004
Could Jesus have been wrong and still have been the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Word of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Savior of the world? If Jesus is "like us in all things except sin" (Phil 2:7; Heb 4:15; Rom 8:3), then does it not follow that He was fallible, since humans are universally fallible. Ignorance, making mistakes, speaking untruth believing it to be truth may be many things but it is not sin. How else is it possible to explain that the vast majority of Christians today, who believe that Jesus is Lord, simultaneously and vigorously repudiate His teaching on the rejection of violence and enmity? | ||
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Sacerdotal Flagism
Posted 11/2005
Should the Flag Be Permanently Displayed in Church Sanctuaries or Other Explicitly Christian Environments? The more zealous a person is for uniting the flag and the cross as complementary and compatible realities and symbols, the more important it is that he or she be made aware of the problems involved in holding such a view. And, the more important it is to begin a dialogue with those holding this view. This essay could serve as the basis of such a dialogue. This should not be dismissed as if it were a trite matter. If it were such a minor matter why are so many so incensed and hostile when the issue is raised or when people by their actions refuse to acknowledge the unity of the flag and cross. Remember in 1943 at the height of WW II the government tried to impose a pledge of allegiance to the flag on students and did it with the backing of Church officials of practically all denominations. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that enforcing such a pledge in a classroom was unconstitutional because "Here it is the state that employs the flag as a symbol of adherence to government as presently organized. It requires the individual to communicate by word or deed his acceptance of the political ideas it bespeaks. Objection to this form of communication when coerced is an old one, well known to the framers of the Bill of Rights." [FN 13] [Footnote 13] "Early Christians were frequently persecuted for their refusal to participate in ceremonies before the statue of the emperor or other symbols of imperial authority." How strange that judges on a secular court see the power, the moral-theological seriousness and the religious dimensions of the symbol of the flag of a nation-state, but bishops, priests and ministers remain oblivious to it-or if they do see it then they persist in the irrationality of insisting that the symbols of the flag and the cross communicate compatible truths. | ||
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The Sword of Peter
March, 2005
Christ ordered Peter to put up his sword and yet today the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of Peter possesses the oldest continually-active military corps in the world-the Papal Swiss Guard. | ||
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Thou Shall Not Kill(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy A reflection on the "Right to Life" | ||
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To Teach What Jesus Taught: A Call to Fidelity(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy Thoroughly enter into the depth of the issue of Gospel Nonviolence by pondering this reflection | ||
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Who is Your King? Who is Your God?
Posted 01/2006
A meditation on the eternal contribution and challenge to Christianity and to humanity made by the servant of God-the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is the address that was delivered between five and six o'clock by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy on April 4, 1993 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated there at 6:02 P.M., twenty-five years earlier on April 4, 1968. The Lorraine Motel is now the National Civil Rights Museum. | ||
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(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy (2012)
(June 11 - June 15)
Mother's Day Meditation, 2012
(May 2012)
Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love
(April 2012)
Thou Shall Not Kill
(January, 2012)
The Only Guide that Will Serve You Well Is Mercy
(Lent 2011)
Prayer to Live Mercifully
(Lent 2011)
Memorial Day's Source:
The Will to Kill Other
People's Children
(May, 2010)
Stations of the Cross of
Nonviolent Love
(February, 2010)
Behold the Lamb
Audio Files and Transcript
in Spanish
(August, 2009)
Notre Dame, Obama, D'Arcy Controversy | PARTS I-IV
(May 13, 2009)
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