Easter Sunday services with Cardinal Francis George were interrupted by six anti-war activists as they denounced the war in Iraq and staged a die-in with fake blood. Accounts of the action can be seen and read at:
chicago.indymedia: story 1, story 2
I think a number of different discussions can emerge from this and look forward to what follows. While I do not entirely agree with everything said in this discussion thus far, or with the entirety of Holy Name actions, when I called the Archdiocese to ask the charges to be dropped, I mentioned that. I do not have to agree with the activists tactically to agree with their message and with their nonviolence. Jesus threw out the money changers for desecrating a holy place. How do we understand money changers today in our own churches, temples, mosques and place of prayer? Are the activists the money changers who need thrown out? Is it a congregation complicit with silence? A church hierarchy failing to honor truth and justice? All questions I think worth asking. Below is a letter to the editor I submitted:
Dear Editors,
The public outcry that denounced the actions of the six peace activists who symbolically reminded a largely silent and complicit Catholic population that we are a nation at war worries me. When there is more outrage and opposition to one group’s small but courageous attempt to
speak truth to a church called to pray for our enemies and love those who persecute us, I wonder if Jesus has truly risen in our hearts, in our minds, in our communities, or in Iraq this past Easter Sunday.
Surely, there will be many different attitudes and opinions concerning the message, the action, and the location these six activists chose. Of all the opinions I would most like to hear, would be that of Iraqi Catholic Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. But his body was found in a ditch after he was abducted during a shootout outside his church, after celebrating the Via Crucis, earlier this month. It is realities like this that we Americans are so insulated from in our calm, sanitized Easter Sunday services.
I recall the words of Fr. Dan Berrigan, SJ. He is one of those rare Catholic believers who took seriously (perhaps too seriously!) the words Jesus spoke at the Sermon on the Mount: "We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total--but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial...There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war--at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death
in its wake.”
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