What happens, metaphysically, I mean, when you go to church and the topic of the sermon is Central America based on Luke 4? Or, like my friend Jim Kline, you are handed at the Mission Church in Santa Clara, a Pax Christi Pledge, while you work for the real peace movement, Lockheed? How are you … Read more
Christianity has been called the most materialistic religion in history. That is an illuminating point. For Christianity is so much more than a moral code, a recipe for virtue, a system of comfortable idealistic thought. It is a religion of acts and facts…. For Christianity is a religion of things that have happened — A … Read more
Address to the Yakunin Hearing, a conference held by Christian Solidarity International on “The Significance of Martyrdom for the Life of the Church,” parallel to the Sixth General Assembly of the World Council of Churches. 23 July 1983, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada I. When Church historians of the late 21st century look back upon our … Read more
On September 5, 1983, at Castelgandolfo, Pope John Paul II addressed the following words to twenty-three American bishops who were making their ad limina visit. The Pope spoke in English. The experience of the whole postconciliar life of the church confirms just how much the renewal willed by the Second Vatican Council depends on the … Read more
American Catholicism has been convulsed by the national Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter on war and peace in a way not seen since the proclamation of the birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. It is not a mild violation of the Second Commandment, but simply a fact, to assert that God only knows … Read more
Nor could Mrs. Thatcher forget, she said, the Berlin Wall (of which her first sight last month so powerfully impressed her.) It was “a grim monument to a cruel and…
Dear Archbishop Bernardin: I appreciate being sent a copy of the second draft of the pastoral letter on war and peace, which the bishops will be debating at their meeting next week. Having read through the new document carefully, I wanted to share some thoughts with you and the other members of the NCCB Ad … Read more
The debate around the Catholic Bishops’ forthcoming pastoral letter on war and peace has tended to focus either on questions of normative moral theology (e.g. if the bishops reject deterrence in the absolute but “tolerate” it in the present, is the door open to similar “toleration” of, say, abortion?), or on political judgments about particular strategic military options. The more fundamental ecclesiological … Read more