Always Advent

I came across this at Fr. John Zuhlsdorf’s website What Does The Prayer Really Say?

At the end of Holy Mass of Palm Sunday in St. Peter’s Square, at noon, His Holiness delivered him (sic) Angelus message. This week it included a very strong appeal for peace in Iraq, following on the death of the Archbishop of Mossul of the Chaldeans, Paulos Farah Rahho.

Here is the section of his comments on Iraq. My emphases indicates the part he quite literally shouted, though they were part of the prepared text:

At the end of this solemn celebration, in which we have meditated on the Passion of Christ, I want to call to mind the late lamented Archbishop of Mossul of the Chaldeans, Paulos Farah Rahho, tragically deceased a few days ago. His beautiful witness of faith in Christ, the Church and his people, which despite many threats he never wanted to abandon, presses me to raise a strong and concerned cry: enough of these massacres, enough with the violence, enough with hatred in Iraq! And I raise at the same time an appeal to the people of Iraq, which for five years is bearing the consequenzes of a war which has provoked the upheaval of civil and social life: beloved Iraqi people, raise up your heads and let you be, in the first place, riconstructors of your national life. Let there be reconciliations, forgiveness, justice and respect in common life betweem tribes, ethnic and religious groups, the solid way of peace in the name of God.

Wow!
(Here’s a link to the post: The Holy Father shouts for peace in Iraq.)

I pulled the image at the top from Fr. Z’s website. He has more images from the papal Palm Sunday liturgy in St. Peter’s Square here: Benedict XVI’s Palm Sunday Mass.

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by Clare Siobhan

The “evil Spock with a goatee” episode

Summary:
A transporter malfunction causes the Enterprise landing party to switch places with their counterparts in an evil alternate universe.

In 1968, “Mirror, Mirror” received a Hugo Award nomination for “Best Dramatic Presentation,” and in a Special Edition issue of Entertainment Weekly (Jan. 18, 1985) this episode appeared 3rd in a list of the 10 Best Episodes of Star Trek. You can see the actors really sinking their teeth into these crazy roles as they play evil versions of their characters, and it’s just as enjoyable for the audience. But the real stars of this episode are the Halkans. (Who?)

Story synopsis:
An Enterprise landing party comprised of Kirk, McCoy, Scott, and Uhura beam down to Halka and confer with the planet’s council, attempting to acquire the rights to mine dilithium crystals there. Dilithium is the power source of all the starships in the Star Trek universe.

The episode opens as these negotiations draw to a close: the Halkans refuse to allow the Federation to mine dilithium on their planet. The leader of the Halkan council tells Kirk “our dilithium crystals represent awesome power. Wrongful use of that power, even to the extent of the taking of one life, would violate our history of total peace. To prevent that, we would die, Captain, as a race, if necessary.”

Lightning flashes as Kirk signals the Enterprise to beam up the landing party. Spock warns Kirk that the ship is being assailed by a powerful magnetic storm. As the landing party beams up, they partially materialize in the transporter room, then fade. When they finally do materialize, the landing party find themselves in a world starkly different from their own: uniforms are immodest and militaristic, discipline aboard the ship is brutal, officers routinely move up in rank by assassination, and the Captain keeps a concubine in his cabin.

They quickly realize what has happened, adapt their demeanors to that of their Evil Shipmates, and set about devising a way to return home. Meanwhile, Evil Chekov attempts to assassinate Kirk, Evil Sulu sexually harasses Uhura, and Evil Spock soon catches on to the fact that Scott and McCoy are making unauthorized adjustments to the ship as part of their plan for beaming back.

After much thoroughly entertaining mayhem, the landing party successfully makes the switch with their evil counterparts and everyone is back where he or she belongs.

Story analysis:
Just before the landing party beams up from the planet Halka, the leader of the Halkan council reminds Kirk that the Federation could, if it wished, take the dilithium crystals from Halka by force, since the Halkans are bound by their own ethics to offer no resistance.

“But we won’t,” Kirk counters. “Consider that.”

The Evil Empire is completely different. Once it becomes clear that the Halkans will not permit the Empire to mine dilithium, Evil Spock orders a complete phaser barrage of the Halkans cities, which is standard procedure in cases like this.

“Regrettable that this society has chosen suicide,” Evil Spock observes.

Kirk can’t stomach this, naturally, so he cancels the attack and speaks to the Halkan council leader one more time, but the Halkans stick to their position:

“We are ethically compelled to deny your demand for dilithium crystals, for you would use their power to destroy.”

“We will level your planet and take what we want,” Kirk replies. “That is destruction. You will die as a race.”

“To preserve what we are,” says the leader of the Halkan council, nodding assent.

Even in the evil mirror universe, the Halkans are total pacifists who are so committed to their ideal that they are willing to die for it. This is why I said that the real heroes of this episode are the Halkans.

In 1984, John Michael Talbot, founder of The Brothers and Sisters of Charity, wrote a book called The Fire of God. In Chapter 6, “The Fire of Nuclear Holocaust” he wrote:

To really “win” a nuclear war, governments say they need first strike capabilities. This means not allowing one enemy warhead to detonate within your national boundaries…More than likely, first strike success would not be complete. Not only would we destroy millions within enemy boundaries, but millions of our own would also die. It would be mass devastation. This kind of mass destruction cannot be deemed moral by any definition. To win you must be ready to strike first. If you do this you must be the aggressor. This cannot be deemed moral by any Christian definition of a “just war.”

Would it not actually be better to disarm unilaterally? Simply to refuse to use nuclear weapons at all is surely the only moral way in the face of such a holocaust. If we play bluff at the bargaining table in the arms race we must be willing to use those arms. Otherwise our bluff is itself a lie and a self-deceit. If we use the arms at all we become immoral as a nation. The only moral option is to disarm bilaterally, or if we must, unilaterally. Of course bilateral disarmament is the first and more appealing option.

This does not mean we would refuse resistance to a Communist takeover. If the United States unilaterally disarmed, the people of the United States would have to make it emphatically clear to any Communist nation that we would nonviolently resist on every domestic level. Faced with such nonviolent non-cooperation, no foreign power could overcome us without killing us all. Then the question would arise: Would we rather use our nuclear weapons and take the world with us, or would we sacrifice our own lives in the name of human life and peace? I could only pray we would take the moral rather than the immoral option.

Talbot wrote this book in the mid-1980s, before the fall of the Communist superpowers, but these words are applicable now, even though Communist nations are not the only ones we’re currently worried about. There is no doubt that if the United States were to unilaterally disarm, there are a number of nations that would happily nuke us to kingdom come.

Bilateral disarmament is the better option because it is the least likely to result in a one-sided nuclear massacre, since both opposing sides will have agreed that they are unwilling to use their nuclear capabilities.

Unilateral disarmament is a risky option because the side that refuses to disarm retains the potential to destroy the side that does disarm, either by a nuclear strike or by a conventional invasion. The nuclear-capable side would be able to exert a lot of power over other nations.

However, unilateral disarmament provides the greater opportunity to imitate Christ. In the scenario John Michael Talbot describes, the disarmed nation, like the Halkans in “Mirror, Mirror,” commits to a policy of non-violent resistance and non-cooperation in the case of an invasion by the nuclear aggressor. The aggressor would be forced to kill all the non-violent citizens of the opposing country. The citizens of the disarmed country would have to be willing to die—“to preserve what we are”–rather than enter into a war.

The fictional Halkans had a global population united in an ethic of total pacifism. For the United States or any other real-life sovereign power to come to a similar accord–unilateral disarmament which risks either destruction by nuclear bombs or a violent conventional takeover and the execution of all its citizens–would require a level of Christian conversion not seen since antiquity. (The European nations of the Middle Ages, for example.) The likelihood of this happening is slim, obviously.

But what would happen if just one segment of a certain demographic group did something totally radical?

In his blog, Light on Dark Water, Maclin Horton published a piece called “A Fit Instrument?” (click on the link and scroll down a bit to read the original post) which explores matters of war & peace, the modern application of the Catholic criteria for just war, and the right of sovereign nations to defend themselves:

…no state will pay much attention to a teaching that says it cannot defend itself. Not only would it require national suicide for the state, and quite possibly the surrender of its own non-combatants to murder and other brutalities, but it would implicitly cede governance of the world to the most ruthlessly violent.

This exactly describes the fictional scenario of “Mirror, Mirror,” in which a sovereign state did pay attention to an ethic forbidding them the use of violence, even in self-defense and even though it resulted in their extermination.

Horton continues:

What, then, can the Church—what can Christians—do..?

Here’s a thought—a discomfiting, in fact dreadful thought—and only a thought, which I haven’t considered at length or at all thoroughly, so don’t expect me to be able to defend it. Perhaps in the end literal self-sacrifice might be required of some. To issue from a position of security a moral precept, however compelling and authoritative, that might require martyrdom of the recipient inevitably smacks of “binding heavy burdens and laying them on other men’s shoulders.” The example of Our Lord points the way: he never asked of his disciples any suffering which he himself was not willing to undergo.

Imagine the heavenly counterpart of the hellish suicide bomber. Imagine a cadre of witnesses ready to accept martyrdom by entering war zones (or potential war zones), having no physical power to protect the innocent but standing alongside them and saying “If you kill them, you must kill me, too.” Harmless as doves, some of them would die, and the spiritual effect of such sacrifice would surely be great. But, wise as serpents, they would serve, in a world where vivid images and stories have an immeasurable impact on the way people think and behave, as a means of inducing revulsion for slaughter. In the recent (and not really concluded) war between Israel and Hezbollah, for instance, could such a witness have made a difference?

I think there have been attempts to do this kind of thing, but from what I’ve read they didn’t seem entirely serious—more like media events than a firm intention to interpose oneself. To be effective, such nonviolent tactics would have to be very serious indeed. And a plea, in the name of God and humanity, for the two parties to find some other way of settling a dispute must be addressed to both parties. The great weakness of Western peace movements is that they apply their efforts almost exclusively to their own side, which is generally the one where just war principles are already at least somewhat respected and which is very unlikely to punish them in any serious way. And so their gestures often seem just that: at worst just a self-affirmation of the protestor’s moral superiority, at best a rebuke to only one of two warring parties, and not likely to be very effective. A one-sided protest may even encourage an aggressor.

But a peace movement whose members were willing to put their own lives on the line, as ordinary soldiers do every day (which is probably one reason why most people have more respect for soldiers than for war protesters), could not fail to win the respect of all.

Imagine.

Christian values depicted:
The Halkans refuse to offer even remote cooperation with violence and death-dealing, even though in the evil universe they know they themselves will die for it.

During a confrontation-turned-brawl in sickbay, the landing party critically injures Evil Spock. McCoy insists on providing life-saving medical care to him, even though doing so jeopardizes his chances of returning to where he belongs.

When it looks like one of the landing party will have to stay behind to operate the transporter controls for the others, Scotty volunteers to stay behind. Kirk makes it clear that he won’t allow it: he orders Scotty and Uhura onto the transporter platform, fully intending to be the one to stay behind.

Christian values denigrated: (by the bad guys!)
In the Evil Universe, immodesty and unchastity were blatant.

The “Captain’s woman” (Lt. Marlena Moreau) shows Kirk a device in his cabin that has allowed his evil counterpart to monitor and, when necessary, “disappear” his enemies. She uses the device to foil yet another attempt on Kirk’s life, this time by Sulu and some of his henchmen. Marlena uses the device to dispassionately kill Sulu’s three henchmen.

The Empire’s barrage of the Halkan cities is an immoral act of mass murder: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, section 80)

Related links:
Catholic Peace Fellowship
Peace Takes Courage — A 16 year-old home-schooled student in Alabama puts this site together. The animations WWJD? and California Dreaming? are especially moving.
Horrific images of war and violence are not limited to the Middle East: go to these 9/11 photo galleries: New York Magazine’s “Day of Terror” and Time Magazine’s “Shattered.”

Other episodes of Star Trek with war and peace as their themes include Day of the Dove, Balance of Terror, Arena, A Taste of Armageddon, The Doomsday Machine, and A Private Little War.

Favorite quotes
McCoy: “I’m a doctor, not an engineer.”

Original airdate: October 6, 1967
(The Original Series, 2nd season)
39th episode produced
33rd episode aired
Written by Jerome Bixby
Directed by Marc Daniels

by Clare Siobhan

“Men went to the Holy Land just to kill,” says Orlando Bloom, the star of Kingdom of Heaven, a 2005 summer movie about the Crusades.

Orlando is only an actor, so perhaps we can forgive him for this blatantly inaccurate statement. But the fact is, what most people think they know about the Crusades of the Middle Ages is also not quite right:

The Crusades were nothing but a European grab for wealth and land in the Middle East, all under the guise of religion and backed by the Church.

Not exactly. At the time of Christ, all the cities and regions of the Holy Land—including Jerusalem—were in the hands of the Romans. The early Church endured much hardship and persecution at the hands of the Romans, but eventually Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, which included the Middle East. The Holy Land had come under legitimate Christian control.

Then the Holy Land and its cities came under attack by the armies of a rapidly growing local religion called Islam, and by 638 Jerusalem was under Muslim control. At the time, this was not a huge problem, as the Muslims allowed Christians in the area to practice their faith and Christians from Europe to come unhindered on pilgrimages to the holy places.

But about 400 years later, a violent faction of Muslims called Seljuk Turks took over Jerusalem and other areas of the Holy Land and made it dangerous for the Eastern Christians to live their faith and for the European Christians to visit. The Eastern Christians sent an urgent plea for help to their brothers in Europe. The Crusades were the European response to this plea.

Some of the knights who went to the Holy Land certainly must have had visions of the Taj Majal** dancing in their heads, but most of the Crusaders had truly noble intentions motivated by authentic religious devotion: to wrest the Christian holy places from the hands of the Muslims and provide a safe environment for Christians living in the holy land and for Christians visiting from Europe. The Crusaders considered their journey to the Holy Land a religious pilgrimage and they regarded the sufferings they endured as penance for their sins. The Popes of the Crusades even granted indulgences to those who “took the Cross”, as going on Crusade was called. (The word “crusade” comes from crux, the Latin word for cross. Texts of papal pronouncements regarding indulgences for Crusades are here and here.)

The Crusades were an attempt to force peaceful Muslims, at sword point, to convert to the Catholic faith.

This statement, also, is a misconception. The Muslims of the 11th century—the Seljuk Turks – were not peaceful. They were militarily aggressive and expansionist to the point of even threatening Europe. Many people are shocked when they learn that in the Middle Ages Muslim armies invaded and took over a large portion of Spain. In Kingdom of Heaven, one of the shooting locations is a Spanish castle built in the 1200s as a frontier fortification between Muslim-controlled Spain and Catholic Spain. Conversion of the Muslims to Catholicism was not one of the goals of the Crusades. The goals of the Crusades were to regain control of the original Christian holy places in the Middle East, protect Christians on pilgrimage from Europe, and eventually to prevent Muslim expansion into Europe.

The Crusades certainly are marred by a few infamous episodes, such as the brutal and merciless sacks of Jerusalem in 1099 and of Constantinople in 1204, and nefarious characters such as the vicious warmonger Reynald de Chatillon, portrayed with devilish gusto by Brendan Gleeson in the movie. It is worth noting that the Christians responsible for the sack of Constantinople acted without approval of the Church and were in fact excommunicated for what they did: the killing of innocent non-combatants has always been condemned by the Church.

Would the Crusades meet the Church’s modern definition of a “just war”, that is, a war that meets the criteria of justice and morality? The Church requires the following conditions to be met:

First, the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or nations coming under attack must be lasting, grave and certain.

Second, all other means of putting an end to the attacks must have already failed or been proven not practical.

Third, there must be a serious chance of success.

Fourth, the use of force and the waging of war must not produce greater evils than those the war seeks to eliminate.

(see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2307—2309 — scroll down.)

Reflect on these four conditions again after you’ve delved into the history of the Crusades. Be aware that most of the historians are not sympathetic to the Catholic Church and will paint the Crusaders as bloodthirsty, intolerant barbarians who used their religious faith to excuse all kinds of brutality. The following sources are written from the Catholic point of view and will provide balance to the secular sources:

• What Were the Crusades? by Jonathan Riley-Smith
• The Crusaders by Regine Pernoud
• Those Terrible Middle Ages! by Regine Pernoud
• The History of the Church—A Complete Course (The Didache Series)
• The Church in the Dark Ages by Henri Daniel-Rops
• A Catechism of Church History by Father Robert J. Fox
• Christ the King, Lord of History by Anne W. Carroll
• Church History by Fr. John Laux
• A History of Christendom by Warren H. Carroll

Crisis Magazine has a good article called “The Real History of the Crusades” by Prof. Thomas F. Madden, chair of St. Louis University’s history department. and author of The New Concise History of the Crusades.

Also, see Catholic movie-reviewer Steven Greydanus’s take on Kingdom of Heaven. (Note: this film is not suitable for children and probably not even for teenagers.)

** Note: I am aware of the fact that the Taj Mahal was constructed in the mid-1600s, several hundred years after the Crusades. Hopefully my deliberate anachronism in the interests of a whimsical turn-of-phrase can be forgiven.

Copyright 2007 by Clare Siobhan
Originally published in Family Centered Faith Formation News.