Pope Benedict XVI Easter Message, 2007

Dear Brothers and Sisters throughout the world,
Men and women of good will!

Christ is risen! Peace to you! Today we celebrate the great mystery, the foundation of Christian faith and hope: Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified One, has risen from the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures. We listen today with renewed emotion to the announcement proclaimed by the angels on the dawn of the first day after the Sabbath, to Mary of Magdala and to the women at the sepulchre: "Why do you search among the dead for one who is alive? He is not here, he is risen!" (Lk 24:5-6).

It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of these women at that moment: feelings of sadness and dismay at the death of their Lord, feelings of disbelief and amazement before a fact too astonishing to be true. But the tomb was open and empty: the body was no longer there. Peter and John, having been informed of this by the women, ran to the sepulchre and found that they were right. The faith of the Apostles in Jesus, the expected Messiah, had been submitted to a severe trial by the scandal of the cross. At his arrest, his condemnation and death, they were dispersed. Now they are together again, perplexed and bewildered. But the Risen One himself comes in response to their thirst for greater certainty. This encounter was not a dream or an illusion or a subjective imagination; it was a real experience, even if unexpected, and all the more striking for that reason. "Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘peace be with you!’" (Jn 20:19).

At these words their faith, which was almost spent within them, was re-kindled. The Apostles told Thomas who had been absent from that first extraordinary encounter: Yes, the Lord has fulfilled all that he foretold; he is truly risen and we have seen and touched him! Thomas however remained doubtful and perplexed. When Jesus came for a second time, eight days later in the Upper Room, he said to him: "put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing!" The Apostle’s response is a moving profession of faith: "My Lord and my God!" (Jn 20:27-28).

"My Lord and my God!" We too renew that profession of faith of Thomas. I have chosen these words for my Easter greetings this year, because humanity today expects from Christians a renewed witness to the resurrection of Christ; it needs to encounter him and to know him as true God and true man. If we can recognize in this Apostle the doubts and uncertainties of so many Christians today, the fears and disappointments of many of our contemporaries, with him we can also rediscover with renewed conviction, faith in Christ dead and risen for us. This faith, handed down through the centuries by the successors of the Apostles, continues on because the Risen Lord dies no more. He lives in the Church and guides it firmly towards the fulfilment of his eternal design of salvation.

We may all be tempted by the disbelief of Thomas. Suffering, evil, injustice, death, especially when it strikes the innocent such as children who are victims of war and terrorism, of sickness and hunger, does not all of this put our faith to the test? Paradoxically the disbelief of Thomas is most valuable to us in these cases because it helps to purify all false concepts of God and leads us to discover his true face: the face of a God who, in Christ, has taken upon himself the wounds of injured humanity. Thomas has received from the Lord, and has in turn transmitted to the Church, the gift of a faith put to the test by the passion and death of Jesus and confirmed by meeting him risen. His faith was almost dead but was born again thanks to his touching the wounds of Christ, those wounds that the Risen One did not hide but showed, and continues to point out to us in the trials and sufferings of every human being.

"By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pt 2:24). This is the message Peter addressed to the early converts. Those wounds that, in the beginning were an obstacle for Thomas’s faith, being a sign of Jesus’ apparent failure, those same wounds have become in his encounter with the Risen One, signs of a victorious love. These wounds that Christ has received for love of us help us to understand who God is and to repeat: "My Lord and my God!" Only a God who loves us to the extent of taking upon himself our wounds and our pain, especially innocent suffering, is worthy of faith.

How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world! Natural calamities and human tragedies that cause innumerable victims and enormous material destruction are not lacking. My thoughts go to recent events in Madagascar, in the Solomon Islands, in Latin America and in other regions of the world. I am thinking of the scourge of hunger, of incurable diseases, of terrorism and kidnapping of people, of the thousand faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the exploitation of persons. I look with apprehension at the conditions prevailing in several regions of Africa. In Darfur and in the neighbouring countries there is a catastrophic, and sadly to say underestimated, humanitarian situation. In Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo the violence and looting of the past weeks raises fears for the future of the Congolese democratic process and the reconstruction of the country. In Somalia the renewed fighting has driven away the prospect of peace and worsened a regional crisis, especially with regard to the displacement of populations and the traffic of arms. Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis and for this reason the Bishops of that country in a recent document indicated prayer and a shared commitment for the common good as the only way forward.

Likewise the population of East Timor stands in need of reconciliation and peace as it prepares to hold important elections. Elsewhere too, peace is sorely needed: in Sri Lanka only a negotiated solution can put an end to the conflict that causes so much bloodshed; Afghanistan is marked by growing unrest and instability; In the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees. In Lebanon the paralysis of the country’s political institutions threatens the role that the country is called to play in the Middle East and puts its future seriously in jeopardy. Finally, I cannot forget the difficulties faced daily by the Christian communities and the exodus of Christians from that blessed Land which is the cradle of our faith. I affectionately renew to these populations the expression of my spiritual closeness.

Dear Brothers and sisters, through the wounds of the Risen Christ we can see the evils which afflict humanity with the eyes of hope. In fact, by his rising the Lord has not taken away suffering and evil from the world but has vanquished them at their roots by the superabundance of his grace. He has countered the arrogance of evil with the supremacy of his love. He has left us the love that does not fear death, as the way to peace and joy. "Even as I have loved you – he said to his disciples before his death – so you must also love one another" (cf. Jn 13:34).

Brothers and sisters in faith, who are listening to me from every part of the world! Christ is risen and he is alive among us. It is he who is the hope of a better future. As we say with Thomas: "My Lord and my God!", may we hear again in our hearts the beautiful yet demanding words of the Lord: "If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honour him" (Jn 12:26). United to him and ready to offer our lives for our brothers (cf. 1 Jn 3:16), let us become apostles of peace, messengers of a joy that does not fear pain – the joy of the Resurrection. May Mary, Mother of the Risen Christ, obtain for us this Easter gift. Happy Easter to you all.

Catholic, other religious leaders call Bush's Iraq War policies 'morally bankrupt'

By Chaz Muth
2/23/2007
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)

BALTIMORE, Md. (CNS) – Baltimore Christian leaders used the backdrop of Ash Wednesday and props of a dead soldier's combat boots as they called President George W. Bush's Iraq War policies immoral and urged Marylanders to take part in an organized anti-war rally in Washington.

The 13 religious leaders from varying Christian faiths – including Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden of Baltimore – chose the first day of Lent Feb. 21 to launch their collective anti-war platform, because it's a penitential season.

"The time has come to confess our mistakes and wrongdoing and withdraw our troops" from Iraq, said the Rev. Peter K. Nord, head of the Presbytery of Baltimore, part of the national Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

"The Jesus we follow prays for peace and so do we," Rev. Nord said at the news conference at City Temple Baptist Church in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. "I'm troubled that our commander in chief neither shares this prayer nor listens to his people."

In an effort to pump up the volume and force Bush to hear their opposition to his war policies and troop surge, the group urged Maryland Christians to travel to Washington March 16 and surround the White House in a nonviolent, candle-lit demonstration.

A group called Christian Peace Witness for Iraq is hosting a 7 p.m. service March 16 at the National Cathedral in Washington. Following the service, they will march the 2.5 miles from the cathedral to the White House for the rally, which is expected to run from 9 to 10:30 p.m.

A major anti-war rally is planned for the next day in Washington, organized by the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition to mark the fourth anniversary of the war, launched March 20, 2003, in Iraq.

The Baltimore religious leaders often used harsh language to express their disgust for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and said Bush's goal of keeping terrorist activity out of that country backfired and instead created a haven for violent radical groups.

They called the president a "naive politician" and "morally bankrupt" and said it was their duty to rally their congregations to protest this war.

"We cannot remain silent while American men and women in increasing numbers are being sent to Iraq to kill and be killed," said United Methodist Bishop John R. Schol of the Baltimore-Washington Episcopal Area. "While thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, ... poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated."

The morning of the press conference, the United Kingdom announced it would begin to withdraw 40 percent of its troops in Iraq in the next year, an example the Baltimore Christian leaders would like Bush to follow.

"Our leaders have a moral obligation to honestly examine where things really stand in pursuing peace in Iraq and to assess what is actually achievable there by our continued presence," Bishop Madden said. "May this day and the march that is to follow be enlightened by the great splendor of truth and aid us on the path to peace."


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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Living Nonviolence in Today’s Reality

This is an excerpt from a speech given by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton the summer before the Iraq War began to the Pax Christi USA 2002 National Assembly.

And in our church, even though there’s no way we could begin to even pretend that we are a so-called peace church: If we look at what is happening within the tradition, taking us back to the original tradition, how the first Christians understood the message of Jesus and lived it for about 300 years, we find that in our tradition, we’re moving back, although many of us in the Church ignore this.

But you go back to 1963. Pope John XXIII made one of the most extraordinary statements, I think, about non-violence and the rejection of war, that we find anywhere in Catholic teaching. He wrote that encyclical Pacem in Terris. It will be the 40th anniversary of this most important encyclical next year. And in that encyclical, which is really a pattern of how to build peace in the world, a real pax Christi, he makes the statement:

“In our atomic era it is irrational any longer to think of war as an apt means to vindicate violated rights”

In this era of total war, which includes nuclear weapons, it’s irrational, immoral, goes against our humanness, goes against God, even to think of war as an apt means to vindicate violated rights. The just war theology disappears with that one sentence. We need to listen to that.

Pope Paul VI 1976 Peace Day statement deplored what had happened at Hiroshima August 6, 1945. For the first time the most clear statement about what an evil that was. He called it a butchery of untold magnitude. And he went on to say, who is the model for our times, this time in which we live? When the reality is so grim, who is the model? He says the poor, weak man, Gandhi, the Hindu who understood better than most of us Christians what Jesus really taught, pax Christi. He justified us. That’s the model for our time.

John Paul II in 1980 in a Peace Day statement urges us: “I invite all Christians to bring to the common task of building peace the specific contribution of the gospel, the specific contribution of Jesus.” And in light of that gospel, he says, “I now repeat, violence is a lie for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity. Do not believe in violence. Do not support violence. It is not the Christian way. It is not the way of the Catholic Church. Believe in peace, forgiveness and love. For only these are of Christ.”

It’s hard to be any clearer that our tradition is reaching back to where we started. And we must begin to make that tradition our own once more.

Again, Pope John Paul II, in 1991 condemned war in the most clear words possible. He wrote, “I, myself, on the occasion of the recent tragic gulf war in the Persian Gulf repeated the cry, ‘Never again war! No, never again war!’”
And he gives some reasons why the just war theology, any theology that justifies violence is wrong: because it destroys innocent lives. Every war does. And it teaches how to kill, depriving those who kill of their humanness by learning to hate and to kill. And it throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing. And then always, it leaves behind a trail of hatred and resentment, making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war. Our tradition is calling us always to reject war. Pax Christi says no to violence, no to war, no to killing, for any reason whatsoever. (extended applause, 16 seconds)

Thank you. That’s important, because I’m just getting to the point where I’m going to ask us to do something. (laughter). So I’m glad you agree so far.

Last November just before the bishops’ meeting when we were going to discuss the U.S. Catholic bishops’ response to 9-11 and to October 7: Just before that meeting I got a letter from a young woman in New York whose brother had been killed in the World Trade Center. It’s a powerful letter.

She says, “I’m writing to you today to offer support and encouragement for what I hope will be an ongoing discussion among the bishops. My brother, William Kelly, was killed on Sept. 11th at the World Trade Center. There is no scale on which my family can begin to measure our loss. Nor are there any words adequately to express our sorrow. My family is quite clear, however, that we would never want another family, whether Afghani or American, to feel the way we do now.”

Then she goes on. But further on she says:

“I adamantly oppose the bombing. I have no other argument than it is not Christ-like. I do not know what Jesus would do in current times, but I am certain he would not advocate the bombing of anyone. The deepest, truest part of our collective heart knows this truth. You and I and my family live in a very human world, however; so how can we reach this true place?”

She says, “One stumbling block seems to be the lack of choices given the American public concerning our response to September 11th. Our country seems to see no other way, because we have been presented with no other way. So this is my urgent request of the bishops. Can you begin the discussion of the other way — Christ’s way? Could you help provide moral guidance to a majority that is voicing support for a bombing campaign?”

On her behalf I made that plea to the bishops last November, and it was rejected. We did not present another way. We supported the bombing. The Catholic bishops of the United States supported the bombing, the war. And I’m very sorry to say it continues that way.

I was utterly appalled on January 29th when President Bush was giving his State of the Union message outlining our plans to attack the “axis of evil” and continue to glorify our response, violent response to September 11th, two Catholic cardinals sitting in the audience jumping up to clap with everyone else.

Another cardinal after September 11th and after October 7th wrote a letter to President Bush. I won’t take the time to read it, but it’s a letter congratulating him on how well he has responded in this just use of violence.

Just a couple of weeks ago another cardinal was present with President Bush when some protesters were in the audience, and they were booed down. And President Bush repeated his cry to use violence; and everybody in that audience except those few protesters applauded. The cardinal was sitting there. I don’t know if he applauded or not, but certainly he was endorsing what the President was saying.

I tell you all of this only because it becomes very clear to me that Colleen Kelly’s request is not going to happen soon, but that the U.S. bishops are not going to show us the alternative way. It’s going to be up to you, and anyone in this country, who really understands pax Christi, who really is ready to reject pax Americana

So we must be the ones that will begin to show the new way. And so at this point, I ask you, — and I want you to respond:

Will you reject the claims of evil pax Americana, no matter how sensible and attractive they may seem? (Crowd shouts, Yes)

And will you believe what Jesus says, and follow him, now matter how strange it may seem? (Crowd shouts, Yes).

Then we have a job before us. There are various ways we can carry this out. One of the first things we can do, and I hope everyone of us will: sign the pledge of resistance. Dave mentioned it last night; it’s being circulated. Sign it. The war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 was an unjust war, condemned by Pope John Paul II. Any new war against Iraq will be an unjust war. We must say, No (20 seconds of applause)

But there’s more. Signing a pledge is one thing. But of course, when you sign that pledge you really are saying, “I am ready to get out in the streets and do civil disobedience if they attack.” (10 seconds of more applause).

There are about 600 of us here, and if every one of us signs the pledge, that would be very significant. But what would be even better if every one of us goes home and gets 10 more people to sign the pledge, or 20 more people to sign the pledge. We’ll have thousands and thousands; and other groups are doing the same thing. So, we must do this.

But I also suggest, we need to do something like the School of the Americas Watch does. They have identified a place, Fort Benning, Georgia, where the School of the America takes place. Every November they are getting thousands and thousands of people to come and protest that very evil institution that has trained people to do some of the most gruesome and evil killing that has gone on, especially in Latin America and Central America. And they get these thousands of people because they focus on that one place.

My hope is that we might determine a place like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for example — where Dave and I were last summer on August 6th — and that we might begin to invite Pax Christi groups to come there every year around that weekend of August 6th, and that we make a larger and larger presence protesting the development. There’s where they are making the new nuclear weapons that we will be preparing to use. We must go there, have our bodies there, do civil disobedience there, say no to nuclear weapons in a very dramatic way. (15 more seconds of applause)

And I thought that maybe next summer — it’s too late for this summer, but it gives us a year to prepare — we could start on July 16th. That’s the date when we exploded the first nuclear device: July 16, 1945, in the desert in Nevada. I don’t know if you’re aware of it — how these people that make these things always give it a code name. They called that one “Trinity.” That was the code name for the first explosion of a nuclear weapon.

And another way of looking at the choice that I’m asking us to make today was something that Archbishop (Fulton J.) Sheen said a long time ago in a talk he gave against nuclear weapons. He said it all comes down to a choice: Which
Trinity will you believe in? The Trinity of mass, energy, and velocity? Or the Trinity of a loving God — father and mother, a son who gives his life for us, and a spirit who lives in our midst.

July 16th I think is an important date. The date in which people make their choice of which Trinity will you put your faith in. So I suggest we might start a fast on July 16th and go until August 6th — 22 days of fasting. Then on August the sixth, try to have a large gathering of Pax Christi people from all over our country to protest, and to demand the end of the development of nuclear weapons.

I believe that if we really committed ourselves to this kind of action, we could be the ones that would lead our Church and our nation away from pax Americana and to pax Christi, the only peace that really is peace. (15 seconds of applause).

I thank you for that response, and I leave you now with some very sober words, that will perhaps linger in our consciousness and help to continue to motivate us. The words were written, again by that Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, who is leading the way of India protesting against their nuclear weapons development. And at the end of the article which she writes deploring and protesting these weapons, she says this:

“The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that human kind has ever made.” and then she says, “If you are religious, believe in God, then remember, this is our challenge to God.” It is worded quite simply: “We, we, God’s creatures, have the power to destroy everything You have created.”

A very evil challenge that a religious person would make to God. It’s blasphemy:

“We can destroy everything You, God, have made — the God who made everything out of love, we can destroy out of our hate.”

But then she goes on to say, "If you’re not religious, then look at it this way: This world of ours is 4,600 million years old. It could end in an afternoon."

Let that thought: if you are religious, that we do not want to offend God with that blasphemy. Or, if your faith doesn’t move you, the thought that we can destroy our world in an afternoon, let that move us to try with all that we can bring to it to reject pax Americana and to embrace pax Christi. Thank you.

What the rest of the world watched on Inauguration Day

This post was written by Sr. Joan Chittister on the day of George Bush's second inauguration in January, 2005.

Dublin, on U.S. Inauguration Day, didn't seem to notice. Oh, they played a few clips that night of the American president saying, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

But that was not their lead story.

The picture on the front page of The Irish Times was a large four-color picture of a small Iraqi girl. Her little body was a coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark night. Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were blood-spattered. The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back seat.

A series of pictures of the incident played on the inside page, as well. A 12-year-old brother, wounded in the fray, falls face down out of the car when the car door opens, the pictures show. In another, a soldier decked out in battle gear, holds a large automatic weapon on the four children, all potential enemies, all possible suicide bombers, apparently, as they cling traumatized to one another in the back seat and the child on the ground goes on screaming in her parent's blood.

No promise of "freedom" rings in the cutline on this picture. No joy of liberty underlies the terror on these faces here.

I found myself closing my eyes over and over again as I stared at the story, maybe to crush the tears forming there, maybe in the hope that the whole scene would simply disappear.

But no, like the photo of a naked little girl bathed in napalm and running down a road in Vietnam served to crystallize the situation there for the rest of the world, I knew that this picture of a screaming, angry, helpless, orphaned child could do the same.

The soldiers standing in the dusk had called "halt," the story said, but no one did. Maybe the soldiers' accents were bad. Maybe the car motor was unduly noisy. Maybe the children were laughing loudly -- the way children do on family trips. Whatever the case, the car did not stop, the soldiers shot with deadly accuracy, seven lives changed in an instant: two died in body, five died in soul.

BBC news announced that the picture was spreading across Europe like a brushfire that morning, featured from one major newspaper to another, served with coffee and Danish from kitchen table to kitchen table in one country after another. I watched, while Inauguration Day dawned across the Atlantic, as the Irish up and down the aisle on the train from Killarney to Dublin, narrowed their eyes at the picture, shook their heads silently and slowly over it, and then sat back heavily in their seats, too stunned into reality to go back to business as usual -- the real estate section, the sports section, the life-style section of the paper.

Here was the other side of the inauguration story. No military bands played for this one. No bulletproof viewing stands could stop the impact of this insight into the glory of force. Here was an America they could no longer understand. The contrast rang cruelly everywhere.

I sat back and looked out the train window myself. Would anybody in the United States be seeing this picture today? Would the United States ever see it, in fact? And if it is printed in the United States, will it also cross the country like wildfire and would people hear the unwritten story under it?

There are about 25 million people in Iraq. Over half of them are under the age of 15. Of the over 100,000 civilians dead in this war, then, over half of them are children. We are killing children. The children are our enemy. And we are defeating them.

"I'll tell you why I voted for George Bush," a friend of mine said. "I voted for George Bush because he had the courage to do what Al Gore and John Kerry would never have done."

I've been thinking about that one.

Osama Bin Laden is still alive. Sadam Hussein is still alive. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still alive. Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah are burning. But my government has the courage to kill children or their parents. And I'm supposed to be impressed.

That's an unfair assessment, of course. A lot of young soldiers have died, too. A lot of weekend soldiers are maimed for life. A lot of our kids went into the military only to get a college education and are now shattered in soul by what they had to do to other bodies.

A lot of adult civilians have been blasted out of their homes and their neighborhoods and their cars. More and more every day. According to U.N. Development Fund for Women, 15 percent of wartime casualties in World War I were civilians. In World War II, 65 percent were civilians. By the mid '90s, over 75 percent of wartime casualties were civilians.

In Iraq, for every dead U.S. soldier, there are 14 other deaths, 93 percent of them are civilian. But those things happen in war, the story says. It's all for a greater good, we have to remember. It's all to free them. It's all being done to spread "liberty."

From where I stand, the only question now is who or what will free us from the 21st century's new definition of bravery. Who will free us from the notion that killing children or their civilian parents takes courage?

The Time Has Come to End This War

Whenever I hear people talking about freedom, patriotism, supporting our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan--I feel an immediate disconnect between their words and the reality that we all know as the Iraq War. Mark Twain once said: "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." This is a war that should have never started--and it will do no good to write about all of the mistakes made by this Administration in the conduct of the war. Let's just say--Enough is enough. END THE WAR. How do we do that? I do not have a definitive answer--but I have a clue. Ohio's Catholics need to be accounted for. Ohio's Catholics need to stand and say: END THE WAR. That is what this site is about. I hope in the coming weeks you will join us as we give our hearts and our labors to the great moral issue of our time--ending the war in Iraq.