Syllogistically, Earl J Weber of #414 would be considered a defeater
of humanity.
http://www.cjd.org/paper/jp2war.html
The most consistent and frequent promoter of peace and human rights
for the last two decades has been Pope John Paul II.
From Iraqi War I to Iraqi War II, he has echoed the voice of Paul VI,
crying out before the United Nations in 1965: War No More, War Never
Again!
John Paul II stated before the 2003 war that this war would be a
defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.
In the weeks and months before the U.S. attacked Iraq, not only the
Holy Father, but also one Cardinal and Archbishop after another at the
Vatican spoke out against a "preemptive" or "preventive" strike. They
declared that the just war theory could not justify such a war.
Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran said that such a "war of aggression" is a
crime against peace. Archbishop Renato Martino, who used the same
words in calling the possible military intervention a "crime against
peace that cries out vengeance before God," also criticized the
pressure that the most powerful nations exerted on the less powerful
ones on the U.N. Security Council to support the war. The Pope spoke
out almost every day against war and in support of diplomatic efforts
for peace.
John Paul II sent his personal representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, a
friend of the Bush family, to remonstrate with the U.S. President
before the war began. Pio Laghi said such a war would be illegal and
unjust. The message was clear: God is not on your side if you invade
Iraq.
After the United States began its attacks against Iraq, FOX News
actually reported the immediate comments of the Holy Father, made in
an address at the Vatican to members of an Italian religious
television channel, Telespace: "When war, as in these days in Iraq,
threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more urgent to proclaim,
with a strong and decisive voice, that only peace is the road to
follow to construct a more just and united society," John Paul said.
"Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of man."
Americans were largely unaware of the depth and importance of the
opposition of Church leaders to an attack on Iraq, since for the most
part the mainstream media did not carry the stories. In the same way,
many Americans were unaware that Pope John Paul II spoke against the
first Gulf War 56 times. Media in the United States omitted this from
the commentaries on the war. Many have also been unaware of the number
of Iraqis killed in that war (not to mention the war which recently
"ended"). In February 2003 Business Week published an interview with
Beth Osborne Daponte, a professional demographer who worked for the
Census Bureau. The first Bush administration tried to fire her because
her published estimates of the number of Iraqi deaths conflicted with
what ***** Cheney was saying at the time. She was defended by social
science professionals and was able to keep her job. Her estimates:
13,000 civilians were killed directly by American and allied forces,
and about 70,000 civilians died subsequently from war-related damage
to medical facilities and supplies, the electric power grid, and the
water system.
In the past few years, Catholic neoconservatives have been attempting
to develop a new philosophy of just war which would include preemptive
strikes against other nations, what might be called a "preventive
war." George Weigel has published major articles defending this
position since 1995. First Things magazine published his articles and
editorially agreed with this point of view. The present Bush
administration has used these writings to defend the strike against
Iraq. Shortly before the war began, through the U.S. Ambassador to the
Vatican, President Bush sent Michael Novak to go to Rome to try to
justify the war to the Pope and Vatican officials. Catholic News
Service reported that the two-hour symposium was attended by some 150
invited guests, including lower-level Vatican officials, professors
from church universities in Rome and diplomats accredited to the
Vatican. Since with one voice Rome had already rejected the argument
for a preventive war, Novak took the approach that a war on Iraq would
not be a preventive war, but a continuation of a "just war," Iraqi War
I, and actually a moral obligation. He argued that a was also a matter
of self-defense, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,
was an un-scrupulous character, and therefore it was only a matter of
time before he took up with Al Qaida and gave them such weapons.
Novak did not succeed in convincing Church leaders-in fact, some
commentators reflected that his efforts might have had the opposite
effect. Novak's credibility in this argument was perhaps under-mined
by his employment at the American Enterprise Institute, heavily funded
by oil companies, some of whom began advertising in the Houston
Chronicle for em-ployees to work in Iraq even before the war began.
Administration officials denied for months that the goal of the war on
Iraq was related to oil. On June 4, 2003, however, The Guardian
reported the words of the U.S. deputy defense secretary, Paul
Wolfowitz (one of the major architects of the war). Wolfowitz had
earlier commented that the urgent reason given for the war, weapons of
mass destruction, was only a "bureaucratic excuse" for war. Now, at an
Asian security summit in Singapore he has declared openly that the
real reason for the war was oil: "Asked why a nuclear power such as
North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any
weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defense
minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference
between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no
choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
John Paul II has sought to distance the Catholic Church from George
Bush's idea of the manifest Christian destiny of the United States,
and especially to avoid the appearance of a clash of Christian
civilization against Islam. Zenit reported that in his Easter Sunday
message this year John Paul II "implored for the world's deliverance
from the peril of the tragic clash between cultures and religions."
The Pope also sent his message to terrorists: "Let there be an end to
the chain of hatred and terrorism which threatens the orderly
development of the human family." As he had done in his invitation to
religious leaders from many faiths to Assisi at the beginning of 2002,
he reached out again to leaders of other religions: "May faith and
love of God make the followers of every religion courageous builders
of under-standing and forgiveness, patient weavers of a fruitful
inter-religious dialogue, capable of inaugurating a new era of justice
and peace."
Catholic World News quoted the Latin-rite Bishop of Baghdad, Bishop
Jean-Benjamin Sleimaan as saying in the Italian daily La Repubblica
that the Pope's high-profile opposition to a war on Iraq has helped to
avoid a sort of Manichaeism that would set up an opposition between
the West and the East, in which Christianity is linked to the West and
Islam to the East.
While the Iraqi War II turned out to be "short," violations of "just
war" principles abounded. Bombing included such targets as an open
market and a hotel where the world's journalists were staying. While
most television and newspaper reports in the United States minimized
coverage of deaths and injuries to the Iraqi people, reports of many
civilian casualties did come out. CBS news reported on April 7 stories
of civilians pouring into hospitals in Baghdad, threatening to
over-whelm medical staff, and the damage inflicted by bombs which
targeted homes: "The old, the young, men and women alike, no one has
been spared. One hospital reported receiving 175 wounded by midday. A
crater is all that remains of four families and their
homes-obliterated by a massive bomb that dropped from the sky without
warning in the middle afternoon." The Canadian press carried a Red
Cross report of "incredible" levels of civilian casualties from
Nasiriyah, of a truckload of dismembered women and children arriving
at the hospital in Hilla from that village, their deaths the result of
"bombs, projectiles."
As talk escalated about a U. S. attack on Iraq, Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, began stating unequivocally that "The concept of a
'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church." His comments had been published as early as September 2002
and were repeated several times as war seemed imminent.
Cardinal Ratzinger recommended that the three religions who share a
heritage from Abraham return to the Ten Commandments to counteract the
violence of terrorism and war: "The Decalogue is not the private
property of Christians or Jews. It is a lofty expression of moral
reason that, as such, is also found in the wisdom of other cultures.
To refer again to the Decalogue might be essential precisely to
restore reason."
Preparation of a new shorter, simpler version of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church will soon begin and, according to reports and
interviews with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, it will probably include
revisions to clarify the section on just war, as the official version
has done against capital punishment in a civilized society. Cardinal
Ratzinger will head up the Commission to write the new catechism. In
an interview with Zenit on May 2, 2003, the Cardinal restated the
position of the Holy Father on the Iraq war (II) and on the question
of the possibility of a just war in today's world.: "There were not
sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of
the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions
that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking
ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a "just
war."
In almost every one of his addresses to groups large or small and in
each visit to other countries, such as his recent visit to Spain, John
Paul II has cried out for peace.
At the Ash Wednesday Mass this year the Pope reemphasized the theme
that peace comes with justice: "There will be no peace on earth while
the oppression of peoples, injustices and economic imbalances, which
still exist, endure." He insisted that changes in structures, economic
and otherwise, must come from conversion of hearts: "But for the
desired structural changes to take place, external initiatives and
interventions are not enough; what is needed above all is a joint
conversion of hearts to love."
In his Easter message the Holy Father drew attention not only to the
Iraq War, but to "the forgotten wars and protracted hostilities that
are causing deaths and injuries amid silence and neglect on the part
of considerable sectors of public opinion." The official Vatican
newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano carried the Pope's Easter message of
peace with a headline in very large letters, Pace (peace), taking up a
quarter of a page. He has asked Catholics to pray and do penance and
ask Christ for peace, a peace "founded on the solid pillars of love
and justice, truth and freedom."
Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, July-August 2003.
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2241 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
-----
"Now, did I want to go? Hell no."
-duke (duckgumbo@cox.net), aka PedophilEarl J Weber, 63
year old mateless, heirless biological failure
of Afton Oaks Apartment, Baton Rouge, on why
a Neocon chickenhawk like him pussied out of
the Vietnam War.
Contact duke's priest and ask
him why duke is such a racist:
http://www.stpatrickbr.org/
Father Gerard "Jerry" Martin
stpatrickbr<AT>bellsouth<DOT>net
Saint Patrick Catholic Church
12424 Brogdon Lane
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70816
.
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