What message, I ask myself today, is Holy Sophia giving to the church, the world--to me--when the very same people who use my Catholic faith to attack gays and lesbians and to argue that women are less human than men also defend the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings with nuclear bombs on this anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima?
Just asking, as I read many of the astonishing responses to Tony Magliano's good article at National Catholic Reporter today, to Tom Fox's equally good statement, to NCR's recent editorial about the challenge of peace in our world today, and to Dennis Coday's "Morning Briefing" column today linking to these items.
Just asking, and praying, as I also mull over the words of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II:
No more war, war never again! Peace, it is peace which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind (Pope Paul VI, Address to the United Nations General Assembly [1965]).
Today, the scale and the horror of modern warfare - whether nuclear or not - makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations (John Paul II, Homily at Coventry Cathedral, 30 May 1982).
What kind of Catholics selectively cite papal statements to bash people on grounds of sexual orientation and to shove women to the margins, while throwing to the winds papal statements condemning the mass murder of people by nuclear weapons, I ask myself today, as I try to listen to Sophia's whispers to me on this anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima?
I'm not sure I hear any answer to my questions. Not from the Holy Spirit, that is.
I have been unable to track the source of the picture at the top of the posting, but several websites say that it's a picture of a girl who lived through the bombing of Nagasaki, but died as a result of the radiation she endured in the bombing.
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