Is there not something wrong in the Church when Christians, on both sides
of a battle line, are receiving the Body of Christ in Communion at 9 a.m. in
preparation for going out to kill each other at 11 a.m.? The fact that this practice has been in
the Church since the Constantinian revision of Christianity in the Fourth
Century and continues to be acceptable to this very hour, underlines both the
seriousness and urgency of the issue.
So, is this Eucharistic custom a proper use, a misuse or a sacrilegious
abuse of the Sacrament that Jesus instituted on the night before He was killed
by the ruling religious politicos and state functionaries in Jerusalem two
thousand years ago.
Remember, Jesus went to His death explicitly and unequivocally rejecting
violence, loving His enemies, praying for His persecutors and without a trace of
revenge, retaliation or retribution.
In His teachings, person and death He is superabundantly merciful to
those for whom justice would have insisted upon lethal justice. Is not the remembrance of these Gospel
truths about Our Lord's sacrifice on Golgotha not intimately and irrevocably
tied to His "Do this in remembrance of Me" command at the Last Supper? On top of this, it is at the First
Eucharistic celebration that Jesus mandates for His disciples His unique and new commandment: "Love one another as I have loved you." (John 13:34). In light of all this, how is it
spiritually, theologically or pastorally legitimate for Christians who are
planning to kill other Christians — or non-Christians — to participate in the
Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion?
Today, in the Catholic Church, with the introduction of laypersons as
extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, a new and giant step has been taken
down the 1700 year old road of putting Holy Communion at the service of
homicidal violence and enmity and the spirit that orchestrates them. I think the best way to appraise my
readers of this new homicide-justifying Eucharistic front is to quote briefly
from an article which is written by a Catholic U. S. Army Captain and which
appears in an August 2003 issue of a national Catholic magazine. The title of the article is "Calling for
Fire." The subtitle is "A Knight
Serving God and Country in Iraq."
As a
field artillery officer in the U.S. Army, there have been many times that I have
had to call for fire. This occurred
most recently last spring during Operation Iraqi Freedom and an attack by the
3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division on the city of
Al Hillah, in south central Iraq.
For me, the mission meant putting well-placed artillery rounds into Al
Hillah and controlling the fires of more than 40 artillery pieces in support of
the advancing infantry.
Prior
to leaving Fort Campbell, Ky., last February, I attended a one-day training
session to be an extra-ordinary minister of the Eucharist or EME. We learned how to conduct prayer
services and Communion services (in the absence of a priest).
At the
first Mass I attended in Iraq, I stood with my fellow leaders, soldiers, a few
photojournalists and the celebrity journalist Geraldo Rivera. Following
dismissal, the chaplain asked if there were any EMEs at Mass. I raised my hand. He impressed upon me
that my duties included performing the Catholic Communion service in the absence
of a priest. With that, he gave me
guidance on what I would need.
Before I left for Kuwait, my brother (a priest), gave me a pyx (for
carrying the consecrated Host). The priest (military chaplain) gave me the most
important gift of all. He placed in
my hands Hosts that had been consecrated at the Mass and said, "Go. God will be
your strength out there."
The
first occasion I had to conduct a service was after the battle of Karbala. My artillery battalion was there in
support of another unit. In the
morning, I realized it was a Sunday, the first Sunday I had the chance to
conduct a service. What I did not
realize was the number of people, both Catholics and non-Catholics, who would
show up. The Lord's Prayer brought
beaming smiles to all those present.
Catholics came forward to receive Holy Communion while others sat and
prayed quietly. Throughout the rest of Lent I continued to do what I could to
make Sunday seem like more than just another workday. In Baghdad, a priest from another
brigade came to celebrate Mass on Easter. He replenished my supply of Hosts and
sent me on my way.
Since then I have had the opportunity to perform a service for my brigade and/or battalion every Sunday and on Ascension Thursday. I was inspired to write this one night as I contemplated what I could do to make Pentecost a more meaningful celebration. I remembered that at Pentecost we call
on the fire of the Holy Spirit. I
realized that next Sunday I would "call for fire" in a whole new
way.
If this
account does not send shivers through the souls of all Catholic, Orthodox and
Protestant bishops who read it, then they better pinch themselves to see if they
have any spiritual life left in them.
A soldier running around a battlefield killing people with consecrated
Hosts in his pocket and knapsack or having consecrated Hosts waiting for him
back in his tent, so that when he is finished killing people he is able to
conduct Communion Services for his fellow killers, is not what the Eucharist is
about.
This is the Eucharist and
Communion being employed to divinize those very spirits that the Lord came to
earth to vanquish. It is the spirit
of Cain being cloaked in divine approval.
It is fratricide being given Christ's blessing. It is Jesus Christ, body and blood, soul
and divinity, word and deed being conscripted in order to religiously legitimize
the extreme antithesis of what He is, did and taught. It is the cacophonous false witness of a
nationalistic Christianity that subordinates the explicit and unequivocal
teachings of Jesus on violence and enmity to nation-state interests, as defined
by the ruling class of the moment.
It is Christian pietistic fervor stripped of Jesus' fundamental teachings
on violence, enmity and retaliation. It is Holy Communion as presented to the
world by Franz Josef Rarkowski, the Catholic Military Bishop of Germany, in his
1944 Lenten Pastoral, where he exhorts his flock to receive Communion in order
to have what it takes to go out and kill for Hitler and the nation: "They (the military chaplains) will
distribute the Bread of Life among you, and I am certain that the power of the
Lord will come over you and will give you the strength to give your best as
soldiers of the German Army for Fuhrer, Volk and
Vaterland."
But let me be transparently clear, lest an unwanted and unintended
misconception creeps in here and misdirects attention from the central concern
of this essay. In no way am I
criticizing or judging the young army captain who was commissioned by the Church
as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist. Nor, is there the slightest thought or
desire to criticize or judge any military person who received Communion from him
or from anyone else on the battlefield.
Those responsible in this matter are solely the bishops of the Church —
each individually and all collectively.
They and only they can formally permit enmity-filled, lethally hostile
groups of Christians, embarked on programs of victory through homicidal
violence, to receive Communion.
If
they did not ecclesiastically approve, justify and encourage it, this young army
captain and his fellow killers of fellow human beings, including fellow
Christians, could not participate in the Agape Meal on the killing fields or in
anticipation of premeditated human bloodletting. The lay military man or woman giving
Communion or receiving Communion before, during or after intentional
participation in the homicidal violence of war is not the person being called to
account here. The issue is
exclusively the bishops of the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches and
their willingness to allow this Sacrament, the Holy Mystery of the Lord's
Supper, to be used in a way that gives divine endorsement to a spirit whose lair
is the world of perpetual horror called hell.
"Beyond the fear and exhaustion is a sea of horror that surrounds the
soldier and assails his every sense," writes former Ranger, Paratrooper and West
Point instructor, Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, in his book, On
Killing. He continues:
Hear
the pitiful screams of the wounded and dying. Smell the butcher-house smells of feces,
blood, burned flesh and rotting decay, which combine into the awful stench of
death. Feel the shudder of the
ground as the very earth groans at the abuse of artillery and explosives, and
feel the last shiver of life and the flow of warm blood as friends die in your
arms.
William
Manchester in his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir
of the Pacific War, opens the door to truth a little, so that reality beyond
the hermetically sealed room of blinding war propaganda may be
seen:
You tripped
over strings of viscera fifteen feet long, over bodies which had been cut in
half at the waist. Legs and arms,
and heads bearing only necks, lay fifty feet from the closest torsos. As night fell the beachhead reeked with
the stench of burning flesh.
Of course
we need only look at the daily newspaper to realize that war is not what the
government's professional falsifiers present it as: An Iraqi woman sitting in a van with her
two daughters sees both their heads blown off without any warning (Boston Globe); an Iraqi father, standing
a few feet from his 33 year old daughter who has just received her Ph.D., sees
her heart literally pushed out of her body by a bomb that comes through the roof
but does not explode (London
Mirror). Is anything described
by Grossman, Manchester or the two newspaper stories not from the spirit that
resides in hell? Is anything
described not the ordinary, daily stuff of war? General William Tecumseh Sherman sums it
all up with brutal succinctness:
I am sick
and tired of war. Its glory is all
moonshine. It is only those who
have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who
cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is
hell.
Did Christ
come so His followers could raise "holy" hell on earth with clear
consciences? Did Jesus institute
the Eucharist [Communion] so His followers could derive from it the strength of mind and
soul to go out and kill other followers of His — or to kill non-followers of
I assume that what I am about to say will be considered a cultural breach
of good manners by Christian bishops and those who think bishops should not be
held publicly accountable by the Christian community for their public acts
within the Christian community.
But, sometimes there is no way to communicate a truth to those who live
by a false perception and an erroneous interpretation of reality, a perception
and an interpretation that are destroying people body and soul, other than by
risking being forever labeled strident.
Be that as it may, I and many, many other Christians and non-Christians
are "sick and tired" of watching bishops, O so cunningly, spiritually valorize
the horror that war brings into existence, by teaching that what Christian men
and women do for their side in war is somehow in compliance with the Will and
the Way of God as revealed by Jesus Christ.
I have watched for over 60 years
Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant bishops ceaselessly exchange the Glory of God,
made visible in the nonviolent Jesus Christ, for the moonshine of nationalistic
military glory. Worse I have
watched bishop after bishop, almost without exception, work diligently to make
militaristic moonshine more palatable to the sheep of their flocks by
artificially lacing it with the saccharine lie that this is a way of life and
death in conformity with the Way of life and death of "our Sweet
Jesus."
It has been said by many over many centuries of Church history that "the
road to hell is paved with miters."
How any one would know this is beyond me, since the final judgment takes
place and Gehenna subsists in realms of existence beyond time and space. But, what can be said with moral and
intellectual certainty is that over the last 1700 years of Church history "the
road to that manifestation of hell which is called war is paved with
miters." Indeed bishops of every
ilk have queued up in "holy" support of just about every side of every war
fought in the West over the last millennium and a half. Is it any wonder that I and many, many
others are "sick and tired" of watching this pitiable, contrived, morally feeble
and long-playing episcopal charade of justifying unspeakable evil in the name of
If this
infidelity were "merely" on the level of the oaths that men in some Churches
have to swear, in direct contradiction of Jesus' explicit teaching against oath
taking, before they are permitted to be ordained bishops, it would be a serious
but not soul-sickening matter.
However, utilizing the episcopal office to administer continuous doses of
the theologically sweetened moonshine of war to those Christians whose spiritual
life has been entrusted by Christ to one's care is altogether on a different
scale of "I will not obey."
Moonshine is a powerful drug that undermines right-mindedness. Sweet-tempered moonshine is poison,
because palatability guarantees lethally excessive consumption. When bishops become the spiritual
confectioners for war, by justifying in the name of Jesus homicidal violence and
enmity, then being "sick and tired" of what they are about should be the
automatic and minimum Christian response.
Unfortunately for the Church and for humanity, most Christians of most
Churches will find the article, "Calling for Fire" spiritually edifying. Likewise, most Christian bishops will
see nothing wrong with a man with consecrated Hosts running around a battlefield
killing people. Nor, will either
see anything amiss with going from killing enemy human beings to conducting
Communion services and receiving Holy Communion. The episcopacy and laity of practically
all Churches will experience no problem with any of this, because from the time
they themselves were lambs their shepherds were pumping artificially flavored,
spiritually sugared martial moonshine into them through every channel
available.
There really is nothing much more to say. The whole situation is sorrowfully
clear. However, there is zero
chance, barring some extraordinary act of divine intervention, that the bishops
of any of the mainline Churches of Christianity any place in the world will
change their minds and hearts and wills and behaviors on this matter of
militarized Eucharists. Too
addictive is spiritually sugarcoated military moonshine and too enticing and
enslaving are its totally perishable fruits. There is no way on earth that the
bishops of the Christian Churches are going to be able to perceive that they and
their predecessors have exchanged the Glory of the Cross for the moonshine of
the Cross turned upside-down, the sword.
There is no way, short of a miracle, that bishops and most members of
most Churches are going to grasp that the nonviolent love of friends and enemies
that Jesus embodies and teaches is vocational and not merely political,
tactical or philosophical; that it comes simultaneously to the Christian with
Christ's call to be His chosen disciple; that it is an irremovable dimension of
His command to "Follow Me."
However, as someone who believes in
miracles, let me conclude with a Gospel passage that Scripture scholars tell us
is intentionally constructed to echo and to repudiate as God's will and spirit a
story about Elijah found in 2 Kings 1:10-14. In this Old Testament story Elijah kills
his enemies on two occasions by the invocation, "Let fire come down from heaven
and destroy you." In the Gospel (Luke
9:51-56) two of the Apostles, two of the first bishops in the lineage of
Apostolic Succession, James and John, are indignant when a Samaritan village
does not allow Jesus, a Jew, to stay there for a rest. And so, overcome by that spirit that
resides in hell but relentlessly endeavors to take up residence in the human
heart, they say to Jesus, "Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
and burn them up?" But, Jesus
"turning, rebuked them and said, "You do not know what spirit it is you are made
of. The Son of Man came not to
destroy people's lives but to save them.'" --
Emmanuel
Charles McCarthy.
Gary G. Kohls, MD, Duluth, MN, for
Every Church A
Peace Church (www.ecapc.org)
See also History of War and Anti-War
24 December 2007
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