Catholic silence on involvement in Middle East called ‘massive failure’

The issue the Bishop points out is a symptom, which stems from the fact that there has been little individual discernment on these important issues. One would think that the best course of action would be a comprehensive review of the state of Catechetics in the Conference. Unless people have been trained to step back and discern, or at least had some exposure to these Catholic Tools in practicum. It's in one ear and out the other. As an aside, I live in a geographic area on all sides covered by World-Class Jesuit Retreat Centres, but one would be hard pressed to find a course or retreat that teaches something as simple as the Examen. For those that recollect Jesuit Formation, it was used extensively for many years. But in my opinion died out in the 1980's. Result: Top-down Catholicism. Insufficient sense of connection to the Blessed Trinity, lack of perception of God's goodness and forgiveness, no sense of what what an authentic Catholic moral conscience is, and a lack of awareness as to the affects of Concupiscence, let alone articulate a prayer to God for help and strength.... Just my opinion...

I'll tell you about something else that seems to be a part of Protestant-Millenarian support of the American violations of "just war" teachings in the context of our policies regarding the Middle East: the complete failure of the Catholic Church in America to defend her own co-religionists from the persecutions they endure at the hands of the Zionist State. And it isn't just Catholic Palestinian Arabs, either: read the two chapters about Israel in William Dalrymple's expose of the disappearance from the so-called "Holy Land" of its Christian populations. In those two chapters of "To the Holy Mountain"--the only one of Dalrymple's books to be panned by American reviewers--he exposes the active persecution of Catholic and Orthodox institutions by representatives of the Zionist State.

I would like to unpack Bishop McElroy's comments and sort them into policy and strategy contexts. 1. "Bishop McElroy said there has been no sustained discussion or opposition in society as a whole, as two wars dragged on to become the longest in American history. 2. "He attributed the lack of discourse to the absence of a military draft and the subsequent distancing of the fighting from the consciousness of the people. 3. "The suffering is not here," he said. 4. "Paraphrasing historian David Kennedy, the bishop said, 'America has created a capacity to fight wars endlessly because the cost to U.S. society is small, not wrenching, in terms of casualties and as a portion of the U.S. economy'." 5. "All three popes opposed U.S. participation in these wars, he said, but "at all levels, the Catholic community has been virtually silent." 6. "The prophecy on the war issue has occurred in the Middle East, he said, where all parties have articulated that the region has been subjected to great tragedies, the bishop said." The theme throughout these enumerated excerpts from the Article is that war in the Middle East is a bad state of affairs and, by inference, the U.S. Policy objective, or desired end-state, is or should be peace there. That takes planning. A plan to achieve a policy objective is a collection of concrete steps known as a strategy. A strategy is not a series of steps, but a collection, because while one step should prepare for or enable another, a collection of such interdependent steps might consist in several parallel series. Because a strategy is concrete, it is necessarily contingent, subject to failure of one or more of its planned steps, and to unintended consequences even if the planned steps succeed as planned. And a strategy's very concreteness requires that the end-state toward which it is aimed be concretely recognizable, but not necessarily as concrete as a strategy. Excerpts 1, 5 and 6 all have to do with talking. Talking, whether it be in the form of "sustained discussion or opposition" or "popes opposed" or "prophesy on the war issue" is one step in a strategy, but a relatively low value one in terms of contributing to a recognizable end state at which to aim. Excerpts 2, 3 and 4 are causal speculations about why the talking step has not been executed. One has to acknowledge that talking helps to communicate a vision, which is necessary to formulate a recognizable end-state. If that is what is being advocated, then that is worth talking about, even if it is only a beginning step. But if peace is the objective, peace comes about as a consequence of enabling conditions which must be articulated and about which consent and consensus must be obtained. If that is what is being advocated, then much more content must be loaded into the talk. Attributing a lack of talking to the absence of a draft, as a single-factor cause, is, however, quite a stretch.