Saturday, April 23, 2022

The Moral Failure of God's Witness

FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill meet in Havana

Consider: If moral decency compels reason to reject 

the impulse of a tyrant to strike an unjustified conflict

what greater compulsion attends to the authority of a 

great religious leader in recognizing the need to condemn 

without equivocation the command of a political leader 

leading to destruction, pillage, rape and mass murder? 

At the most solemn and enduring memorial to peace 

and goodwill struck down by malevolent powers fearing 

its message -- but rising anew, yet another Shepherd 

has chosen politics over religion's obligation to invoke 

the thunder and lightening of its message of brotherly love. 

Preferring instead to speak soothingly of trust in one's 

neighbour, of the need to forgive and relent at the very time 

that neighbour assaults another and the victim's humanity 

is humbled and defiled with the aggressor unrepentant and 

forcing ongoing war, yet spared the indignity of censure. 

Following in the malodorous footsteps of a predecessor 

whose stench of cowering before the genocidal violence 

of an aggressor, who much preferred silence to censure as 

six million perished. Does the most venerable Christian 

conscience of the world so love its fascist murderers?

 

 

No comments: