AmericanPapist Comments
As much as we all 'want peace' it's going to take more than "calling for it" if we define peace as "tranquilitas ordinis" and not merely the absence of warfare.
Calling for peace didn't stop the Serbian army from shelling helpless civilians and it isn't stopping the genocide in Darfur where one faction is armed and other other is defenseless.
Nor will disarming civilians the world over of light arms 'establish a just world order' and thus peace given the universal experience of the abuse of power by armed elites - be they mobsters, gangsters, or repressive regimes.
Gun control alone without a prior establishment of a culture of security always results in massacres of unarmed and thus defenseless civilians by ruthless minorities - and more often than not those rounded up first are Catholics.
Now in today's era where the Catholic Church can't even effect a political win against abortion in Catholic countries, to suggest we're going to achieve lasting peace by calling for unilateral disarmament of civilian populations, the withdrawl of US forces everywhere, and invocations for people who have proven themselves to be ruthless to "behave themselves" is simply ridiculous. It's like telling someone who's starving to "have a nice day!"; it feels good to wish it, but doesn't accomplish anything.
Certainly we can't expect the Pope to call for a crusade or demand the West start having babies and initiate a full mobilization to war footing, but if the goal is to maintain and extend self-control among peoples, the majority of whom are not guided by grace and the Gospel, one must rely on the tried and true means of "walls, warnings, and weapons" if only to give one space to effect a moral conversion: Just as the Vatican is surrounded by massive passive defenses, then civilized warnings against 'unauthorized access' and finally a cadre of highly trained and armed guards, so too society if similarly equipted could extend the tranquilitas ordinis needed as the sine qua non for moral conversion.
But to think that the same people who find it politically expedient to justify abortion - the intentional, VIOLENT killing of a completely defenseless, non-aggressive person for convenience' sake will harken to a Papal cry for peace among nations and peoples that is even more inconvenient to their appetites (sex, slavery, natural resources, economic advantage) and feelings (revenge, 'reconquistas', territorial ambition) is wishful thinking.
One need only look at the "peace movement"s open acceptance of dictatorships for the answer to what "the world" sees as an acceptible peace: the utter submission of a captive people to a ruthless overlord.
There's no marches in the streets of Europe to insist on Taiwan's independence, nor do Europeans and hip Americans march to restore Cubans' rights to freedom of assembly, religion, and the press.
No "bad news" in the state-controlled media = paradise on earth. But
Commenting by HaloScan
