Liturgy for Prayer Vigil at the Home Office, November 2024

Leader invites a few moments of silence and contemplation before the icon.

Opening Prayers

Leader	We pray for those who will spend time during our service handing out leaflets to the public. We ask that our message will reach the hearts of people of good will on this street today. Creator Spirit, wellspring of our lives, as the refreshing rain falls on the just and unjust alike,
All	Refresh us with your mercy, you who know our own injustice.
Leader	As the stream flows steadily on, defying all the odds of stone and water,
All	Flow over every boundary and border that separates us from each other.
Leader	As the waters of our baptism washed us and welcomed us,
All	Renew us now in newness of life and unity of love.

Hymn – “Tell Out, My Soul”

1 Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord! Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice; tender to me the promise of his Word; in God my Savior shall my heart rejoice.	3 Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his might! Powers and dominions lay their glory by. Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight, the hungry fed, the humble lifted high.
2 Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his name! Make known his might, the deeds his arm has done; his mercy sure, from age to age the same; his holy name, the Lord, the Mighty One.	4 Tell out, my soul, the glories of his Word! Firm is his promise, and his mercy sure. Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord to children's children and forevermore!
by Timothy Dudley-Smith

Psalm 69

A Save me, O God,

for the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in deep mire,

where there is no foothold;

B But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.

At an acceptable time, O God,

in the abundance of your steadfast love,

answer me.

A With your faithful help rescue me

from sinking in the mire;

let me be delivered from my enemies

and from the deep waters.

B Let heaven and earth praise him,

the seas and everything that moves in them.

For God will save Zion

and rebuild the cities of Judah;

A and his servants shall live there and possess it;

the children of his servants shall inherit it,

and those who love his name

shall live in it.

Prayers of Repentance

Leader: Loving Jesus, as a child in fear of your life, you were forced to seek refuge in Egypt. You know what it is like to be rejected, and to be an outsider. You call us to love our neighbours as ourselves, but we have hardened our hearts against strangers. All: Forgive us, and help us to change.

Leader: You told us to welcome strangers in our land, but we have hated, humiliated imprisoned, and killed those who have asked for our hospitality.

All: Forgive us, and help us to change.

Leader: We are called today to welcome those fleeing from war, famine and poverty. Open our hearts, and those of our neighbourhood, of our city, of our country and of our continent, to those who need shelter.

All: Forgive us, and help us to change.

The List of the Dead

The names and details which follow are those of people who have died trying to obtain sanctuary in Europe or the UK. We read them so as to honour their lives and mourn the injustice of their deaths. Many are unknown, but as Pope Francis said, ‘Every one has a name, a face and a story’. Today we mark those who died in November 2023.

After each entry, Leader says: Lord have mercy.

All respond: Christ, have mercy.

Date	Details
?	8 people from Gambia died of exhaustion during a 15-day boat journey from Gambia to the Canaries. Their bodies were thrown in the sea; 55 survived.
3/11	A boy died from exhaustion in hospital, having arrived at El Hierro (Spain) by boat from West Africa one day earlier; 83 survived.
4/11	134 people from Senegal, including at least 3 children and 6 women, drowned when a Canaries-bound boat on the way from Senegal sank off Nouadhibou (Morocco);15 191 survived. 2 people died of unknown cause, their bodies found on board a boat during rescue off the Canary island of El Hierro. 2 others died on the way to hospital. A man of 23 from Syria died, his body found by nature researchers in Białowieża Forest (Poland) near Narewka River at the Poland-Belarus border.
5/11	15 people were presumed drowned off Nouadhibou (Morocco), missing from 7 canoes on the way from Senegal to the Canaries. 13 people, including 2 children, from sub-Saharan Africa died of hunger and thirst on the way to Spain, their bodies in state of decay found in boats off Nouadhibou. A body, probably of a woman, wearing a white shirt & tied to a tire used as a life vest was found between rocks on the coast of Lampedusa (Italy).
6/11	Dinh Anh Nguyen, a man of 37 from Vietnam, was hit by a train near Calais (France) while walking on railway tracks in the dark. 182 people from Guinea, Mali, and Senegal drowned off Gadaye (Senegal) on the way from Bargny (Senegal) to the Canary Islands (Spain). 87 survived.
8/11	17 people from Algeria drowned when a boat went missing on the way to Murcia (Spain) after embarkation from Mostaganem (Algeria). 2 men, both aged around 30, drowned off Gadaye (Senegal) on the way to the Canary Islands, their bodies found at Diamalaye beach (Senegal); 87 survived.
9/11	A body was found by the Spanish Civil Guard, after a boat from West Africa arrived south of El Hierro (Spain); 79 survived. Mohammed Amine Saidat, a man of 26 from Morocco, was hit by a train in Bolzano (Italy) while looking for shelter for the night. He had camped near the site of his death.
10/11	A man’s body was found by journalists while reporting in the Kupa Riverbed in Netretić (Croatia) on the Croatia-Slovenia border.
11/11	7 people, including an infant, drowned, their bodies recovered in the Mediterranean Sea off Sfax (Tunisia) by the Tunisian National Guard. 2 people from sub-Saharan Africa drowned on the way from Sfax (Tunisia) to Lampedusa (Italy) when they fell from a small boat when rescuers neared; 67 survived.
12/11	A body was found by Belarus border guards in Belarus near the 82nd Belarusian pillar of the border fence with Latvia. A man of about 30 from sub-Saharan Africa drowned off Gadaye (Senegal) on the way to the Canary Islands, his body found at Déni Guedj Nord beach (Senegal); 87 survived. A man of 29 from Eritrea died of unknown causes on the way to Lampedusa (Italy), his body found on board a boat by Italian coast guards.
13/11	7 people from Liberia, Palestine, Syria and elsewhere, including a child and 2 women, drowned when a rubber boat on the way to Chios (Greece) sank in stormy weather off Cesme (Turkey); 6 survived. Abdelbassit Mohammad, a man of 22 from Sudan, had his throat slit during a brawl between migrants under the Mollien bridge in Calais; his attacker fled.
14/11	11 people from Algeria drowned in the Mediterranean sea, off Murcia (Spain) on the way from Mostaganem (Algeria). 16 people drowned when a boat hit rocks on the way from Senegal to the Canaries (Spain), their bodies found on a beach of Lagouera (Morocco).
15/11	A person from Gambia died of exhaustion during a 15-day boat journey from Gambia to the Canaries, their body found during rescue; 55 survived. 19 people from Algeria drowned when a boat missing on the way to the Balearic Islands (Spain) after embarkation from Algiers (Algeria).
Mid Nov.	A person died of unknown causes on the way from Africa to Lampedusa (Italy), buried in Palma on the island of Sicily.
16/11	19 people from Algeria drowned when a boat went missing on the way to the Balearic Islands (Spain) after embarkation from Algiers (Algeria).
17/11	35 people, including 2 children and 5 women, from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa, drowned, when a boat capsized in high waves south of Guelmim (Morcco) on the way to the Canaries; 10 survived. Baysal Recep, a man of 42, and Geçsöyler Mehmet Ali, a man of 37, both from Turkish Kurdistan, were hit by a truck and killed while walking on the emergency lane of the A16 near the Calais ferry terminal. An Albanian man of 37 died in hospital after attempting suicide in Brook House removal centre in Gatwick in fear of deportation.
19/11	18 people from north Africa went missing on the way to Alicante (Spain) after embarkation from Tipaza (Algeria).
20/11	A girl of 2 from Guinea died of unknown causes on a rescue ship on the way to port after shipwreck off Capo Ponente (Italy); 43 survived 8 people from sub-Saharan Africa, including 2 children, drowned on the way from Sfax (Tunisia) to Lampedusa (Italy) after shipwreck off Capo Ponente (Italy); 43 survived.
21/11	A woman of 36 drowned off Lampedusa (Italy) on the way from Sfax (Tunisia) when a metal boat sank during rescue; 46 people, including her sister, survived.
22/11	Mulu Wolde Tsehaye, a woman of 34, and Eskiel Sebsbea Tsgaye, a woman of 37, both from Ethiopia, and a man named Aman, drowned when a Britain-bound boat capsized after leaving a beach near Equihen-Plage (France); 58 survived.
26/11	Mikhail Zubchenko, a man of 24 from Russia, committed suicide after 14 months in Asylum Seekers Center in Echt (Netherland). He was a LGBT asylum seeker.
27/11	A person from Egypt was found frozen to death in the outskirts of Sofia (Bulgaria), part of group of 10 migrants; 9 survived.
29/11	A body was found on an inflatable boat during rescue off Gran Canaria (Spain); 50 survived. 2 people drowned, having been thrown into the sea near Cadiz (Spain) by traffickers using a fast drugs-smuggling boat from Morocco; 23 survived.

Taken from UNITED List of Refugee Deaths, produced by UNITED for Intercultural Action (UNITEDAgainstRefugeeDeaths.eu). Collated from the following sources: 7sur7be, AA, ADakar, AfricaNews, ANSA, APNews, Barrons, BBC, BFMTV, BNNnetwork, BTA, Caminando, CrossBorderForum, Czaban, Dakaractu, El Diario, EP, ECRE, EURonewsRS, Fatto, Francetvinfo, GlobalVoices, GPKGovBY, GuardeNatTN, Guardian, Hespress, InfoMigrants, IRR, Italy24, Kewoulu, Kirlant, Le Figaro, Le Monde, LGBTWorldBeside, LGBTasylumsupport, Limburger, L1Nieuws, LV, MarineSenegal, Mediapart, MP, NewArab, Nieuwsblad, NOS, NovayaGazeta, OKO, OpenMigration, ORF, Reuters, Rudaw, SeneNews, Tahalil, TheHuffFrance, TikiToki, TimisActu, VON, VecernjiHR, VoixDuNord, Xalima, XalimaSN.

All: Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.

Hymn – “Wait for the Lord”

by Communauté de Taizé

Wait for the Lord, whose day is near.

Wait for the Lord: keep watch, take heart! (x3)

Reading

(Mt. 24 3-14) When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Messiah!” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

‘Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But anyone who endures to the end will be saved. And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.’

Reflection by Barbara Kentish

Prayers of Intercession

Everyone present reads in turn. All say the response in bold.

We pray for the thousands of men, women and children, known and unknown, who set out to seek safety and a better life in Europe, but who were drowned in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Aegean, or the English Channel, and for those who mourn them. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

We pray for migrants who have met hostility or violence from authorities or vigilantes. We pray for those pushed back into the sea, those forced into the desert, and for those who persecute them. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

We pray for the protection of all people in refugee camps in Calais and elsewhere and the communities they build. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

We pray for refugees arriving in the UK and being placed in detention in poor conditions at arrival, and those made homeless on being granted asylum. We pray for their mental and physical well-being and for the recognition of their right to decent housing. We pray for Ibrahima Bah and all others imprisoned through unjust laws. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

We pray for the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, those working in this building, and all others who work to maintain border regimes, that they will be guided by their conscience to change policy. We pray for the end of the hostile environment, and the creation of safe, legal routes to claim asylum in this country. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

We pray for a resolution to the conflicts and oppression which displace people, for the end of the arms trade, and the realisation of the right of people to remain in their homes. We pray for the people of Congo, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, Ukraine, Russia, and Palestine. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

We pray for those who are fleeing the effects of climate change, with rising sea levels, drought, flood or crop failure, yet who have caused little or no damage to our climate; for those who make decisions about compensation, and those who continue to exploit the earth for profit. We ask forgiveness for our complicity in this. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

We pray for the safety and success of those serving aboard the rescue ships: the Sarah, the Maldusa, the Life Support, the Aurora, the Mission Lifeline, the Rise Above, the ResQ People, the Imara, the Nadir, the Geo Barents, the Sea Punk 1, the Sea Watch 5, the Humanity 1, the Ocean Viking, the Open Arms, the Louise Michel, and others; and of the volunteers of the Alarm Phone, and the reception teams on the Greek and Italian islands. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.    

We pray that you create in all of us the strength and resilience to resist unjust immigration laws and to support one another in this struggle. O Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you.

Leader invites those present to add other prayers if they wish.

Concluding Prayer

by the Baptist Union of Great Britain

All: God of all humanity,

When your people were enslaved and displaced

You led them to a land that they could call home.

When your people were in exile

Your promise was that one day

They would live in streets of play and laughter.

When your disciples were afraid and uncertain,

You spoke of your Father’s House

With mansions and places prepared.

We pray today for all those who have no place to call home,

Hearing the heart-cry of your word

For those who are without refuge.

Where shelter is ours to offer

Grant us the will and resolve to reflect the generosity of our Creator.

Where others stand in the way of those who need safe haven

May our cry for justice never falter.

May the idols of self-interest and economic gain

Never deflect us from the ways of your Kingdom.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Hymn – “Awake from your slumber!”

1 Awake from your slumber! Arise from your sleep! A new day is dawning for all those who weep. The people in darkness have seen a great light. The Lord of our longing has conquered the night. R	2 We are sons of the morning; we are daughters of day. The One who has loved us has brightened our way. The Lord of all kindness has called us to be a light for his people to set their hearts free. R
R Let us build the city of God. May our tears be turned into dancing! For the Lord, our light and our Love, has turned the night into day!	3 God is light; in him there is no darkness. Let us walk in his light, his children one and all. O comfort my people, make gentle your words, proclaim to my city the day of her birth. O city of gladness, now lift up your voice! proclaim the good tidings that all may rejoice! R
By Dan Schutte

All introduce themselves briefly. Any announcements are given.

[List produced by UNITED for Intercultural Action – campaign ‘Fortress Europe No More Deaths’

unitedagainstrefugeedeaths.eu – listofdeaths@unitedagainstracism.org]

Barbenheimer

Much has been made of the stark thematic contrast between the simultaneously released Barbie and Oppenheimer, to the point of receiving their own comical portmanteau: Barbenheimer. The differences are obvious: Barbie is a Toy-Story-esque fish-out-of-water comedy about a Barbie doll who must leave her pink and perfect ‘Barbieland’ in order to fix problems in the alternate and very imperfect ‘Real World’, whilst Oppenheimer is a biopic rooted in the very grey and male ‘Real World’, telling the story of the nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who became ‘father of the atomic bomb’. Despite these differences, however, the films share a basic theme: in both the protagonists peer through the mirage that pacifies the masses and become haunted by mortality and moral evil.

Early in Barbie, the protagonist ‘stereotypical Barbie’ interrupts the perpetual party of Barbieland by asking if any of the other Barbies had thoughts of death. The music stops as all the other Barbies look on aghast. This realisation opens up a world in which stereotypical Barbie becomes vulnerable to embodied frailties and real injustices. A similar sequence occurs in Oppenheimer at the Manhattan project’s first ‘Trinity’ test of the nuclear bomb. As it explodes, the silent awe of others is contrasted with Oppenheimer’s grim realisation that he has ‘become death, destroyer of worlds’. Consequently a vision of nuclear holocaust intrudes on Oppenheimer’s victory speech and his meeting with President Truman is polluted with Macbethian concerns that he has blood on his hands.

In both cases, however, the films hide how the weaknesses of their subjects crumble under the weight of this imposed subject matter.

When Barbie first interacts with a girl from the real world, she is condemned as a ‘fascist’ who promotes an oppressive view of women. After Barbie’s innocent tears and a tour of Barbieland, however, the same girl is won over by the ‘cool’ world of possibilities Barbie opens up for her. Then Barbie’s real origin in Bild Lilli, the sexually objectified 1950s play doll of the right-wing German tabloid Bild, conveniently goes unmentioned in the whitewashed origin story that closes the film/advert’s mission to reclaim Barbie as a pure idea open to endless reinvention.

Oppenheimer is similarly sanitized. The story is forced into that deeply stupid Hollywood genre of tortured genius films, which relentlessly refer to a protagonist’s intelligence rather than the dialogue and drama itself displaying any of its own. Lots of well-known ‘God doesn’t play dice’-type quotes are thus crammed together alongside shots of Oppenheimer staring at clever things: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, Picasso’s Woman Sitting with Crossed Arms, Stravinsky vinyls, Einstein on a walk, Oppenheimer’s own blackboard scribbles. Meanwhile, his weaknesses are largely absent. His serial infidelity is reduced to a tragic love-triangle where the women initiate every dalliance and his brazen disregard for human life is traded for a largely fictitious guilt complex - in reality, Oppenheimer always defended the nuclear bombing of Japan, he proposed poisoning ‘at least’ 500,000+ German civilians, and he disturbed colleagues by his prizefighter-like postTrinity test celebrations.

The film’s most revealing omission is Linus Pauling, a close friend who rejected Oppenheimer’s request to work on the Manhattan project because of his pacifist beliefs and who fell out with Oppenheimer after the latter unsuccessfully tried to seduce his wife, Ava. Instead, the one character to trouble Oppenheimer on screen with the idea that it is wrong to build a mass murder weapon (a misrepresented Isidor Isaac Rabi) is immediately won over by Oppenheimer’s ingenious ‘but, the Nazis...’ argument. This is because the director Christopher Nolan did not want to trouble consciences with the idea that we are not merely victims of circumstance, but that we choose our future, for better and for worse.

The truth is that Oppenheimer was not chosen by the US military to lead the project solely because of his scientific achievements - there were other more obvious choices - but because his hirer Leslie Groves saw in him an ‘overweening ambition’ that would get the job done at all costs. These costs are, of course, absent from the film, for to let such suffering speak would be to let truth itself speak. Rather than the deaths and screams of Japanese innocents, then, the film closes with an hour-long sermon on our hero’s technocratic attempts to limit nuclear arms proliferation and the state’s technocratic attempts to limit him. The problem is, the damage has already been done. As the film shows, Oppenheimer was a radical youth and in later life he acted on a deep fear of nuclear expansion. But ultimately the moral sense of his life was mortally wounded when he sought to murder the innocent for career and country: a tragedy even greater than the lives lost.

Barbie exhibits a similar moral compromise, but this time it doesn’t center around the protagonist - after all, Barbie is a doll with no soul to sell - but with the film’s director, Greta Gerwig. A darling of independent cinema, the director, writer, and actor has been skewing mainstream for a while now, having progressed from writing and acting on low-budget mumblecore films such as Frances Ha (excellent) and Mistress America (OK), which praise authenticity to the point at which it collides painfully with our culture’s inauthenticity. Her subsequent work directing Lady Bird and Little Women lands a softer blow, but is still committed to resisting the ideological and economic oppression of women. Barbie, however, plays nice, especially cutting back on economic critiques. And while it references the Barbie brand’s commodification of the female body, the punches at Mattell Corp are carefully pulled. This is not to say it isn’t a funny and intelligent film.

Barbie's narrative stages cleverly track life stages. The opening Barbieland sequence is innocent childhood play: girls play dress up and boys play fighting. Then, like adolescents, when Barbie and Ken go into the ‘Real World’, they discover ‘Patriarchy’. Whilst young Ken-men wield this power, Barbie-women are enslaved by it, until an older enlightened Real World woman injects a strong dose of feminist critical theory, enlightening the enslaved Barbie dolls. Here, however, the story becomes unmoored as the answer of what to do about it is exchanged for a cheap joke: the Barbie dolls must flirt their way to power. A final coda tries to redress this absence but the film’s answer to women’s liberation is abstract self-actualization, without any collective sense of how we can address injustices. This ignores that self-actualization is so often denied to women by the modern West’s ‘feminization of poverty’ and gender-based violence. Again, Hollywood keeps such realities well from view and proposes the abstract, atomized self as the solution.

Ultimately then, both Gerwig and Oppenheimer prove that while we may attempt to wield the state-capitalist complex to our own will, ultimately the system can and will only wield us, as it continues to churn out all those Barbies and bombs.

Our Stand

Many of our readers ask, “What is the stand of the Catholic Worker in regard to the present war?” They are thinking as they ask the question, of course, of the stand we took during the Spanish civil war. We repeat, that as in the Ethiopian war, the Spanish war, the Japanese and Chinese war, the Russian-Finnish war–so in the present war we stand unalterably opposed to war as a means of saving “Christianity,” “civilization,” “democracy.” We do not believe that they can be saved by these means.

For eight years we have been opposing the use of force–in the labor movement, in the class struggle, as well as in the struggles between countries.

Chesterton in writing about Pacifism (to which he stood opposed) said that there were “the peacemakers who inherited the beatitude, and the peacemongers who profaned the temple by selling doves.” We stand at the present time with the Communists, who are also opposing war. It happens at this moment (perhaps the line will change next week as it is wavering now), that the party line so dictates this policy. But we consider that we have inherited the Beatitude and that our duty is clear. The Sermon on the Mount is our Christian manifesto.

Many Catholics oppose the use of the word pacifism. But Father Stratmann, O.P., writes: “The triumph of Pacifism, the condemnation of war, and the declaration of passive resistance, is just as little opposed to tradition as was the attitude of the Church towards slavery or serfdom, or the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, or the Infallibility of the Pope. Only he who does not realize the wonder of the Church and her life in Christ, can be disturbed that her progress is impeded–not he who believes in Christ and His Church.”

In various issues of the Catholic Worker, we have reaffirmed this stand. We have quoted the Pope on the “fallacy of an armed peace.” We have quoted Pope Pius XI, who urged the press and the pulpit to oppose increased armaments (adding sadly, “and up to this time our voice has not been heard”). We quote Bishop Duffy of Buffalo in this issue, who stands out alone in opposing Roosevelt’s gigantic preparedness program.

Theologians have laid down conditions for a just war (Monsignor Barry O’Toole is writing on these conditions in the last eight issues), and many modern writers, clerical and lay, hold that these conditions are impossible of fulfillment in these present times of bombardment of civilians, open cities, the use of poison gas, etc. Fr. Stratmann, in his book, The Church and War, speaks of how “many fervent Catholics are awaiting a moral definition about war, for a decisive word as to its immorality … That the Church should forbid war belongs to those things of which our Lord says: ‘I have many things to say unto you but you cannot hear them now’.” And how agonizingly true is it when we consider the millions in Europe and China defending with their lives and at untold suffering, believing it the only way their country, their families, their institution and their Faith.

Prayer and Penance

Instead of gearing ourselves in this country for a gigantic production of death-dealing bombers and men trained to kill, we should be producing food, medical supplies, ambulances, doctors and nurses for the works of mercy, to heal and rebuild a shattered world. Already there is famine in China. And we are still curtailing production in agriculture, thinking in terms of “price,” instead of human needs. We do not take care of our own unemployed and hungry millions in city and country, let alone those beyond the seas. There is prejudice in our own country towards Jews, Negroes, Mexicans, Filipinos and others, a sin crying to Heaven for punishment.

“And if we are invaded” is another question asked. We say again that we are opposed to all but the use of non-violent means to resist such an invader.

At a meeting of the Catholic Worker when Maritain spoke a few weeks ago, the question was asked: "What other means are there besides the use of an even greater force than that of the enemy.” Mrs. De Bethune, who has a son in Belgium and a daughter with two small babies in Holland, spoke up from where she was sitting: “Prayer and penance,” she said, recalling what to all should have first come to mind. There had been little mention of it made that evening.

During the Franco-Prussian war, Bernadette considered the Prussians the servants of God. When the Maccabees were being slain, one by one, in defense of their faith, they each testified that they were suffering for the sins of their race. How many Christians think of Hitler or Stalin in this way, as “the servant of God.” Do they remember them as temples of the Holy Ghost, creatures made to the image and likeness of God, two human beings for whom Christ dies on the Cross? Are they praying for them–with love and pity?

The Pure Means of Love

We are urging what is a seeming impossibility–a training to the use of non-violent means of opposing injustice, servitude and a deprivation of the means of holding fast to the Faith. It is again the Folly of the Cross. But how else is the Word of God to be kept alive in the world. That Word is Love, and we are bidden to love God and to love one another. It is the whole law, it is all of life. Nothing else matters. Can we do this best in the midst of such horror as has been going on these past months by killing, or by offering our lives for our brothers?

It is hard to write so in times like these when millions are doing what they consider their duty, what is “good” for them to do. But if the Catholic press does not uphold the better way, the counsels of perfection will be lost to the world.

There are many who consider that we are approaching the end of the world, but what are two thousand years in the history of the world? We are still in the beginnings of Christianity. It is true that we are at the end of an era, and we are probably seeing the death throes of capitalism.

“Just as slavery was only put down after hundreds of years of labor by Christian men, so war will never be done away with, or even limited, but by an army of Peace workers who never cease their labors.”

Preparation Must Take In the Whole Man

It is good to conclude with the words of Father Stratmann:

“No young man should consider himself superior to his companion who obeys the call to arms. Yes, he may be very much his inferior for there is a poor, feeble, unmanly pacifism without any strength or greatness, a compulsory pacifism from bodily weakness, or a sham pacifism from cowardice. Such are contemptible and it gives one food for thought that one of the young men of the other camp, Max Boudy says: ‘I have never yet found a pacifist whose pacifism inspired him with such inner beauty as I have found in several men for whom war, under certain circumstances, was a reasonable, justifiable, if tragic necessity.’ Such remarks must be taken seriously. They impose inner and outer obligations. If it is not to be a bloodless intellectualism or a weak, cowardly quietism, or a luxurious epicureanism–pacifism must lay very great stress on bodily discipline, on culture, on bodily and mental development.

“More than all, he who opposes war must be inwardly clean. His passion for justice must not be tainted by hidden uncleanness. As long as pacifists are in the minority, let them begin with a steady fight against all that is evil in themselves.”