Dear Friends,
In light of the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, I share the thoughts of others. First, I share the thoughts of Fr. John Hollowell, a priest from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis:
We do not just offer “thoughts and prayers.” In the wake of two more shootings in our country, we will again see atheists come forward mocking Catholics for offering prayers for the victims and their families. We will be told some version of 'we don't need your prayers, we need action.' It is important here to note that Catholicism doesn't just offer thoughts and prayers. Just to name a few things, Catholicism offers:
- The foundational teaching that each person is created in the image and likeness of God, a notion that has helped create and shape the entire system of law in our country.
- Catholicism offers a blunt and crystal clear exposition on the sheer evil of terrorism
- Catholicism offers a robust teaching on the virtue of protecting innocent lives, even through the use of force
- Catholicism offers a King who can help give meaning to the otherwise completely disorienting experience of suffering who can handle our protests about the pain in our lives, and this King answers our cries for meaning by telling us, with great loves, from the Cross: “I suffered too. I am with you.”
- Catholicism offers teaching on both the right of a nation to monitor and regulate their borders while also talking about helping the alien in our midst
- Catholicism offers a world view that says we are to stand in solidarity with one another and care for each other, even laying down our very lives for one another if need be
In his most recent column, Archbishop Charles Chaput, the current Archbishop of Philadelphia, shares his testimony before the Senate in 1999 after the shooting at Columbine when he was the Archbishop of Denver:
The real problem [of Columbine-like violence in our culture] is in here, in us … In the last four decades we’ve created a culture that markets violence in dozens of different ways, seven days a week. It’s part of our social fabric. When we build our advertising campaigns on consumer selfishness and greed, and when money becomes the universal measure of value, how can we be surprised when our sense of community erodes? When we glorify and multiply guns, why are we shocked when kids use them?
When we answer murder with more violence in the death penalty, we put the state’s seal of approval on revenge. When the most dangerous place in the country is a mother’s womb and the unborn child can have his or her head crushed in an abortion, even in the process of being born, the body language of that message is that life isn’t sacred and may not be worth much at all. In fact, certain kinds of killing no longer even count officially as “killing.” Certain kinds of killing we enshrine as rights and protect by law. When we live this kind of contradiction, why are we surprised at the results?
The Columbine murders will mark my [Denver] community for years to come. They’re a wound felt by the entire country — but I don’t think they’ll be the last. We live in the most violent century in history. Nothing makes us immune from that violence except a relentless commitment to respect the sanctity of each human life, from womb to natural death. The civility and community we’ve built in this country are fragile. We’re losing them. In examining how and why our culture markets violence, I ask you not to stop with the symptoms. Look deeper.
Archbishop Chaput continues today: “The people using the guns in these loathsome incidents are moral agents with twisted hearts. And the twisting is done by the culture of sexual anarchy, personal excess, political hatreds, intellectual dishonesty, and perverted freedoms that we’ve systematically created over the past half-century. So I’ll say it again, 20 years later. Treating the symptoms in a culture of violence doesn’t work. We need to look deeper. Until we’re willing to do that, nothing fundamental will change.”
In Christ,
Fr. Matt