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Friday, June 3, 2005 | ||
Fighting for peace and freedom
Contributing Writer A new peace group has been organized in the local area for the purpose of building opposition to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, hooray for them. In fact, I received an invitation to attend one of the early meetings. I declined. How, one might ask, can you decline to attend a meeting about peace? Its not that I am for war. Who, in their right mind, I ask, is for war? During the entire time that I served in the Marine Corps, I never met a Marine who was for war. There are, in my congregation, quite a number of veterans, both men and women, who served in the military many of them in combat and we have three men in Iraq today. Not one of them is for war. I hate war. I hate what war does to people. I hate the deaths, the maimings, the brutality, the violence, the waste. Everyone I know hates war. In a perfect world, there would be no need for armies, navies, air forces, or peace groups because, in that utopian existence, there would be no wars. In a perfect world, there would be no dictators, no terrorists, no mass graves, no concentration camps, no invasions, no 9/11s, no attacks on the Pentagon, no Flight 93s crashing into a field in Pennsylvania, no widows, no orphans. People think, because I am a priest, I live in an ivory tower far removed from the real world. They couldnt be more wrong. As a priest, I have seen in my 35 years of ministry an abundance of wrongdoing, rage, violence, drug addiction, alcoholism, adultery, child molestation, murders, rapes, shootings, and stabbings. As a social worker in an earlier stage of life, I have seen five-year-old children prostituted, seven-year-old girls burned to the bone by wicked parents, infants shaken to death, children beaten so badly they sustained brain damage, and children starved to the point that, in their hunger, they followed around a cat and ate its feces. My 16 years as a volunteer law enforcement chaplain has added to my experience that the world is filled with evil, hatred, and violence. As, as much as Id like to be able to visualize peace, I simply cant because there is no probability of peace because there are dangerous people everywhere. Id like to be able to leave the keys in my car when I go shopping. Id like to sleep with the doors unlocked. Id like for my wife to be able to go alone to the malls at night without any worries. Id like for my four small granddaughters and my three grandsons to be able to go anywhere all by themselves to play and enjoy life without fear of predators. In a perfect world, they could. I wish we didnt have any need for the police. In a perfect world, we wouldnt. I hate war, but I hate worse the evil and devastation visited on peaceful peoples by the tyrants and fanatics who, unchecked, would kill hundreds of millions of innocents. I spoke with a person once who believed that the police didnt have a need to carry a firearm. I guess he just wanted the cops to visualize crime-free communities. Such thinking, in my opinion, leads not to peace but to oppression, the surrender of freedom, and the rule of thugs. If the peace advocates of the 1930s and 40s had been able to have their way, Japan would today rule Asia and the Pacific and Nazism would dominate from Siberia to England to South Africa. If fact, Franklin D. Roosevelt won an election by promising to keep America out of the war in Europe. If World War II had not been fought, then, sooner or later, following the conquest of Asia and Europe, the Axis forces would have invaded American soil and the swastika or the rising sun would flutter in the breeze instead of the Stars and Stripes. I love peace. I long for peace. I pray for peace. I serve the Prince of Peace. But, until the day comes when crime and war are no more, I will give thanks to God for the brave and courageous people who take up arms so that the helpless and powerless may have a hope against the ruthless and the relentless. I will thank God for those who leave the safety of their home and land and put their own lives at terrible risk so that we may be safe, secure, and free; even free, if we like, to join a peace group.
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