This time next week we shall all be alive, in or out of Europe, in or out of the European Football Championship, and you may be excited, feeling disappointed or just as you are today. But the horrifying killing of Jo Cox reminds us that people are capable of making important issues matters of life and death and not simply opinions, convictions, values to freely live by. Our lives are challenged on important issues – but not to kill or die for.
Pax Christi has just written. It wants our interest in establishing world peace and looks at various areas of conflict, particularly peace in the Holy Land, the danger of nuclear weapons, the terrible and useless threat of Trident. Pax asks for our prayers for dismantling of barriers, physical and psychological, in the Holy Land, life in Gaza and a just peace for Palestine and Israel. It speaks of nuclear weapons and shows a poster “Trust in God Not Nuclear Weapons” and quotes a lady: “I have no faith in Trident because I have no faith in weapons of mass destruction. If we can ban chemical and biological weapons because of their indiscriminate function then I do not want my country to hold nuclear weapons.” Is she right?
Would you make a reasonable argument for our Trident submarine fleet, its estimated cost of £205 billion and the certainty that if we use this weapon millions of innocent people will be killed? How does killing innocent people solve the problem of evil governments? We must have self-defence, of course, but are weapons of mass destruction self-defence? There is an argument and good people make that argument. Can you argue both sides of the question? There are good arguments for Remain and Leave: can you make those two arguments? In any discussion we are more worth listening to if we know and acknowledge both sides of the debate. There is no deed for a shouting match. How does you family resolve issues? If only our society could, as well.
Our wonderful world we share . . . St John Paul II: “Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.”
God be with us.
Fr John
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