Letters to the Editor
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What a ghastly thing to read
I am a Roman Catholic, a reasonably devout one at that, and I am absolutely appalled at what my government is doing in my name. I do not understand how anyone could call him/herself a Christian (and you can start at the White House with all those "born again" types and work your way down) and agree with our government's behavior. The reading for today (Thursday in the third week of Lent) in the old liturgy is from Jeremiah, the famous "Temple Sermon". In the year 609 B.C., the prophet Jeremiah rebuked the people of Israel in Jerusalem for their misplaced sense of confidence that the merit of the Temple would somehow prevent God's wrath against their unacceptable behavior. The chapter as a whole presents a stunning prophetic censure of a misplaced emphasis on forms and structures (literally) instead of appropriate ethical and ritual behavior. It reminds me of nothing so much as how these modern hypocrits clothe themselves in the mantle of righteousness and then behave as monsters:
"Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Make your ways and your doings good: and I will dwell with you in this place. Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord [read: born again, born again, born again]. For if you will order well your ways and your doings: if you will execute judgment between and man and his neighbor, if you oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, and walk not after strange gods to your own hurt: I will dwell with you in this place, in the land which I gave to your fathers from the beginning and for evermore, saith the Lord almighty."
How are these so-called Christians following this teaching? Did I not read only yesterday more horror stories of how our military had taken entire families, men, women, children, the elderly, babies, and herded them into houses and shot them in cold blood? Have we not disappeared people off of the face of the earth and held them in secrecy and tortured them? Is not everything we have done in Iraq contrary to anything approaching justice? We are behaving like rapacious animals, we are anathema in the eyes of the world, and rightly so.
Far be it from me to pass judgment on another person. And I do not know what awaits me in the hereafter. But I'm pretty sure that Bush and Co. are going to be frying for all eternity for what they have done in the name of the United States of America and its people.