Enemy of My Enemy – Part II
Walter – Thanks for your reply. I have been a supporter of the Mises Institute in the past and agree it is an outstanding organization well worth supporting. It has made communications like ours possible and I will renew my support again.
In your reply, you made the statement that “religion can be per se evil only when it violates rights and that you cannot see your way to condemning religion for failing to oppose state evil.” I would ask, “What value are moral standards if we don’t speak out when Government violates the rights of others?” Are we to say that the Protestant and Catholic Church leaders of Germany and Italy were blameless for the atrocities of the Fascists when they never spoke out? Are we to say the Protestant and Catholic Church leaders of the United States were blameless for the interment of Japanese citizens in WWII because they did not speak out? Are we to say the Church leaders of the WWII allies are blameless for not speaking out about the fire-bombings of Germany and Japan?
I don’t see how the Churches can be blameless when not only were they silent about the carnage around them, but actively supported it during their weekly sermons. Remember Franz Jgersttter, the Austrian peasant who was recently beatified for refusing to fight for the Germans in World War II. As the newspaper the Independent wrote, “Pacifism may seem an obvious choice for a religion founded on loving one's neighbour as oneself and turning the other cheek, but millions of practising Christians fought on both sides during the Second World War, encouraged by army chaplains. So, to put a man on the road to sainthood because he was a pacifist, marks, according to Canon Paul Oestreicher of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, "a historic volte-face - there is no modern precedent".
Then there is Rev. George B. Zabelka, the Catholic chaplain for the Bomb Group who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Rev. Emmanuel McCarthy wrote an article about him that was posted on LewRockwell.com titled, “A Military Chaplain Repents.” Rev Zabelka made this statement in the article, “To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and a priest as I see it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in and to a world and a Christian Church that had asked for it – that had prepared the moral consciousness of humanity to do and to justify the unthinkable. I am sure there are Church documents around someplace bemoaning civilian deaths in modern war, and I am sure those in power in the church will drag them out to show that it was giving moral leadership during World War II to its membership. Well, I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the Church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best – at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them.” That quote and the entire article are burned in my memory. I keep a copy of it on my desk as a reminder of what always happens during wars.
During Vietnam, there was the great speech by Dr. Martin Luther King opposing the Vietnam War. He was widely criticized for making that speech and I do not remember leaders of any of the great Churches supporting him.
Then there is this quote from the movie “Kingdom of Heaven” in which King Baldwin states regarding a man’s responsibility in life, “A King may move a man, a father may claim a son, but remember that even when those who move you be Kings, or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God, you cannot say, ‘But I was told by others to do thus.’ Or that, ‘Virtue was not convenient at the time.’ This will not suffice. Remember that.” I realize this is fiction, but the point is still valid. Just as Leonard Read’s “Conscience of the Battlefield” is fiction but as powerful a statement about a person’s responsibility for their own actions as anything written.
Personally, I believe that not objecting to a great moral wrong is no different than supporting that wrong. In the case of Church leaders, who remain silent on issues like the Iraq War I believe the same can be said. Because of their silent support and the active support of military chaplains, young American men and women have killed thousands of innocent people who posed no threat to them. Because of their silent support many of these young men and women will spend a lifetime or perhaps eternity trying to understand and justify the horrors they participated in or witnessed.
Moral leadership requires individuals and groups to take difficult positions. That is why leadership is difficult. Until I see Church leaders on a daily basis supporting Life, Liberty, Property and the Individual I will find it impossible to believe they are the Enemy of the State.