Peace in our time
“When will the governments realize? It’s got to be funky, sexy ladies.”
—Flight of the Conchords, from their “blondes not bombs” peace proposal
Dan McKanan interview about the Catholic Worker movement
Here’s an interview with Dan McKanan, author of Touching the World and The Catholic Worker After Dorothy, about the Catholic Worker movement. I think everything he says about the CW is dead on. I can’t find a page about this anywhere, but here’s the mp3: Link
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Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke
Interview with Christopher Lydon about his new WWII book. I love Baker, Lydon, and anything that seriously considers that war might be bad. So I’m looking forward to reading the book and hearing the interview.
Dorothy Day, the editor of the Catholic Worker, wrote an editorial called “Our Stand.†“As in the Ethiopian war, the Spanish war, the Japanese and Chinese war, the Russian-Finnish war — so in the present war we stand unalterably opposed to the use of war as a means of saving ‘Christianity,’ ‘civilization,’ ‘democracy.’†She urged a nonviolent opposition to injustice and servitude: She called it the Folly of the Cross.
“Where’s the Business Model for News, People?”
Jay Rosen’s latest meditation on the press. Short answer: There doesn’t seem to be one.
Meanwhile, at the Orange County Catholic Worker
OC Register:
The increase in homeless families in our local armories prompted CHAT-H public health nurse Paul Leon to create a new model program called Families and Children of Tomorrow, targeting children in what he says will be a first-of-its-kind model focusing exclusively on emergency shelter services for the homeless.
Launched yesterday to coordinate with the closure of the armories, the model program is helping five families initially and is housed in the newly remodeled Orange County Catholic Worker’s Isaiah House in Santa Ana, which re-opened yesterday.
From the hiding-your-light-under-a-bushel dept.
Why did the pope avoid addressing the Iraq War? I’ve seen essentially nothing about the fact that the pope failed to mention the war, despite many Catholics asking him to do so.
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton:
In 1991 John Paul II repeated the cry of Paul the VI in an encyclical letter, condemning the 1991 Iraq war. After that war there were over 12 years of sanctions that brought about the death of 1.5 million Iraqis, half of whom were children. This invasion has brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands more and made refugee or displaced 4 million. We’ve had thousands of U.S. soldiers killed, even more veterans commit suicide and tens of thousands of casualties. That’s why John Paul II condemned the 1991 war and pleaded that the second one not start.
Catholic Worker Frank Cordaro:
On birth control and abortion the Pope tells Catholics: you have to agree with me. But with the Vatican’s stated stance on this war — that they are against it — isn’t backed up. The Pope and the U.S. Bishops have got to let U.S. Catholics in the military, who agree with Pope John Paul II that the war in Iraq is unjust, know that the Catholic Church will support them as conscientious objectors.