Below is a reflection from Father Charles McCarthy, a Melkite priest, that is the Director of the Center for Christian Nonviolence. www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org

“Below is a photograph of an Iraqi family, exactly like the Holy Family, struggling to escape the energy of the hideous and heinous spirit that posed Herod and that possesses politicians, whether men or women, to massacre children in order to protect or advance their own political and economic interests or the economic interests of those to whom they owe their political power. What the Churches and Church leaders of Christianity should be asking themselves on the Feast of the Holy Innocents is whether they and their Churches by withdrawing their allegiance from Jesus and His teaching of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies and giving it instead to some one or another of the humanly devised Christian just war fantasies, have done far, far more to proclaim and make flesh in this world the spirit that filled Herod two thousand years ago rather than the Spirit that filled Jesus two thousand years ago—and continues to fill Him to this very instant.

Leslie Stahl national TV reporter: ‘We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean that is more children than died at Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?’

Secretary of State Madeline Albright: ‘The price, we think the price was worth it.’

What the world needs is to replace Herod with a fresh face. That it needs Churches, their leaders and people, to return to fidelity to the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent of friends and enemies is off the table for consideration in Rome, Constantinople, Geneva and Canterbury.”

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

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