“Catholic Schoolgirls Against The War” *

In Rome, on Easter morn, the Pope spoke about Iraq in his “Urbi et Orbi”. He spoke thusly on, “especially the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon and finally Tibet, all of which I encourage to seek solutions that will safeguard peace and the common good”. While the first latin high mass was celebrated, in more than a generation, at Saint Stephen, Cleveland on Easter morning, and in Chicago, at Holy Name, mass was interrupted by a demonstration, by a group calling themselves, the silly yet provocative, “Catholic Schoolgirls Against The War”. They squirted simulated blood, on themselves and others, and raised a ridiculous ruckus. The mass continued.

If they had hung nooses outside a black church, or spray painted swastikas on a synagogue, it would have gotten more notice and more disapprobation, malediction, and opprobrium and yet would have been of a less serious nature. A mass is to be continued, after beginning, even if under military fire. This is more than insult or vandalism; it is sacrilege. These people identify themselves as catholics? they act as if they were virulent anti-catholic bigots. For peace activists, they can very well be 1920s KKK crackers or any other group which hates catholicism. I was going to post on this, but after Easter week, and then I was sent a communiqué by electronique courier. Committing sacrilege at an Easter mass, is misguided, counterproductive, irrelevant and hateful. This was not advocating peace!! This was a hate crime. Some may applaud them, not I. I question if they are Catholic. To some only ex-Catholics are representative or worth notice. I am wary of people who identify themselves as christians, when I see them acting not in a christian manner.

If Cardinal George is, as they accuse, supporting bushjr, then a protest at the chancery or his residence would have been appropriate. This war BELONGS to bushjr and his cabal. To refer to the one honest and worthy statement that Colin Powell made to bushjr, when bushjr began his war machinations, "you break it, you own it". All protests should, be at least in some way, directed at bushjr. There has to have been a federal office building in downtown Chicago, in walking distance from the cathedral; but there would have been a police force there.

The Catholic Church in America has virtually no political power in the country. To push at the Catholic Church, so as to influence bushjr, is practically like pushing at an apple orchard to influence bushjr. It would be proper for the Catholic Church to denounce, in clear terms, this wretched war and the vile architects and “deciders”, though, how productive would it be? Still it might be necessary. It is doubtful, that bushjr would set up a Dachau or Gitmo for the Catholic hierarchy in his, supposed, last year of usurpation. The international church has shown when pressed by bushjr and rice, that they were against the war. The US came to Rome and pressed hard, and was rebuffed, rebuffed, although not by distinct denunciation. The point was: the US through bushjr and rice wanted a blessing†‡, and got squat, while, perhaps, most catholic americans sided with bushjr, the church, the universal church, did not!
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*The name of the group sounds reminiscent to some mocking, queer, parading groups. It is doubtful, that, many of them had been to mass any time recently, if at all. It was a group that anyone could join, anyone who disliked catholicism. I am sure it was not a closed group.
†John Paul the Great, when the words spoken are released, must have thoroughly disagreed and probably censured our american tyrant. To spare public scandal, those words said to that vacuous warmonger, that conversation is not known to us.
‡Rice, more recently, could not get an audience with Benedict. The deafening papal silence in favor of this war adventure is witness to their opposition, as was Thomas More’s to Henry VIII.