c-Blog: Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War

March 24, 2008

Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War

" . . . disrupted an Easter Mass on Sunday, shouting and squirting fake blood on themselves and parishioners in a packed auditorium." Ok, they're not actually schoolgirls; that's just what the activists call themselves.

"Speaking after the service, [Cardinal] George said, 'We should all work for peace, but not by interrupting the worship of God.'" (More here.)

I was under the impression that actions such as working for peace actually are the worship of god (as opposed to, e.g., mere words unaccompanied by actions)? (Assuming the sermon interrupted did even actually address any of the great evils of our times?)

Guess Cardinal George's god isn't as evolved as mine? -- scary, 'cause I don't even have one.

One attendee complained about the possible effect on children present. I concur; but I'd like to know what he's done about the deaths of over a million Iraqis, likely including at least tens of thousands of Iraqi children.

6 comments:

UnknownMarch 24, 2008 at 1:17 AM
And tell me exactly how this advances the cause for peace? It really doesn't and was a childish, stupid act that does nothing to end the war in Iraq. The Church has been a leading voice in opposition to the war in Iraq, so I fail to see the point in protesting during a mass.

One a secondary note I find it quite hypocritical to ask what anyone has done about humanitarian disaster in Iraq when, quite frankly, I highly doubt you even have the moral high ground.

I can promise you that, other than bitching about it, you really haven't done anything at all. Honestly, no one has. I am sure you feel otherwise. Maybe you would tell me how you went to anti-war protests or that you post on this blog documenting the tragedy that continues to happen in Iraq, but that isn't much. In fact, the Church has done more to oppose this war then you ever have. I find it ironic that an agnostic, such as myself, is defending the church against hypocrites inside it and against fellow secularist from out.
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AnonymousMarch 24, 2008 at 8:25 AM
what could the cardinal do? nothing, this country could care less on what he has to say. What happened on sunday was disrespectful and the wrong place to protest. It is one thing to disprespect the cardinal for supposedly not making an effort and its another to disrespect the worship time of the others whom had nothing to do with his actions. A protest should have been kept outside the church and not durring the worship. Dousing people with fake blood was totally uncalled for. I am highly against the war myself but I would never disrespect the religous services of others. Those people are not against the war, they are sick and looking for attention. I categorize them along with those fools that go to funerals and disrupt the greiving process.
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AnonymousMarch 24, 2008 at 8:48 AM
Where are these girls, can't find them on the web and I'm horny... Catholic Schoolgirls are the best I hear.
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LidofidoMarch 24, 2008 at 9:42 AM
How smug of you to assume that person quoted hasn't been doing anything in their power to help bring the war to a peaceful conclusion.

I rarely, if ever agree with the Catholic Church. However I also have the sense to protest when it's appropriate, in a venue that will spark the most difference - hitting some churchgoers on what THEY would consider one of the holiest days of the year will do nothing for your cause, and will more than likely turn them against such things. I also have the decency to respect their beliefs - I have no interest in them, but last time I checked, you can't just pick and chose who to censor and who to allow - you let it all through and filter it YOURSELF. The moment it crosses the line and someone actually tells me what to do is when I'll go all up in arms - if I had been in the congregation and one of those protesters had gotten me in the face with whatever the hell that liquid they were tossing around was, that's it, a line has been crossed.
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c.March 24, 2008 at 10:09 AM
Ok everybody. First, I agree with those of you who feel this protest action was inappropriate and possibly ineffectual.

However, the bigger evil in my view is not the fake blood; it's the real blood; and I am very concerned that so many U.S. citizens remain uninformed and quiescent about the war, among other issues.

I'd also like to defend myself so far as to say that, although I'd rather not go into the details here, since before the Iraq invasion, I have been more active and I hope more effectual in my efforts against the war than ryan seems to imagine.

Finally, for everyone's information, here's what I just found regarding the Catholic Church's opposition to the Iraq war (from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_against_war_on_Iraq ), something I admit I'm not knowledgeable about: "The Holy See took a firm stance against the U.S. plan to invade Iraq. Pope John Paul II's special envoy, Pío Cardinal Laghi, was sent by the Church to talk with George W. Bush to express opposition to the war on Iraq. The Catholic Church said that it was up to the United Nations to solve the international conflict through diplomacy. According to the Church, the Iraq war, and indeed most modern wars, did not satisfy the just war requirements set by St. Augustine of Hippo and other theologians. The method of total war (i.e. any non accidental attacks on non combatants, or civilian infrastructure), which has been used in most modern wars since the American Civil War and which was used in Iraq, are not permitted. The Church was also worried of [sic] the fate of the Chaldean Catholics of Iraq. The Vatican worried that they might see the same destruction as happened to the Churches and Monasteries after the war in Kosovo. The Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Jean Louis Tauran, said that only the UN can decide on a military attack against Iraq, because a unilateral war would be a 'crime against peace and a crime against international law'. The Cardinal Secretary of State of the Vatican, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, indicated that only the United Nations Security Council had the power to approve an attack in self-defense, and only in case of a previous aggression. His opinion was that the attack on Iraq did not fall into this category and that a unilateral aggression would be a 'crime against peace and a violation of the Geneva Convention'."
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AnonymousMarch 24, 2008 at 11:00 PM
May I point out that Wikipedia is not a valid resource for information and that more liable proof would be necessary to prove that point.
Besides that fact, the Catholic Church has been strongly opposed to the war since it started. I think that what these six people did was highly inappropriate and that if they wanted to make a point, they did not choose the right place to do it. Easter is one of the holiest days of the year for Catholics and this was so highly incongruous that it disgusts me.
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Re- this blog:

Thoughts for the year or whatever, in no particular order:

What a huge debt this nation owes to its “troublemakers.” From Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King, Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore. Yet it is often only with hindsight that we can distinguish those troublemakers who brought us to our senses from those who were simply troublemakers. Prudence, and respect for the constitutional rights to free speech and free association, therefore dictate that the legal system cut all non-violent protesters a fair amount of slack.
– Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Papineau v. Parmley, 465 F.3d 46 (2d Cir. 2006).

I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.
– Jason "Jay" Gould, per Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States Vol. 2: From the Founding of the A. F. of L. to the Emergence of American Imperialism, P. 51 (1998, 2d ed.).

On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.
– Stewart Brand to Steve Wozniak, at the first Hacker's Conference in 1984, per Roger Clarke.

A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking.
– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

Knowledge is power.
– Sir Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations, Of Heresies, 1597.

A balance of power requires a balance of knowledge.
– moi (pre- 2000).

. . . Napoleon . . . said that it wasn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered.
– attributed by PRWatch to Martin A. Lee & Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1991), p. xvii.

The infowar is the new class war; and information is the new wealth.
– moi (2010).

Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who give up without a fight.
– "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1961), script by Irwin Allen & Charles Bennett.

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? . . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
– Hermann Goering, per Nuremberg Diary (Farrar, Straus & Co 1947), by Gustave Gilbert

The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous.
– George Orwell, 1984.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . .
– Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit (South End Press, 2002; originally published 1993).

Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.
– Julian Assange, IQ.ORG, "Witnessing," Wed 03 Jan 2007.

I used to be concerned about this mass audience thing . . . not anymore. There are overlapping circles of activity and . . . . It doesn't matter what the volume is . . . These circles are not sealed off from each other, they affect each other.
– Yvonne Rainer, in an interview by Lyn Blumenthal for "Women with a Past," Program Six from the series, What Does She Want (VHS 1987, Video Data Bank).

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
– John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1919).

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
– James Madison, Independent Journal, Wednesday, February 6, 1788, The Federalist.

[W]e forgot that the question is NOT, how do we get good people into power. The question is, how do we limit the damage the powerful can do to us?
– Chris Hedges, "The Failure of the Liberal Class in the United States," address to the Poverty Scholars Program, April 10, 2010.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
– Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1977).

In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ca. 500 B.C.

The opposite of good is not evil; it's apathy.
– Cindy Sheehan in her speech to the Veterans for Peace on August 5, 2005, just before she began her first vigil outside of Pres. G.W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX; see vimeo; see also HuffPo.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That's what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow's voice?
– Wallace Stevens, The Man on the Dump (1923).

It's class warfare, [and] my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.
– Warren Buffet, CNN Interview, May 25 2005, suggesting we need to raise taxes on the rich.

The past is never dead. It's not even past.
– William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, Act I, scene iii (1951).

Cui bono (To whose benefit)?
– attributed by Marcus Tullius Cicero to Lucius Cassius Longina Ravilla, ca. 125 B.C.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
– Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848), ch. 1 "Physiology of Plunder."

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
– Noel Coward (1899-1973) (numerous sites attribute this to Coward, but I've found none that provides a more precise citation).

[T]he hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
– Pres. John F. Kennedy, remarks in Bonn, West Germany, at the signing of a charter establishing the German Peace Corps, June 24, 1963, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, P. 503, probably based on a passage from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.
– George Orwell, 1984 (1949).

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
– H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, vol. 2, chapter 41, p. 594 (1921).

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is Enemy Action.
– Ian Fleming in Goldfinger (1959), as spoken by James Bond's eponymous adversary.

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.
– attributed to Marshall McLuhan, http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/poster.html.

"Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."

– Joseph Heller, Catch 22, Ch. 39, P. 407 (Simon & Schuster, 50th Anniversary Ed., 2011).

They'd rather some people die for your mistake, than that they lived, but that they lacked a leader.

– David Mamet, script for Hoffa (1992).

It was too late to prevent the great Fall, but it was still possible, at least, to cut short the intermediate period of chaos.
– Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation, P. 87 (ed. Bantam June, 2004; first published 1953).

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
– Abraham Lincoln (1805-1865).

My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
– William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (1883-1963) (I don't own this and find no online source that mentions where it was published; pls help if you can).

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke (1729-1797; see link re- variants and possible misattribution).

I consider it completely unimportant who . . . will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this: who will count the votes, and how.
– Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), per the Memoirs of Stalin's Secretary.

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

– Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948).

HECATE: And you all know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.
– W. Shakespeare, Macbeth (ca. 1606), Act II, scene v, MIT's Moby Ed.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
– Frederick Douglass, “West India Emancipation" speech, Aug. 3, 1857.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
– Margaret Mead (1901-1978).

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
– Che Guevara, Intercontinental Press (Vol. 3 January - April 1965); also in Che Guevara speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1967).

The United States is the only nation in history to go from barbarism to decadence without any civilization in between.
– Norman O. Brown, Closing Time (described as a graffito in Paris, May 1968; p. 29, ed. Vintage Books, 1974).

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" (1997?)

We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, Chapter III, “Beauty” (1836).

Let’s do something, while we have the chance! It’s not every day that we are needed. . . . Let us make the most of it before it is too late!
– Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1949).

Take off your pants or go home.
– Chris Rose, "Real Life Returns," The Times-Picayune, Feb. 6, 2008 (Pullitzer-winning New Orleans-area newspaper, not long after Katrina).

If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call.
And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall.
For he who is not embraced by a passion for life will dissipate into thin air,

* * * * *
Then it was earth I questioned: “Mother, do you hate mankind?”
And Earth responded: “I bless ambitious and aspiring souls,
Who do not flinch at danger. I condemn those out of step with time,
People content to live like stone."
– “If the People Wanted Life One Day,” Abou-Al-kacem El-chebbi (also spelled other ways, such as Abu Al-Qasim Ash-Shabi), known as the "poet of the Tunisian Revolution."

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.
-- "Dhammapada," Ch. 1. the Twin Verses 5, as quoted by Maha Ghosananda.

There is no responsibility, without freedom;
No freedom, without power;
No power, without knowledge;
No knowledge, without love.

– moi (1976).

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
– Oscar Wilde (1997). Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis, p. 1051, Wordsworth Editions.

. . . and in the morn
I'll bring you to your ship and so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial
Of these our dear-beloved solemnized;
And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.
– W. Shakespeare, The Tempest (ca. 1611), Act V, scene i, MIT's Moby Ed.

March 24, 2008

Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War

6 comments:

Duration of Assange's Detention for Publishing U.S. Crimes:

Re- this blog:

Some links:

Some current costs of the U.S. wars:

c-Blog archives:

Thoughts for the year or whatever, in no particular order: