Tag: war

Cardinals McElroy and Cupich denounce Iran war: ‘War now has become a spectator sport.’

“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game—it’s sickening,” Cardinal Blase Cupich said.

 

by Edward Desciak

Following the United States and Israel’s overnight missile barrage of Iran on Feb. 28 and the widening war across the Middle East, a number of U.S. bishops have spoken out in opposition to the war.

They underscored an urgent need for peace and a return to diplomacy, denounced as unjust American and Israeli military aggression and expressed deep concern for the millions in the region affected by the armed conflict.

“At this present moment, the U.S. decision to go to war against Iran fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war,” Cardinal Robert McElroy of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., said.

In an interview with the Catholic Standard on March 9, he explained that the U.S. offensive operations failed to meet at least three criteria of just war theory—the Catholic framework for evaluating the morality of military action—including the requirements for just cause, right intention and clarity that “the benefits of this war will outweigh the harm which will be done,” made impossible by the unpredictability of the region.

Cardinal McElroy said: “Almost everyone rightly believes that the Khamenei regime has been for decades a brutal and repressive government that has spread terrorism throughout the world and should be replaced. But there is immense concern that this war will spiral out of control and embroil the United States in ever greater depth.”

The cardinal, who has also voiced opposition to the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy, mentioned particular concern for the military families he has spoken with who are worried about their loved ones’ safety.

“We must all work together to forbid this expansionism to lead us into an ongoing morass in Iran,” he said, expressing his “deepest concern” for the “deterioration of moral norms” in the United States and the world, signified by the growing willingness to turn to preventative war over diplomacy as a legitimate means of foreign policy.

Cardinal McElroy’s responses echoed comments from Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who criticized the war and the Trump administration’s mix of militarism and entertainment in a statement on March 7.

Cardinal Cupich cited a post from the official White House X account captioned “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY” that spliced clips from popular action movies, cartoons and TV shows “with actual strike footage from their war on Iran.”

It was one of many edits the White House has posted over the last few days in which the account has similarly spliced together video footage of the war with NFL and MLB highlights and video game references.

“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game—it’s sickening,” Cardinal Cupich said. “This horrifying portrayal demonstrates that we now live in an era when the distance between the battlefield and the living room has been drastically reduced.”

He noted that the social media post dishonored the six U.S. soldiers who had been killed at that point during the war (the death of another service member was confirmed on March 8) as well as the hundreds of others who have died across the Middle East, “including the scores of children who made the fatal mistake of going to school” the day a U.S. missile struck a naval base next to an elementary school in Iran, killing 175 people.

“The moral crisis we are facing is not just a matter of the war itself, but also how we, the observers, view violence, for war now has become a spectator sport or strategy game,” Cardinal Cupich wrote, referencing a particularly macabre scandal involving the popular prediction market site Kalshi, where Americans can now gamble on matters of life and death. The company is the respondent in a $54 million class action lawsuit after it declined to pay out wagers on whether Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would be ousted by March 1, citing a “death carveout.”

Cardinal Cupich also urged the American people not to “become addicted to the ‘spectacle’ of explosions.”

“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment,” he wrote, “as if it’s just another piece of content to be swiped through while we’re waiting in line at the grocery store.”

“I know that the American people are better than this. We have the good sense to know that what is happening is not entertainment but war, and that Iran is a nation of people, not a video game others play to entertain us,” he concluded.

The cardinals joined the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Coakley, who followed Pope Leo XIV’s lead and released a statement on March 1 condemning the hostilities: “We ask for a halt to the spiral of violence, and a return to multilateral diplomatic engagement that seeks to uphold the ‘well-being of peoples, who yearn for peaceful existence founded on justice.’”

Archbishop Coakley added: “I invite Catholics and all people of goodwill to continue our ardent prayers for peace in the Middle East, for the safety of our troops and the innocent, that leaders may seek dialogue over destruction, and pursue the common good over the tragedy of war.”

The Archdiocese of New York’s new archbishop, Ronald Hicks, also commented on the Iran crisis in a brief interview for 1010 WINS on March 5, calling for prayers and diplomacy. “We have to give some special prayers for our men and women in uniform and pray for their protection, too, and everyone involved,” he said.

“It is absolutely heartbreaking.”

Source: Cardinals McElroy and Cupich denounce Iran war: ‘War now has become a spectator sport.’ – America Magazine

August 25, 1944, the liberation of Paris: “the greatest day since the storming of the Bastille” 

75 years ago, the capital was finally free from the German yoke. This historic day will remain, in the eyes of the whole world, the symbol of the renewal of France and democracy.

“There are minutes there, we all feel it, which exceed each of our poor lives.” This August 25, 1944, late afternoon, the atmosphere is solemn at the City Hall of Paris. General de Gaulle, who has just arrived suddenly in this high place of republican declarations, is received by the communist Georges Marrane, on behalf of the Paris committee of the Liberation, and by the Catholic Georges Bidault, president of the National Council of the Resistance (CNR), the successor of Jean Moulin. Paris has just been released in the middle of the afternoon from the Nazi yoke. Everything was done in haste. [ . . . ]

Continue at: August 25, 1944, the liberation of Paris: “the greatest day since the storming of the Bastille” 

Syrian anti-Assad May Skaf actress buried in Dourdan, suburbs of Paris

The actress May Skaf, one of the first Syrian artists to take a stand against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who died at the age of 49 last weekend in the suburbs of Paris, was buried Friday in Dourdan (Essonne) to the south West of Paris.

Five to six hundred people, including Syrian figures from the world of cinema and culture, attended the funeral Friday afternoon at the cemetery of the commune of Dourdan, where many flags of the Syrian opposition floated. The coffin of this famous artist, who had left her country after a brief detention in 2013, in Jordan, then in France where she lived with her son Jude al-Zoabi, was covered with the green-white-black flag with red stars. “It will be a temporary resting place (…) until we all enter our Syria, democratic, fair and free,” said Jude al-Zoabi a few days ago on Facebook.

“I’m sure May never imagined where her path would take her, she believed in her ideas and took the path that respects her principles, I do not know if she knew she would have to give up her artistic career and to his interests in Jordan, “he said in his eulogy.A whole woman”May has become a star because she refused the glory, she refused to make money and to work with people who exploit her,” he added. 

The actress was found dead in the night from Sunday to Monday at her home in Dourdan. His home was immediately sealed and an investigation opened, but the autopsy found a natural death, due to aneurysm, we learned from his relatives. 

May Skaf had been living in Dourdan since 2015, living in the city with his son, like several other Syrian refugees, according to Mayor Maryvonne Boquet.

Syria has been ravaged by war since 2011. More than 350,000 people have been killed since 2011 in this conflict, which has become more complex with the involvement of foreign countries and jihadist groups in a fragmented territory.

Source: Syrian anti-Assad May Skaf actress buried in Dourdan, suburbs of Paris

“Sanctuary!”

The “Sanctuary!” scene from the classic 1939 version of Victor Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo and Maureen O’Hara as Esmeralda.

“Hunchback” was the only movie screened at the very first Cannes Film Festival, as the remainder of the festival was cancelled when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939. The bell-ringing scene was Laughton’s response to impending war. The actor later said he rang the bells actually wanting “to arouse the (real) world, to stop that terrible butchery!”

“It is absurd to speak of Laughton’s Quasimodo as a great performance, as if that were some quantifiable assessment. It is acting at its greatest; it is Laughton at his greatest; it is a cornerstone of this century’s dramatic achievement; it is a yardstick for all acting.”
– SIMON CALLOW, NY Times 1988