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June 15th, 2009
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A World Gone Crazy
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I was greeted at work this morning with a question from one of my co-workers, “Has the world gone crazy? I don’t understand all the shootings, and violence in the world.” It is crazy isn’t it? Two shootings have grabbed headlines nationally, the murder of Dr. Tiller in Kansas, and the random irrational shooting in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC that resulted in the death of a guard. The front pages of the Great Falls Tribune and the Helena Independent Record have been dominated with local shootings, and death. What is it that brings our culture and us as individuals to a place where we feel the only solution is killing? Is it violent video games that numb young people into a mind set that shooting our opponents or those that disagree with us is how we win? Is it our acceptance of the ultra violent “Extreme Fighting” that is growing in popularity on TV and in our communities? Is it dismissing new human life as a mass of cells that is an inconvenience that can be corrected with a simple surgical procedure? Is it demanding that we continue to kill people in our state supported death chambers? Is it allowing physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs so a man or woman can end the life they no longer want to live? Is it sending our young men and women to foreign lands to the horror of war, death and disfigurement, and then abandon them after they return home when they turn to drugs and alcohol for solace? Is it doing all we can to ignore the homeless, the mentally ill, the disabled, the elderly, and the inmates in our jails and prisons? How do we promote life? Do we fight to the end to save the life of the unborn, but reserve the right to kill them if they don’t behave like we want them too? Do we fight for the poor but resist protecting the unborn as well as promote euthanasia for the old and feeble? Is only some life sacred? Do only some persons deserve respect? These are questions I ask myself. Perhaps we should all ask ourselves these questions. Catholic Social Teaching addresses all of these issues. Not just one or two of them, but all of them. The Ten Commandments address all of these: love God, respect others, do not kill. The gospel of Matthew says the King invites those to His Kingdom, who feed the poor, welcome the stranger, visit those who are sick and in prison. He tells us to treat all persons with respect and love them because, “What so ever you do for those the least of My brothers, you do for me.” The world has gone crazy, but until we understand that we includes me, and that we will not solve the problems until we understand that it is also my responsibility, little will be done. Until we stop spending money on violent games for our children and subscribing to the violence of “Extreme Fighting”; Until we stop thinking of people as masses of cells, and that it’s OK to kill people in our state death chambers; Until we stop ignoring the poor, refusing to help the less fortunate, the mentally ill, the disabled, and the inmates in our prisons; Until we find a way to bring all of our young men and women home from wars and conflicts around the world, and repay in some small way those who were permanently scarred; Until we can accept that all persons were created by God, and all persons throughout their life have the same innate right to be treated as children of God, because that’s what they are; and Until each of us can fully understand that our Lord has called us to love Him above all things, and to love others as we would ourselves, we will never find an answer to, “Why has this world gone crazy?”
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