Social Conscience

In the strongest, most impassioned terms, Scott Ritter denounces the catastrophic bombing of two girls’ schools by the U.S. in Iran. It reminds him of his own horrifying mistake 25 years ago in Iraq…

In 1998, I traveled to Iraq delivering badly needed medicines… and I saw a destroyed society, heard the children wailing in hospitals… Iraq: once prosperous, now impoverished. Where was the victory?

Below us was a crowd, men in business suits pressed together… the desire in those eyes and hands, each one searching for the feel, the touch, the connection with the force we call truth, as if through the shake of a hand, that which Sam Ervin had done could run into their bodies and erase their sins…

In today’s reading, the uncaring rich man was cast into hell, the impoverished Lazarus was “carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.” Which of one these are we, the U.S. Catholics at Mass?

Dan Ellsberg died on June 16, 2023 after a life of courage and conscience. He exposed the lies of U.S. military leaders behind the Vietnam War.

A political crisis poisons a nation’s spiritual life. In 2018, the Honduran dictator Juan Orlando Hernandez used fear, despair for repression. Freedom came by acting on faith and hope.