More Comment on Dan Berrigan CL Board member Thad Crouch was a guest columnist in The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the diocese of Austin, and wrote “A Personal Reflection: Late Priest Stood for the Consistent Life Ethic.” (scroll down to the bottom of the page). This includes the story of John Dear’s last visit with Dan: “Happily, it was a good day for him . . . I got to tell him everything about the hopeful week in Rome, and he was astonished, amazed and grateful. [The conference at the Vatican] strongly called for the abolition of . . . just war theory . . . We can’t claim anymore to follow the nonviolent Jesus who said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ and ‘Love your enemies,’ and still, at the same time, support war, abortion, the death penalty, greed, racism, sexism, nuclear weapons, environmental destruction and any violence.”
New Peacemaking Books by our Endorsers
Hot off the presses, Shane Claiborne has a new book called Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us.
John Dear has a new book about to be released, The Beatitudes of Peace: Meditations on The Beatitudes, Peacemaking, and the Spiritual Life.” The introduction is by another CL Endorser, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire.
Campaign Nonviolence – Planning for Nonviolence Action Week
John Dear is also active in Campaign Nonviolence, which hosts a week of world-wide actions promoting nonviolence, to be held this year from September 18-25. We’re endorsers of that campaign, and encourage people to think of activities to do in their own locale. We are of course especially excited about actions that connect the issues together, such has having marches or vigils involving local military sites, death penalty sites, and abortion clinics.
Election-Related Opportunities to Spread the Word Both the U.S. Democratic Party and the Republican Party have web pages for submitting testimony about their platforms. Washington Week in Review, which offers a panel discussion of the news every week on PBS (the U.S. Public Broadcasting System), is soliciting comments on the election. They certainly need to hear various points from our perspective!
Latest CL Blog: Our History
Carol Crossed offers Reminiscing on the Founding Meeting of the Consistent Life Network. Note that it refers to the founding event happening 29 years ago, which means our 30th anniversary is coming right up – and we’re making plans to hold a conference for it. Stay tuned!
Quotation of the Week Mary Meehan Abortion: The Left Has Betrayed the Sanctity of Life The Progressive, 1980 Representative Robert Dornan of California, a conservative pro-life leader, once told his colleagues in the House, "I have heard many rock-ribbed Republicans brag about how fiscally conservative they are and then tell me that I was an idiot on the abortion issue." When he asked why, said Dornan, they whispered, "Because we have to hold them down, we have to stop the population growth." Dornan elaborated: "To them, population growth means blacks, Puerto Ricans, or other Latins," or anyone who "should not be having more than a polite one or two `burdens on society.' "
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