717 - Peace & Life: Yom Kippur/Conscientious Objection/Nukes - October 11, 2024
Yom Kippur
Sunset this evening (October 11) is the start of Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. It’s the holiest day of the year on the Jewish calendar.
We’ve also recently had the one-year anniversary of the outrageous massacre of October 7, with more Jews killed in one event than at any time since the Holocaust. Antisemitic hate crimes have skyrocketed in recent years, coming from bigotry which has been lethal for millennia now.
The short Biblical book of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur with its theme of massive repentance. We could see it as literature having a consistent-life ending, when the Israelite prophet Jonah expresses that he wished Nineveh, an enemy of Israel, had ended up destroyed after all. God asks: “And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left [that is, young children] – and also many animals?”
Cycles of Violence
The Israeli government and Hamas, along with other groups, have a long history of responding to violence with more violence. The observation this brings more violence doesn’t seem to register. They call it “defense,” but when thousands of children are killed, those children were clearly not defended. Israeli and Palestinian peace activists are among the victims.
Pictured: Rachel MacNair (CLN Vice-President) adds a stone to the growing peace mosaic on the Gaza Strip wall in February, 2020. Each stone was placed by a different person, communicating concern to the people stuck inside.
Conscientious Objection Need Not be Religious
A U.S. District Judge in Oregon has ruled that Oregon Right to Life has to provide abortion coverage in its health insurance for employees. There are religious exemptions to the state requirement, but she ruled that the group wasn’t religious and therefore the exemption didn’t apply.
Here we have anti-war precedent for a non-religious exemption: the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of 1965, United States v. Seeger ruled that conscientious objection status against military conscription could be granted to those with "sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those" who had routinely gotten the exemption.
Danger of Nukes
The horrors of continued nuclear “modernization” don’t get as much media attention as they deserve, but The New York Times just published a good article on that.
The Catholic Institute for Nonviolence
The Institute is a project of Pax Christi International´s Catholic Nonviolence Initiative. Its mission: make nonviolence research, resources and experience more accessible to Catholic Church leaders, communities and institutions, to deepen Catholic understanding and commitment to practicing nonviolence. It works mainly as an online institute, with a small presence in Rome.
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National Review, September 27, 2024 (entire article)
Alabama just executed its second murderer by nitrogen. It was reportedly not pleasant:
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was pronounced dead at a south Alabama prison. He shook and trembled on the gurney for about two minutes with his body at times pulling against the restraints. That was followed by about six minutes of gasping breathing.
And yet, we are told that suicide by nitrogen in the suicide pod is peaceful and dignified. So, which is it?
This is another example of what I call cruel and unusual death with dignity.
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