People who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian, Pope Francis said on Sunday.It's a strawman argument -- I can trust in God and still see the value of weaponry. There are a whole lot of Christians who could use a few more weapons round about now, especially in places where ISIS is operating. One would have hoped a Jesuit would understand such things, and Francis does -- he's spoken out on such matters in the past. When he gets rolling, Francis appears liable to say anything.
Francis issued his toughest condemnation to date of the weapons industry at a rally of thousands of young people at the end of the first day of his trip to the Italian city of Turin.
“If you trust only men you have lost,” he told the young people in a long, rambling talk about war, trust and politics after putting aside his prepared address.
“It makes me think of ... people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit a distrust, doesn't it?” he said to applause.
And to really drive the non-sequitur home, Francis says the following:
He spoke of the “tragedy of the Shoah,” using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.So if you want to bomb the railway lines, what do you need? Weapons. But if manufacturing weapons makes you less than a good Christian, you'd better hope that someone else will make the weapons for you. We're gonna need some enterprising pagans, I guess.
“The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals, everybody. Why didn't they bomb (the railway lines)?”
I trust in God. Really, I do. If you trust only men, you have lost. Among the men I don't trust is the one currently on the throne of St. Peter.
3 comments:
So, the pope is going to fire his security detail, of which being catholic is a requirement?
That's what I was thinking. So the guys that made the pikes for the Swiss Guards were sinning by doing so? Seems to me that this would have come as news to his 265 predecessors, including the guy who was told by Christ to bring a sword. And we are also left to understand that David, a man after God's own heart, was wrong for being ready to wage war, and SHAME on Nehemiah for instructing the Hebrews to arm themselves when building the wall of Jerusalem, and Moses was wrong in passing down God's instructions making all young Hebrew men part of the militia.....
At times like this, I am glad I am a Baptist and can just say that the person saying that was nuts, out of line with Scripture, and so on. Not that we're not screwy in many ways, but we've got this at least. :^)
One other note. It strikes me that Francis the Talking Mule was the smart one in those movies, and he'd not likely appreciate being compared with the Pope. Just sayin'.
(my son is a devotee of the old Donald O'Connor movies and introduced me to them)
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