[Silouan] Violence or NOT?

From the Class of Nonviolence

Here is a snip...

• Fred: OK. So you're a pacifist. What would you do if someone were, say, attacking your grandmother?
  Joan: Attacking my poor old grandmother?
  Fred: Yeah, you're in a room with your grandmother and there's a guy about to attack her and you're standing there. What would you do?
  Joan: I'd yell, "Three cheers for Grandma!" and leave the room."

  Fred: No, seriously. Say he had a gun and he was about to shoot her. Would you shoot him first?
  Joan: Do I have a gun?
  Fred: Yes
  Joan: No. I'm a pacifist, I don't have a gun.
  Fred: Well, I say you do.
  Joan: All right. Am I a good shot?
  Fred: Yes.
  Joan: I'd shoot the gun out of his hand.
  Fred: No, then you're not a good shot.
  Joan: I'd be afraid to shoot. Might kill Grandma.

  Fred: Come on, OK, look. We'll take another example. Say, you're driving a truck. You're on a narrow road with a sheer cliff on your side. There's a little girl sitting in the middle of the road. You're going too fast to stop. What would you do?
  Joan: I don't know. What would you do?

Read all the rest before continuing here.

I have a question for Joan. What would you* do if it was culturally acceptable to murder babies before they were born?
Would you* march against it?
Would you* picket against it?
Would you* stage a sit-in?
Would you* boycott?
Would you* lobby?
Is abortion within your* definition of violence?
If not, then you are flippant with life and resting upon the 'luck' of being one of those who were born.
Because, as far as I can tell, ABORTION is as much as a reality as WAR. Both are senseless, shameful, VIOLENT, and fueled by selfishness I cannot begin to describe.
Now let's move on the the elderly.

[After all we're supposed to be eschewing
hypotheticals and considering real-life evils]

What would you* do if they were systematically denied life sustaining medicine/treatment by their "care-givers"?
What would you* do if they were forgotten by their self-indulgence offspring to rot in sub-standard "homes"?
Do you* care that life at its beginning and end are being reduced to decisions of convenience while people try to save the rest of the world from violence, oppression, and hate-crimes?
I am afraid this attitude makes us miss our intended goals to help people and work for the GREATER GOOD. If I were left with only this mantra my best efforts to reach out will have missed a hundred people before my elbows straightened. Ideologue. Blind. Moat-in-eye.
God forgive us both and save us both from blindness.

*Ultimately it matters less what we believe individually...but what does the Church teach...and do...and what are examples of it?
Education, homeless shelters, orphanages, hospitals, reformatories [prisons], soup kitchens, pro-life advocacy, adoption, ad infinitum.

Biretta tip to Silouan.

Caritas in Veritate

We have so wedded the ideals of capitalistic "free market" to our political system of a democratic republic that we cannot understand what the Holy Father asserts in his latest encyclical.
This is how Hunter Baker sounds at the Touchstone blog.
We seem to have made our own affluent lifestyle the irreducible minimum for human existence. Our eye-ball is a millimeter from our belly button. We cannot see how billions exist without Costco and Medicare. Yet, billions do exist without them...and it's not our mission in God's plan to bring the gospel of consumerism and affluence to them.
We also prematurely assume that the pontiff is suggesting form of socialism. Is this true? Are there other options besides the polar opposites of capitalism and socialism?

I have more thought to share in the comments if anyone wants to engage these ideas.

Plantinga

I had the chance to hear Alvin Plantinga speak at Criswell College in Dallas yesterday. I would definitely recommend this guy to anyone interested in philosophy. Though his talk was philosophical, we should never divorce that discipline from Theology. His presentation was on Naturalism v. Evolution...the real battle between science and religion.

See the connection? Naturalism is the 'religion' in conflict with evolution, in other words. Though he would not support an evolutionary cosmogony, he explained why its major incompatibility is not with theism, but with naturalism. Naturalism, by the way, is the standard message coming from all the science/learning channels--buyer beware.

Plantinga has captured the theistic world's attention. He is highly regarded and now I know why. He can boil mountains of complicated philosophical data down to my level. I hope to read more of him after graduating. Cogency in presentation proves that you really have command of your material. I wish I had that too!