Refusal to Join Unjust War- Saint? Coward? Strong? Weak?

An amazing article in a recent Indy about the Church taking very hesitant steps
on the road to sainthood for a man who refused to join the army in WWII
came to my attention recently. Highlights include"

...In 1940, aged 33, he was conscripted into the German army and completed basic training. Returning home in 1941 on an exemption as a farmer, he began examining closely the religious reasons for refusing military service. He studied the issues in detail and at one point wrote a series of questions about the morality of the war that he discussed with his bishop. He emerged from that conversation saddened that the bishop seemed afraid to confront the issues.
The mass of Austrian Catholic opinion was reconciled to fighting a war to defeat godless communism – overlooking the fact that Nazism was just as godless. But Jägerstätter refused to accept the Nazis' aims. "It is very sad to hear from Catholics that this war is perhaps not so unjust because it will wipe out Bolshevism," he wrote.
"But what are they fighting? Bolshevism or the Russian people? When our Catholic missionaries went to a pagan country to make them Christians, did they advance with machine-guns and bombs in order to convert and improve them?"

Amazing in my view because conscientious objectors are usually overlooked
in the awards, honours and and decorations bestowed by man.
Amazing too because the Church in this case seems to have acted weakly if
not cowardly as the next extract shows:

...In 1943, after being called to active duty, Jägerstätter reported to his army base and refused to serve. A military court rejected his assertion that he could not be both a Nazi and a Catholic and sentenced him to death for undermining morale. His offer to serve as a paramedic was ignored. A priest from his village visited him in jail and tried to talk him into serving, but to no avail...

Yet also amazing because the Church is now contemplating the prospect
of sainthood for the very man its clergy tried to persuade to
forget right wrong and conscience.
The example of sainthood for a courageous woman or man
refusnik should imho be more highlighted than perhaps it is.

HCPT Bartres Villa - Autumn 2007

Hopefully everyone who participated in the experimental extended family
pilgrimage to the HCPT Villa at Bartres over the past few days, found
the shared time together as beneficial as I did.

Highlights were sharing French bread wine and fromage together over
the Villa's refectory tables; walking down the Chemin de Bernadette
from Bartres to the Grotto at
Lourdes and the day trip to La Cirque de Gavarnie in glorious sunshine.

Those who traveled from Portsmouth to Bilbao by ferry rather than we
who travelled from Gatwick to Toulouse by air had the better journey
but the end results were wonderful for all.

Some piccies if my techie know how is up to it:

Gavarnie



Grotto



Villa

Graffiti - Art? Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder

There is between SW20 and Wimbledon Train/Tram/Tube station, a narrow
almost attractively overgrown, railway footpath.
On my daily early morning walk
to the start of the SWTrains commute I sometimes groan
inwardly at the graffiti-filled gaps in the undergrowth on the footpath.
Great dawbs of tags meaningless to middleclass commuters like yours truly,
seem to spoil the natural atmosphere wild plants and weeds have created
in the urban jungle.

Walking down this same footpath on this sunny Saturday, I noticed a
teenager who looked as if he had just come from the USA TV hit "The Wire".

He was inspecting the graffiti handiwork and carefully taking photographs
of what to him were its star pieces of art but the beauty of
which passed me by, almost entirely.

Those living in "The Wire" type background must have learnt to
apply more direct ways
of making their mark on what could be to them, a overly, far too ordered and grey society, than, those who seem more fully integrated,
even though the latter don't perceive the greyness.

I still loathe the graffiti but am more watchful about
the need not to add the greys but to instill more personal
colour to one's and others everyday life.

HCPT Bartres Villa

Next Sunday sees the start of our experimental extended
family time out at the HCPT Villa in Bartres near Lourdes, France.

A photo of part of the Villa looks thus:



Whether or not the experiment is a success it will be different.
I hope to post more.

Gastropub Book Launch

An invitation by the author to counsel's book launch of
Employment in Schools a Legal Guide sounded on paper as if it might
prove a somewhat grey/red tape sort of evening out but the
Gastropub venue at The Green Clarkenwell proved anything but grey.

Counsel himself was there and had managed to distill an explanation of
employment laws for the really difficult and sometimes odd,
patchwork of different types of
English schools, into a concise ready reckoner for teachers
unions, LEAs and lawyers. The good wine and tasty gastronomical
morsels on offer also encouraged me to buy a copy for my day job office.

Sharon from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers compared the
behaviour she came across of English school children unfavourably yet honestly,
with that of their counterparts in N. Ireland, Wales and her homeland
in the Carribean and agreed that answers to such deteriorating behavioural
problems needed to be found.

A London borough lawyer turned out to be a fellow Catholic living nearby
me in SW London,
who with her husband were both from Australia. They were concerned
like many local Catholics, to find a good state school which shared
their values for their children, thus minimising for them, the problems
just discussed with Sharon.

Their local Catholic primary school
is heavily over subscribed. If only the same could be said
for the local Catholic Church.

An unsual and educational evening was happily rounded off by
be able to take the train directly back to SW London's Wimbledon from
NE London's Farringdon Station.

Thank you learned counsel.

More on Burma

The clampdown by the Burmese military on that country's oppressed citizens,
has put out the flickering flame of their quest for freedom - for the time being.

This again raises the question of whether
nations with more open and tolerant governments should use their
military power to try to free the oppressed. Again though
it goes against the human instinct of trying to oppress
the oppressors, the temptation to use force should be very carefully
considered before anyone goes in.The UK is not important
enough to make a decision to do so on its own and
neither is any other nation in the C21.
Using force in self defence as in WW2 or more recently in the Falkland
Islands is justified but in other circumstances the outcome
risks creating more bloodshed
and tyranny than existed before as sadly, seems likely to be the case
in Iraq.

Diplomacy, UN, media attention, targeted boycotts,
sanctions and prayer are the apt response rather than war.