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| Photo from the book: A Place Called Brooklyn |
"The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"
The armistice signed by the Allies and Germany came into
effect and World War I hostilities ended at precisely that time. Too bad no one
was told. Since that day the proclamation that WWI was the war to end all wars
we have seen WWII, The Korean War, The Viet Nam War, and the various struggles
in the Middle East since the end of the Second World War.
We see looking back to the last 100 years the changes and
challenges we have faced this past century. The rise of Nationalism, Fascism,
Communism, and all the conflicts of the Middle East, and Africa, the rise of
Arab states and the demise of colonialism, all shaping, reshaping and evolving
this complex world.
The Catholic Church has been proven to be fallible and all
too human in its policies of cover-ups and yet ironically their humanitarian
and Herculean efforts to help the poor. We now kill each other in the name of
God, just look up the holy wars now being fought, yet religion has been the
fomenter of conflict with the first sect ever organized.
The past is past, or is that prologue? Are we waiting for
the next conflict or are we still in conflict. Antagonism is masked in
religious and tribal prejudice, we now hate with conflicted reasons that allow
us to take up sides. Who is it we direct our anger and fear at? How can so
educated a civilization be so ignorant of understanding as a tool for
reconciliation and peace? Why do we continue to abuse the innocent, children
and men and women whose only crime is their faith in God and seek only peace?
Maybe someday we will melt our swords and into plow shears
and seek to feed, house, and comfort one another with healing our own hearts
and embracing all for what they are, brothers and sisters, and not for what
they believe.
For these past one hundred years, we have learned nothing.
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