Washington D.C., Aug 10, 2017 / 11:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Dialogue and prudent actions to uphold international resolutions are key to maintaining peace amid rising tensions between North Korea and the international community, one theologian said.
“Dialogue is critical to resolving this particular issue,” Dr. Joseph Capizzi, a moral theologian at the Catholic University of America, told CNA. “We have kicked the can down the road for 50-plus years, with regard to Korea.”
“And the further we kick the can down the road, the more difficult the situation becomes, the less solvable it becomes by the use of force. So dialogue is more essential now than it ever was before.”
The Vatican has shown concern over the developing situation and has also expressed the need for dialogue between countries. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, former Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, said on Wednesday that the “way of conflict is always the wrong way.”
“The way forward is not that of having the latest military technology, but of having an approach of inclusion,” the archbishop said, as reported by Vatican Radio.
In July, North Korea successfully tested ballistic missiles that had the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland, following a series of launches of medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles earlier this year.
Then on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that North Korea had produced a small-enough nuclear warhead that could be placed inside a missile, according to intelligence analysts. North Korea reportedly has as many as 60 nuclear weapons, according to one United States estimate.
On Wednesday, DPRK state media reported that the Kim Jong-Un regime was considering a strike against the island of Guam in the West Pacific, the westernmost U.S. territory and one from which B-1 bombers have flown over the Korean peninsula in military exercises. The AP followed up on Thursday by reporting that a plan for North Korea to launch four missiles aimed to land in the ocean within 25 miles of Guam, as an exercise of its threat to the U.S. territory, had been hatched and could be submitted for approval in the next week to Kim Jong Un.
Because of North Korea’s continued nuclear buildup and its ballistic missile tests, the UN Security Council unanimously voted last weekend to impose more sanctions on the Communist dictatorship.
President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday that if North Korea continued to threaten the United States, they would “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a Wednesday press conference that “what the President is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un can understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language.”
“I think the President just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime on the U.S. unquestionable ability to defend itself, will defend itself and its allies,” he said.
The need for dialogue carries with it the importance of prudence and “sobriety” in the rhetoric of U.S. and world leaders, Capizzi said.
“We do want to engage them,” he said. “We’re trying to pull back some of the incendiary nature of the rhetoric. And then to have the President immediately follow that up with the ‘fire and fury’ comment, it makes us seem erratic. It makes us seem inconsistent,” he said.
Yet, he added, “action is much more important here than rhetoric.” The international sanctions, and the unanimous vote of UN Security Council members – including even Russia and China — to impose them, were an important step to take, he said, “to induce North Korea to stop testing missiles.”
Also, the actions that have not been taken are important, he said, like an overly aggressive mobilization of U.S. military forces. “You don’t see our military or our navy sort of ratcheting up right now,” he said.
“That’s what we really need to keep our eyes on, is what is our military doing? Where are our ships going in that part of the world? What is Japan doing?” he said. “And so far I think everybody recognizes there’s nothing to gain by pushing this further. What we really want to do is sit down and see if we can negotiate out of this.”
Pope Francis, in an April 29 in-flight press conference during his return from Egypt, said that regarding the escalating international tensions with North Korea, “the path is the path of negotiation, the path of diplomatic solutions.”
“This world war in pieces of which I’ve been talking about for two years, more or less, it’s in pieces, but the pieces have gotten bigger, they are concentrated, they are focused on points that are already hot,” he said.
“Things are already hot, as the issue of missiles in North Korea has been there for more than a year, now it seems that the thing has gotten too hot.”
Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, told UN News this summer “general disarmament — that is a priority this year.”
“There is no doubt that the Catholic Church, Pope Francis now in particular, is very much against not only the use but also the possession of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Leaders for the U.S. and European bishops also called for nuclear disarmament in a July 6 statement “Nuclear Disarmament: Seeking Human Security.” Bishop Oscar Cantu, chair of the U.S. bishops’ international justice and peace committee, signed the statement along with Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich, president of the Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions.
“For many, the horror of a potential nuclear war receded from consciousness with the end of the Cold War, but recent geopolitical developments remind us that our world remains in grave danger,” the bishops stated.
“Even a limited nuclear exchange would have devastating consequences for people and the planet. Tragically, human error or miscalculation could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.”
While the United Nations conference to negotiate the multi-lateral and legally-binding Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was wrapping up in July, the bishops said, the U.S. and “most European nations” were noticeably absent.
122 countries present voted in favor of the treaty, with one, the Netherlands, voting against it and Singapore abstaining, the UN reported.
“Nuclear states are making significant new investments to modernize nuclear arsenals. These costly programs will divert enormous resources from other pressing needs that build security, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” the bishops stated.
“The indiscriminate and disproportionate nature of nuclear weapons, compel the world to move beyond nuclear deterrence. We call upon the United States and European nations to work with other nations to map out a credible, verifiable and enforceable strategy for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
[…]
Carnage and the Cross
I look at the blood and devastation,
Decimation of God’s creation.
Innocence on full display,
There is no execution stay.
A body pierced by a blade,
As a life begins to fade.
I see wounds everywhere,
More than my heart can bear.
Evil on full display,
No words, nothing to say.
Not thinking of Calvary,
But killing fields for all to see.
Unborn children torn apart,
Forever stopping a beating heart.
Jesus cried two thousand years ago,
His tears continue to flow.
“When asked what he would say to Catholic president Biden, Hying responded: “I would say, Mr. President, we invite you to look at what the Church says about the dignity of life.”
What a weak statement! The CCC lists several sins that cry to heaven – murder is first on the list. Abortion is murder, the deliberate killing of the unborn. Those in the abortion business, women seeking abortion, and politicians promoting abortion (murder) are endangering their eternal salvation. Would it be too much to ask a bishop to state this, rather than just saying it is “wrong.” Lots of things are “wrong” but they don’t necessarily endanger one’s soul.
I am not singling out Bishop Hying, because what he said is typical of bishops’ statements on abortion. Not long ago I saw one state’s bishops reacting to the state’s latest pro-abortion action as “problematic.” Hard to see Saint Paul telling some of the Corinthians that what they were doing was “problematic.”
Unfortunately, the bishops’ statements on abortion are in line with their actions, or should I say their lack of actions. They refuse to enforce canon 915 by continuing to give the Eucharist to public notorious sinners. So, what are people to think?
There is a description for people who do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome. and it is not a positive description.
I am looking for a little outrage. Is it too much to ask, for example, for the same level of outrage by the bishops over the murder of the unborn that many bishops show when our country enforces our border immigration laws?
“The CCC lists several sins that cry to heaven – murder is first on the list.”
Yes, the Catechism and the Magisterium (nn. 2033-5) identify intrinsically evil acts which are immoral under all circumstances and non-negotiable. These include: intentional killing of the innocent (n. 2273), infanticide (n. 2268), abortion (n. 2273), euthanasia (n. 2277); and sexual immorality (nn. 2352, 2353, 2356, 2357, 2370, 2380, 2381).
The Second Vatican Council makes direct reference to the binding force in all cases of universal Natural Law (n. 79), and then expands the list:
“Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraced working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator” (n. 27).
QUESTION: About the appeasements of so-called “gradualism,” why doesn’t Dignitas Infinita remove Fiducia Supplicans’ drop of cyanide in the punchbowl—the crypto-blessing of “irregular” couples—as “couples” rather than as persons?
Munich in 1938. Rome in 2023?
Bishop Hying is one of the good guys. He deserves support.
One may reasonably suspect that Biden has known the Catholic position on abortion for decades and has come to reject that teaching for political, perhaps financial gain. Biden made his choice to promote and sustain abortion.
Good on him for taking a stand, but where are the rest of the US Bishops on calling out Biden and all the other self-professed “Catholics” in the political world, and where have they been the past 7 years? Aside from the very few who have shown courage, US Catholic “leadership” has been guilty of silence on so many vital issues.
Your Excellency, demand Biden’s excommunication or sit down and shut up. Those are your options.
Abortion isn’t bad because the church says it’s bad, abortion is bad because the Bible says so. God says that murder is a sin against humanity and Gods Holy nature and his Word, not because the Catholic Church says so.
Not only because the sola Scriptura Bible says so…
St. Irenaeus said it this way: “From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the Decalogue [the Bible].” And St. John Paul II underlines both the baked-in natural law plus your point: “The Church is no way the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (n. 95).
Amen!!!
Can we please stop dancing around this issue and tell the blunt truth? Abortion is murder and as such, it’s a mortal sin. The punishment for mortal sin if never confessed and forgiven is hell. This is real simple.
Amen!!!
The Bishop, as well as all the Bishops, should be inviting Biden to either repent or to leave the Catholic Church altogether. Biden knows full well what the Church has to say about abortion and he has made it clear time-and-time again that he doesn’t care. Given that, he should be invited to honor his choice to not be Catholic and to leave the church (or made to if he doesn’t accept that invitation or the invitation to repent). We need to stop being weak about our faith, and live it the way the Lord requires us to as revealed in Scripture!