Does the ressurection of Jesus matter? If you believe in his teachings, do you really need him to be the son of God? What if Jesus slipped into a comma on the cross and he revived three days later, would that render his revelations to us impotent or would they remain important?

@Zero G, can't say I have... conspiracy theory?

rladlof, next you're going to tell us, that it was a small article buried in the back of the rag.

N

The LDS financing Prop Hate did not hit Newsweek until November 15th . . . Two weeks after the election.

John Paul II said that he failed to speak out more against the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

At one a.m. on November 16, 1989, 26 soldiers, 19 of them trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, stormed a Jesuit community in San Salvador, El Salvador. They killed six Jesuits and destroyed the house, word processors, Bibles, and filing cabinets. They also killed the cook and her daughter.

The deaths stunned the world. These good people were advocating the end of the brutal war within El Salvador and the daily $1.3 million in U.S. military aid that has funded the war. These people were killed because they were speaking out on behalf of the poor and oppressed. They had encouraged negotiations between the government and the rebel forces as well as the U.S. embassy. They had preached the gospel and comforted the poor and they paid the price.

Archbishop Romero was a champion for the poor, oppressed, and justice. Archbishop Romero was assassinated in 1980 and the people who loved him picked up his works of solidarity, peacemaking, and truth-telling. Since 1980 countless thousands of people in El Salvador have joined Oscar Romero in martyrdom. Romero’s life gave strength to the Jesuits. Since 1980, despite their most brutal efforts, the government and soldiers had one great problem: Romero, like Christ, refused to stay dead.

What the Salvadoran and U.S. government death squads did not know was that bullets cannot kill the spirit. They killed the bodies of 75,000 Salvadoran martyrs but they could not kill their spirits.

Perhaps the purveyors of death are beginning to learn a basic Christian lesson. CHRISTIANITY MAINTANS THAT THOSE WHO LOVE LIFE AND LIVE A LIFE OF LOVE, LIVE ON IN THE LOVE OF OTHERS. We Christians call this great truth, resurrection, the eternal spirit of nonviolent, revolutionary love that insists on justice and peace. It grows in the human community of love and truth that side with the poor in the nonviolent struggle for justice. Whoever dies in that nonviolent struggle lives on in the spirit of those who take up the struggle anew. Someone always picks up where the martyr leaves off. The spirit of love and truth lives on, the coming of God’s reign of justice and nonviolence gets closer and closer. Peace and justice become reality. Such is the lesson of martyrdom, the practice of resurrection, the essence of Christian love.

ALTHOUGH THE MUSLIMS ARE NOT CHRISTIANS, THEY, TOO, MAY HAVE TAKEN UP THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY IN A WRONG AND AN IMMORAL WAR IN IRAQ.

Oscar Romero lived and died in that nonviolent struggle for justice. His life message was a call to conversion, solidarity with the poor, a speaking of truth to power. He proclaimed life when the system around him demanded death. He announced peace when the government and rebels waged war. He exuded hope when despair ruled the day. The message of the Christian community today is as dangerous as the message of Romero: Jesus lives! The Salvadoran death squads, the Pentagon, and the U.S war makers know it too: Romero lives! The nonviolent struggle for justice continues.

@Maxrot, there are Catholics who seek to turn back Vatican II. Vatican II was a step in the right direction for the people.

@Zero G, depriving persons of a means to sustain themselves is similar to torture and/or terrorism. G. K. Chesterton said that there were people who were also slaves working for slave wages.

Zero G. the love of money is a root of all evil eh?

N

I remain convinced of this though, hoarding wealth is violence to the whole. Depriving persons of the means to sustain themselves is violence. Every bit as violent as killing them outright.

Thanks folks, tough brain workout today...

@Zero G. I understand. Its a tough, tough issue to deal with correct use of violence. Fighting back in Warsaw, was there really any other choice, even if it was ultimately futile for them to do so. Up to the last moment in the concentration camps many didn't know when or if they were about to be killed, what they did know was that the slightest resistance on the way was often answered with a bullet. Hard for an unarmed mass to do anything effective against men carrying submachine guns. Really its a moot point, by the time people were being rounded up, they had already been disarmed and for all intents and purposes shell shocked. The only chance for the fight against the racism to have been successful might have been in the '20's, prior to the NAZI's rise to power. The question then becomes would violent or non-violent resistance been the best tactic. Being that if violent tactics were employed it may have played more into the hands of the NAZI's propaganda, though on the other hand, non-violent gatherings may have become ripe targets. Its impossible for me to say what would have been the best way to go, but obviously the lesson we should learn from it, is by being divided and doing little to nothing results in further and further erosion of rights.

N

Quark,

True enough that Gandhi got the British to quit India - would he have prevailed against the Germans?

The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins is a must read for anyone that tries to intertwine religion with evolution.