Constantine's Sword Page #8

---

An hours drive from Auschwitz in Krakow,

as elsewhere in Poland,

there is hardly a trace of the Jewish life

that flourished here before the war.

I met a young priest...

who had grown up

without knowing this Jewish past.

When he found out, he made it his calling.

They were neighbours.

Their houses are still there.

What happens to them?

Why the people forget so easily?

So it has become a kind of questions

about myself...

about the kind of memory

which I have.

The Jews were perceived as "others"...

as not part of our group.

And probably it is easy to kill someone

who is not belonging to us.

We still are unable to admit this,

most of us.

We Catholics have to take responsibility

for this...

and to say this openly.

That there is an institution,

we played a role in this.

Just saying this,

recognising this,

we are changed by this truth.

Father Obirek was demanding

a much fuller reckoning...

with the Church's failures

than the Vatican was.

His Jesuits superiors ordered him

to stop preaching in public.

He said a mass for me in the small chapel

at the seminary where he used to teach.

I cannot teach, I cannot write

as a member of the order.

- You have been silenced?

- Yes. - Why?

Because I was expressing

what I am saying to you now.

In Poland this kind of voices

are not acceptable.

I am leaving the priesthood,

I'm leaving the order...

and I will try to to build my own way,

according to my conscience.

- Still as a believing Christian?

- Yes.

In a way, it is painful...

because I have thirty years

of being a Jesuit,

twenty years as a priest.

So to change it, it is not easy.

I feel this as a new challenge

for my life.

I think ironically

you were entering the order...

as I was leaving my order...

thirty years ago

So probably you have the same experience.

My version of it, I left the priesthood.

Precisely to speak as myself...

and to write as myself,

my time as a priest,

from 1969 to 1974,

coincided with all that had been

effectively undercut...

in my life.

I couldn't be obedient after having...

the war in Vietnam

destroy my faith in authority.

The turmoil of those years

were my turmoil.

There was a moment in my life

when I realize that...

If the B52 bombers flying over Vietnam

were dropping contraceptive...

the American Catholic hierarchy would have

condemned that war in a minute.

But they were dropping napalm.

In 1973, I spent a summer

in a retreat in Tantur in Jerusalem.

When I walked where Jesus walked,

on his way to his death...

I understood that it wasn't just the pious story

that I had been raised to

to believe and to celebrate

every good Friday.

I understood in a way

I never had before...

that there were people

who had paid with their lives...

for the way their story was told.

So all of this was

bearing down on me...

and I understood

if the priesthood is wrong for you,

then leave...

because your connection to God

is unbreakable.

And the rest of my life

followed from that.

Thousands of young priests like me

left our orders.

I wonder if the liberal reform

would have taken hold if we had stayed.

In Rome, I sought out my old friend,

Father John Pavlikovsky,

who stayed when I left,

and fought for the

very things that now

matters so much to me

- How are you?

- Good. Good to see you again

- Was it '73, I think, was the first time.

- We were young priest in Tantur.

I think you know...

I think you know...

what a definitive summer

that was for me.

You confessed to me that perhaps

you weren't going to stay around.

- I was deciding to leave the priesthood

right then. - That's right.

Confession is not a bad word

for the feeling I have.

I don't feel that way so much now...

but at the time, as you know,

it was a real struggle. - It was a struggle

You stayed in the trenches.

- You have done tremendous work

over the years. - Thank you.

What has it been like?

Well, it has been very positive,

I would say.

- Then you get the Gibson film...

- Yeah.

Gibson film that kind of destroys it,

and then you get people who...

are supposed to be speaking

or something...

coming up and saying,

"Oh, this is totally wonderful.

There is no contradiction here

between what Nostra Aetate says."

And you are staring at the space,

and say...

"What planet are you on?"

If you want to make religion

a constructive force in society...

religions must begin

with an honest admission...

of those moments when they haven't been

a constructive force...

when they have been a destructive force.

And the thing that

frustrates me no end...

is when religious leaders get up

and give the impression

that religion has always been on the side

of good and virtue.

It hasn't. Let's be honest.

"This crusade...

this war on terrorism

is going to take a while."

The president may not have understood

what he was saying.

But his words calling for a crusade...

in the war we are fighting now

still haunt me.

"We are in a conflict

between good and evil...

and America will call evil by its name.

We received our rights from God...

and we know that God is not neutral."

I am convinced this really is a crusade.

Islam is accused of violence,

as if Christianity is innocent.

If you think of religion as a great lake,

it's lake of gasoline...

and all it is going to take

is someone to drop a match into it...

for a terrible conflagration...

and I'm talking literally now,

tragically...

'cause ause that is what the world

of weapons of mass destruction mean.

And when you put religion into that context

as a source of hatred and violence...

the worst catastrophe of all is possible.

Every religious person

has to take responsibility...

for the way in which their tradition

encourages intolerance,

suspicion, hatred of the "other"...

and the Christian tradition,

both in relation to Muslims and Jews,

we have some very clear reckoning

with history to do.

I can't ignore what is happening

in Colorado Springs.

Religious and military power

are coming together.

It's a warning

and I hear it getting louder.

"Tonight, at one military school,

there are serious allegation...

"of religious fervour out of control.

The air force academy

face a full blown scandal...

when it was revealed

that there had been a cover-up...

of a report by the Yale

University Divinity School.

What we observed at the air force academy

was wide spread evangelizing...

from cadets to officers to chaplains.

The Yale team reported that a chaplain

delivered a sermon...

exhorting over 500 cadets

on basic training...

to threaten non-evangelicals

with dire consequences...

if they refuse to convert.

The head chaplain was telling them that

in fact if they did not come to Jesus...

that they will burn

in the fires of hell.

"Quite frankly, some of the incidents

that we looked at...

and heard about

over the last 4 or 5 years...

were vicious

and that's totally unacceptable."

The academy immediately started

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes