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Fr. Charles McCarthy and a Christian perspective on the box office hit, "American Sniper"

A Fox TV News talking-head, who also has his own Fox radio show, and therefore reaches millions of people with his presentation of reality and Gospel "truth," Todd Starnes, an Evangelical Christian, said last week that Jesus Christ would have been a fan of Clint Eastwood's latest movie, American Sniper, the mythologized story of America's top killer in Iraq, Christopher Kyle.

"I'm no theologian," said Starnes, "but I suspect Jesus would tell that God-fearing, red-blooded American sniper, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant for dispatching another Godless jihadist to the lake of fire.'"

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"You've gotta love" those American Evangelicals. They call the shots as they are. They don't pussy foot around morally and theologically when it comes to war. Unlike their Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox co-religionists, they do not incessantly dabble in ethical hair-splitting rooted in the esoterica of metaphysics and mysticism in order to twist Jesus' command, "Love your enemies," into meaning that a Christian is loving his or her enemies when in reality he or she is destroying and mutilating them and those they love. The Evangelical knows what war is. They know what really goes on in war. They know the spirit of lethal enmity in which war has to be waged by the men and women who actually do the fighting, killing and dying--if they are going to successfully do the job that they think the President of the U.S. sent them to do. (They will never know the real reason behind the President sending them to kill and maim people in some place far from the United States) They are Christians. They have the true faith. They are the true believers of the true faith. Anyone else is just Godless, without God. And, if the Godless ever dare oppose the United States, which is "under God" and is a place "with liberty and justice for all," then they have no right to exist-- because only truth has a right to exist; then they have no right to exist because by being enemies of this Christian nation they ipso facto are enemies of its God.

In this 70% "Christian" nation--on paper--the populace recently has been drawn to see the film American Sniper, like flies are drawn to flypaper. It is a box office palooza. It is unlikely that many, if any, Bishops will have much to say that is negative about it, if they dare say anything. Silence in the face of the human slaughter and destruction that their government's wars demand, and that members of their Churches are executing, has always been the Bishops' strong suit and cornerstone on which they have built their pleasant and lucrative relationship with the government. Silent acquiescence, while Christians in their spiritual care dash head long into the spiritual flypaper of American Sniper, would be normal for them. Where anything related to homicide by the U.S Military is involved, regardless of the level of human desolation it brings down on men, women and children, civilian or military, in utero or extra utero, today or tomorrow, "Mum's the word." So there is no reason to anticipate that the U.S. Bishops will even warn Christians that this multi-million dollar film is a multi-sensual cinematic deception intended to brainwash people into putting on the mind of Cain, which is as far removed from the mind of Jesus as hell is from heaven. Indeed, this film's infernal cunningness lay in the fact that it can lead Christians ever more deeply to believe that the mind of Cain is the mind of Christ.

In my judgement it would be a near occasion of sin for young people whose brains are not fully developed to view this murderous piece of propaganda. At a bare minimum, a warning of the film's potential to morally corrupt young people and those adults with certain mental disorders should be issued by every bishop to the people of the diocese. Any bishop who would do that would have neuroscience, common sense and the Gospels to thoroughly back-up what was said.

Friday, March 29, 2024

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"My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion."

Joe Biden, "Promises to Keep" (2007)



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