The pope is a little less nuanced than Dwight Eisenhower when talking about the undue influence of the Military-Industrial Complex: “Many powerful people don’t want peace because they live off war…This is serious,” Francis told the children. “Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms. It’s the industry of death”.
So, where’s that put you if you’re a devout Catholic with a cushy job at Northrup Grumman?
Signing on to elect a Republican Catholic as POTUS?
Defense jobs aren’t always exactly cushy. Layoffs happen all the time when contract don’t come through or are cancels. – often for reasons that have less to do with the merits of the weapons system and more with the whims of Congress or the Pentagon.
And most of the worlds Catholic are poor and outside of the US.
But your point is taken. My guess is they will take it as seriously as many US Catholics take the Vatican teachings on contraception. As an economic choice they limit their family size according to financial realities. And they will likely make their employment choice based on the financial demands of their mortgage holder.
But I am with the Pope on this one. He is one cool Pope. 😀
Pope Frankie broke it down all the way REAL!
So, where’s that put you if you’re a devout Catholic with a cushy job at Northrup Grumman?
Headed straight to Hell. Why do you ask?
AG
It puts you in the place of not giving a FFOARD. Along with your priest.
Express train called the Prosperity Gospel.
You would have to come to the realization that you can not serve two masters. You would have to choose to either worship your JOB or worship and support God and his word.
Matthew 6:24″No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Ultimately the choice is yours via fee will.
It’s easy…. God gave them their (well-paid) job. Amen. And their ‘secure’ place in the economic pecking order.
Then there’s the Opus Dei/banking thing, money (however you make it) is a means to an end, the end being preparing the world for the second coming, consisting mostly of reducing a once-divine habitat into horizon-less waste and destruction, radioactive rubble and blood.
Praise Jesus!
Fast bucks, like fast food, not much to do with fasting.
I think the guys at Smith & Wesson are in the same boat. Catholics have a long history of ignoring their hierarchy’s opinion on Ethics and Faith. So I think the employees of defense contractors are just going to ignore it and still pretend to be devout Catholics.
Personally I gave up on Christianity, I can’t be associated with such hypocrisy and evil. It is too difficult to leave the country so I continue to be a citizen working as best I can to improved this country from within.
Except when it doesn’t apply to them personally.
That one is sure to get the dander up like no other.
I once made the mistake of asking one of my wife’s conservative catholic friends how she could condone her husband working at Lockheed Martin. She and her husband are both intelligent, loving people, her husband was actually working on bombs, she still won’t speak to me.
A friend of mine asked himself that question over 30 years ago, and he gave up a well-paying defense job. Unfortunately, the rest of his life went south after that.
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ Serious Question
The biggest (unadvertised) lesson to be drawn (by hapless proles) is that is what happens when you step out of line. Even being ‘magic’ won’t save you! Even walking on water and raising the dead ain’t enough!
Jesus should have stuck to carpentry, kowtowed, kickbacks to the Empire, bingo, no more problems, a peaceful old age under the olive trees dandling grandchildren on his holy knee…
Conservative gunrunners would have to find another icon. MLK perhaps?
C’mon, Martin. This is religion we’re talking about. Has there been any other endeavor in human history that requires the level of cognitive dissonance that religion does? And since the relatively recent merger of religion, patriotism, the soldier and the military industrial complex into a singular humongous monster that resides primarily on the conservative side of the cultural ledger, this has largely been a non-issue among the majority of American religious folk. It is the left and the minority of left leaning religions in the country who have struggled mightily with the god-guns-war paradox. For the rest of religious America, Jesus loves him some drones, bunker busters, M-16’s and other assorted hardware and software that kills those heathenish, other-wise pigmented bastards all around the world. Why did it seem that hardly anyone on this side of the pond flinched when W framed the Iraq war as a “crusade”, but the Europeans about shit their pants.
The right leaning religions in this country, which are the majority, by and large, seem to want a clash of cultures that leads to war. After all, how else are they going to get Jesus to come back and make everything all right unless we have us some mushroom clouds?
“Has there been any other endeavor in human history that requires the level of cognitive dissonance that religion does?”
Politics?
Diplomacy?
Business?
Actually, the pope didn’t sound too cognitively dissonant on this one.
Any situation of being obedient to an absolute authority. I believe the Bible called that condition of cognitive dissonance idolatry. Too bad the authorities reduced that to strip it of its critical power.
Presumably the devout Catholic defense worker does not see themselves as one of the “powerful people” who determine whether peace or war obtains anywhere. The bigger question is do they vote for the (obviously bigger) warmonger candidate?
Most Americans are convinced that America exclusively engages in Good Wars which are simply “defensive” and are undertaken solely to protect our “national security”, however infinitely malleable it may be. Surely America’s serial wars to protect itself from the endless evildoers and Hitlers du jour living in the far ends of the earth aren’t what the Pope means! And helping to “protect” and “defend” America by aiding and abetting our heroic bloated military can’t be advancing the “industry of death”! No, the Pope must be talking about those immoral offensive wars, like the all-powerful Islamist Hamas against peace-loving Israel.
And what’s a “devout [American] Catholic” (such as a bishop) to do when Pope F officially decries man-made climate change this summer? Keep voting for the party that has proudly made climate denialism and do-nothingism foundational planks of the platform? Most likely. Thank God for the secret ballot!
“So, where’s that put you if you’re a devout Catholic with a cushy job at Northrup Grumman?”
Look, ya gotta make a living. It’s hard to put food on your family.
I don’t know about Northrup/Grumman, but I had a friend in the 1970s who was the shortest guard on his basketball team at St. Polycarp High School, Boston, and quit a cushy job at Honeywell to become a community organizer. Last I heard he was still at it, but that’s been over a decade ago.
The cluster bomb business did it for him.
I can’t lay my hands on the book right now, but I have (somewhere) a history book that in one chapter recounts the story of an English mercenary in Medieval Italy.
The merc is crossing a square when a monk calls to him, “Peace be with you, Brother.” The merc turns on the monk and says, “What have I ever done to you that you should wish such a horrible fate on me? War is my bread and butter. Why do you want to take the bread from my mouth?”
Found the record of the book purchase, but not the book. My house has piles and boxes of books everywhere.
This is the book I bought it because it had a rare look into the transition from Roman Empire to Medieval Italy. This is another book about little known history, albeit somewhat biased.
Barbarians, Marauders, And Infidels: The Ways Of Medieval Warfare: Antonio Santosuosso: 9780813391533: Amazon.com: Books
Some things never change(d, yet)…
In the same place as a devout Catholic Supreme Court justice who considers mere innocence no reason to stay an execution: ignoring Church doctrine when it conflicts with your desired worldly outcomes.