Pope Benedict XVI's Dream and the Natural Thirst for Justice

By Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq.
4/24/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again

The Good News of Easter is that the puzzle which Plato and Cicero struggled to solve is resolved for us, in fact has been revealed to us. Not, however, by myth, and not by dream. But by a brute historical reality that happened once in history, but which Catholics repeat anew at every Mass, and which Christ's faithful announce at the Memorial Acclamation: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - Men and women of good will naturally thirst for justice. Justice requires that the good and the evil receive their just deserts without exception. And it is simply undeniable that in this world this does not happen. Our thirst for justice is not slaked in this world.

Even in our daily lives we suffer, or perhaps are the cause of, more or less petty or more or less serious injustices that frequently go unfixed. Adultery, rape, murder, abortion, theft, fraud, and on and on. These present an insurmountable enough problem. But if we turn to the massive injustices within our historical memory, especially if we concretize them, the problem is infinitely insurmountable. We approach the threshold of despair.

Who shall give justice to Moses Roper, the mulatto slave who was traded from master to master seventeen times, was nearly flogged to death with 200 lashes of the whip, but eventually escaped to write his autobiography? And what about all the other victims of the African slave trade?

Who shall give justice to Sadako Sasaki, the two-year old who was blown out of the window of her home, exposed to radiation in Hiroshima, miraculously survived, only to die of leukemia ten years later? And what about the 50,000 or so of her fellow townspeople who suffered death moments after the "Little Boy" was dropped out of the hatch of the Enola Gay?

Who shall give justice to my great great uncle Ludwig Br�gel, a historian known for his book Geschichte der österreichischen sozialdemokratie, who died in the Concentration Camp at Theresienstadt on August 30, 1942, for the mere reason-which is no reason-that he was a Jew? And what about all numerous millions of fellow victims of Hitler's inhuman Shoa, Jewish and non-Jewish?

Who shall give justice to-to pick a name at random-Brandon Buchanan, a young equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, who died at the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the victim of a few Muslim barbarians with Allahu Akbar on the brain?

Even if it were possible to give justice to these individuals and the hundreds of millions like them in the history of man, from whom would we exact it? Who could pay the debt? Upon whom could it rightly be imposed?

In the light of uncorrected and uncorrectable injustice, and man's intrinsic thirst for justice, many ask the question of whether the world is well-made. A world full of injustice would seem not well-made.

Some therefore accuse God of injustice in making the world. Or they deny God exists. In either event, the matter becomes an irresolvable surd. If the world is not well-made by God, if God is unjust, or if God does not exist, then we have no reason to complain of injustice, and the desire for justice is vain. Without a just God, all is vanity, which is to say all is absurd. Then shut yourself in your house and read Camus or Sartre, and end your miserable life by putting a bullet through your brain if you are man enough.

But if we resist the false lull of absurdity which leads to despair, we shall have to come to terms that there must be justice if the world is well-made by God, which means there must be just judgment. And we come to the quandary that in this world this just judgment is nowhere to be found.

Those who have believed in a benevolent God--Pagans included--have resisted absurdity and cannot believe the world was not well-made. In the face of injustice in this world, they have yearned for, dreamed of, guessed at, even hoped for a life beyond this one, and a just judgment in that life beyond this one as the most plausible answer.

Moved by this quandary--belief in a world-well-made with the fact of plenty of injustice--Plato ends his dialogue The Republic with the "Myth of Er." In explaining justice, the protagonist Socrates ultimately has recourse to myth. He tells his interlocutor Glaucon about the testimony of a soldier named Er, son of Armenios of Pamphyilia. Er, he relates, died in battle with a number of his fellows, and these bodies were gathered ten days later to be burned in a funeral pyre.

Er revives from his death, and tells the survivors of his journey to the afterlife. He tells them that there are judges in the afterlife who issue just judgment. The just carry their good deeds in front of them and take the rightward path to heaven. The unjust carry their wrongdoing like burdens on their back as they are made to walk the leftward path into the ...

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

Mike Chapman
1 year ago
Justice for the little girl, and all of those killed in Hiroshima? That lies at the feet of the Japanese leaders who attacked the U.S. without a declaration of war and committed atrocity after atrocity upon captured soldiers (Bataan Death March) and entire societies (such as the Chinese). It's a deep injustice that this was included in your list of injustices! How bizzarre! How could you misunderstand injustice so badly? At the Hiroshima memorial where there is a book to sign, one American once wrote, "Remember Pearl Harbor." Where's the justice for all those men and women entombed in the USS Arizona? You had so many other much more relevant and true choices. Millions upon millions of civilians were killed by Germans and Nazis in that war. You also could have chosen any number of Christian martyrs from just the past year (including Yousef imprisoned in Iran right now), and you choose someone killed in our successful attempt to end the war to avoid further lives lost? Wow. Those bombs saved lives. Truman had to drop the second one because their leaders still refused to surrender. There is tragedy and misfortune (such as what we, in law enforcement, are forced to do in ending the life of someone posing a threat, and innocent lives are sometimes lost in the process of being forced to do just that), and there is true injustice. No good person wanted to kill the little girl in Hiroshima (except those such as Muslim extremists and Palestinian terrorists who regularly kill children in Israel and elsewhere). But lives are lost when decent and righteous societies are forced to defend themselves or stop the slaughter of innocent people. Do you not understand Just War? For example, read the Old Testament where entire cities were wiped out by God's holy people , including children and every living thing. It was a tragedy, but the necessary and right thing to do. There is a huge difference between loss of life by murder and deceit, and loss of life in responding in order to stop it.You've confused the two and tried to equate them, like so many in our politically correct culture do. That in itself, is a grave injustice.
DENISE M. SHARAR
1 year ago
I HOPE AND PRAY SOMEDAY LOVE WILL STOP ALL THE ACTS OF INJUSTICE WE SEE IN THE WORLD. LOVE AND PRAYER IS OUR HOPE. I ESPECIALLY PRAY FOR FATHER PFLEGER IN CHICAGO WHO IS IN THE MIDST OF ACTS OF INJUSTICE AND MAY GET ANGRY AND LOSE HOPE NOW AND THEN. WE MUST ALWAYS FIND SACRED SPACE TO PRAY AND MEDITATE SO WE CAN FEEL GOD'S PRESENCE AND NEVER LOSE HOPE.
Geoff
1 year ago
It would seem that the root of injustice is "want". What is it that we may "want" at the expense of another? I was just crossing the road this evening at a cross walk and was almost hit by a fast moving car ignoring the pedestrian (me) on the cross walk. He simply appeared to accelerate and honked his horn. His objective would not account for anything other than his "want" to get to his objective as quickly and effortlessly as possible. He was in fact an agent of chaos. His rule was simple, he had power and was isolated in the comfortable cabin of his Land Cruiser with his music. Isn't this the case with most injustice? That the operatives of a system designed to promote the commom good become the very vehicle to remove the common good for privilege? It is an interesting notion that perhaps injustice can be found in the word itself: res publica versus leggio privatus (excuse the latin).
JoAnn
1 year ago
The greatest evil ever perpetrated was the crucifixion of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and what incredibly awesome GOOD came from it. God bless.
Andrew M.Greenwell
1 year ago
@Edwin:
Thanks for your comments, and I appreciate your argument, but I will have to disagree, and quite vehemently. What both Harry and Mohamed did was the same thing in their minds: they did evil so that good may come out of it. This is an immoral principle, though it is the basis of a cost/benefit analysis so typical of utilitarianism or consequentialism. (Here, strangely, both traditional Islam and modern utilitarianism share a way of thinking.)

That is in fact how you justify Harry Truman's use of nuclear weapons not against military targets but against whole cities and civilian populations. The civilian casualties In Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and Dresden and other German cities, for that matter) were not "collateral damage," but were the intended target. Though I'm sure Truman did not know her, he intended to kill Sadako Sasaki as sure as he intended to kill her fellow civilians. This was evil, an absolute evil, one without exception, however you dress it.

Pope Pius XII condemned the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima when he expressed the traditional Catholic teaching on just war that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man." In the words of Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman. a well-seasoned warrior if there ever was one: "It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan ... The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

In your analysis, you also neglect to mention that part of the Japanese intransigence which caused Truman's seeming choice was our own decision to seek "unconditional surrender." Why I would expect any people, especially a proud people like the Japanese, to fight to death if the condition for life is unconditional surrender to the enemy. A change in our stance would have made a difference.

Now let me ask it this way: If Mohammed Atta under orders from Bin Laden had used an atomic bomb instead of a plane to bomb the Twin Towers, how would Atta's act be different than Paul Tibbet's acting under Truman's? Other than State action, I see no difference. And being head of state does not authorize the intentional taking of innocent human life. Ever. We can't do evil so that good may come.
Edwin Concepcion
1 year ago
Harry Truman's inclusion in the list of deviants that includes the likes of Atta IS an injustice in itself. Truman's decision to drop the A-bomb arguably foreshortened an ongoing, red hot world war that is an immoral event, and thereby saved millions of lives, which is a morally laudable outcome. The Japanese establishment in 1945 is to blame for their persistence in the war, in spite of ample American warning, which resulted in thousands of nuclear blast victims. This Japanese establishment, Emperor Hirohito for one, should have been on that Atta list. Not Harry Truman, no sir...
abey
1 year ago
Injustices happen when man takes Justice upon his own hand. Vengeance is mine says the Lord . In the Lord's prayer we ask " Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors" which is to Forgiveness, no doubt easy said than done, but is to be done , for it amounts to a sacrifice, to taking our own cross to His sharing. Jesus never said it would be easy, contrary to ear pleasing to appeasing words of many a preachers, they who preach the truth but the truth turns to a lie to the hearer, cause it was meant to appease, to the likeness of Obama & gangs, the very people who cry Blood for Blood not knowing the truth in mans eternity. On the contrary if man does not learn to forgive but to develop hatred in the name of Justice how can He stand before the love of God, it is to this that God says of the manner "Let me handle it"..Moreover what is the Justice of man to backdoor peddlers who cause murder & mayhem coming in all shapes & sizes, even as echelons of society where the law cannot reach them or unknown to the law, who escape this world but then they see the Christ, for a sure they will as the judge to "Game Over" with no place or way to hide or run, again to His words " Vengeance is mine", which is to the truth of "Justice is in Him. The Characteristics of the serpent & its seeds is to hatred & revenge in the pride, fall not in to become it.

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