Spiral of violence

For the first time in many years I find myself unable to watch the 6.30pm news on television. It’s too disturbing, especially the graphic images confirming the suffering of innocent people in Ukraine.

I look around to see whether others (especially impressionable children) might be sharing my discomfort at what the Christian Science Monitor describes as example after example of what can happen when two nations don’t share the truth about their shared history.

Then I check to see what my favorite columnist, Father Richard Rohr, has to say about the brinkmanship that’s been heating up over many months. (Center for Action and Contemplation, May 2, 2022.)

Rohr heads straight for the 13th century wisdom of Thomas Aquinas: “Evil only succeeds by disguising itself as good.”

Then he turns to an observation from the Brazilian archbishop Helder Camara (1909—1999) who offered a  model for understanding how structural injustice leads to greater violence.

If we don’t nip evil in the bud at the level where it is legitimated and disguised, he said, we’ll have little power to fight it at the individual level.

Rohr reminds us that the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians about levels of violence through powers, principalities, thrones, and dominions, suggesting that if we don’t recognize the roots of violence at the first structural level, which is “the world,” we’ll waste time focusing exclusively on the second and individual level, “the flesh,”  and we’ll seldom see those real evils which disguise themselves as angels of light (“the devil”).

Rohr closes with a simple prayer that’s perfectly guided me, especially after my exposure to evening news bulletins I couldn’t escape: “Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation.”