The War Escalates in the Southern Philippines
Posted On September 22, 2008
The Xaverian Missionaries are far from the blood soaked fields of Mindanao where Muslim separatists having been fighting the government of the Philippines for more than 30 years for a muslim nation within the Philippines. The presentation by 101 East of Aljazeera shows the real cost of war. If Americans could see a similar coverage of the Iraq and Afganistan wars, not merely from the side of soldiers who volunteer to go, but from the hundreds of thousands of civilians who did not ask for these wars.
How then, from the position of the social teaching of our Church, does mission and vocation awareness take place while war machines trudge forward as an answer to spiritual, moral, political, and economic distress and incertitude? You will notice in the first part of the program that the Oblates of Mary Immaculate are in the middle of support to the civilians caught in the middle of the conflict. The question I ask is already answered by them.
Please pray for the civilians trapped in the war in Mindanao, Southern Philippines, as well as all civilians caught within the anvil of gutless moral passivity and political-economic abuse in all countries of conflict. In our mission message, let us preach peace and show that American foreign policy does not require the war machine!
