Pax Christi Minnesota

Hire Your Own Cop!
By Steve Clemens. June 2008

For the past twelve years, AlliantACTION has vigiled in front of Alliant Techsystems, Minnesota’s largest arms merchant. After being spun off from Honeywell who grew tired of the protests from the Honeywell Project, Alliant Techsystems, or ATK as it is known by their company logo and in the stock market, first located in an old Honeywell facility in Hopkins, MN. The weekly vigil by local activists started in 1996, focusing on ATK’s manufacture and sale of anti-personnel landmines. After a significant victory in court in 1997 when 79 people were acquitted of trespassing charges under a defense claiming International Law, the Wednesday morning vigil continued to grow in size.

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Reintroducing JFK: Seeing Our Slain President Through a New Lens
by Steve Clemens

Review of James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. 2008)

I had just turned 13 the month before the startling news was broadcast into my 8th grade classroom: President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas and had been rushed to the hospital. It was followed by the bulletin that the President was dead. Lorenzo, my fellow classmate, an Italian Catholic, burst into tears. I sat quietly thinking: at least we got that Papist out of the White House! The anti-Catholic indoctrination I received from my church and parents never allowed me to see JFK as a person, only a symbol of a false religion to reject. Oh, and he was a Democrat as well!

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Thoughts from Tim Haskamp…

Thomas Merton, in his book Peace in the Post-Christian Era, speaks of the crisis of the spirit and the “moral upheaval of the human race that has lost its religious and cultural roots.” In our desire to destroy evil, we search for a simple solution and suddenly become that which we are trying to destroy. We lose sight of truth and our deep moral obligation for life. We alienate ourselves from truth and the “springs of spiritual life and God.” It is our fear that causes us to lose perspective.

It is our faith that must encourage us not to become what we are hoping to destroy.

Thoughts from Tim Haskamp…

Father Pedro Arrupe was the superior general of the Jesuits from 1965 -1981. As a result of his missionary experience in Japan after the Hiroshima bombing, he became a strong advocate of social justice issues in the Society of Jesus. It was his conviction that the “pursuit of justice was integral to life in Jesus.” He believed that justice in the world “was as much on the level of societal structures as in personal relationships, and justice meant structural change in every aspect of human life.” His was a dream of promoting justice in the world, and justice meant challenging ourselves and the world in which we live.

Do we connect justice with the life of Jesus?

Are we willing to challenge ourselves or do we merely give lip service?

Cloud of Witnesses, Edited by Jim Wallis and Joyce Hollyday

Thoughts from Tim Haskamp…

Penny Lernoux was a tireless advocate of the poor in Latin America. She wrote several books, the most famous being Cry of the People, where she speaks of how “powerful people and institutions oppress the powerless.”  Before she died of cancer at the young age of 49, she spoke of learning of her powerlessness with her illness connecting it with the powerlessness of the poor.  At the same time it was a cleansing and healing experience for her because she felt the ultimate powerlessness of Christ.  She worked closely with the Maryknoll missionaries who helped invigorate her faith.  It was the missionaries who introduced her to the “sounds, smells, hopes and sufferings of the poor.” Penny stated that, “only by entering into the world of the poor, can you begin to understand what it is like to be powerless, to be like Christ.”

We are filled with so many riches today. What is our connection to the poor and powerless?

Cloud of Witnesses, edited by Jim Wallis and Joyce Hollyday