De Cura Animarum: Osama Bin Laden's Death: How Should Christians Respond

Saturday, 7 May 2011

Osama Bin Laden's Death: How Should Christians Respond

Fr Robert Barron offers a brief insight into the way we as Catholics might better respond to the recent capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. This is, and has the potential of being a very huge debate. I don't want discussion digressing into ad hominem attacks but discussing the points made by Fr Barron could be helpful and fruitful. That is my prayer as I offer this video for discussion.

1 comments:

Tony said...: Robert Barron presents a truly orthodox Catholic view of Osama Bin Laden's killing. There will, I think, be a large measure of agreement with what he says. Fr Barron's stark reminder to us that Osama was our 'brother' emphasises just how hard the Christian road is to tread for us mortals!

Bin Laden's death amounted to state assassination of course (raises issues about the rights of nations to go killing people on 'foreign' soil) and, it seems, he may have had his head blown apart in front of his teenage daughter. I for one, like Rowan Williams, feel uncomfortable (and guilty) about this.; 9 May 2011 13:05

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"I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater... She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight and at one, I hadn't opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say... Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them. Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the most portable person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it. That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."

- Flannery O'Connor