Bishop of Tripoli: "This war resolves nothing"

The Vatican Joins in the Babel of Libya. With Silence

A silence that is passive acceptance of the air raids against Gaddafi. Decided on for "humanitarian" reasons? The bishop of Tripoli doesn't believe it: "This war resolves nothing" 

by Sandro Magister

ROME, March 24, 2011 – Just when Paris is hosting the solemn opening of the "court of the gentiles" conceived by Pope Benedict for a peaceful global dialogue between men of faith and men far from God, also from Paris and from French president Nicolas Sarkozy – as from other Western capitals in a loose coalition – has come the most disastrous political and military Babel ever seen in this century, on an international scale.

A Babel that is being unleashed upon Libya. Which is split between Gaddafi and the rebels. But under attack by states that are in turn divided by interests and rivalries. Devoid of unified command. Devoid of common objectives and a minimum of overall perspective.

A Babel whose developments are all turning out for the worst. Vittorio Emanuele Parsi, a professor at the Catholic University of Milan and one of the most insightful experts on international politics, on Tuesday, March 22 filled an entire page of "Avvenire," the newspaper of the Italian episcopal conference, with analysis of all the possible outcomes of the Libyan adventure. Among the "thousand unknowns" examined, not even one of them is reassuring.

But in this Babelic confusion there is one more element. The silence of the authorities of the Catholic Church.

A silence that contrasts with the thundering judgments that the same Church authorities, at the various levels, issue every time weapons are taken up between states and within states. Every time a massacre is committed.

Of course, in order to protect those who remain exposed to fresh aggression, the Church makes wide recourse to the virtue of prudence. Political realism is not foreign to it. Its faithful are present on all the continents, and in some places face deadly dangers.

But although it is cautious, the Church's judgment is usually clear. Not equivocal. And yet not dogmatic. John Paul II did everything he could to oppose the second Gulf War, in Iraq, but he never condemned theologically and morally those Catholics who maintained that it was just.

This time, instead, all judgment is silenced.

Continue reading here: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1347201?eng=y

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