Cindy Sheehan anti-war vigil energizes Catholic peace community
The two-week vigil of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq,
near President Bush’s vacation ranch in Crawford, Tex., has mobilized
millions of people of faith in the U.S. to oppose the continued U.S. military
presence in Iraq. It has also bolstered the peace efforts of Pax Christi USA
and of Catholics for Faithful Citizenship (CFC), one of the multi-group Catholic
coalitions formed after the 2004 elections.
Sheehan is a Catholic who served as a youth minister for her church. Her son Casey, killed in Iraq in April 2004, was a former altar boy.
Pax Christi and CFC issued a joint statement Aug. 22 recapping three years of steady moral opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq both from Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI. The late pope challenged the “arrogant” use of power by the Bush administration. The current pope stated that “the concept of ‘preventive war’ does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.” Many Vatican officials have joined the chorus of opposition. Even Cardinal Pio Laghi, a former Vatican Ambassador in Washington and a Bush family friend, called the U.S.-led war both illegal and unjust.
Sign-on Statement
Pax Christi USA is circulating a sign-on statement it plans to publish in U.S. Catholic in coming weeks. It is titled “The War in Iraq Remains a Defeat For Humanity,” echoing the phrase John Paul II used to describe the war as soon as the U.S. invaded Iraq.
The statement is available both at www.paxchristiusa.org and at www.catholicsforfaithfulcitizenship.org
Pax Christi USA membership includes more than 130 U.S. bishops, 800 parishes, 650 religious communities and 300 local groups. Catholics for Faithful Citizenship is a newer organization that promotes education and involvement in the U.S. political process through a lens of social justice, just war policy and attention to the poor.
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