tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5561829398685858313.post3008357756224974246..comments2023-05-08T04:06:30.276-07:00Comments on Notes of an Itinerant Mendicant: A Violated Christmas: Of armed soldiers in Churches and the spirit of Christmas Jason Keith Fernandeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13747657801280747019noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5561829398685858313.post-36978261704609635502009-01-01T19:28:00.000-08:002009-01-01T19:28:00.000-08:00Happy New Year! I'm treating you to my response to...Happy New Year! I'm treating you to my response to your Christmas<BR/>violence as the first gift of the pristine year 2009:<BR/>Your annoyance at the presence of increased security measures during the Christmas Eve celebrations is clear. As usual, I admire the verbal brille with which you express your indignation about what sounds like an open insult to the integrity of one of the most cherished celebrations of our faith. I particularly like your coinage of words like “paraphernalia” in the first sentence, expressing your contempt more effectively than anything. A formula like “born in manger surrounded by human bonds that are the true foundation for the peace that he came to establish on earth” is fortunate and deserves a place in some ecclesiastical doctrine.<BR/><BR/>Yet, at a few decisive instants I tend to deviate from the point you<BR/>make and the stand you take. Before mentioning these, of course I have to stress that I have no idea of the disturbance that this armed presence caused during the celebrations, so I cannot judge the exact measure of your annoyance.<BR/><BR/>That being said, I was puzzled by your outright rejection of the<BR/>security measures. Of course, in principle you are right, that they do not have any place amidst the spirit of Christmas, which indeed amounts to “a voluntary adoption of vulnerability”. But could this voluntary adoption not uncannily swift deteriorate into carelessness and irresponsibility? Of course, again I have to stress that I do not know the severity of the threat of anything happening in Goa that day. So I cannot fathom the degree to what rejection of security measures would count as careless. Still, we can allow at least the assumption of a threat, as you suggest yourself, even if only for the sake of argument.<BR/><BR/>Then I ask myself: would I have taken my children to church that night, if only the smallest hint of a threat existed, and if there were no appropriate safety measures to give me at least the illusion of security? I think my answer would be clearly: no.<BR/><BR/>I don’t hold much for martyrdom myself. I have seen and heard it being invoked too often for the wrong sorts of reasons. I also don’t believe that the self-sacrifice of Christ was an open invitation to seek<BR/>martyrdom. What I do believe is that some things rank beyond life and death, and that in exceptional cases (which we can only hope not to encounter), the impossible choice comes before a human conscience to put his/her life at risk for the sake of something more holy than survival.<BR/><BR/>But I’m not very sure if that Christmas Eve in Goa was such an occasion.<BR/><BR/>I’m also not very sure if in the face of the threat of indiscriminate and shapeless violence (of which we speak when mentioning ‘terrorism’) the appeal to ‘offer the other cheek’ would mean much.<BR/><BR/>The example of Gandhi is a case in point. I have always thought that<BR/>satyagrahi was successful (to a certain extent) as a strategy of<BR/>resistance, because the opponent was somehow bound by a rule of law,<BR/>albeit largely by its own making, and could not resort to indiscriminate violence and force with impunity. In fact the instances where such excessive and disproportionate violence wasused, this contributed precisely to a further destabilization of the regime. So satyagrahi was<BR/>successful in the precarious constellation of a rule of law constantly struggling with its own excesses. I would say in the present context, where a similar excess on the part of the State and the law struggles to<BR/>contain an equally excessive violence, called ‘terror’, satyagrahi somehow sounds a bit out of place to me, if only because it’s confronted – at least in one part – with a faceless opponent that is not bound by<BR/>any form of law.<BR/><BR/>That’s in short how I would phrase my hesitation to your plea for<BR/>voluntary vulnerability, as a mystic act to break the circle of<BR/>violence. I fully acknowledge the high moral standard of such a plea,<BR/>with the reservation (mentioned above) that it could easily be twisted into carelessness and irresponsibility, and be condemned as such, which would not have much moral appeal. I trust you are familiar with the similar ambiguity in the phrase “unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God<BR/>what is God’s” that you quote. More often than not, it is used to back out from responsibility for the affairs of the world, which is how it could be read, even if intended as rather the opposite.<BR/>Do I make any sense?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com