Page 124 - October 7 - Teresa Pirola

condemns in the strongest possible terms the barbaric actions of Hamas, which have resulted in the brutal execution of six innocent hostages. ... We are deeply saddened and outraged by these heinous murders, which violate all principles of humanity, religious teachings, and international law’.
When I shared the Muslim statement with a Catholic friend, her response shot back: ‘Why can’t the Catholic Church speak up like this?!’ Indeed, that is the question that underlies this entire book. In the face of unspeakable atrocities committed against Israelis by a terrorist group with a raison d’etre that seeks the destruction of the State of Israel and the elimination of free, sovereign Jews ‘from the River to the Sea’, why do so many Catholic leaders remain silent? When these atrocities are celebrated and supported (or, conversely, ignored and denied) by hate-filled voices around the world, why do so few Catholic social justice stalwarts protest such base behaviour, despite being powerfully resourced to do so by their tradition’s principles and values, including the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that ‘decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone’ (Nostra Aetate, 4)?
A full answer will require deeper analysis in years to come, when the war in Gaza has ended and the current polarised tensions abated, if that is possible. However, there is one potentially contributing issue that already invites attention, and this brings me to the second event that occurred on the eve of this book’s publication, about two weeks prior to the murder of the six Israeli hostages.
On 20 August 2024, at a livestreamed church event, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference launched its annual Social Justice Statement for the period 2024–2025, ‘Truth and Peace: A Gospel Word in a Violent World’. Incredibly, in a
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