Page 52 - October 7 - Teresa Pirola

Qaeda in Fallujah. When the Allies fought the Nazis, Allied bombing razed entire German cities to the ground with horrific numbers of civilian deaths. ‘War is hell.’ No reasonable person wants it. Certainly, Israelis do not wish for war or celebrate its human cost. It tears at the Jewish soul. But Israelis are grimly aware that they can no longer live securely with Iran-backed Hamas next door and that military force is required for regime change.
The complexities of geopolitical disputes should always be debated. However, it is bewildering to witness the hesitation of so many Catholic leaders to condemn unequivocally the premeditated, sadistic murder of Israeli civilians on October 7 by Hamas and the antisemitic reactions that have swept the world since. It is inexplicable that Jewish women and girls— their bodies raped, tortured, murdered and mutilated on October 7—find no outspoken support from Catholic feminist movements.
While Israelis were combing their fields, picking up the body parts of their people slaughtered, our Catholic leaders— clerical and lay—were focused on a synod in Rome with a theme of ‘walking together’. In the days following October 7, one might have expected a flurry of public statements condemning Hamas’ attacks and expressing solidarity with Jewish communities. One might have expected to see clergy paying compassionate visits to rabbis, and homilists reinforcing the teaching of Vatican II that the church ‘decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone’ (Nostra Aetate, 4).
Instead, the prevalent Catholic social justice message has been ‘we mustn’t take sides’.
Like people everywhere, my heart is breaking over the violence engulfing Palestinians, as whole families in Gaza
52