Gaudete!

Our Lady, Mother of Ferguson and All Those Killed by Gun Violence

Our Lady, Mother of Ferguson and All Those Killed by Gun Violence, often shortened to 'Our Lady of Ferguson', was created in 2015 by Black iconographer Mark Doox, after being commissioned by Rev. Dr. Mark Francisco Bozzuti-Jones for the Trinity Church in New York City. The icon was made to honor Michael Brown, a Black teen murdered at the hands of Darren Wilson, a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, in 2014. While Black Lives Matter and similar groups had already established their presence in the United States following the murder of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown's brutal murder brought all eyes across the United States onto the movement and forced the reality of police brutality onto the TV screens and twitter feeds of white usamericans who refused to acknowledge that reality.

Rev. Bozzuti-Jones, a Jamaican priest at Trinity Church, an Episcopal church in Manhattan, commissioned the icon to honor Michael Brown and all other African Americans taken by police violence. Rev. Bozzuti-Jones, who is known for his racial activism and writings in the Episcopal church, chose Mark Doox for his bold, unflinching combination of Blackness and religion. Influenced by Byzantine iconography and Dadaism, Doox describes his art as such:

Blending narrative elements, historical references, and spiritual iconography in his Byz Dada style, Mark aims to create works that challenge viewers to confront sometimes uncomfortable truths about race, Identity, and power in American history. His commitment to addressing these existential themes head-on aims to explore deep cultural and historical issues while inviting reflection, conversation, and healing.

Doox continues to create icons for the Episcopal and African-Orthodox churches, and recently published "The N–Word of God", a graphic novel and art book. You can purchase it here

at about 192, the Pope declares Just War Theory outdated

it’s a brief moment but it carries some fascinating implications, especially since Leo XIV is a member of the Order of St. Augustine. he’s intimately familiar with Augustinian thought, so him declaring Just War Theory outdated is very very interesting. i hope to see him expand on this in the near future.

192. To all of this, the media and digital dimensions are adding new and decisive elements. Communication networks, fragmented information environments and algorithms that reward conflict can magnify polarization and resentment, increase propaganda and make shared discernment more difficult. Thus, war is not only fought, but also culturally conditioned through simplistic narratives, a friend-or-foe mentality, disinformation and fear. When historical memory fades and the ethical principles that protect civilians and the most vulnerable are weakened, it becomes easier to justify violence as necessary, inevitable or even “sanitized.” It is in this context that humanity is slipping into a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts. Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. [182]  Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness. The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.

The note is also important in this sense:

Cf. Francis , Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti (3 October 2020), 258: AAS 112 (2020), 1061: “In recent decades, every single war has been ostensibly ‘justified.’ The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the possibility of legitimate defense by means of military force, which involves demonstrating that certain ‘rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy’ have been met.  Yet it is easy to fall into an overly broad interpretation of this potential right.  In this way, some would also wrongly justify even ‘preventive’ attacks or acts of war that can hardly avoid entailing ‘evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.’”

So, it seems to be what is being criticized is the spurious attempt to weaponize just war theory to make anything you do appear as legitimate self-defense (If we don't take over Greenland the Russians or the Chinese will, and then attack us, so conquering Greenland is an act of self defense!). Which is also something anyone who studies these things even half-seriously knows and agrees with. "Preventive" strikes are most certainly NOT considered just by any reasonable just war theory.

Another sense in which Just War theory needs readjustment (which, again, acknowledged by pretty much everyone who actually studies the issue) is that our capabilities for destruction, and specially for the harming of civilians, have grown exponentially in the last century and a half, and so proportionality means a much different thing than it did for Augustine or Aquinas.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well...for there is a force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go.

Happy Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker! Remember that the 1% are last in Christ's world, and the poor and overworked are seated beside the throne as saints in their own right. Let us remember that while work can be a gift, dignity and safety are greater ones, and that humanity > company and business profit.

Saint Joseph the Worker, pray for us!