The priest as warrior

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That’s the definition of pacifism and how Mark Kurlansky defines it in his book.

Nonviolent pacifist do not believe in violence, but they remain inactive on issues.

People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, were activist. They had a goal, independence for India, civil rights for black people. However, they ran their campaigns without the use of violence.

Jesus, was probably more of a pacifist. He didn’t have a political goal, but salvation and he made himself a victim to achieve it. In that sense he was an activists, but it was of the spiritual nature, not the political. He didn’t try to achieve independence for Israel.

Don’t misunderstand, there’s nothing wrong with pacifism, but pacifists do not get themselves engaged in political activities to achieve a specific goal.

Jim
 
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You are wrong, but Kurlansky is not. Here, for example, is what the Dalai Lama says in his intro to the book you refer to: “The true expression of nonviolence is not a passive response, but a rational stimulus to action.”
Kurlansky, meanwhile, says: nonviolence “is one of the rare true revolutionary ideas, an idea that truly seeks to change the nature of society, a threat to the established order.”
Neither of these understandings is passivity OR lack of action. So I don’t know where you are getting your interpretation, but it squares with no understanding of nonviolence (which is not exactly the same as pacifism, but is close).
I’m done. I think you need to study this concept more fully before you make claims that simply are not accurate. I will not say more here, as apparently you have a fixed sense of things that even evidence from your source will probably not alter.
 
”Warrior” priests and “warrior” Jesus seem like an attractive meme for younger teenage boys.
 
So you took the forward from the Dalai Lama and concluded this is what Kurlansky wrote in the rest of his book.

Anyway, as he himself wrote, “nonviolence is not the same as pacifism for which there are many words.” Page 6.

I too am looking at the sample on Amazon, for I borrowed the book from the library years ago.

Anyway, we have a different meaning on the two words, nonviolence and pacifism, and we’re not going to solve the issue here.

God Bless
Jim
 
As Pat Moynihan famously said, “you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”

This is hardly my only source, and I did cite Kurlansky. Read stuff by any number of Catholic pacifists and nonviolent activists. Start with Dorothy Day and Dan or Phil Berrigan.
 
I’m not making my own facts as you accuse me of.

Remember, when you read the translations from the so called scholars, the word pacifism is a generic translation into English.

There is a deeper meaning behind it and as Kurlansky points out, there is no single word for those who are nonviolent, but active in their goals.

This thread has been trashed enough.

God Bless
Jim
 
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The same shepherd that holds the sheep lovingly in his arms also fights off the predators for the life of the sheep. Preists are called to be loving, comforting and supporting as well as strong when needed. Jesus was not one dimensional, neither do preists need to be one dimensional.
 
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