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Donald Trump & Torture (Sunday Homily)

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Mike Rivage-Seul
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Readings for 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: 2 MC 7: 1-12, 9-14; PS 17:1, 5-6, 3, 15; 2 THES 2:11-3:5; LK 20: 27-38.

One of the wonderful aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition is how so much of it reflects the consciousness of the poor and oppressed, while at the same time giving expression to a "preferential option for the poor." That's a gift for us in a culture that generally despises poor people, oppresses the world's impoverished majority, and spins the news in ways that ignore the poor and reflect a decided "preferential option for the rich."

This morning's first reading is especially valuable for us who live in a system where a candidate for president, Donald Trump, advocates torturing poor people who rebel against American imperialism. He has promised, to bring back water boarding. He's said, "I would bring back water boarding, And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than water boarding."

Before Abu Grahib, a statement like that would have been unthinkable. Torture is against international law. It contradicts Article 5 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights which identified the right not to be tortured as a fundamental human right. At least since the end of World War II, torture has been considered one of those intrinsic evils about which there simply could be no debate.

However, ever since Abu Ghraib gave the lie to George W. Bush's famous prevarication, "The United States doesn't do torture" -- ever since our government redefined the word to exclude even waterboarding -- it has become apparent that Bush (and so many others of our "thought-leaders") was lying. So today, it's possible for a presidential candidate to propose measures worse than water boarding -- perhaps cutting out of tongues and removal of limbs -- as measures Americans admire and advocate..

But what do tortured terrorists actually think about while having limbs removed and tongues cut out? Read today's selection about the Maccabee brothers and find out.

The Maccabees were members of a heroic family of guerrilla fighters who in the mid- 2nd century BCE terrorized the invading Greek forces of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. (Actually, "Maccabee" wasn't the family's name; it was more a nom de guerre for an entire resistance movement. The word meant "Hammer" -- the Hammer Gang -- so-called because of its delight in pounding to mincemeat the invaders of their beloved homeland. The term "Maccabee" was similar to "al Qaeda," when it simply meant "the list" -- a reference to the Rolodex of assets the CIA used when it employed al Qaeda back when they were "freedom fighters" against the Russians in Afghanistan.)

For his part, the Seleucid king, Antiochus, was fiercely anti-Semitic. He considered the Jews historically and culturally backward. For him and his empire's advancement, Jews had to be brought into the 2nd century BCE even if it meant their kicking and screaming the whole way.

Today we might understand Antiochus' project as "modernizing" the Jews -- as Hellenizing them for purposes of imperial control. Evidently the Seleucid king subscribed to the position that if empire can persuade conquered peoples to adopt its patterns of thinking and especially of imagining God, the task of imperial administrators is made that much easier.

Many Jews agreed with the program of Antiochus. After all, the Greeks' empire seemed invincible. If the empire couldn't be beat, it was better to join it willingly. So these "Hellenized Jews" stopped circumcising their sons, and changed their diets even to include eating pork. They became more Greek than the Greeks.

They also became the targets of Maccabee "terrorist" attacks. In today's terms, such Hellenized Jews would be the targets blown up by Maccabee suicide bombers in marketplaces located in Jewish but Greek-loving neighborhoods. (Even if the Maccabee targeting may have been more selective than that, it is certain that Hellenized Jews were as much the objects of Maccabee terror as were the Seleucid forces themselves.)

In countering such extremism, Antiochus IV proscribed the Jewish religion as itself criminal and illegitimate. This was very similar to the way many "Americans" consider Islam. So Greek troops burnt and otherwise desecrated copies of the Torah in much the same way as our "Christian" troops are frequently caught burning or urinating on the Holy Koran and on corpses of Muslim resistance fighters.

Though the Greeks considered the Maccabean forces to be terrorist, faithful Jews admired them as national heroes and servants of God. They understood that the Maccabees were fighting a Holy War against the much more powerful Seleucids. It was David against Goliath all over again.

In any case, according to today's selection from Second Maccabees, seven brothers of the gang's leadership were finally arrested (along with their mother) by the Greek invaders. (This would have been reported to Greeks "back home" as a great triumph -- "Senior Leaders" captured making "our troops" and "our world" much safer.)

Then the torture and the screaming start.

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Mike Rivage-Seul is a liberation theologian and former Roman Catholic priest. Retired in 2014, he taught at Berea College in Kentucky for 40 years where he directed Berea's Peace and Social Justice Studies Program. His latest book is (more...)
 

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