The Buddha said to Todd and Buzz The route is wide and useful Now a bit neglected All things die Even highways Lend me your Vette Then walk down the road To the Blue Swallow Motel Sleep if you must But be sure To wake up
This year is the centennial of Route 66. Whether that is more or less significant than the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is something to consider. We can speculate about which of the freewheeling founders would have reveled in rolling across the continent they could only dream of in a vehicle they could only dream of.
Route 66 is a once great American highway passed over by the Interstates, but not surpassed. Some motels and other businesses catering to travelers are gone. The Blue Swallow Motel remains, and is not mere nostalgia. It is a place that allows the past to be present, not because the past is better but because it is different.
Todd and Buzz are also past, heroes of the 1960s TV show Route 66, in which they drove around the country in their Corvette, having dramatic American adventures.
The Buddha is the Buddha, never in Tucumcari, never drove a Corvette, though the route is the way.
“Pope Leo, his papal predecessors and his contemporary brethren are calling for returning to Christian roots, with one simple concept: War is fundamentally antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
I am adding a short opinion piece in the New York Times, It’s Time to Put This Catholic Teaching to Rest, by James Grimaldi, former executive editor of The National Catholic Reporter. The teaching referred to is just war theory. Excerpt follows:
It isn’t every day that a pope calls for an overhaul of a more than 1,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church, but that’s exactly what Pope Leo XIV did last month. In his inaugural encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” which was mainly an exploration of how to protect human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence, Leo devoted a brief but critical passage to just war theory.
In a break with a foundational principle of Catholic thought on conflict, Leo called the theory “outdated” and made it clear that the teaching has been twisted to justify wars for decades, most recently the war in Iran. It is about time for the change.
Just war theory holds that wars must meet strict conditions: They should be in self-defense, and only if alternatives have been exhausted; the use of force should be proportional; there should be a likelihood of success and the threat should be imminent. Since World War II at least, several popes have criticized world leaders for using the theory as a fig leaf.
While Leo did not cite any specific war in the encyclical, he clearly had President Trump’s war on Iran in mind. On June 6, in remarks en route to Madrid for a visit, he was asked if a “just war” was being waged in Iran. The pontiff replied: “I believe this has already been made very clear: In Iran, the criteria for a just war are not present.” Leo wasn’t done. “The theory of the just war dates back to centuries when it was impossible to imagine the weapons and the destructive capacity available to humanity today,” he added….
In casting doubt on the usefulness of just war teaching in the modern era, Leo’s encyclical preserved “the right to self-defense in the strictest sense.” Instead of suggesting a new framework for justifying war, Leo all but rules out war’s legitimacy. “Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness,” Leo wrote. “The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”
Overhauling just war teaching will be among the top issues to be discussed on Friday and Saturday at a consistory, or meeting of the pope’s cardinals, at the Vatican, according to Vatican News, the Holy See’s official outlet. The cardinals should not pull their punches. The moment urgently calls for new guidance, not just discussion. In reformulating the church’s view of war, the stakes for Catholicism, the United States and the world are high, and the Vatican needs to get this right. The universal church, with millenniums of moral reasoning and clergy on the ground in virtually every conflict zone, is uniquely situated to articulate a new intellectual framework on just war theory — especially as A.I. increasingly automates decisions on the battlefield.
The answer is deceptively simple. Leo, his papal predecessors and his contemporary brethren are calling for returning to Christian roots, with one simple concept: War is fundamentally antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Bob Schwartz 