A Passive Voice Is How We Hide From The Wars We Choose – OpEd |
By the time you read this, Pope Leo XIV has probably said it again.
Not because he is running out of ideas. Because the wars are still running. Ukraine grinds on, the Middle East burns in new configurations. Sudan’s suffering continues with the quiet persistence of a tragedy the world has decided it can live with.
And so Leo — Robert Prevost from Chicago, a former missionary, the first American pope, a man who has apparently decided that the job description includes saying uncomfortable things to comfortable people — keeps showing up and saying the same thing. Enough. Not as a slogan. As a verdict rendered from somewhere deeper than politics.
What is remarkable is not that he says it. Popes have always said it.
What is remarkable is how little it costs the people he is saying it to — and what that cost tells us about where we actually are.
Avoiding responsibility
We have built an entire grammar to protect ourselves from the fact that wars are chosen.
Wars break out. Violence erupts.........