“The trowel in hand and the gun rather easy in the holster”
—Nehemiah, according to T.S. Eliot
“Say you got two Gucci jackets, you hock one and you get yourself a gat.”
—The “Bad” News Bible
Jesus, contemplating His departure from this world, instructed His disciples to arm themselves, and, ever since, Christians enrolled in the Church Militant have made use of whatever defensive weapons the technology of the age produced—swords in the first century, automatic rifles in our own. In the struggle against evil, Christians who decline to fight comprise a fifth column, doing the enemy’s work on the home front.
Christian pacifism is a contradiction in terms. A self-described Christian pacifist—or Christian vegetarian or Christian socialist—is only a pacifist, vegetarian, or liberal who wraps himself in the comforting language of the Christian Faith. Christians are called upon to make peace, treat animals decently, and practice charity, but these virtuous practices derive from the Faith; they do not determine it.
Many American Catholics, in rebellion against both their Church and the Christian faith, say that it is always wrong to take a human life. To pick apart the moral theology of “Christian” liberals...