As the War in Ukraine continues to escalate, my heart breaks for those involved in this war. Every day, 24/7, we hear the news and see the video footage of the carnage that is taking place in the nation of Ukraine. It matters not whether it is Russians raining death on the civilian population of Ukraine, or Ukrainians destroying the Russian military in combat, every time a person fires a rocket, throws an explosive and fires a weapon that kills human life, a piece of that person’s soul breaks off. There comes a time when the person’s soul is so broken and missing that there is hardly a semblance of soul left.
KILLING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING BREAKS THE SOUL
Whether the death of another person occurs accidentally, or if the death of another person occurs intentionally, killing leaves a lasting impression upon the soul of the one who caused the death of another person. You can see in their eyes that there is a wound that never will ever heal. Some may read this with incredulity and disbelief, but it remains to be a truth. As much as the violence of human history may indicate otherwise, the human soul bears the image of God, whom Jesus revealed as unconditional love. The action of causing the death of another human being goes against the will of God to love; killing alters the human person and wounds the soul.
This is why my heart breaks for the Ukrainian people who are now forced by the invading army of Russia to kill Russians. I can say the same for those in the Russian army who are now commanded to kill Ukrainians. The damage being done to the souls of Ukrainians forced to fight, and the souls of Russian ordered to kill is irreparable and the lives of these people will never be the same again. The spectres of the deaths for which they have been responsible will follow them and cling to them the rest of their living days.
THE EFFECT OF KILLING ON THE SOULS OF COMBAT VETERANS
In the time I was the parish life administrator of St Stephen’s Catholic Church in South Minneapolis, many of the forty-one men who slept in the homeless shelter at the church were Vietnam War veterans. What they were ordered to do, saw, and experienced in combat caused such anguish in their lives that their PTSD was off the scale. They could not readjust to civilian life after the war. They could not escape the nightmares of the war that possessed their lives. Many sought to escape through alcohol and street drugs. Many ended up dying on the streets and under the bridge overpasses they called home.
As we examine the lives of returning war veterans of the United States, those who knew them prior to them going into combat speak about how they have drastically changed because of combat. The rate of divorce of returning war veterans is over sixty percent according to the Veterans Administration. In the post-9/11 wars alone, close to 31,000 war veterans have died by suicide as contrasted with the @ 7,000 deaths of those who died in combat. When you ask war veterans to open up about their war experiences, they refuse to share. I had a friend whose uncle refused to travel by airplane. Why? He was a tail gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress in World War II, in which the life expectancy of a B-17 crew was less than 50 percent. He saw too many of his friends in other B-17’s die in fiery crashes during that war. He refused to say anything about his war experience, even to his closest family members.
THE BLACK AND TAN WAR
As the War of Ukraine has unfolded on television and social media, I am reminded of the wars of occupation in Ireland. For over seven hundred years, the British engaged in war in Ireland. The level of brutality, the level of inhumanity of the British, including starving to death over a million Irish men, women, and children during The Great Hunger of the 19th century, was the cause of many violent rebellions by the Irish against the British. One of the most brutal wars in modern Irish history occurred between the years of 1920 and 1922, called the Black and Tan Wars. Ten thousand of those recruited by the British into the Royal Irish Constabulary were unemployed soldiers returning from World War I. Many of these men were uneducated, unmarried Protestants from London, Wales, and Scotland. The British government unleashed these men, whose souls had been damaged by the carnage of World War I, on the Irish populace. They were called “Black and Tans” by the Irish because they uniform they wore consisted of khaki trousers and dark green tunics, belts, and caps.
The Black and Tans were known for their brutality. In response to the guerilla warfare of the Irish Republican Army, the Black and Tans carried out reprisals against civilians. Their reprisals included burning the homes, businesses, meeting halls, and farms of the Irish people. Many buildings were attacked with grenades and gunfire, and businesses looted. Most this destruction was also accompanied by the beating and killing of civilians by the Black and Tans. The British government tacitly approved of the destruction and murder caused by the Black and Tans as a way of putting down the Irish people and the support of the Irish people for the Irish Republican Army.
Because the atrocities committed by the Black and Tans were so inhuman, their action alienated the public opinion of people not only in Ireland but also in Great Britain. The violence of the Black and Tans did not dissuade the Irish people in their support of the Irish Republican Army but only increased their support of the Irish Republican Army.
Michael Collins, a leader in the Irish Republican Army, and an expert in guerilla warfare, knew that the IRA could not face the British military in a face to face battle and succeed. Instead, Collins organized a group of men to engage in the assassination of British spies and intelligence officers in Ireland. This group of IRA assassins was called the “Squad” or, Collin’s “Twelve Apostles.” As Collins was recruiting the men for the Squad he asked them whether they had a moral objection to killing a man in cold blood. In the movie, “Michael Collins”, this question Collins asked the men was, “Do you think you soul could handle the burden (of killing a British agent)?” Many whom Collins interviewed did morally object in being an assassin. Collins honored their objections and excused them from this duty. Collins knew the effect of killing another human being on the human soul, and wanted to make sure that the souls of those who morally objected to killing another human being would not be harmed.
Human violence will kill the soul. I discovered this early on at the age of sixteen years, when I read this account that reportedly took place in an Irish Catholic confessional during the Black and Tan War. The story was designated as a “joke” in an Irish book of humor.
Father O’Dowd was sitting in the confessional hearing confessions one Saturday afternoon. It had been a long afternoon and Father O’Dowd was looking forward to the end of his stint in the confessional at 4 pm so that he could get to O’Rourke’s Pub for a pint of stout. At about 3:55 pm, a young man enters the confessional, and Father O’Dowd, who could almost taste the stout awaiting him, was feeling impatient and frustrated. The young man confesses that he was a member of the Irish Republican Army. Father O’Dowd tells the young man, “Now, being a member in the Irish Republican Army is not a sin. Now confess your sins so that I can get to O’Rourkes to drink a pint of stout.” The young man tells the priest, “Father, did you read about the bomb that exploded in the barracks of the Black and Tans the other day and killed forty Black and Tans?” The priest replied, “Yes, yes, I read about that.” The young man then tells the priest, “Father, I was the one who planted the bomb and exploded the bomb that took the lives of all those men.” The priest then responded, “I heard you. Now confess your sins so that I can get to O’Rourkes and drink a pint of stout.”
When I recall this story today, I cringe. I find it fascinating, telling, and scandalous, that the priest, the moral authority of the story, judged that the taking of forty human lives was not a sin, as long as the murdered party were British. What is revealed in the young IRA bomber is the higher morality of God, and the recognition that in taking those 40 lives, his soul had been broken.
THE DEMONIZATION OF ENEMIES
When nations go to war, we demonize the enemy. The enemy loses any semblance to being human and takes on the status of something akin to a monster, a thing to be destroyed. The priest, in the story, has demonized the British to such an extent that the intentional murder of 40 men was not, in Catholic parlance, a “mortal sin”, much less a “venial sin.” How can we break this tendency to demonize our enemies?
When I was young, I bought a book from Scholastic Book Club entitled, “Marine At War”, written by Russell Davis. Russell Davis wrote about his personal experience of the War in the Pacific during World War II. Because he was fluent in Japanese, he was a translator for the Marines. In his personal account of the war, he revealed the human face of the Japanese whom he fought. Working in Marine Intelligence, after a battle he would examine the bodies of dead Japanese on the battlefield trying to glean any information from what the dead soldiers might have on their persons. It was a dangerous task, because the Japanese often booby-trapped their dead. I remember reading in one of the chapters, how he carefully went through the personal effects found on the body of a dead Japanese soldier. In opening the dead soldier’s wallet, he found a picture of the dead man’s wife, and pictures of his children. Inserted in the wallet was a letter the dead man received from his wife days before the battle that had killed him. Like many war brides, she expressed her great concern for her husband’s safety and could not wait for him to return to her and their children safe and sound. Davis wrote that the moment he quit demonizing the Japanese was the moment he read the letter from the dead soldier’s wife. Davis no longer viewed the dead Japanese soldier as some demon monster, but discovered that the dead man was human, who loved his family in the very same way Davis loved his own family.
Mahatma Gandhi knew well how killing destroys the human soul. This is why he refused to engage in violence, preferring to act out non-violently. He authentically lived a code of conduct that stated that only love can end hate. There is a story of a Hindu man who approached Gandhi. The man was very fearful of his own personal damnation. Gandhi asked him why he was thinking that. Gandhi learned that the Hindu man had murdered a Muslim child in retaliation for the murder of his own son by Muslims. Gandhi said to the man that there was a way for the man to avoid damnation. The man asked what he would have to do. Gandhi told the Hindu man to find an orphaned Muslim child and to raise the child as he would his own son. However, Gandhi told the man that he must raise the child in the Muslim religion. Gandhi wrote, “Hatred, cannot be turned into love. Those who believed in violence will naturally use it by saying, ”kill your enemy, injure him and his property wherever you can, whether openly or secretly as necessity requires.” The result will be deeper hatred and counter hatred and vengeance let loose on both sides.”
WEARING THE FACES OF OUR ENEMIES AND MAKING THEM OUR OWN
Gandhi knew that the only way to no longer demonize our enemies is to wear the face of our enemies and see it as our own face. This is not a concept that is brand new. In the Gospels, Jesus, over and over again emphasized the need for his disciples to love their enemies, to pray for those who persecute them. We cite the words of Jesus over and over again. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Love one another as I have loved you.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Forgive them Father, for they do not know what they are doing.” Christians quote these words constantly but we don’t really listen to them, much less than embrace them. As Gandhi observed, “It is a first class human tragedy that people of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus, whom they describe as the Prince of Peace, show little of that belief in actual practice. … Live like Jesus did, and the world will listen.”
Until that time that we begin to actually believe what Jesus taught, humanity will be doomed and damned to repeat over and over and over again what we experienced in all the wars humanity has experienced throughout all of history. The bloodshed, the hatred, the violence and the killing will continue to destroy human souls. Humanity will continue to walk around seeing the world through soulless eyes.
What can we do?
Here are some steps I believe we must take:
- Pray for God to heal all the soulless in our world. Pray for the Ukrainians to not be consumed by hatred. Pray for the soulless in the Russian military who are ruthlessly killing Ukrainians.
- Look into a mirror and search for a hint of soullessness in our own eyes. Reflect on those who have hurt us and have caused us to be bitter. It may be someone in our neighborhood or community. It may be someone in our workplace. It may be an ex-spouse, or an ex-friend. It may be politician or those whose political viewpoints we do not share. It may be the religious authorities in our local church or those in our religion. Then, pray for ourselves, that we may not be consumed by hatred in the hurt and “mini-deaths” we have experienced at the hands of others. Then, pray for those who have caused us harm.
- Try to live as authentically as we can the teachings of Jesus as lived out in the lives of people like Francis of Assisi, St Oscar Romero, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King Jr., as expressed in the Gospels: “But I say to you that listen. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you. … But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:17-31, 35-36, NRSV)
