Connecting Carnivals
CL Endorsers and member groups offer comment on the news of the week, the killing of Osama Bin Laden: see Brian McLaren, John Dear, Jim Wallis, and Pax Christi.
Carnival atmospheres have been historically prominent for executions, lynchings, and parades of soldiers preparing for war. In psychology, this has been called the “mythic mode” of thinking – a cartoon mentality where the “bad guys” get their comeuppance. It can be illustrated with The Wizard of Oz, where in in the fairy-tale world, Dorothy kills a witch and therefore the Munchkins dance and sing. Yet what would have happened had Dorothy killed her nemesis Miss Gulch? There would have been no party; people would have been shocked. Miss Gulch was an actual human being in the real world, where the cartoon mentality doesn’t apply. (All three photos below appeared with a Google image search for “the wicked witch is dead.”)
As someone who participated in killing thousands of innocents, Bin Laden is unusual in being outside the law. Abortion staff, war profiteers, and government leaders who start wars or massacres, however noble their intentions might be, cause countless "legal" deaths for which they are never held accountable. In the real world, we need creative nonviolent means to stop all killing.

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CL Member Groups Act
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Pax Christi USA published in the April 29 issue of National Catholic Reporter a statement calling on President Obama to negotiate with Russia to end the “launch on warning” policy and take the weapons off alert. It calls on the leadership of both political parties to move beyond cold war thinking and remove the very real danger that these weapons pose today. This statement has been signed by hundreds of people, many of them Consistent Life supporters.
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Sojourners was involved in leading a protest in which over 36,000 Americans joined in a group fast to protest congressional budget cuts that fall heavily on the poor. CL Endorser Jim Wallis said, “Our endless military spending has gotten another free pass while those who can least afford it are getting cut.” Two dozen members of congress joined the fast. (National Catholic Reporter, 4/29/11, page 8.)
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CL 2010 Annual Report Available
Individual members and group members should have received their paper copy in the mail by now, but anyone can view our annual report online. If you haven’t joined and would like to, or would like your organization to become a group member, you can visit our joining page.
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Quotation of the Week
Ron Paul, 2008 candidate for U.S. Republican nomination, U.S. Representative from Texas
Liberty Defined, 2011

“The consistent right-to-life position should be to protect the unborn and oppose abortion, to reject the death penalty, and to firmly oppose our foreign policy that promotes an empire requiring aggressive wars that involve thousands of innocent people being killed. We would all be better off for it, and a society dedicated to peace, human life, and prosperity would more likely be achieved."