GODS OF METAL PLOWSHARES
Do not turn to idols and do
not cast metal gods for yourself,
I am Adonai your God. (Leviticus 19:4)
You
shall not have other gods be sides Me.
You
shall not carve idols for yourselves
in
the shape of anything in the sky above
or
on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth:
you
shall l not bow down before them or worship them. (Exodus 20: 3‑4)
… they
will hammer their swords into plowshares,
their
spears into pruning hooks.
Nation
shall not lift sword against nation,
no
longer will they learn how to make war .. (Isaiah 2:4)
Our
apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order….
We
could not so help us God, do otherwise,
For
we are sick at heart, our hearts give us no rest….
(Opening
words of the Statement of The Catonsville Nine).
THE 20TH CENTURY IS THE BLOODIRST CENTURY THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN
How to
break the cycles of violence generally held as the only possible alternatives?
We ordinary people‑grandmother,
parish priests, Cathoilic sisters we people of faith, have come to Andrews Air
Force Base, MD to the annual Air Show and Open House 98:
to
unmask the idolatry of these gods of metal, celebrated in this nuclear liturgy
of the Air Show. We publicly and openly offer disarmament in a
sacred liturgy on behalf of life
to
nonviolently and lovingly disarm these weapons of mass murder by enfleshing the
imperative of Isaiah " to hammer swords into plowshares ". We plead
for the cause of peace with justice and the abolition of war.
to
celebrate God as True Security rather than accept weapons and violence as
restorers or maintainers of peace. We pour out our own
blood as a sign of our willingness to lay down our lives rather than take life
from another.
to
announce that weapons and their carriers in space, air, sea and land are in
fact idols ‑ gods of metal. Our
trust in them amounts to worship. We
must not applaud, celebrate, or worship them for they defile all of creation.
We are grateful to the
Catonsville Nine, who thirty years ago today burned draft files to awaken us to
the immorality of the Vietnam War. In this witness we continue the legacy and
tradition of the Catonsville witness.
In doing so we hope to offer
the next generation an example of love in action ‑ the alternative to
violence meeting violence, the alternative to the fate of "an eye for an
eye making the whole world blind." (Gandhi).
We encourage all people of
good will to explore similar opportunities to put love into action until
justice is established and peace prevails in all the earth
Kathy;
Shields Boylan Rev; Larry Morlan
Rev; Frank Cordaro Carol Gilbert, O.P. Ardeth Platte, O.P.
GODS OF METAL PLOWSHARES BIOGRAPHIES
Ardeth Platte, OP (62) Grand Rapids,
Ml. Dominican Sister, former high
school teacher, administrator and City Councilwoman, justice and peace
organizer, member
of Jonah House resistance
community, Baltimore, MD.
Kathy Shields Boylan (54) Mother of 5,
grandmother, member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Washington, D.C.
Rev. Larry Morlan (38) Roman Catholic
priest of Diocese of Peoria, IL., former member of Davenport, IA. Catholic
Worker, struggling resister.
Carol Gilbert, OP (50) Grand Rapids,
Ml. Dominican Sister, former teacher, member of Jonah House resistance
community, Baltimore, MD.
Rev. Frank Cordaro (47) Roman Catholic
Priest and Pastor at Holy Trinity of S.E. Warren County, IA., co‑founder
of Catholic Worker house/community in Des Moines, IA. in 1976, active worker
for justice and peace.