Pope Francis says weapons manufacturers can't call themselves Christian

[sandensea]

People who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian, Pope Francis said on Sunday.

"It makes me think of ... people, managers, businessmen who call themselves 'Christian' and manufacture weapons. That leads one to doubt it, doesn't it?" he said to applause.

He also criticized those who invest in weapons industries, saying "duplicity is the currency of today ... they say one thing and do another."

Francis also built on comments he has made in the past about events during the first and second world wars. He spoke of the "tragedy of the Shoah," using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

"The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals, everybody. Why didn't they bomb (the railway lines)?"

At: https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-21/pope-says-weapons-manufacturers-cant-call-themselves-christian

[C_U_L8R]

1. How about gun buyers?

Thou shalt not kill... right?

[meow2u3]

2. What about gun promoters and the politicians who represent them?

They're the same ones who call themselves Christians!

[GeorgeGist]

3. Neither can Trumpeters. IMO.

[sandensea]

7. Hear, hear.

[EX500rider]

4. And the Vatican guards carry, what, slingshots?

So Vatican buying weapons for protection, OK, company who makes them so they can buy them, not ok?
lol

[sandensea]

9. Good point - but there are degrees.

If the arms industry only made handguns and hunting rifles, it would still be a transgression from a Christian point of view - but nothing like the kind of sin (for lack of a better word) that assault weapon, missile, fighter jet-making behemoths commit day in and day out.

To say nothing of the politicians who concoct the bad-faith wars that keeps said industry obscenely profitable.

[Blue_Adept]

5. Every American is complicit. Hell, all of us are.

Our taxes invest in all of it for national defense - to the extreme here at least.

[HeartachesNhangovers]

6. Not just national defense - tax dollars arm police officers,

IRS investigators, postal service investigators, EPA investigators, etc, etc, etc. So if the gun-makers aren't "Christian", are the people who use them for work "Christian"?

[WinkyDink]

8. But they can call themselves "rich."

[hunter]

10. Quite a few of my ancestors landed in the U.S.A. as Christian pacifists.

One of my grandfathers refused to take up arms in World War II. Given a choice of prison or building and repairing ships for the Merchant Marine, he built and repaired ships. No guns.

My own dad, and my wife's dad, took the Radar O'Reilly route, my dad just as nearsighted.



My wife's dad got to witness a nuclear blast up close and personal in the Nevada desert from a hole in the ground. And then he got to march towards ground zero as stuff was still burning. He's still here but many of his comrades were not so radioactive fallout resistant.

[sandensea]

12. Very good and brave people.

Thank you for sharing that, Hunter.

Would that my forbears had stories even half that interesting.

[DFW]

11. Sure they can. They can call themselves anything they want to

But like the old saying goes, going inside a church every Sunday doesn't make you a Christian any more than going inside a garage makes you a car.

[sandensea]

13. Isn't that the truth. They're nothing if not shameless.

On a lighter note, belated Happy Birthday to you DFW!