Is It Too Early To Start Talking About Reparations?

I’ve seen many suggestions for praying Psalm 31 for those suffering in Ukraine. Verses not to lose in our age of fake news, lies, and detraction:

Do not let me be put to shame,
for I have called to you, LORD.
Put the wicked to shame;
reduce them to silence in Sheol.
Strike dumb their lying lips,
which speak arrogantly against the righteous
in contempt and scorn. (18-19, NABRE)

The Christian hopes that shame, when it comes, inspires conversion. I’ve noticed a bit of wavering on the Right, even the Catholic Right the past few days. On some sites, some dithering after initial support for the “liberation” of Ukraine, the unity one feels when a foreign dictator applauds the insults hurled at an old politician who only wanted to deliver the US from a failed businessman-turned-president.

Unless or until someone stages a palace coup against the one responsible for the combo of military adventurism and financial collapse in the world’s eleventh largest economy (until last week, that is) I suspect the stubborn will continue to prosecute the war in such a way to exact the most pain for a refusal to roll over and cede.

Morally, I think the Russians and the Trumpkins are on the run. It is a truth in addiction that one must hit bottom before one can become convinced of one’s depravity and powerlessness in the face of misguided passions. I for one would prefer to see a humbled Russian oligarchy, and monies scraped for military might across Europe be guided to rebuild Ukraine when this horrific mess is finally cleaned up.

About catholicsensibility

Todd lives in Minnesota, serving a Catholic parish as a lay minister.
This entry was posted in Liturgy, Other Places, Politics, Scripture. Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Is It Too Early To Start Talking About Reparations?

  1. Liam says:

    The paleocon Right in the USA appears quite riven over this; it’s as if the real earth moved under their feet orthogonally from below and disrupted the domination of public discourse by a barbell curve of the polarized that has prevailed for the last 5 years or more and been intensified by the 2 years of the pandemic straddling an election and new government. Some are reverting to older pieties, others strongly trying to continue their newer pieties without much regard for the changed realities on the ground. Sound familiar? The capacity for ignoring realities on the ground is deep and broad. Not as deep and broad as God’s mercy and justice, but deeper and broader than we often care to imagine.

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