Rose Marie Berger

Two years after the Vatican State signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (currently ratified by 34 countries), he declared during an in-flight press briefing from Japan to Rome, “Not only their use, but also possessing them: because an accident or the madness of some government leader, one person’s madness can destroy humanity.”

“NO” IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE. I said it recently to a U.S. Capitol Police officer when he asked me to stop praying the rosary for immigrant children and to move. He then arrested me for “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building in D.C.

That day the police arrested 71 Catholics. In the parlance of Christian nonviolence, we brought the spiritual power of our prayer to a site of mortal sin—specifically the offices of powerful lawmakers who support, through cowardly and often deliberate consent, caging immigrant children. The border patrol apprehended 69,157 such children at the U.S.-Mexico boundary between October 2018 and July 2019, seven of whom have died after being in federal custody.

What is the significance of Catholics and other Christians saying “no”? At its most authentic, religious faith builds moral muscles that push the human species to become more generous and just and guard against it backsliding into barbarity. While shallow religion shapes people for instinctive compliance to authority, ecclesial and secular, a deep faith tradition trains for moral discernment and formation of conscience and provides a narrative for how to resist immoral actions.

THE MAP is not the territory, wrote Polish scientist Alfred Korzybski, “but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”

When I glanced through the participants list at the second Vatican consultation on nonviolence and just peace, I recalled Korzybski. The list was organized by ecclesial rank. Cardinals on top, followed by archbishops, bishops, monsignors, and reverend fathers. Next were women in religious orders, then male and female laity with titles, finally misters and Mses. My name was last.

MONEY IS TO Americans what sex was to Victorian England. We’ll read about others’ exploits, but rarely reveal our own.

In the mid-1980s, I joined the Sojourners base Christian community. I was in my 20s with little disposable cash and a modest college loan. My theological attitude was “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10)—even thinking about money risked sliding into America’s amorous relationship with capital.

UNITED METHODIST BISHOP Cynthia Moore-Koikoi has fond memories of growing up in the church. It helped form and develop her as a leader, she said. But her involvement with church administration and leadership came with a price, as she described in a panel at the Religion News Association conference in 2018. As a youth delegate to her annual convention, Moore-Koikoi recalled that whenever she walked by a certain group of clergy, “they were going to make comments about my physical appearance ... I learned how to turn my face quickly when that ‘holy kiss’ was given so that it would land on my cheek not on my lips. It was like I was walking a gauntlet at times.”

In 2016, Moore-Koikoi was consecrated as a bishop and called to serve United Methodists in western Pennsylvania. Certainly, she thought, serving in such a high church position and marriage would protect her from sexual comments and predation. But, says Moore-Koikoi, “no level of power or authority in the church can insulate persons from sexual harassment.” Sojourners’ senior associate editor Rose Marie Berger interviewed Moore-Koikoi by phone in December 2018.

Sojourners: In 2016 you were elected bishop. Have you experienced any sexualized pressure, harassment, or assault since your ordination as a bishop?

Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi: Yes. There was an incident that happened not long after I was ordained a bishop that I characterize as sexual harassment. Unfortunately, it happened at one of the earliest meetings that I went to as a bishop with the Council of Bishops. An individual there made some inappropriate comments about me, about my physical appearance and about his desires. It was a very uncomfortable situation, [my] being a new bishop, not knowing how bishops conduct themselves at those kinds of things.

I AM ROMAN CATHOLIC, and I want to apologize. Apparently, a portion of my church not only believes in but still practices child sacrifice.

The Pennsylvania grand jury report was clear. It opened: “We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: It happened everywhere.”

For more than 30 years, investigations around the world have revealed similar patterns in Catholic institutions. Priests, bishops, cardinals, and even popes have decided that the Roman Catholic Church is too big to fail—that perpetrators of child abuse should be “bailed out” and victims given cash and gag orders to protect the idol of a religious corporation.

Since medieval times the Catholic Church has operated as an artificial legal persona to put property in perpetual collective ownership: the first legal corporation. If diocesan priests are considered “shareholders,” then the Catholic Corporation has willingly sacrificed children in the name of shareholder protection, betraying any legitimate “pro-life” ethic it might publicly promote. In the Bible this profanity is called the “worship of Molech,” an ancient god of Israel’s enemies: Molech’s outstretched arms of bronze were held in fire until red-hot, then living children were placed in his hands.

SUICIDE IS A SIN. As a Catholic, that’s what I was taught. Life is a gift from God; only God can take it away. Suicide chooses despair over God.

But I’ve never understood suicide to be an individual sin. It’s a communal one—based in a profound failure of love.

This past spring, two young men committed suicide while in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security. Beyond individual and communal sin is structural sin—when lovelessness is made into policy and enacted with cruelty. Note all the places where love failed.

In May, Marco Antonio Muñoz, a 39-year-old Honduran refugee, died in a south Texas jail cell of apparent suicide a few days after being forcibly separated from his wife and 3-year-old son at the U.S. border. And I mean “forcibly.”

When Border Patrol agents told Muñoz that the family would be separated, he “lost it,” according to The Washington Post. “‘The guy lost his s—,’ an agent said. ‘They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.’”

Muñoz was transferred to a county jail and placed in a padded isolation cell. Guards checked on him every 30 minutes. Reportedly, every time the guards passed during the night, they noted him praying in the corner of his cell. By morning, Marco Antonio Muñoz was dead.

THERE IS NOTHING new under the sun, as the author of Ecclesiastes reminds us. In this, theologian Elsa Tamez said, we can “find solidarity in our discontent.”

I visited Charlottesville in May, nearly a year after the “summer of hate.” I heard from young Christians who had been on the frontlines at Robert E. Lee Park (now called Emancipation Park). I stood in the presence of their discontent, listening and witnessing to the ongoing, traumatizing effects of last summer’s “fascist lollapalooza,” as one University of Virginia professor put it.

Still reckoning with the memory of Aug. 12, one leader in his 20s shared how he had tried to be a nonviolent defender amid multiple “armed actors,” including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, anti-fascists, and police. By the end of that day, two state troopers were dead, one woman was murdered, dozens were injured, and the whole community was emotionally, spiritually wounded.

WHAT DO YOU do when the democratic process delivers the power of the presidency to an authoritarian leader with the strategic impulse control of a 2-year-old?

Here are a few responses I’ve observed.

OPTION 1: The Ostrich. Bury one’s head in the sand until the annoyances pass. The virulent rhetoric of Mr. Trump’s campaign, combined with his appointees and advisers, make this option available only to men of European decent. (White women may cover their heads, but shouldn’t bury them completely.)

OPTION 2: The Spaniel. Fluff up one’s coat and appear clean and eager on the doorstep of the new master. Hope for the best; hope for a bone. This option is supported by many who are well-meaning, are part of the political elite, or are dangerously naive.

OPTION 3: The Cockroach. When the light comes on, scatter into the street with a sign saying “Not My President.” Or simply hide in a dark corner hoping to pass the coming wrath undetected. This escape behavior is instinctual in creatures that are startled or undeveloped.

Since the wee hours of Nov. 9, I’ve exhibited most of these behaviors myself.

But as a Christian, I’m not allowed to live in illusions for long. In Paul’s “letter of tears,” written to the fledgling church at Corinth, he wrote, “We cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth” (2 Corinthians 13:8). Therefore, existing in a “post-truth” state is not an option.

Americans are deeply disillusioned about the state of our nation. The fundamental optimism of the “American dream” has not matched reality for at least three generations. American optimism has always been partly delusion, as evidenced by the experiences of those defined outside of it or on whose backs the “great good” was built.

An election, however, is supposed to be a tool for the nonviolent transfer and distribution of power, not a therapy session to deal with disillusionment.