Certa vez, eu escrevi um artigo para a Sociedade Chesterton Brasil sobre como Chesterton lidava com as guerras (Chesterton, só para iniciar, apoiou tanto a Primeira Guerra como a Guerra contra Hitler, apesar de morrer antes da Segunda Guerra). Interessante que neste artigo de 2019 já tem o Putin de ilustração. Leiam meu artigo clicando aqui.
No ano passado, eu escrevi dois artigos para jornais acadêmicos sobre como católicos (Chesterton, von Hildebrand, Anscombe, papas, Rémi Brague,...) viam as guerras. Ainda estão sob avaliação dos jornais acadêmicos.
Hoje vi que o Dale Alhquist, presidente da Sociedade Chesterton dos Estados Unidos, escreveu justamente sobre o que Chesterton falava das guerras, movido pela Guerra da Ucrânia. É um bom artigo e traz frases interessantes de Chesterton que só são lembradas por Alhquist como:
"É certamente um ideal cristão que as guerras injustas cessem; mas não mais do que governos injustos, ou comércios injustos, ou processos judiciais injustos, ou qualquer uma das inúmeras outras maneiras pelas quais os homens torturam ou traem sua espécie”.
Hehehe. Chesterton não achava possível o fim das guerras, como dizem os papas desde João XXIII. Ele estava certo, afinal este mundo está entregue ao mal e perseguiu e continuando perseguindo Cristo.
Vou colocar aqui o texto de Alhquist. Leiam abaixo:
War and Rumor of War
From the March/April 2022 Issue of Gilbert! Magazine
It is a morbid and suicidal thing for two great nations to hate each other. But when they do hate each other it is not because their aims are different, but because their aims are alike.
G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, May 9, 1908
Of all the
things I expected to be writing about right now, this was pretty near the
bottom of the list. I was expecting to write about Lent and Penance, which
offer an abundance of material to which we can all relate. And there are many
other matters of local turmoil and pressing daily challenges that provide
fodder for reflection, but all these things got pushed aside as I am suddenly
watching the world get all worked up and compelled to march to the precipice of
World War III.
It is a great mystery to me. Even after departing from my normal discipline of
avoiding the news and allowing myself a glimpse at the horrific images being
paraded before me, I still feel like I don’t really know what’s going on.
Obviously I’m watching Russia attack Ukraine. I’m watching buildings being
blown apart and bodies along with them. What nobody can explain is why.
G.K. Chesterton says: “It is surely a mistake to suppose that wars arise merely
from a barbaric ignorance. A man does not fight another man because he does not
know him. Generally he fights him because he knows him uncommonly well.” Thus,
the best way to figure out what Russia is doing might be to look at our
ourselves. We have a rather unsavory history of expanding our territory through
methods other than diplomacy. Negotiation has not always been our starting
point. I could give any number of examples, but Hawaii comes immediately to
mind. It was once an independent kingdom. It did not exactly hand itself over
to us because of the excitement and opportunity of having military bases on its
islands. We needed Hawaii. And we took it. It helped to already have a military
presence there when we decided to make it one of our territories and eventually
one of our states. But let bygones be bygones.
Along with the feeling of being mostly ignorant about the situation is the
feeling of helplessness, the sense that we are getting pulled into something
that most of us do not want. The initial reaction to Russia’s bombing Ukrainian
cities and mobilizing on its borders has been the loud cry that we have to
defend Ukraine, which means defending a government that originally took over
the country by means of a military coup. Have we considered what we are getting
involved in? Do we really want to be part of a war against Russia? We seem to
be hurling ourselves in that direction, emboldened by the assurance that the rest
of the world is on our side. But is the rest of the world on
our side? Our allies and enemies have long enjoyed the weapons we sell or give
them, but they don’t always support us in exchange for the deadly help we
provide. And if we gang up with Europe against Russia, what if Russia makes an
alliance with China? Then we really are looking at World War
III. But it’s not going to be as much fun as those other two world wars. People
could get hurt this time. Or vaporized.
By the time this issue gets into print and into your mailbox, the situation may
be completely different. Maybe Russia will have backed away and gone home and
sent a check to repair the broken merchandise. Maybe Ukraine will have
surrendered because it really wanted to be part of Russia and not Europe. Maybe
you won’t even be reading this because tensions will have escalated and world
leaders will have faced off with hot ultimatums and someone will have blinked
or tripped or made the I-told-you-I-wasn’t-bluffing move and pushed the button,
thereby reducing much of the planet, including your mailing address, to ashes
and broken bricks. All of those scenarios are possible. Most likely, however,
is the one where the United States will have enmeshed itself in another long
and hopeless war that is hardly our business. But we will make it our business,
and we will send our soldiers to die trying solve other people’s problems.
Meanwhile, we are doing nothing to solve our own. Things are still a total mess
here on the home front, where we do not exactly enjoy the peace we are urging
on other nations. G.K. Chesterton says that it is certainly a Christian ideal
that unjust wars should cease; “but not more than unjust Governments, or unjust
trades, or unjust law-suits, or any of the numberless other ways in which men
torture or betray their kind.” And those are the battles that we must stay here
and fight and not forget about.
Maybe there is a Lenten reflection here after all. It would be a great act of
penance to suffer for righteousness, not for the remote injustices far away but
for the unjust laws and unrighteous behavior immediately surrounding us in our
own communities and our own cities and states. It is a suffering that will
yield a great blessing, and hunger and thirst that Christ promises will be
satisfied.
Dale Ahlquist
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