Sir, – In difficult times, my mother would cite Matthew 10:29-31, which promises that God takes care of his children just as he cares for the sparrow that falls to the earth.
I wonder what she would have made of pastor Brooks Potteiger, who, at a Pentagon prayer service hosted last year by the US secretary of war Pete Hegseth, cited the same verse as evidence of God’s sovereignty “over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles”.
Throughout his tenure, Hegseth’s distinct brand of Christian nationalism has been on public display in his repeated invocations of God’s will to legitimise military aggression, and in his chilling prayer, at a Pentagon prayer service on March 25th, for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”.
It was, most likely, these bellicose appeals to divine providence that spurred Pope Leo to publicly declare that God ignores the prayers of leaders who wage war and whose hands are full of blood.
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Some of your readers have declared their support for the Trump administration, not only in its spat with the pope, but in its campaign in Iran. While we may differ about the circumstances under which military aggression is acceptable, surely the least we should demand of political leaders is that they act in accordance with the procedures established in their own constitutions, not to mention the limits of international law?
At what point will the supporters of Donald Trump decide that the time has come to demand evidence that his actions have passed either of these tests? – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN O’CONNELL
Crumlin,
Dublin 12.
