You're a good man going directly to the source! Thank you.
It makes me think one thing: people, leaders, entrepreneurs who call themselves Christians, and manufacture arms! This gives rise to some mistrust: they call themselves Christians! “No, no, Father, I don’t manufacture them, no, no.... I only have my savings, my investments in arms factories”. Ah! And why? “Because the interest is somewhat higher...”. And being two-faced is common currency today: saying something and doing another. Hypocrisy.... But we see what happened in the last century: in ’14, ’15, in ’15 in fact. There was that great tragedy in Armenia. So many died. I don’t know the figure: more than a million certainly. But where were the great powers of the time? They were looking the other way. Why? Because they were interested in war: their war! And those who died were people, second class human beings. Then, in the ’30s and ’40s the tragedy of the Shoah. The great powers had photographs of the railroads that took trains to the concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, to kill Jews, and also Christians, also Rom, also homosexuals, to kill them there. But tell me, why didn’t they bomb that? Interest! And shortly after, almost contemporaneously, there was the Russian Gulag, under Stalin.... How many Christians suffered, were killed! The great powers divided Europe among themselves like a cake. So many years had to pass before reaching a “certain” freedom. There is that hypocrisy of speaking of peace and producing arms, and even selling arms to this one who is at war with that one, and to that one who is at war with this one!
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The Holy Father does, in fact, here bring up a good point about young people "living" as opposed to merely "existing."
I am Catholic, and what His Holiness says here is not dogma or church policy--in fact, a good article has been written on Pope Francis' uncanny ability to be a "fallible" pope with some of his off-the-cuff remarks:
Papal Fallibility
Regardless of what the Pope says, I WILL KEEP MY FIREARMS, One of the first orders of business as a Christian, in my opinion, is to protect oneself so that one can serve Christ, serve others, evangelize, and so on. Faith in action requires prudence in an evil world.
Thanks for setting me straight on the Pope's comments!