Here today in Australia it’s ANZAC day, a day that’s treated as more holy that Christmas and Easter, where we remember those that have died fighting in war, more than that, we are told what is held by many as Australia’s creation myth.

In remembrance of the horrors of war, and all those young men and now women who go off to bravely fight in causes they don’t understand to return to inadequate support from the State’s that offered them up as a sacrifice, I offer this essay by who I think will become one of the most significant American Catholic voices in ethics in years to come, William T. Cavanaugh called “KILLING FOR THE TELEPHONE COMPANY: WHY THE NATION-STATE IS NOT THE KEEPER OF THE COMMON GOOD”

When we say fighting is wrong we spit in the face of all those who have bravely given their lives standing up to injustice. Yet when we fail to have the creativity or the courage to fight with the only “weapon that heals” as Martin Luther King Jr. called nonviolence, we like those religious authorities and soldiers who mocked a nonviolent saviour, spit in the face of Christ.

So I offer this essay for all those re-pats I cared for inhospital who woke from nightmares they never talked of, for all those who can’t leave the nightmares of what they experienced on the battlefield, for my uncle and other fine men who have shown such bravery in fighting to put their lives back together…

“Lest we forget”.