Statement of Philadelphia Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop-Metropolitan Borys Gudziak on the Massacres in Texas and Ohio

The shock of the wanton violence and massacres calls us to conversion. The gun culture, violence on screens, and personal morality, in general, in our country— all need conversion. The complex factors which stand behind the hate, racism, rejection of immigrants, the compulsions and addictions, the mental illness, and escalating aggression do not have one common social denominator—other than a spiritual and moral one—the rejection of God, a lack of love for neighbor.

The free-for-all in our popular culture, the use of guns as toys or instruments of revenge, the lack of respect for the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death is all in a continuum. So is the vulgar political discourse.