Opinion (James Carroll): Reject the cult of war

A PARENT'S worst nightmare is the death of a child. Or is it? What if you have two sons, and one murders the other? Wouldn't that be the worst thing? But what, then, if you and your spouse recognize that you yourselves are the cause of the one son's heinous act, and of the other's victimhood? Who could stand such knowledge?

That chain of circumstance, in fact, describes the universal tragedy, and it was given masterpiece expression in the story of Adam and Eve. The terrible consequences of their banishment from Paradise are usually identified as the pains of childbirth and the burden of work, but what are those griefs compared with what that couple surely felt upon learning of the murder of their son Abel by their son Cain? From then on, savage fratricidal war would define the human condition. Imagine the steely glances that Eve and Adam must have exchanged at the news. And imagine with what self-accusation they must have turned from one another. We did this.

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