By CARDINAL JOHN J. O'CONNOR

"The body itself is not made up of only one part, but of many parts. If the foot were to say, 'Because I am not a hand, I don't belong to the body,' that would not keep it from being a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, 'Because I am not an eye, I don't belong to the body,' that would not keep it from being a part of the body. If the whole body were just an eye, how could it hear? And if it were only an ear, how could it smell?...So then, the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' Nor can the head say to the feet, 'Well, I don't need you!'...And so there is no division in the body, but all its different parts have the same concern for one another. If one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it; if one part is praised, all the other parts share its happiness." [1 Cor. 12:14-21; 25-26]

The text from St. Paul is speaking of what we call theologically the "Mystical Body of Christ." Recognition of our human interrelatedness, however, is not unique to St. Paul. Ancient Greeks and Romans made much of the concept of all humanity as one body, and even the divine and human as intertwined. So with Seneca, 55 years B.C.: "All this which you see in which divine and human things are included is one thing. We are members of a large body. Nature announces that we are related since we come from the same things and grow in the same way. This justifies for us mutual love and makes us sociable." [Epistulae 95.52]

Terence, who died in 159 B.C., was readily understood when he said: "I am a man; nothing human is foreign to me." And Tennyson, who died in 1892 A.D., was just as readily understood when he said in "Ulysses": "I am a part of all that I have met." When Wordsworth in his "Tintern Abbey" spoke of "The still, sad music of humanity," he seemed to be simply conveying more gently the tempestuous words of Dante: "O humanity, in how many storms must you be tossed, how many shipwrecks must you endure, so long as you turn yourself into a many-headed beast lusting after a multiplicity of things...You pay no heed...to the sweetness of divine counsel when it is breathed into you through the trumpet of the Holy Spirit..." ("Monarchy," I)

Tanzania, Kenya, Omagh! Utter madness, unspeakable obscenities, murders most foul. But isolated from one another? Unique? Able to be divorced from the daily violences with which the body of humanity is being ripped ferociously by the moral and social sins that we commit against one another and against human life itself, wherever we be, whatever we believe?

People call me and write me and talk to me and want me as a Churchman, and particularly as an Irish-American Churchman, to condemn the murders in Omagh. I respond. I condemn the murders in Omagh. "What have you to say about the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania?" I respond. I condemn the bombings, the murders in Kenya and Tanzania. I wash my hands. I do not live in Omagh. I have always pleaded for peace in Omagh. I do not live in Tanzania. I do not live in Kenya. I had nothing to do with the bombing of either embassy. I am saddened. I am sorry for victims and their families. I am free of guilt.

That's not what St. Paul would say. I can condemn all the bombers and all the murderers in the world and neatly absolve myself of all guilt, yet stand by so often in silence as kids kill themselves with drugs, as guns become a way of life in the United States, as the misery of homelessness is veiled by unexcelled prosperity, as we wallow in racism, as thousands of infants are destroyed every day in their mothers' wombs in "procedures" paid for by government, as babies about to leave their mothers' wombs have their skulls split open with a scissors before they are crushed by a physician authorized to do so by the law of the land in this home of the free, in this land of the brave. Saying so does not even fractionally mitigate the guilt of the murderers in Omagh, in Kenya, in Tanzania, but neither does it let any of us isolate ourselves from our responsibility to humanity.

Essayist Eric Gill once wrote a book, "It All Goes Together." It does, though my saying so in this column will probably anger some of the very individuals who have called or written or asked me to make a statement about Omagh, about Tanzania, about Kenya. I will understand. "Have you no sympathy for victims or families?" they will ask. Could you not express your sorrow for them without introducing these other things; without exploiting their suffering?

I suffer with them deeply. I believe St. Paul. I believe that if one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it. Even the "pagan" Greeks and Romans understood that. When Mother Teresa of Calcutta, honored by rulers worldwide, received the Nobel Peace Prize, she warned that the world will never know peace until we end the scourge of abortion. Believing her, I feel no less sorrow for the victims of the murders in Omagh, in Kenya, in Tanzania, I grieve no less bitterly for their families.

As much as I loathe and detest the work of the murderers, however, whether they think of themselves as righteous, in Omagh or in Africa, I know that all the diatribes in the world, however justifiable, all the investigations, all the trials, the imprisonments, even the executions, if such be decreed, will not free a single one of us from our own violence, our own hatreds and prejudices, will not absolve a single one of us from our own indifference to the slaughter all around.

May the souls of those killed in Omagh, in Kenya, in Tanzania rest in peace. May their families, their loved ones find some measure of consolation somehow, some day. May murderers and their supporters be brought to justice. May God have mercy on us all and give us the grace of revulsion against violence in any form.