What Fr. Federico Lombard really said

Over at Catholic and Enjoying it, Mark Shea posted the entire statement by Fr. Lombard.  This is it:

The initiatives announced by the United States government in view of limiting and controlling the diffusion and use of arms are certainly a step in the right direction. It is estimated that Americans today possess about 300 million firearms. No one can be under the illusion that limiting their number and use would be enough to impede horrendous massacres in the future, such as the one in Newtown, which shook the conscience of Americans and of the world, of children and adults alike. But it would be much worse if we were to satisfy ourselves with only words. And if the massacres are carried out by people with mental illness or distorted by hate, there is no doubt that they are carried out with arms. Forty-seven religious leaders of various confessions and religions have issued a call to American politicians to limit firearms, which “are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths”. I’m with them. But while American society is engaged in this debate of dutiful civil and moral growth, we cannot but widen our gaze to recall that arms, throughout the world, are also instruments for legitimate defense, but surely they are everywhere the main instruments used to bring threats, violence and death. Therefore, it is necessary to repeat tirelessly our calls for disarmament, to oppose the production, trade, and smuggling of arms of all types, fuelled by dishonourable interests for power or financial gain. If results are achieved, such as international conventions, the ban of landmines and other deadly arms, the reduction of the immense and disproportionate number of nuclear warheads…all the better! But weapons are and will always be too many. As the Pope said while travelling to Lebanon, we are all distraught by the massacres in Syria, but the weapons continue to arrive. Peace is born from the heart, but it will be easier to achieve if we have fewer weapons in hand. 

The part that got me was the call for eventual and universal disarmament.  It's going to be difficult to accuse people who raise the alarm about the desire to eliminate all firearms when you have a spokesman of the Vatican more or less pining for the day when we can eliminate all firearms.  I know, I know. Lion and lamb, swords into plowshares.  Who doesn't want that?  And yet, we can either just live the Messianic age now, or accept we must deal with the age of these principalities and powers of this present darkness.  If the Vatican is preferring the former, then more than just telling everyone to lay down their weapons will be needed.   But in any event, it's not time to call them idiots who see a growing movement to eliminate weapons altogether.  Call them anything, but you can't call them idiots.  Not when this is said by the Vatican, and in line with a growing segment of the country's population.