Speaking to Robert Rhodes of the Mennonite Weekly Review, an inter-Mennonite newspaper in the US, the Canadian Loney revealed his constant struggle with the thoughts of escaping and the use of force.
“I don’t know what the right or wrong answer is,” said Loney in his home in Sault St. Marie, Ontario, Canada. “But I felt increasingly that we weren’t going to get out alive unless we took matters into our own hands.”
The Roman Catholic, who helped found Toronto’s Catholic Worker community, revealed: “Escape was, for me, one of the most difficult internal struggles I had.
“I thought about escape really from the very beginning.”
James Loney was held captive in Baghdad for more than 100 days with fellow CPT workers Norman Kember, the retired British professor, Harmeet Singh Sooden, previously of Montreal, and the late Tom Fox from the US who was found shot dead not long before the release of the other three men.I never understood what freedom was until I was deprived of it. I just ached for the most basic things in God’s creation — blue skies, breezes.
James Loney, former CPT hostage in Iraq
The four men spent much of the long days of captivity bound to one another with only a few breaks in the monotony to use the bathroom or exercise.
The internal struggle that took place within Loney each day centred on the clash between his commitment to non-violence and the recurring thoughts of escape that would likely result in at least some use of force.
“I was prepared to use some force to get us out, and my limit was avoiding any permanent physical harm,” he said. “I felt like it would be wrong in a sense, but I was willing to live with this and to ask God’s forgiveness.”
The question of the use of force in the face of evil still troubles Loney over a month after his release: “Can even a small amount of force be justified? When does the use of physical force become violence?”Loney’s experience was one that truly pushed to the limit his commitment to non-violence and the teachings of Christ to even love enemies.
