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March 19, 2005: Two Years of War The CPF
retreat will be held March 19, 2005, the second
anniversary of the U.S. war on Iraq and a week prior to the 25th anniversary
of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. By the gift
of Providence, our retreat master is Art Laffin of
the D.C. Catholic Worker, a lover of Romero and one who has
been imprisoned numerous times for his passionate commitment to peace.
The purview of Art’s peace making encompasses the globe. Join us on
Saturday the 19th for Proclaiming the Word
of God in a War-Making Empire. Archbishop Romero on February 7, 1980, five weeks prior to his assassination, spoke to his people: “Christ invites us not to fear persecution. Believe me, brothers and sisters, anyone committed to the poor must suffer the same fate as the poor. And in El Salvador we know the fate of the poor.
Romero knew his fate, but he called upon his people to join him, to accept death as the cost of discipleship. “I wish to rejoice with the religious men and women who have taken their stand with our people, even to the point of heroically suffering with them, and with the Christian communities and with the catechists who stay at their posts while cowards flee.” When we look wide-eyed at the price of witnessing, and Christianity is a religion of witnesses, beginning with the apostles; could we measure up, to stand, not flee? We eschew violence, but as Wendell Berry, a prophetic voice in America, reminds us: “Such things are easy to say. But finally we must face the daunting question, not as a nation or a group but as individual person -- as ourselves. We are disposed, somewhat by culture and somewhat by nature to solve our problems by violence -- by maximum force relentlessly applied -- and even enjoy doing so. And yet by now all of us must at least have suspected that our right to live, to be free, and to be at peace is not guaranteed by any act of violence. It can be guaranteed only by our willingness to use or give our own lives to make that possible. To be incapable of such willingness is merely to resign ourselves to the absurdity we are in; and yet, if you are like me, you are unsure to what extent you are capable of it. . . . Here is the other question that the predicament of modern warfare forces upon us: How many deaths of other people’s children by bombing, by starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? To that question I answer pretty quickly: None. And I know that I am not the only one who would give that answer. Please. No children. Don’t kill any children for my benefit.” The Lancet, a respected British journal, has projected over 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the commencement of the war, probably over half of them children. Sr. Joan Chichister, aghast at the loss of children in Iraq, calls it “military abortion,” a chilling term. Stanley Hauerwas, professor of theological ethics at Duke University, recently spoke at Villanova. He confirms, in a scholarly fashion, the innate sense one has of the churches, Protestant and Catholic, being co-opted, seduced by our government, legitimizing empire-building by their deafening silence or vociferous support. The church of America is America. The pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America has displaced the Creed as our primary expression of faith. Hauerwas notes the willingness of our young men to die for their country. It has supplanted the passionate love of God and people that Romero died for as the primary call of conscience. There are 13 recruitment centers in the Philadelphia area in pursuit of new blood and a virtual presence of military recruiters in our high schools. The Washington Post National Weekly Edition of 1/10-16/05 and the New Yorker of 2/14/05 detail the approval of torture at the highest levels of the Bush administration. We rightly think of ourselves as a good people, but innocence can be suspect. Again Hauerwas, “Goodness can be deeply corrupted by its innocence. . . most of the time innocence is deeply immoral because it is such a lie not to acknowledge that we live in a very complex world that we benefit from and we don’t have to acknowledge the havoc our benefits depend upon.” Where is the outcry of the church concerning torture? One is reminded of the lines from Pascal that John McNamee is so fond of, “Jesus will be in agony till the end of the world. . . . There must be no sleeping during that time.” Archbishop Robert Weakland, a Benedictine monk, when he resigned as Archbishop of Milwaukee following the disclosure of his liaison with a man and payments to him for silence, prostrated himself before the altar of a packed Cathedral Church begging for the forgiveness of God and the people. Perhaps the churches on Sundays at the Confiteor should be filled with prostrate bodies asking forgiveness for the death of Iraqis and Americans and the torture of other human beings. Joe Bradley |