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Religion and the Nation Pew Research, with impeccable credentials, noted early in the Iraq war that 74% of white Catholics and 68% of white Protestants supported the war; the Evangelicals were in the high 70s. One might ask how the Catholic community supported this war, opposed by almost the entire community of nations, especially given that their leader John Paul II, the great communicator and his right hand man, then Cardinal Ratzinger, unequivocally labeled the war as immoral, a debacle to be avoided at all costs. National fervor gained the upper hand. The Iraq war, echoing John Paul’s warning, is a compendium of the unknown evils visited upon a people when we open the Pandora’s Box called war. A course this fall at Villanova on 20th century Europe, with an excellent teacher, Paul Steege, analyzed the German people’s response in August, 1914 to the Kaiser’s declaration of war on Russia, France, and England. The thought crossed my mind, are we Christians similar to the German people when confronted with a call to arms for God and country? Modris Eksteins in Rites of Spring provides incisive pictures of the drama played out that memorable August. “In front of the royal palace a crowd estimated at from 100,000 to 300,000 . . . gathers, spreads like a sea from the old museum to the steps of the cathedral . . . The enthusiasm knew no bounds.” The support of the war crossed all segments of the society from the intellectual to the peasant. “On Sunday morning at 11:30 an open-air inter-denominational church service takes place at the Bismarck monument . . .Thousands are in attendance for this ceremony of incomparable symbolism and suggestion . . .The court preacher, Licentiate Dohring, leads the service. The war, he says, has been forced on Germany but ‘we Germans fear God yet otherwise nothing in this world’ The entire congregation repeats the Lord’s Prayer and the service ends with Holy God, We Praise Thy Name . . . Protestants and Catholics are reunited in Germany.” It takes a book like Ekstein’s, so complex are the reasons, to explain the hunger of the German people for this war. To die was an honorable thing and the young were especially vulnerable. The rectors and senates of Bavarian universities issued an appeal to academic youth. “Students! The muses are silent. The issue is battle, the battle forced on us for German Kultur, which is threatened by the barbarians from the east, and for German values, which the enemy in the west envies us. And so the furor teutonicus bursts into flame once again. The enthusiasm of the wars of liberation flares, and the holy war begins.” (Sound like G.W. Bush after 9/11?) Almost the entire student body enlisted. In the first five months of the war, Germany lost one million men, and in two weeks of August, France lost 300,000. The seduction of nationalism and culture can be overwhelming. Can we trust our religious leaders, as a counterpoint, to provide the authentic message of Christ? I was at a Mass at the Jersey shore shortly before the recent presidential election, and the pastor publicly declared for Bush. I found this directive scandalous. Part of the 20th century experience is that the mass of people can be done in by the “familiar,” the local church, General Electric, “We Bring Good Things to Life” but deadly missiles as well, the plains of North Dakota with their ICBM missile silos, the new prison in center city. Who’s inside? The “familiar” can be a metaphor for our dulled sensitivity to reality. The Iraqi war dead, an anonymous group until a Cindy Sheehan says, my son Casey died and I want to know why, to what end. Someone said New Orleans provided an uncanny opportunity to confront a reality that was hidden but there all the time. The Iraq war is now “familiar,” an occasional distraction, the problem of the soldiers and Iraqis who are dying. The
Lord provides prophetic voices throughout history to guide the people, to craft us into solitary responders to what transpires
around us, to enable us to see. But in the words of
Dorothy Day, it can be a “Long Loneliness,” a painful journey.
One thinks of a Franz Jaggerstatter, the Austrian
Catholic layman, a sacristan, who refused to serve
in Hitler’s army and was eventually beheaded. His pastor scolded him
and belittled his lack of learning to make such a momentous
decision against the order of the “Bishop.” Jaggerstatter’s
reply was that perhaps they had not received the grace to see and understand.
He had a recurring dream of the German people riding a fast train in festive
eating and drinking, but the train was headed to
hell. This war is hell for the Iraqi people, and we need to get the U. S. out
of there. “So if in Christ there is anything that will move you, any
incentive to love, any fellowship in the Spirit, any warmth or sympathy, I
appeal to you, make my joy complete by being of a single mind, one in love,
one in heart, and one in mind.” (Philippians
2:1-2) Joe Bradley |