GumbletonandMore

Peace and Justice News

Pope John Paul II calls upon Catholic lawyers to refrain from undertaking divorce cases and other legal matters that contradict Catholic teaching. (1/28/02)

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Gumbleton: Scrap 'just war' for nonviolence

Patricia Lefevere - National Catholic Reporter

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton made an impassioned plea to his brother bishops to change the thrust of their pastoral on terrorism from one that allows military retaliation for the events of Sept. 11 to one that calls forth a nonviolent response.

He urged the bishops to abandon their traditional approach to assessing war: "Take that 'just war' theology. Put it in a drawer. Lock it. Never open it again." He recommended that the bishops replace just war theology with the nonviolence practiced by their faith forebears in the first four centuries of Christendom.

The Detroit auxiliary pointed to the bishops' own advice in the pastoral -- to Israelis, Palestinians and to Sudanese warring forces -- to stop the violence and return to a negotiated settlement of their conflicts.

He read a letter he received last week from Colleen Kelly of the Bronx whose brother, William Hill Kelly Jr. was killed in the trade towers. She did not wish any family, American or Afghan, to endure what her family was feeling.

"I adamantly oppose the bombings," she wrote. "I have no other argument other than it is not 'Christ-like.' " Kelly had this "urgent request" of the bishops: "Could you begin the discussion of the other way, Christ's way? Could you help provide moral guidance to a majority that is voicing support for a bombing campaign, but with reserve and ambivalence? Could you open a dialogue of alternatives, concrete ideas leading to Christ's truth in our hearts? Could you pray that we may be all open to God's difficult and sometimes divisive message?"

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington thanked Gumbleton for his "prophetic voice," but noted that governments have to defend their own people and reach out and protect the poor. "No one gets a free ride in our society," the cardinal said. A member of the International Policy Committee that drafted the pastoral, McCarrick said the bishops need to be sure that "what we do is moral and the it upholds our values as Americans and our Judao-Christian values."

Gumbleton countered: "Yes, but the mistake we make is in thinking that the only way to defend ourselves is through violence."

In the end the bishops transformed their sentiments into votes, approving of the pastoral 167-4. A copy of the document appears on the bishops' Web site: www.usccb.org

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Praying for our enemies' eternal peace

By George Bryjak

As American warplanes bomb Afghanistan, a question arises that has troubled me for a long time. During our involvement in the Vietnam War, we killed tens of thousands of enemy soldiers (I helped kill some of them). In addition, approximately 1 million North and South Vietnamese civilians lost their lives -- an untold number of these deaths were either directly or indirectly a consequence of our military action. In the time I spent in Vietnam, I never heard a military chaplain (Catholic or Protestant) ask for God's forgiveness for what we had done or pray for all the dead Vietnamese or even acknowledge that we had killed them.

All the praying had to do with keeping us safe, keeping us alive. The same thing when I returned home. With the exception of the Berrigan brothers and a few other "radical" priests who protested the war, I never heard a word -- much less a prayer -- about the death and destruction we had wrought.

A study released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1992, over the objection of the first Bush administration, concluded that in the Gulf War, 40,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 83,000 civilians lost their lives. Thirteen thousand of these civilians -- mostly women and children -- died as a consequence of "precision bombing" ("collateral damage" in military jargon). Another 70,000 people perished in the aftermath of the collapse of the public health system -- the water purification and sewage treatment. Most of these victims were children and the elderly -- those segments of the population who because of weakened immune systems are especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases. Once again I never witnessed a priest lead the congregation in prayer for these people. It was all about our relatively few losses, our sacrifices. It's always about us.

As we embark on a military campaign in Afghanistan, the same lack of spiritual concern for the innocent people we are killing, will destroy, is evident. To a certain extent I can understand laypeople not praying for their enemy. What I fail to comprehend is how and why the Catholic clergy can be so callous. Am I missing something here?

In Vietnam the troops used to encourage one another, only half jokingly, to "kill a gook for God!" Dehumanizing your enemy makes him easier to destroy. All military personnel are subject to this indoctrination beginning in boot camp. Is God an American? Is God really on our side in all of these confrontations? Does he want us to kill our enemies without acknowledging their humanity? Their immortal souls? Who among us has not heard "We are all God's children"? If this is true, why don't we pray for our brothers and sisters whose lives we have ended? Does fighting a "just war" preclude us from asking for their forgiveness?

For God's forgiveness? Are these individuals, as the movie title suggests, "children of a lesser God"? Is this why we don't pray for them?

Priests do not instruct us to contemplate what we have done to others in wartime. Is it because priests don't care? It doesn't fit with Catholic theology? Why is the church so concerned with lives of the innocent unborn, yet so indifferent to taking innocent lives via war? Are some lives more sacred than others?

If we practice what is learned from the pulpit, shouldn't we be praying for Osama bin Laden as much as the victims of the terrorist attacks, maybe more? Is the directive to "love your enemy" just a Sunday morning platitude with little relevance to the real world? Are most Catholics, including the clergy, blatant hypocrites regarding this matter?

In 1912, two years after his death, Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" was published. Twain was urged by family and friends not to let this work see print until his demise, lest it be regarded as sacrilegious. The story unfolds at a time when the country was involved in a war. An aged stranger, a messenger of God, made his way to the front of a church. "When you pray for victory," he said, "you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory -- must follow it, cannot help but follow it ... He commandeth me to put it into words:

"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriotic dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief ... stain the snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love ... and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

If these unmentioned results are the inevitable consequences of our prayers for victory, shouldn't we beseech God to grant our enemies (and the innocent souls among them) eternal peace? In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus asked some of the apostles, "Could you not pray with me for just one hour?" What are we going to say when on judgment day Jesus asks us, "You and your country killed those people. Could you not at least pray for them?"

George Bryjak is professor of sociology at the University of San Diego. His e-mail address is bryjak@acusd.edu

National Catholic Reporter, November 23, 2001

Email: Holy Family



	Peace and Justice News Pope John Paul II calls upon Catholic lawyers to refrain from undertaking divorce cases and other legal matters that contradict Catholic teaching. (1/28/02) ***** Gumbleton: Scrap 'just war' for nonviolence Patricia Lefevere - National Catholic Reporter Bishop Thomas Gumbleton made an impassioned plea to his brother bishops to change the thrust of their pastoral on terrorism from one that allows military retaliation for the events of Sept. 11 to one that calls forth a nonviolent response. He urged the bishops to abandon their traditional approach to assessing war: "Take that 'just war' theology. Put it in a drawer. Lock it. Never open it again." He recommended that the bishops replace just war theology with the nonviolence practiced by their faith forebears in the first four centuries of Christendom. The Detroit auxiliary pointed to the bishops' own advice in the pastoral -- to Israelis, Palestinians and to Sudanese warring forces -- to stop the violence and return to a negotiated settlement of their conflicts. He read a letter he received last week from Colleen Kelly of the Bronx whose brother, William Hill Kelly Jr. was killed in the trade towers. She did not wish any family, American or Afghan, to endure what her family was feeling. "I adamantly oppose the bombings," she wrote. "I have no other argument other than it is not 'Christ-like.' " Kelly had this "urgent request" of the bishops: "Could you begin the discussion of the other way, Christ's way? Could you help provide moral guidance to a majority that is voicing support for a bombing campaign, but with reserve and ambivalence? Could you open a dialogue of alternatives, concrete ideas leading to Christ's truth in our hearts? Could you pray that we may be all open to God's difficult and sometimes divisive message?" Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington thanked Gumbleton for his "prophetic voice," but noted that governments have to defend their own people and reach out and protect the poor. "No one gets a free ride in our society," the cardinal said. A member of the International Policy Committee that drafted the pastoral, McCarrick said the bishops need to be sure that "what we do is moral and the it upholds our values as Americans and our Judao-Christian values." Gumbleton countered: "Yes, but the mistake we make is in thinking that the only way to defend ourselves is through violence." In the end the bishops transformed their sentiments into votes, approving of the pastoral 167-4. A copy of the document appears on the bishops' Web site: www.usccb.org * Praying for our enemies' eternal peace By George Bryjak As American warplanes bomb Afghanistan, a question arises that has troubled me for a long time. During our involvement in the Vietnam War, we killed tens of thousands of enemy soldiers (I helped kill some of them). In addition, approximately 1 million North and South Vietnamese civilians lost their lives -- an untold number of these deaths were either directly or indirectly a consequence of our military action. In the time I spent in Vietnam, I never heard a military chaplain (Catholic or Protestant) ask for God's forgiveness for what we had done or pray for all the dead Vietnamese or even acknowledge that we had killed them. All the praying had to do with keeping us safe, keeping us alive. The same thing when I returned home. With the exception of the Berrigan brothers and a few other "radical" priests who protested the war, I never heard a word -- much less a prayer -- about the death and destruction we had wrought. A study released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1992, over the objection of the first Bush administration, concluded that in the Gulf War, 40,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 83,000 civilians lost their lives. Thirteen thousand of these civilians -- mostly women and children -- died as a consequence of "precision bombing" ("collateral damage" in military jargon). Another 70,000 people perished in the aftermath of the collapse of the public health system -- the water purification and sewage treatment. Most of these victims were children and the elderly -- those segments of the population who because of weakened immune systems are especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases. Once again I never witnessed a priest lead the congregation in prayer for these people. It was all about our relatively few losses, our sacrifices. It's always about us. As we embark on a military campaign in Afghanistan, the same lack of spiritual concern for the innocent people we are killing, will destroy, is evident. To a certain extent I can understand laypeople not praying for their enemy. What I fail to comprehend is how and why the Catholic clergy can be so callous. Am I missing something here? In Vietnam the troops used to encourage one another, only half jokingly, to "kill a gook for God!" Dehumanizing your enemy makes him easier to destroy. All military personnel are subject to this indoctrination beginning in boot camp. Is God an American? Is God really on our side in all of these confrontations? Does he want us to kill our enemies without acknowledging their humanity? Their immortal souls? Who among us has not heard "We are all God's children"? If this is true, why don't we pray for our brothers and sisters whose lives we have ended? Does fighting a "just war" preclude us from asking for their forgiveness? For God's forgiveness? Are these individuals, as the movie title suggests, "children of a lesser God"? Is this why we don't pray for them? Priests do not instruct us to contemplate what we have done to others in wartime. Is it because priests don't care? It doesn't fit with Catholic theology? Why is the church so concerned with lives of the innocent unborn, yet so indifferent to taking innocent lives via war? Are some lives more sacred than others? If we practice what is learned from the pulpit, shouldn't we be praying for Osama bin Laden as much as the victims of the terrorist attacks, maybe more? Is the directive to "love your enemy" just a Sunday morning platitude with little relevance to the real world? Are most Catholics, including the clergy, blatant hypocrites regarding this matter? In 1912, two years after his death, Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" was published. Twain was urged by family and friends not to let this work see print until his demise, lest it be regarded as sacrilegious. The story unfolds at a time when the country was involved in a war. An aged stranger, a messenger of God, made his way to the front of a church. "When you pray for victory," he said, "you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory -- must follow it, cannot help but follow it ... He commandeth me to put it into words: "O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriotic dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief ... stain the snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love ... and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." If these unmentioned results are the inevitable consequences of our prayers for victory, shouldn't we beseech God to grant our enemies (and the innocent souls among them) eternal peace? In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus asked some of the apostles, "Could you not pray with me for just one hour?" What are we going to say when on judgment day Jesus asks us, "You and your country killed those people. Could you not at least pray for them?" George Bryjak is professor of sociology at the University of San Diego. His e-mail address is bryjak@acusd.edu National Catholic Reporter, November 23, 2001 Email: Holy Family