Sometimes We Need a Good War?
Scott Fina
As a boy I attended Mass in a little church in rural northwestern New Jersey. We had a guest priest on some Sundays whose name was Father Bill. He was old and gentle. During homilies he spoke about a loving God, and the kindness of Mary, the mother of Jesus. He expressed sadness that many folks had stopped attending church and were missing out on appreciating God’s love and Mary’s intervention for suffering people.
I was 16 at the time, and usually tuned out homilies. But Fr. Bill said something that caught my attention which I have never forgotten: “Sometimes we need a good war to get people to go to church.”
This may be the most provocative statement I have ever heard coming from a pulpit.
At the time, I appreciated Fr. Bill’s point. It was akin to saying there are no atheists in foxholes. He was reminiscing about days during WW II when he was a young priest and churches overflowed with people despairing the potential or actual loss of their loved ones fighting in Europe and the South Pacific. People flocked to church for solace, hope and protection.
Years later I found Fr. Bill’s words disturbing. I could only hold “war” and “church” in the same sentence by turning his statement on its head: “Sometimes we need a good church to stop people from going to war.”
A trip to Europe helped convinced me of this. Walking through a Catholic cemetery in a Bavarian village, I came upon a memorial with the names of local men who had perished as soldiers in WW II. A vivid picture of German Catholic soldiers and American Catholic soldiers shooting at each other came to mind. So did a cognizance that being co-Catholics was no impediment for soldiers killing each other under orders from their military leaders.
Nationalism trumped Catholicism in the most devastating war in human history. I pondered why.
I developed a friendship with Fr. Bill, which led me to enter the seminary of his religious community. I studied for the priesthood for six years, but left before being ordained. Decades later I worked for the religious community in its international development office. The religious community is dedicated to serving the poor.
The community has priests and brothers working in 88 countries. At one time or another, my office had projects in half of them. I collaborated with priests and brothers on five continents. It was remarkable to see their shared charism of service to the poor operating across so many different cultures and socioeconomic contexts.
The religious community had also founded and remains affiliated with some Catholic universities in the United States. Over the years I became troubled by the fact that the universities of the religious community sponsor ROTC programs. They prepare young men and women as military officers for American armed services.
Military violence is one of the greatest progenitors of poverty around the world. Consider that over the last eight years, 6 million of Syria’s 18 million people have been displaced from their homes by sectarian strife and military intervention in their country by the U.S., Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
The reach of the U.S. military is expansive. It includes 800 military bases in 80 countries around the world. (https://www.thenation.com/article/the-us-has-military-bases-in-172-countries-all-of-them-must-close/)
According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the U.S. “spends more on national defense than China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and Germany” combined. Defense spending accounts for 15% of our federal government’s spending, and half of its discretionary spending. (https://www.pgpf.org/chart- archive/0053_defense-comparison)
The Congressional Budget Office reports that the U.S. will spend 1.2 trillion dollars on maintaining and upgrading its nuclear weapon systems during the thirty-year period from 2017 to 2046. (https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/53211-nuclearforces.pdf)
Is this not militarism gone mad?
American military academies and numerous secular universities conducting ROTC programs are able to provide all the military officers the U.S. needs for its vast armed forces. So why would American Catholic universities and colleges want to be involved in this endeavor, or feel a need to be? Yet, more than 100 of them are.
Moreover, why would an international religious community committed to addressing poverty, with members and works in so many countries--some in which American military activity has been unjustified and harmful to civilians—want to be connected to the U.S. armed services through ROTC programs at its Catholic universities?
From my perspective in its international development office, the religious community appeared to suffer from a “dissociative identity disorder” (a.k.a. multiple personality disorder).
I find the “separation between church and state” to be essential for the authentic practice of democracy and
Christianity. Even more so, I believe that the “separation of church and military” must be a cardinal tenet for
Christianity. And is it not written that we should “give onto Caesar what is Caesar’s and onto God what is God’s?”
I was haunted by the fact that American members of this religious community did not see the inharmoniousness of their connection to the world’s most powerful military force (through their university ROTC programs) with their charism (service to the poor). What blinded them to this dissonance, or what overriding concerns made this morally justifiable for them? Perhaps was I uninformed or thinking too shallowly on this question?
Pope Francis’s visit to Panama in January of 2019 to celebrate World Youth Day motivated me to find out.
One of my last projects in the international development office before I retired, was to raise funding so indigenous youth served by the religious community’s mission in Panama could participate in the World Youth Day celebration. That Sunday in Panama, the pope consecrated the Eucharist with a blood-stained shirt worn by Archbishop Romero prominently displayed near the altar.
Archbishop Romero was wearing the shirt and saying Mass when he was assassinated by the military regime in El Salvador. The military officers responsible for his murder had received training at the School of the Americas, conducted by the U.S. military at Fort Benning in Georgia.
The military regime in El Salvador was corrupt and brutal. It helped preserve the economic and political inequality in the country, which deeply harmed the poor. The military didn’t hesitate to attack those who challenged it.
Archbishop Romero directly called upon the soldiers of El Salvador to disobey orders of their superiors, for the sake of morality and justice. He also wrote to President Jimmy Carter to plead that the U.S. halt its support of the military regime in El Salvador. Archbishop Romero knew that his prophetic actions could have detrimental consequences for the local Catholic Church.
Holding World Youth Day, the pope’s Mass, and Archbishop Romero together in my mind became too much for me.
By email I wrote a letter copied to every priest serving on the boards of trustees of the American universities of the religious community I had worked for. My letter urged them to assess the appropriateness of sponsoring ROTC programs at their institutions, relative to the charism of their community and the social teachings of the Catholic Church. In the letter, I addressed the expansiveness and troubling track record of U.S. military interventions around the world since WW II.
The list of priests receiving my letter included current and former university presidents and administrators, men who had served in the international leadership of the religious community, men who had been my seminary rectors, and men who had studied with me for the priesthood. Almost every man knew me personally. All are good and loving men, and very spiritual and intelligent.
My letter preemptively addressed likely counter arguments I would receive. These included the monetary reasons why Catholic universities might feel compelled to host ROTC programs: the increased access the programs
provide for students who can’t otherwise afford tuition and room and board; and the political economic impact that might come through the alienation of alumni and cancellation of federal grant programs if the universities closed their ROTC programs. I also spoke to the assumption that ROTC programs help to humanize the U.S. military by instilling its leaders with Catholic morality during their college years. These are substantive but, I believe, debatable tradeoffs in favor of ROTC programs on Catholic campuses.
Only a few of the priests responded to my letter. But I would say they were among the most influential and most qualified to do so. They did not bring up the issues I had expected. Instead, they mostly discussed the U.S. military itself, and said little about the relationship of Catholic institutions to it. I paraphrase their position below:
Members of the U.S. military have committed atrocities at times, and the use of the military by our government leaders can be unjustified and harmful. These actions should be condemned. But overall, the U.S. military comprises good people selflessly dedicated to the protection of others, and is a necessary force of good when so many are exploited by, and defenseless against, unjust and violent forces. So on balance, it is appropriate for Catholic universities to host ROTC programs.
I was surprised by this response, because I had not challenged the fundamental need for defense forces or military action. I had certainly pointed out the immorality of the disproportionality of the U.S. military and many of its unjustified interventions. But I made these points in arguing the need of the Church and its related institutions (in this case Catholic universities) to stand apart from the military. Otherwise, isn’t the prophetic credibility of the Church undermined in matters of war and peace?
I sum up the thinking of the priests by borrowing words I had heard as a boy from their older confrere, Fr. Bill: “sometimes we need a good war.”
I suspect that overwhelmingly American Catholics, including most clergy, support Catholic universities hosting ROTC programs. And I lack a convincing comeback to the priests’ response to my letter. Perhaps the line I draw from ROTC programs is too long and indirect to clearly assert complicity by Catholic universities in immoral aspects of the U.S. military. Still, how can sponsoring ROTC programs not be conceived as Catholic universities endorsing the U.S. military?
This situation is painful for me—as I am sure it is for others of my thinking. It suggests that war is a given in human existence. Disarmament, “beating swords into plowshares,” seems to be an abstract and apocalyptic vision, rather than a tangible and feasible goal for our world and its peoples.
Thinking of Steve Kelly, SJ sitting in a county prison, awaiting sentencing for his nonviolent “plowshares” civil disobedience on a Trident Submarine base in Georgia (in which he was joined by six other activists), inspired me to write this article. Steve has spent many years now in prison for these actions, and likely faces more. But he also lives with the fact that so many Jesuit universities in the U.S. host ROTC programs. Moreover, while many of Steve’s co-Jesuits hold him as a hero, if not a saint, there are others who take issue with his civil disobedience or find it futile.
And maybe I also fail to see these matters in the right light. Perhaps such actions by Steve and others--rather than any institutional actions--are the only efficacious response in measure to a militarism that is an end onto itself.
Does not Steve’s personal sacrifice—sacramental habeas corpus, handing over of his body--bring the human and redemptive power of love to match the intensity of evil forces capable of ending life as we know it?
Scott Fina and family are CPF West
