Fumiaki Tosu is a member of the Catholic Worker Community in San Jose, California. Fumi taught at a Jesuit school in San Jose (Bellarmine College Prep) for seven years, is a former Jesuit Volunteer, has a Master of Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, and also completed the 3-year Pierre Favre spiritual direction program at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos, CA. Despite his extensive Jesuit background, Fumi unintentionally found himself in the center of controversy concerning the ROTC program at Santa Clara, a prominent Jesuit University. Fumi has generously agreed to write about his experience for the Catholic Peace Fellowship newsletter. Scott Fina
We are a house of hospitality, and a house of resistance. We offer hospitality to those living on the margins of our society, and we resist the forces that cause their marginalization in the first place. We say yes to love, and no to violence; yes to the Reign of God, and no to the empires of the world.
So it is that we have stood against war and war-making in its many forms, from protesting war- profiteering by weapons makers to denouncing drone warfare. War and poverty, we know, are two sides of the same coin. War directly causes homelessness abroad when we destroy the cities and villages of our “enemies,” while at home our military spending robs the poor of the resources they desperately need. It is our daily work with the poor of San Jose that motivates us to speak out against the greatest cause of poverty the world over: war.
A year and a half ago, we began regular vigils calling for the end of the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Santa Clara University. Santa Clara University is “the Jesuit University of Silicon Valley,” located three miles from Casa de Clara, and their Army ROTC program trains cadets who will graduate from SCU to serve as officers in the U.S. Army.
On October 14, 2016, a dozen of us from Casa de Clara and the Pacific Life Community gathered outside the Mission Church on SCU’s campus to call for an end to their ROTC program. On this particular occasion, a freshman Religious Studies class came to talk to us about our witness, and the students engaged in a thoughtful discussion with us for about twenty minutes. During that time, first
campus security, then the Santa Clara Police Department asked us to leave, but we did not comply, as we felt we had the right to peacefully witness to the Gospel outside the Mission Church (and next to the crosses honoring the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador, who insisted on nonviolence even as they faced persecution!).
At the conclusion of our vigil, we folded up our banners and proceeded into the Mission Church to attend daily mass, as is our custom. The officers from Santa Clara PD asked me to accompany them to their vehicle, rather than go to mass with the others. As I was not under arrest, and within my rights to attend mass at the Mission Church, I politely declined and joined the others in church. Then, to my surprise, the two officers pursued me into the sanctuary, and proceeded to arrest me while mass was in progress. They took me to the police substation, cited me for trespass, and released me with a date for my arraignment.
In a time when the world is in endless war, and the Vatican itself is exploring nonviolence as an alternative to the just war theory, I believe engaging students on questions of peace and peace- making is exactly what needs to happen at a Catholic university. At no point were we a danger to anybody, or a disruption to the functioning of the University. In fact, of all the people gathered outside the Mission Church (students, faculty, us), the only people who were unhappy with our presence seemed to be campus security.
In the days since the vigil, I have had the opportunity to visit the class that came to see us outside the Mission Church that day, as well as meet with a variety of professors, campus ministers, and the University President, Fr. Michael Engh, SJ. The professors I met with offered suggestions on how to keep the conversation going – perhaps a panel discussion, or a one-unit class taught by the Catholic Worker; the campus ministers expressed genuine concern for the welfare of their students, including the cadets; the President apologized for the arrest, and said he had asked the police to drop my charges.
We know there is much that is good that happens at Santa Clara. Yet the University fundamentally betrays its Gospel mandate by training soldiers for war. The claim is often made that an officer whose education is infused with “Catholic values” is less likely to lead us into war, and, in the event of war, more likely to engage it “humanely.” I have yet to see any evidence for this claim. What I do know is that even when the U.S. Bishops declare a war to be unjust (as in the Iraq war), Catholic universities across the nation show no hesitation in graduating officers from their ROTC programs to fight in these wars. One of the most prominent graduates of Santa Clara’s ROTC program is Leon Panetta, the former CIA Director and Defense Secretary who vastly expanded drone warfare and its resulting high civilian casualty rate – clearly no champion of “humane” war.
Rather than provide our Armed Forces with any kind of “Catholic conscience,” ROTC programs on Catholic campuses do more to provide a Catholic “stamp of approval” for the U.S. military. The sanctioned presence of the ROTC on campus and the silencing of dissenting voices through intimidation and arrests like mine serve to create the false impression that there is no contradiction between being Catholic and fighting in the U.S. military. When the arrest of a peaceful protestor during mass is permitted, we must ask whether the university truly serves the Gospel and the People of God, or the interests of the American State and its military.
The “Soldiers’ Creed” found on the first page of the “Army ROTC Cadet Handbook” reads, in part, “I am an American Soldier… I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.” Is this really what we want our Catholic universities to teach its students?
