2011 & 2012 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.
A Political Economy of Faith and Freedom
Pt. I “Protest and Numbers” appeared in September 2011 newsletter Pt. II “Courts and Catholics” appeared in April 2012 newsletter Pt. III “Warring Catholics” appeared in July 2012 newsletter
I held an unwavering belief in the separation between church and state, until I was arrested for the first time. I live within a 15-minute drive from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Vandenberg is the chief testing site in the United States for intercontinental ballistic missiles and space-based weaponry. I have seen missiles launched from the base scorch the night sky over the hills that creep up to the Pacific Ocean due west of my home. Their frightening rumble has shaken my children from their sleep.
A few years ago I joined a small group of protestors in a monthly vigil outside the main gate of Vandenberg. We are a motley group. Most of us are middle aged—a few are in their 80s. We stand quietly along the busy Pacific Coast Highway that cuts in front of the base entrance. We hold signs condemning nuclear and space-based weapons. A band of hobbits with posters. Yet sympathy for our cause has been growing among the motorists driving by the base. Honking and peace gestures have notably increased. Unfortunately the base command isn’t among our sympathizers. It seems to ratchet up restrictions on our protest in step with the growth of public sentiment against the weapon systems.
A new regulation finally led us into conflict with base security measures. The base required us to present personal identification to security officers while we demonstrated outside the main gate. We felt intimidated by the order to show identification. It inhibited others from joining us. We believed the base targeted us because of the content of our protest. The order to show identification on the basis of our critical speech violated our First Amendment right under the U.S. Constitution.
One day I and several other protestors refused to show our identification to the military security personnel at Vandenberg. It was on a day when the base launched an interceptor test missile--that missed its target. The (failed) test reportedly cost $125 million— an amount that would pay for a whole year of schooling for 12,550 students (based on the national average public school expenditure per student).
I couldn’t keep my mind off that 125 million number as a young soldier handcuffed me and led me to be fingerprinted and photographed. I would soon be haunted by some other numbers when I learned about the potential penalty I faced for violating the security rule issued by the military base (a Class A Misdemeanor offense): a $100,000 fine and up to one year in prison.
I found the experience of being arrested and facing such potentially weighty consequences both frightening and intensely spiritual. The non-violence ethos of Jesus depicted in the gospels—turning the cheek, walking two miles when pressed into service for one--originally inspired my protest against nuclear weapons. But it was the
numbers that grabbed and shook my soul: 125 million -- 100,000 -- one year. Through this experience I came to realize that there is a political economy to faith in common with the American concept of freedom.
It’s dangerous to reduce Christian faith practice to a few terms, but two prominent elements bubbled up from the cauldron in which my simple act of refusing to show a driver’s license had plopped me. The first is the role of the prophetic. In the gospel passages between the birth and crucifixion of Jesus, we mostly find a prophet calling his people to return to the root of their Jewish tradition. Jesus identifies that root as the golden rule: treat others as you would have them treat you. The golden rule -- equal treatment -- is the basis of justice and for me constitutes the second radical element of Christian faith practice.
Prophetic justice is no more pronounced in the Scriptures than in the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel where Jesus states his public purpose: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." In this passage Jesus follows a long line of prophets and writings calling for a return to Jubilee justice: the periodic redistribution of land and wealth in Judaic society that re-establishes equality. Those indentured through debt are released. The playing field is leveled. All are on equal footing again.
In taking a strong stance for distributive justice, Jesus came into conflict with the Judaic-Roman regime of his day. That regime sought to quiet critical voices to preserve the tentative peace between the Jewish monarchy and the empire. It also enjoyed its privileges of power. It found the preaching of Jesus subversive to the arrangement of security in the contemporary Judaic society. Jesus was turning the world on its head with his concept of God’s kingdom—bringing what was underneath to the top—stirring up a grassroots, nonviolent revolution.
The radical elements of the prophetic and golden rule have direct counterparts in the American idea of freedom: the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. In my mind, it is these two tenets of American law, more than any other, that seek to safeguard freedom. Is not the First Amendment, the right to free (and critical) speech, our American prophetic? Does not the Fourteenth Amendment, “equal treatment under the law,” embody the golden rule? And are not these tenets of American liberty themselves subversive—in constant tension with the powers that be in our society?
Through my protest and conflict with the authorities, the political economies of faith and freedom have become two sides of a single coin for me. For this reason I am immensely appreciative of the times when my church raises its voice to advance justice. Most salient for my current circumstances, are two compelling letters issued by the American bishops: one condemning nuclear weapons titled “The Challenge for Peace” (1983); the second calling for distributive justice in the U.S. economy, titled “Economic Justice for All” (1986). The latter of these pastorals nicely summarizes the moral depravity of our nuclear arsenal from a political economic perspective, where it states: “the contrast between expenditures on armaments and on development reflects a shift in priorities from meeting human needs to promoting ‘national security’ and represents a massive distortion of resource allocations…” The bishops made this statement nearly a quarter century ago. It is even more relevant in our day.
While awaiting my day in court, I was heartened by the news that President Barack Obama signed a nuclear arms treaty with Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev. The treaty promises to significantly reduce the nuclear arsenals of both countries. Still the treaty leaves both nations with enough warheads to destroy life on our planet many times over.
But there was other news on the very same day Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the nuclear treaty: news that deflated my hope of arms reduction. The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Military had launched a new weapons project called the “Prompt Global Strike Program.” The program is rearming intercontinental
ballistic missiles with conventional war heads. The reason for the program? Our military seeks the capability to strike a specific target with missiles anywhere in the world within one hour. The Post reported this new program will cost $2 billion to develop, which it categorized as “a bargain by Pentagon standards.” (That’s also enough money to school 200,800 students for a year according to the national expenditure average.) The new weapons program is initially being installed and tested at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
More telling numbers: 2 billion--one hour. More thundering blasts to waken my children.
(NOTE: Charges for the security violation against me and my fellow protestors-defendants were eventually dismissed—although we were officially banned from protesting at Vandenberg Air Force Base under the threat of arrest. Some of us ignored the ban and were arrested again.)
Part II: Courts and Catholics
In A Political Economy of Faith and Freedom—Part I, I described my arrest with a handful of other protesters at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I suggested that radical Christianity, with its central concepts of the “prophetic” and golden rule, shared much common ground with the fundamental American concepts of freedom and equality articulated in the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Here in Part II I recount how the events that followed my arrest led me down a wearying path through the maze of the U.S. judiciary. The experience revealed how tentative liberty and justice have become at the core of our justice system. In Part III I will share my struggle with contradictions I uncovered through my experience that suggest American Catholicism has formally embraced war-making.
All training for American military personnel who launch ICBMs in the U.S. is conducted at Vandenberg Air Force Base. So are tests of the missiles themselves and tests of other space-based weaponry. I and my fellow protestors were arrested and charged with a Class A Misdemeanor for failing to show the military police our identification. We were standing quietly alongside California Highway 1 outside the main gate of the base, holding anti-nuke signs when we were arrested. We faced a maximum penalty of a $100,000 fine and one year in prison.
Most of my fellow arrestees at Vandenberg were Catholic Workers who had been arrested many times before during protest. Those familiar with Catholic Workers know they readily accept state condemnation with its consequences of imprisonment and fines. They do so in a Gandhian spirit to advance peace and justice. Catholic Workers and their likes typically plead guilty in court and welcome the opportunity to bring to light systemic injustice and immorality during their pre-sentencing hearing.
But Mahatma Gandhi I am not! I could barely maintain my fury over the arrests. I was also scared. Imprisonment and/or a substantial fine would not fit well with my family circumstances. I decided to fight the charge. My fellow arrestees joined in the fight—mostly for my sake.
It’s important to share some of the details surrounding our arrests and citations. Vandenberg has formally designated an area outside its main gate on the side of Highway 1 for protest. It has not done so out of the goodness of its heart. In the late 1980s a group of peace activists, comprising mostly Quakers, engaged in a series of protests outside Vandenberg’s main gate and suffered numerous arrests for trespass under a special section of federal code (18 U.S.C.§1382). This law pertains specifically to military installations. California Highway 1 is actually on military property where it traverses the base, albeit it is also on a public roadway easement. The military, State of California and Santa Barbara County share legal jurisdiction on Highway 1 where it crosses Vandenberg for 14 miles.
The Quakers and their colleagues believed they had a Constitutional right to protest on a public roadway and sought relief in the local U.S. District Court. The ACLU agreed to take on their civil suit. The U.S. Government decided to settle the suit during the trial and agreed to certain stipulations that included the designated protest area outside Vandenberg’s main gate along Highway 1. The government settled because it feared the suit could move into a higher court and result in a legal precedent undermining its ability to control people and traffic on public roads that enter military installations. Numerous military bases across the U.S. could be affected.
In challenging my arrest I decided to defend myself (argue “pro se”). It was an easy decision. I had enough financial resources to be disqualified from receiving the services of a public defender, but not enough resources to afford a private attorney. The Catholic Workers who were arrested clearly qualified for a public defender but decided not to accept one. Instead, they adopted me as their unofficial legal counsel. While I appreciated their inflated perception of my abilities, I believed they had made a bad choice. We were going up against a legal department of JAGs at Vandenberg that would be teamed with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. What’s the adage—he who has himself as counsel has a fool as counsel? If this is true, what did the Catholic Workers have for counsel?
Armed mostly with Google I went to work on our case. I believed the arrests of orderly protestors standing along a public highway for failing to show ID violated the Fourth Amendment. The military police couldn’t stop and ID anyone else on Highway 1 without a reasonable suspicion they were committing a crime, so they couldn’t stop and ID orderly protestors on Highway 1. (Google the Supreme Court case, Terry vs. Ohio for starters on why).
In fact, I found the action by the military so blatantly wrong I decided to write every relevant public official I could think of to complain even before we were arraigned. None of these folks responded with the exception of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. Boxer was in the midst of a challenging electoral campaign. Apparently someone on her staff decided it was politically worthwhile writing to the Congressional liaison officer for the Air Force in Washington about the arrests at Vandenberg. The liaison officer--an Air Force general—was obligated to follow up with the Vandenberg command. The Air Force predictably argued it was legal and necessary to arrest protestors who refused to show ID. The inquiry itself, however, was enough to rattle some cages. The U.S. Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against protestors who were cited for failing to show ID. Vandenberg has never arrested any protestor for failing to show ID since that time.
So it seemed that we had won the challenge and our legal problems as protestors were over at Vandenberg— except we hadn’t and they weren’t. We were just getting started.
Commanders of military bases often issue “ban and barment” letters to protestors who are arrested and cited. Once you receive one of these letters you are banned from returning to the base under the threat of arrest under 18 U.S.C. § 1382. The commander at Vandenberg issued all the protestors who were arrested for failing to show ID a ban and barment letter with the exception of Catholic Worker Dennis Apel—who already had an active ban and barment letter at Vandenberg. Dennis had thrown his blood on the entrance gate of Vandenberg on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003--and served two months in prison for his symbolic act of civil disobedience. Dennis had refused to abide by his ban and barment letter and had been arrested over a dozen times for simply showing up at the protests at Vandenberg. Dennis didn’t believe ban and barment letters could be legally enforced on people protesting on highways on military bases—and even if they could be, he didn’t much care.
Vandenberg and the U.S. Attorney’s Office had never carried through on the numerous citations it had issued to Dennis for violating his ban and barment letter—until after the ID arrests were dropped. Now Dennis was facing trial for trespass (18 U.S.C. § 1382) for violating his ban and barment letter. He was in good company. Steve Kelly, S.J. had also violated his ban and barment letter at Vandenberg by showing up alongside Dennis during a
protest. (Steve is currently serving a 15-month imprisonment for cutting through fences at the Trident sub base in Bangor, Washington. He has spent over one-tenth of his life in prison for similar “plowshare” actions.)
Vandenberg had refused to withdraw the ban and barment letters against those of us who had their charges dropped for failing to show ID—even though none of us had created a security threat to the base. For this reason and the sake of future protestors who might arbitrarily receive ban and barment letters, Dennis and Steve decided to plead not guilty and fight their charges. They decided to defend themselves (proceed pro se). I was again adopted as unofficial counsel. I would write the required motions and briefs and advise them on strategies for their trial. Now the argument turned on First Amendment protections.
Before their trial date arrived Vandenberg experienced a change in guard. We protestors hoped the new base commander would be less aggressive than his predecessor. I researched the new base commander’s background and learned that we had some interesting commonalities. Both of us were active Catholics, and had graduated from Catholic high schools and Catholic universities. (He was a graduate of the Reserve Officers Training Corps-- ROTC-- program at his Catholic university.) Both of us also had young children. I decided to write to the new base commander. Hoping to capitalize on his Catholic background, I asked him to dismiss the charges against Dennis (a Catholic Worker) and Steve (a Catholic priest), and to rescind the ban barment letters against the rest of us. The new base commander wrote back and emphatically answered, NO. Trial was on for Dennis and Steve. I and the other protestors were still banned from Vandenberg.
During the next several months I spent many nights with Google. It’s amazing what one can find with a good search engine: every U.S. Supreme Court case, every case from every U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the entire federal code, and even a legal manual advising Air Force base commanders on the use of ban and barment letters and citing violators under 18 U.S.C. § 1382. I was off to a good start in writing the “Motion to Dismiss” for Dennis and Steve in the U.S. District Court. There were a number of relevant court precedents. I found constructing legal arguments to challenge the arrests for violating ban and barment letters relatively easy. It was the endless and esoteric rules for filing motions that was killing me. This is the stuff most attorneys don’t have to worry about because it’s handled by administrative assistants and paralegals. Unfortunately I had none of these handy folks at my disposal.
Not surprisingly, my legal briefs failed to convince the District Court magistrate judge to dismiss Dennis’s and Steve’s case at their motion hearing and trial. Although Dennis and Steve were remarkably poised and coherent during the proceedings (they were no strangers to federal court after all), the judge found them guilty. Steve’s presence in court made a special statement, but not so much because he was a Catholic priest, but that he was a Jesuit. The judge was a graduate of Boston College – a Jesuit school. What irony!
While the judge’s ruling was not unexpected, her penalty and closing remarks were very surprising. Despite a recommendation of prison time and substantial fines by the Assistant U.S. Attorney, the judge only sentenced Dennis and Steve to nominal court costs. She then concluded the proceedings by indicating that her decision was difficult and perhaps the case should be heard at a higher level. She was virtually encouraging Dennis and Steve to appeal! Dennis decided to do just that for the sake of other protestors who had received ban and barment letters. He retained me as his “fool” for an unofficial counsel.
The first level of appeal of a ruling by a magistrate judge remains in the district court to be heard before a regular district judge. I now had to struggle to learn a new set of motions and filing procedures. The fact that Dennis’s case was assigned to a district judge who was a conservative and temperamental Bush appointee complicated our efforts. In fact, the district judge accused Dennis of lying on one of the court forms and immediately dismissed his appeal. I knew the judge’s finding was false. I knew it was false because Dennis had never even completed the form the judge accused him of lying on!
We then filed an affidavit and motion that Dennis had never submitted the court form and that his appeal should be reinstated. Our motion included a strongly worded petition that Dennis should be assigned a new and unbiased judge. Another district court judge, who was also a conservative Bush appointee, handled the motion. She reinstated the appeal but ruled that Dennis had presented no evidence of bias on part of the original judge—who would continue to hear the appeal. Now Dennis not only faced a conservative district court judge who was willing to fabricate facts to dismiss his case, but a judge that was really angry at him. Throughout the district court appeal the judge tolerated no filing mistakes or omissions. The struggle to fulfill the myriad of court appeal rules was a nightmare.
It seemed like nothing was going our way. But then came Hobert Parker. Hobert Parker had also been arrested at Vandenberg for trespass for violating a ban and barment order. Hobert was not affiliated with any peace movement. He was a former civilian employee at the base who was angry for being fired from his job. Hobert had been protesting his treatment by the base on another public road that ran through military property near the back gate of Vandenberg.
I never met Hobert Parker, but I saw the YouTube video of his arrest. He was disgruntled, cranky, and outright insulting with the military police, telling them what parts of their body they could wipe with his citation. Not a model protestor for sure! Hobert fought his trespass charge in the district court before the same magistrate judge that had found Dennis and Steve guilty. Hobert, however, had been granted the service of a public defender—and one who proved to be very talented. Regardless, the magistrate judge had also found Hobert guilty of trespass. Hobert also appealed before a regular district judge with the assistance of the public defender, and was found guilty a second time. By the time of Dennis’s appeal in the district court, Hobert’s appeal had reached the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal in San Francisco.
After studying the briefs and motions in Hobert’s original trial and his appeals, I realized his case was legally indistinguishable from Dennis’s: the same charge against a defendant protesting on a public roadway easement on a military base—the very same base in fact, just a different road. I now had a new tremendous resource for Dennis’s appeal: Hobert’s dedicated public defender. Essentially every argument and every precedent cited by Hobert’s lawyer applied to Dennis. I simply had to change the name of the road to easily incorporate them into Dennis’s briefs. I also had the advantage of seeing the government’s response briefs in advance.
And Hobert’s lawyer did his homework—which meant I was throwing some high level arguments supported by numerous citations of precedents at the military JAGs and the Assistant U.S. Attorney (also a Catholic) working to confirm Dennis’s conviction. Nonetheless, the district judge upheld Dennis’s conviction. There was never any question in my mind he would, knowing how the appeal had started out. But because the judge had been such a stickler on procedure, and thanks to Hobert’s lawyer, Dennis now had a solid case record with thorough briefs and transcripts—all ready to go on to the next level of appeal also in the Ninth Circuit Court. And so we filed in the Ninth—now pulled along by the tail wind of U.S. v. Hobert Parker.
At this point I convinced Dennis to accept a pro-bono defense lawyer for his appeal in the Ninth. I knew I was in over my head in a U.S. circuit court and was personally worn out from the paperwork. We filed a motion to appeal in the Ninth and for Dennis to be provided with an attorney. The Ninth Circuit accepted the motion and assigned Dennis free legal representation: a legal clinic at U. C. Irvine Law School directed by one of America’s leading First Amendment scholars. The tide was changing for Dennis.
In fact, the tide was rushing in. Soon after we filed Dennis’s motion, Hobert Parker won his appeal in the Ninth Circuit. The majority of the panel hearing the appeal comprised liberal Clinton appointees. The panel ruled that a person could not be arrested and cited for trespass on a military base if he/she were standing on a public roadway
easement, including a person with a ban and barment letter. In my mind, if Hobert had won his case, so would Dennis. The facts in their cases were nearly identical—and even involved the same military base. I assumed the arrests of protestors with ban and barment letters would immediately cease at Vandenberg with the announcement of Hobert Parker’s victory. But incredulously, Hobert Parker’s ruling in the Ninth Circuit gave the base commander at Vandenberg utterly no pause. The arrests continued.
The majority of rulings in circuit courts of appeal are not formally published but instead issued as memoranda of disposition. These decisions can still be cited in related criminal cases and carry much weight, but they are not recognized as legal precedent. Hobert Parker’s ruling fell into this category. The legal department at Vandenberg and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles interpreted this to mean that Hobert’s ruling only applied narrowly to his case and on the specific road where was Hobert was arrested.
I found this conduct by the base and the U.S. Attorney ludicrous. I called the public defender who had skillfully represented Hobert Parker and explained the ongoing situation with protestors at Vandenberg. I had read that the rules of the Ninth Circuit allowed for petitions to have a memorandum of disposition published as a broadly binding precedent. The public defender, while sympathetic, was unwilling to make such a petition and indicated that it would be futile. I then decided to make the petition myself and wrote a letter to the Ninth Circuit. I made it clear to the court that a number of appeals of an identical nature to Hobert Parker’s from the very same military base would be piling up on its doorstep—beginning with Dennis’s which had already arrived.
To my surprise, the Ninth Circuit decided to publish Hobert Parker’s decision as a precedent on the sole basis of my petition. U.S. v. Hobert Parker became part of the “law of the land.” Public road easements precluded arrest for trespass on every military installation in the United States.
With the publication of U.S. v. Hobert Parker, the arrests of protestors with ban and barment letters finally stopped at Vandenberg. While Dennis’s appeal is still in process, it’s unlikely that a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit will overrule its colleagues on the panel in U.S. v. Hobert Parker. If it does, Dennis’s pro-bono legal defense team has promised to appeal to the Supreme Court. It would seem that our motley group of protestors has won the day against far more empowered opponents. I take little solace in this victory, however. In reality it only means that we have gained a better foothold on which to protest. We gained no ground in the actual argument over the immorality of nuclear and space-based weapons.
Moreover, I remain haunted by the fact that a key commonality between the base commander at Vandenberg and me –our Catholicism—proved irrelevant in our conflict. I explore this irrelevance in Part III and how it has brought me to the conclusion that American Catholicism is a warring religion.
Part III: Warring Catholics
In Part II of A Political Economy of Faith and Freedom I described my experience of being arrested at Vandenberg Air Force Base with several Catholic Workers. I recounted our victorious albeit grueling legal battle that followed in the U.S. District Court and U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. I concluded my discussion by admitting I take little solace from our judicial triumph, and remain haunted by the fact that the base commander at Vandenberg and I were both committed Catholics who found themselves on opposite sides of the moral argument over nuclear and space-based weaponry. I explore this paradox here in Part III.
While I am thankful for the outcome of our legal challenge to our arrests at Vandenberg, the reality is that we have gained nothing from the effort in the big picture of nuclear weapons. Our First and Fourth Amendment battles were at best a sideshow to the unabated, immoral mission of Vandenberg. I’ve come to believe that nuclear
weaponry and war-making are so deeply entrenched in our American culture, it’s questionable whether we will ever shake them off as a society. This conclusion relies not only on the political economy aspects surrounding nuclear weaponry and warfare, but also, sadly, the religious. My involvement at Vandenberg uncovered an important legitimizing role that American Christianity, especially Catholicism, plays in the warring mindset or our nation.
Throughout the legal struggle over the Vandenberg arrests I was troubled deeply by the shared Catholicism of the base commander and myself. I imagined how it would feel to sit near the base commander at a Mass being presided by Father Steve Kelly, SJ, or Father Louie Vitale, OFM, both of whom have been arrested under his command, tried, and found guilty for protesting actions at Vandenberg. How would the “kiss of peace” work for us as we turned to each other and extended our hands? Most disturbing was the fact that the base commander had been prepared for his soldiering by a ROTC program at a Catholic university. Moreover, I had no reason to doubt that the base commander was an admirable man, and a loving and committed husband and father as suggested by his published biographical information. But these fine attributes and our shared religion mattered little in our confrontation over the immorality of nuclear weapons.
These thoughts returned me to disquieting feelings I experienced some years ago on my first visit to Germany. I was staying in the home village of my wife’s family in Bavaria. Village life there revolves around the local Catholic Church and religious festivals, as it has for centuries. While standing in the church cemetery I noticed a memorial for dozens of village men who had been killed during the World Wars. The wars had decimated village families. I was suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful paradox.
During both these wars tens of thousands of German and American Catholics faced each other in brutal battles. No doubt many of these men on both sides desperately prayed to survive while they fired on each other. Ironically, these same men could have attended the same church and participated in the same religious ceremony in the same language (Latin). And if they ever found themselves sitting near each other at Mass, would they attempt to kill each other immediately or at least wait until they exited the church? And whose prayers did God answer when it came to determining which Catholics would live and which would die? Sadly, a common Catholicism among soldiers and military leaders has mostly been irrelevant when it has come to battle.
Toward the end of our legal battle over our arrests I learned that the base commander at Vandenberg was to be transferred to a different military installation in Nebraska. I requested a meeting with him before his transfer, hoping to have a dialogue on how our common backgrounds and faith had brought us to very different perspectives on nuclear weapons and war. He declined my request, and has since departed Vandenberg. Even without the opportunity of this dialogue, I find it difficult to condemn the base commander for his positions or his efforts to contain our protest. He was, after all, trained by a Catholic institution in the conduct of war. Why would he not feel justified in his work, and his perspective legitimized by having received his military training in a sympathetic “Catholic” environment?
I struggle deeply with the legitimizing role American Catholic universities play in warfare through their ROTC programs. There are 272 senior ROTC programs in the United States. These include programs hosted by 116 Catholic colleges and universities and involve many religious orders. Even Catholic University of America, which has the closest oversight by U.S. bishops, participates in a joint ROTC program. ROTC programs prepare more officers for the American armed services than military academies and officer candidate schools. In this sense, Catholic colleges and universities collaborate closely with the U.S. military and unquestionably help to advance its mission.
At the same time, Catholic colleges and universities are key institutions for the American Catholic Church. They play a vital role in preparing religious and diocesan leaders of the church and faculty for its seminaries. For this
reason, the Vatican formally monitors American Catholic colleges and universities and their faculty to assure they comply with church teachings.
Holding the roles that Catholic colleges and universities play for both the U.S. military and the American Catholic Church side by side, I am faced with a disconcerting conclusion: the American Catholic Church is complicit in the actions and policies of the U.S. military. This means that the American Catholic Church, by preparing soldiers and leaders for the U.S. military through its sponsored colleges and universities, has had its hands bloodied by such recent military endeavors as the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the pre-emptive strike and occupation of Iraq, and military interventions in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1970s and 1980s and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. All these military actions were contaminated by serious flaws of justification. Combined, they have resulted in hundreds of thousands of direct civilian casualties and many more indirect deaths of innocent people. By its participation in the U.S. military through Catholic colleges and universities hosting ROTC programs, the American Catholic Church has indirectly endorsed these military endeavors and moralized them. How can we American Catholics deny that we belong to a warring religion?
For me the pressing question is not whether the American Catholic Church participates in war-making through its higher education institutions, but why? Why must Catholic colleges and universities prepare soldiers for the U.S. military, when there are so many secular higher educational institutions available to do so, not to mention the numerous military academies and officer candidate schools? And how can we American Catholics not be deeply unsettled by this fact where we claim to follow the peace-making ethos of Jesus that has been articulated beautifully in our Church’s doctrines and social teachings? Where is the angst of the many religious communities whose stated charisms so highly value peace and justice and love of the poor, but who still house ROTC programs on the campuses of their sponsored colleges and universities?
The answer to these questions may partly be a matter of pragmatism. Perhaps some American Catholic Church leaders and laity rationalize that training military officers within the context of a Catholic education will help constrain U.S. military policy and action. The thinking is that if we put enough Catholics in the military leadership, then the military will be less likely to go to war and will be more humane when it does. The history of the unending
U.S. military activities since World War II, however, quickly undercuts this position. Moreover, this thinking is naïve as anyone who has served in combat can confirm. War is war. Atrocities are committed in all military conflicts by all sides. There are always innocent fatalities involved.
Can there really be a Catholic or Christian way of war? And if “Catholic” ROTC programs were having a positive moral impact on the U.S. military, wouldn’t we be seeing a flood of Catholic military officers conscientiously objecting to the morally questionable military campaigns undertaken by the United States?
Given my experience with the Catholic base commander at Vandenberg, I would contend that the influence of Catholicism and the military in Catholic ROTC programs flows in the opposite direction. ROTC programs make warriors of Catholic students among their participants who might otherwise be peace-makers. The hosting of an ROTC program by a Catholic university also sends a message to its broader student body, staff and faculty that war is necessary, inevitable, and honorable. How sad that Catholic institutions of higher learning are not, instead, alternative voices of peace and nonviolence!
But I believe there is something more powerful at play in the militarization of Catholic colleges and universities than moral pragmatism: money.
Most Catholic colleges and universities struggle to fund their operations. Unlike their public counterparts, they do not enjoy tax-funded subsidies. Few benefit from large endowments held by Ivy League and other higher tier institutions. Consequently, Catholic colleges and universities constantly strain to balance access for students who
have limited resources with the need to regularly raise tuition. ROTC programs make substantial scholarship monies available for students who could not otherwise afford to attend Catholic schools.
But the amount of scholarship monies that Catholic colleges and universities gain from hosting ROTC programs pales when compared to the monies the schools could potentially lose by eliminating them from their campuses. Catholic colleges and universities that drop their existing ROTC programs can lose funding in two ways. One concerns the impact on the giving by donors and alumni. Being seen as anti-military during these post 9-11, hyper-patriotic times, and especially when the U.S. is at war, could result in fewer contributions. Consider who typically constitute the board of trustees of Catholic schools: wealthy business leaders with conservative leaning political views.
The second way Catholic schools stand to lose funding by terminating their ROTC programs involves grants and contracts from the federal government. During the 1990s Congress added the Solomon Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act under the Clinton Administration, which was strengthened several times during the Bush Administration. The Solomon Act (18 U.S.C. § 983) empowers the U.S. Department of Defense to disqualify any college or university (including Catholic ones) that limit access for military recruiters from their campuses or maintain anti-ROTC policy, from receiving federal grants and contracts from the Departments of Defense, Labor, Homeland Security, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Energy, and even Education with the exception of student financial aid. The stakes for Catholic colleges and universities that might consider ending their ROTC programs are enormous.
Yet, doesn’t all prophecy come with a price? And is it not written, “What does one profit in gaining the whole world if it comes at the cost of one’s soul?”
Moreover, I wonder if the consequences for a Catholic college or university deciding to terminate its ROTC program will be so detrimental. Perhaps the perceived threat in doing so is greater than its reality. Could the action not also be widely seen as courageous and advancing a Catholic mission? Could the message taken not be that “We love our students too much to send them into war?”
And what if all of the 116 Catholic colleges and universities that participate in ROTC programs acted to end their ROTC programs? Would their collective action not only empower them, but also have a huge impact on military ethics in the United States? Imagine if our American bishops or the Vatican ordered them to do so to maintain their “Catholic” standing!
The Solomon Amendment has a clause that exempts a school from its penalties if: “the institution of higher education involved has a longstanding policy of pacifism based on historical religious affiliation.” On one hand, Catholic colleges and universities have been hosting ROTC programs for decades. Yet on the other, their Catholicity, if authentic, has a two millennia-old policy of pacifism! There are 28 Catholic universities in the United States with law schools. I wonder what kind of recourse they could effect in legally challenging the application of the Solomon Amendment to Catholic schools—if they so had the will.
Many Catholic institutions—including colleges and universities— have not hesitated in confronting the U.S. Government on the recent ruling by the Department of Health and Human Service requiring them to provide their employees access to contraception through health insurance. The American Catholic Church quickly and loudly condemned this requirement on the grounds of religious freedom. But where are the Catholic Church’s demands for religious freedom when it comes to her schools and ROTC programs?
The compliance of Catholic higher education institutions with the Solomon Amendment and their broad willingness to participate in ROTC programs suggest that the American Catholic Church has welcomed state subjugation
when it comes to military activities. It seems that Catholicism, and more broadly Christianity, have been thoroughly co-opted by American military interests. I offer one more piece of concrete evidence for this conclusion, which brings me back to Vandenberg Air Force Base and the vital role it plays in the U.S. nuclear warfare program.
During the summer of 2011, in the middle of my legal struggle over the arrests of protesters at Vandenberg, Truthout.org published a remarkable news story about the base. The story was eventually confirmed in every detail by military officials and the Air Force Times. All Air Force officers who are responsible for launching ICBMs in the U.S. are trained at Vandenberg. Truthout.org revealed that for twenty years Vandenberg had been requiring these missile officers to take an ethics course during their first week of training. At the end of the ethics course the officers were asked to sign a statement that they would not hesitate to launch nuclear missiles on order from the President of the United States. The ethics course had been conducted by base chaplains.
The ethics course utilized a 43-slide PowerPoint presentation which recently caused a controversy among some of the missile officers. The PowerPoint presentation included numerous biblical and religious references in justifying nuclear warfare. One slide quoted Revelation 19:11 as identifying Jesus as a “mighty warrior.” Another used Hebrews 11:32-34 as an example of how believers have engaged in righteous war. Several slides cited elements of the just war theory of St. Augustine; one included his picture.
Among the slides was also a quotation from Werhner Von Braun, the former Nazi who oversaw the generation of the deadly V-2 rocket bomb during WW II. Van Braun later led the efforts to develop the U.S. space program. Von Braun is also known for using prisoners of Jewish concentration camps to build the V-2 rockets. Many prisoners died from their forced labor; so did many British civilians who were on the receiving end of the rockets. Incredibly, Von Braun was cited on a slide as a moral authority where he stated, after his surrender to Americans in 1945: “We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”
Thirty-one missile officers complained about the ethics course at Vandenberg to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The foundation in turn threatened the Air Force with a lawsuit unless the course was terminated. The complaint of the officers focused on the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment because the ethics course utilized blatant Christian sources. The story was carried by major news media including CNN and Fox News. Not surprisingly, the Air Force quickly suspended the ethics course from its missile training program.
Astoundingly, I found no comment in the news coverage of the story that concerned, what I believe to be, overt religious perversion in the PowerPoint presentation of the ethics course at Vandenberg. Perhaps that is because the media sensed few American Catholics (and other Christians) would share this critical assessment of the PowerPoint presentation? Have we American Catholics not become comfortable being members of a warring religion?
Scott Fina CPF West
