Antiwar.com regular contributor Aaron Glantz has been working very hard at KPFA Radio with his new project, The War Comes Home.
A sample:
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/005.Aguayo.mp3]Army medic Augustin Aguayo refused to load his gun in Iraq and then escaped through a base window in Germany rather than be deployed a second time. He said during basic training he realized that he could never use his gun to kill anyone. But the military turned down his application to become a conscientious objector and when he turned himself in at Fort Irwin in California they shackled him and flew him back to Germany – where he spent six months in a US military prison.
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/004.dean_.mp3]Last Christmas, Army Reservist James Dean barricaded himself in his father’s farm-house with several weapons and threatened to kill himself. Authorities responded by cordoning off the house and fired tear gas inside. They brought in armored vehicles and blew a hole in the right side of the house. Just past midnight on Dec. 26, a state police sharpshooter shot Jamie Dean dead.
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/008.casteel.mp3]After serving as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison, Joshua Casteel traveled to the Vatican where he was given an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. Casteel argued for a firmer antiwar stance from the Catholic Church. Church leaders, he says, should actively encourage soldiers to become conscientious objectors when political leaders wage an unjust war.
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/009.bolles.mp3]Dr. Gene Bolles has spent 30 years repairing bodies broken by disease, accidents and brutality. Drafted into the military during the Vietnam War, the Colorado neurosurgeon served for two years as a flight surgeon, witnessing the suffering of both U.S. military personnel and Vietnamese civilians. Yet, despite his extensive experience with war, nothing has shaken him up more than the 26 months he spent working at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany treating U.S. soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.
One wonders just how many Catholics, particularly those having an exhaustive familiarity with just war theology and having actively opposed the war in Iraq precisely on this basis, would be inclined to accept lectures about the Church “not doing enough” from 20-something conscientious objectors currently in graduate school. The energetic leadership provided both by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI on this question is well enough known to make radio appearances by adolescents reinventing the wheel just that: Radio appearances by adolescents reinventing the wheel. And it is particularly galling in the circumstances to hear it implied that the Church’s alleged “silence” on the question can be attibuted to its having accepting “30 pieces of silver”. The Holy Father simply will not require instruction on the meaning of the Redemption.
Could it be that Casteel’s public appearances have more to do with self-romotion than conscientious objection? I’d certainly suspect so. It would seem to me that any authentic Catholic peace advocacy would be one grounded utterly in the humility that is Christ Himself and one that emerges from just such a foundation. It is an advocacy of personal example, one more more at home with St. Therese of Liseaux than David Letterman. Mr. Casteel would do well reflecting on the rest of the Catechism before presuming to instruct any of the many Catholics committed to following the example of Holy Father on the question of war in Iraq.
John Lowell
If the Pope wanted this war stopped, he could stop it by calling on the faithful to reject it. “The energetic leadership provided both by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI on this question is well enough known” as is their complete failure at ending the suffering that has gripped the besieged Iraqi population since we invaded.
energetic leadership is all well and good
but results count, and it has been 4 years
Now isn’t this intervention of your’s either the most poorly informed or ill-intentioned possible. You imagine the Church as a kind of dictatorship with the Pope as Il Duce and the faithful as automotons? Let me give you a little help here since you seem so desperately to need it: The Holy Father’s position opposing the war, based as it is upon the Church’s teaching on just war, is not considered a kind of edict, it is rather his own personal opinion based upon reflection and intended to have the impact that any ordinary Papal statement might have upon the faithful. And it specifically admits of the possibility of there being opposing views although by its very nature it discourages them.
I really must say, for you honestly to expect that the Vatican produce “results” when its role in respect of the State is that of moral advisor carries naivete to new levels. So unless you’d consider it overly taxing, have the personal honesty first to famliarize yourself with it’s capabilities and it’s acknowledged limitations before presuming to criticize the Church on the war next time.
John Lowell
“The Holy Father’s position opposing the war, based as it is upon the Church’s teaching on just war, is not considered a kind of edict, it is rather his own personal opinion based upon reflection…”
once again, GOP first, RCC second
A very strange kind of logic you exhibit here, petey. Would the Pope’s opposition to the war have to be regarded as infallable teaching for it to carry critical moral weight with Catholics? Count on it, it carries such critical weight with me. Your charge of the GOP’s interests being placed ahead of the Church’s is utterly absurd in this case. The Pope isn’t Fr. Neuhaus.
John Lowell
“Let me give you a little help here since you seem so desperately to need it”
That’s exactly what the Pope oughta say
To the Iraqi people
When he points our that our failed occupation of Iraq (and the misery it has spawned) is not only unjust, but evil, and that the faithful would do well to not participate. (advice, not an edict)
your last paragraph reads like bureaucratic jargon, wielded to justify mournful inactivity by a given bureaucracy
more’s the pity
the Pope can, and should, do more
We’ll hoped to hasten to call another conclave and elect you Pope, KoWT. But we’ve had second thoughts, what with this shoulding all over yourself … :-)
John Lowell
One furthur thought while you’re shoulding all over yourself here about what the Pope “ought” to be doing about the war, KoWT, might you have a report to offer us on your own, personal activity beside that spent sitting on your duff typing about it that would serve as an example for him? I’d rather doubt it, frankly.
John Lowell
Yes indeed, the Pope should do more, as should have the former pope. Elected officials who support a woman’s right to reproductive freedom are condemned by the Catholic hierarchy, whereas not so elected officials who cry out for war against “foreigners” they deem enemies. I wish the Pope would deem such killings a mortal sin, and ask our soldiers in Iraq to please resist, as did Wataba.
The Church doesn’t teach pacifism, Marycatherine, and the Pope is not an ideologue. War in every circumstance is not considered immoral. Nevertheless, She finds it virtually impossible in the present to imagine instances in which war can be considered just even though She admits to the legitimacy of a plurality of opinions on the question. Not so with abortion which is always considered wrong. If one is to equate the two, as you seem to be doing, I would point out that what you describe as “reproductive freedom” might properly itself be regarded as a kind of war, a war of mother against child. What, then, are we to do with a morality that places war and abortion on an equal footing? To argue for pacifism hardly elevates the intrinsic evil that is abortion.
John Lowell
There is a large gulf between refusing communion to a Catholic politician in a Catholic Church or denouncing a Catholic politician’s stance regarding killing the unborn and ordering soldiers to revolt against their government.
True, soldiers are powerless and under tremendous coercive pressure to comply with orders. Politicians are under no such coercion to vote pro-choice. So threatening soldiers with denial of sacrament puts them in a lose-lose position.
But there is no such large gulf between refusing communion to a Catholic politician for voting “pro-choice” and refusing communion to a Catholic politician for voting “pro-war”. So let’s leave the soldiers out of this. The Church could indeed do much more to stop the slaughter. War is not pro-life.
I think you’ve missed Pat’s point, Bill. He simply contrasts the gravity of one’s denouncing a politician’s support of abortion where a career is at stake with one’s asking a soldier at war to go into open rebellion against his governments policies where his freedom and perhaps his life are at stake. It was never posited that a soldier be denied communion.
While I quite aqree with you that war is not pro-life, beyond the repeated issuing of official statements indicating its disapproval, what more is it that you see the Church as appropriately doing to oppose the war, Bill, sending a Papal Legate to Washington to punch Dick Cheney in the mouth? Is it enough to say “the Church could be doing more to stop the slaughter” without asking oneself personally the same question? Might we fairly ask what more Bill could to be doing to stop the slaughter, or Marycatherine or KoWT? There are boundaries of which the Church must be conscious when engaging questions of this kind and still be true to Herself. Christianity properly understood is not an ideology although, sadly, some Catholics and most Evangelicals have reduced it to an ideology in recent times. The morality of any question is all the Church sees Herself as properly addressing. The politics of the question is purely an affair of the state. Can you imagine the uproar if the USCCB were formally to endorse candidates?
John Lowell
While I have little regard for organized religion, I can’t help but notice that the Pope showed considerably more generosity of spirit towards an idealistic 20 year-old who felt moved to argue in favor of encouraging conscientious objectors than I’ve seen demonstrated by apparently “good” church members in these blog responses. I’ve seen no evidence of anyone “lecturing” the Pope, but a good deal of lecturing seems to be going on by the presumably pious here .
It’s always particularly impactful to read the opinion of one who, while acknowledging “little regard for organized religion”, manages somehow to define piety and identify the pious for us. And as for his being unable to uncover evidence of anyone lecturing the Pope, might I suggest the simple nostrum of his embarking on a search for the words “should” and “ought” in this thread. Lectures typically contain such markers and his failing to find one after having benefit of this modest assist would be simply intolerable.
John Lowell
Some people just can’t stand a rebuke. Good luck to you sir, and may your god bless you.
And others can’t seem to manage either the courage or the honesty directly to address those they intend to rebuke, eh?
Thanks for the good wishes and the blessing, as obtusely as the blessing may have been offered. You have my good wishes and a prayer for God’s blessings for you as well.
John Lowell