So I realize fully that I am a bit of an anomaly. This was never more apparent to me than when I worked as a campus minister at Saint Louis University last spring. I had organized an intramural volleyball league for some of the graduate students. A few of the students who were participating were living at Claver House, an intentional-faith community in the Ville neighborhood of North St. Louis. (For those familiar with the landscape of St. Louis’s City, North St. Louis is primarily African American. It’s poor, and if you look at a map, you’ll see that it’s very easy to ride on the highways in St. Louis and never see it. The less affluent families who live there can easily be forgotten by many St. Louisans. The Ville goes through spikes of peace and violence, sometimes being a stable community and sometimes not so. I saw both while I lived there.)
I was very familiar with Claver House, since I had been around when it began and spent two years living there while I was in graduate school at SLU. Many of the graduate students who were involved in the campus ministry programs knew that I was just a temporary campus minister, filling in only for the semester since Mark was deployed in Iraq. One of the students who lived in Claver asked me how I could be married to someone in the military since I had lived in Claver House. He didn’t understand how some could fight for social justice and believe passionately in Catholic Social Teaching and still support the U.S. Military. Needless to say, I was astounded of the narrow view that this student had and how little he was educated on the other side of social justice issues.
Well, I was reminded of this ignorance again today when I saw a disturbing post on Facebook and a link to this article: http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/rotc-loyola-university. In his blog entitled ROTC at Loyola University, John Dear, a Jesuit, shares his disgust when he sees an article in Loyola University’s alumni magazine featuring its ROTC detachment. In his first paragraph, I became so annoyed I called Mark at work—something I rarely do. In the blog, Dear states, “The lead article features some of the many young Catholics that this Jesuit school trains for war. This issue of the magazine is a disgrace. But so is the presence of the U.S. military at any so-called Christian institution.”
Right off the bat, it was clear to me that he didn’t understand what ROTC is about. Mark and I have many, many friends in the Air Force who were part of ROTC. His brother is currently part of ROTC. I have NEVER heard any of them talk about being trained for “war”. From my outsider perspective, I have seen that ROTC has trained these individuals to be leaders and critical thinkers, to be disciplined, to build community, and to be physically fit. From my point of view, ROTC actually promotes the values of Jesuit education, striving to educate the entire person and to create men and women who are for others. (Be realistic…these men and women in ROTC could DIE so we could be safe and could DIE trying to make innocent civilians caught in war safe. That’s really being a person for others.)
In his article, Dear also states, “What else is new? Most Catholic, Jesuit, Christian universities in the U.S. take millions of dollars from the Pentagon to train students for war — and then call ROTC a ‘student’ organization. In doing so, they serve the U.S. war machine and betray the Gospel of peace. They present fine rationale about having intellectual soldiers who will wage ‘better’ wars — but they can never quite claim that they are doing God’s will, obeying the Gospel, or following the nonviolent Jesus.”
He discredits the fact that St. Ignatius of Loyola was a soldier and that he belongs to an order of priests that was and still is set up with an organization structure very similar to the military, so much so that many refer to the Jesuits as “Catholic Special Forces”. (Even the vows a Jesuit takes are strikingly similar to the oath our military members take.)
He also doesn’t realize that Jesus did say, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Being part of the military isn’t necessarily about shooting and killing people. Sometimes it takes a person with a gun to step in between the two groups of people at war in order to get them to stop.
Do I think that we should strive for peaceful alternatives to war? Of course! Who wouldn’t? I bet most men and women in the military would agree. Unfortunately, we live in a world that isn’t always peaceful. I saw this when I lived in North St. Louis. Two men down the street were in a fight, and because the only way that they knew how to solve a flight was with violence, they started shooting at each other. Those of us living in Claver House were caught in the middle, and that night we ended up having bullets shot at our house, some of which punctured windows, entering our home.
Learning how to deal with confrontation in a peaceful manner is a learned art. That’s why there are so many college degrees and programs out there for conflict mediation. That’s why we taught it to the students at De La Salle Middle School when I worked there. If a child doesn’t have adults in his or her family or community to learn from, he or she may not naturally learn to rationalize when there is an argument. Instead, these children (and sometimes even entire cultures) turn to violence. And sometimes, it does, unfortunately, take violence to stop violence.
I think St. Ignatius of Loyola knew this; after all, he is the patron saint for soldiers. Being a Catholic and a Christian means to STRIVE FOR PEACE. Even us Catholics learn in high school morality and college philosophy classes that there is an intricate decision process that we as Catholics use (courtesy of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas) to decide if a war is just. In our Catholic Church’s catechism, we have four conditions for just war. THIS is why Catholic college campuses SHOULD have ROTC detachments on their campuses. Isn’t it important for those who are going to be the leaders in our United States military to learn this? (I realize this is just from Wikipedia, but there are some good quotes in here about what is a just war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War.)
For thousands of years, mankind has fought one another; in nature, Darwin pointed out that it is part of that “survival of the fittest” mentality. Humans do what they feel they have to do to survive. In nature, many times, trying to survive means eliminating the enemy completely by killing that enemy. Does this make the violence OK? No, but I’m an educated woman who learned at a very young age that it wasn’t OK to hit my sister with my toy. I learned that there were rationale ways to discuss who got to use the bathroom first in the morning, rather than just beating up my sister and bullying her so I got my way. I had parents, teachers, and other adults in my life who taught me to treat others the way I want to be treated. However, I’m not naive enough to think that everyone grew up the way that I did. I value every person; others in the world can’t see beyond gender, race, or sexual orientation. They don’t know how to take a deep breath, calm down, and talk rationally to solve a conflict; instead they hit the person they disagree with.
So, do I think Catholic, college campuses should keep their ROTC detachments? Most definitely. The world is not perfect. Violence will exist, and I want people who are educated in the Catholic Jesuit values of educating the entire person and who have learned what it means to have a “just war” to be the ones who leading our military; I truly believe that it’s these people who play a part in helping us have a more perfect and peaceful world.
