A right to conscience

Paul Lauritzen makes the all-too-common mistake of saying that pacifism is the only reason to oppose ROTC on Catholic campuses. Not so.

Catholics who are not pacifists can believe either in the just-war theory or in the blank-check theory, according to which the government gets to decide which wars are justified and which are not. Lauritzen is clearly a just-war thinker. He decries "imperialist uses" of armed force but says that "the common good sometimes requires the military to protect the innocent." The question is: Who gets to decide which category a war is in?

We know who does not get to decide: service members, including those who prepared for service on Catholic college campuses. The church teaches that soldiers, even sworn officers, have the right to refuse participation in a particular war or a particular action in war. This is called selective conscientious objection (SCO). Without it, the just-war theory becomes meaningless.

The problem is that, although the church supports SCO, it is illegal. The military will allow a member to leave if he becomes a full conscientious objector, but will not let soldiers "pick and choose" when they will kill. This means that when a young eighteen-year-old enlists or begins officer training, he effectively hands over his conscience to the military.

So the issue is this: How can we, as moral educators, teach our students about the inviolability of conscience and the need to exercise critical judgment, while allowing another institution that denies this basic right to form our students too? It is schizophrenic and wrong.

The just-war tradition would dictate another path: Saying to the military that unless they show respect for a principle at the core of our moral tradition--the right to discern when one is or is not participating in moral evil--they are not welcome to run formation programs on our campuses.

MICHAEL GRIFFIN

Notre Dame, Ind.

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