Contradicting traditions

If one slides uncritically over Paul Lauritzen's assertion that "Catholic tradition ... [affirms] the right and responsibility of governments to defend their citizens," his argument for ROTC appears solid.

But the tradition Lauritzen cites is essentially incompatible with the ancient Christian tradition that precluded Christians' taking up arms--unless the state could not find enough non-Christians to fill its military ranks. The U.S. bishops' acknowledgment of the gospel nonviolence tradition in their 1984 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, makes clear that "just war" has not superseded that tradition: the contradiction remains.

The military, the bishops wrote, should "primarily serve a peacekeeping and defensive function," but the U.S. military has not served a defensive function since World War II. And since then, only the Korean, Balkan, and 1994 Haitian interventions were actually peacekeeping missions. The ROTC is, in fact, almost entirely a preparation for aggression and service of empire: we have killed, either directly or through proxies, 4 million innocent people since the Korean conflict.

A military is "needed," St. Francis demonstrated, only to defend possessions; war appeared on the human scene only with agriculture and rival claims to land or resources.

More troubling is Lauritzen's argument that the commitment of ROTC students to public service, "to making the world a better place," earns ROTC a place on campus. This reminds me of the argument that ROTC gives future officers a strong moral and ethical foundation. But I have not heard of a Notre Dame or John Carroll ROTC graduate refusing to be deployed to Iraq on moral grounds, despite condemnations of that war by John Paul II and the U.S. bishops and the evidence that removing Saddam Hussein failed the just-war proportionality test.

WILLIAM H. SLAVICK

Portland, Maine

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