Correspondence: Elshtain's war; Father Anonymous

...And-for those of us who are familiar with the facts of the litigation-there is nothing "improbable" about the conclusion that the course ordered by the Florida Supreme Court constituted a gross violation of the Equal Protection Clause...

...History will ultimately judge reject ing women and married men from or dained ministry a greater scandal than either homosexuality or pedophilia in the priesthood...

...PATRICIA DONOHUE WHITE Steubenville, Ohio The author replies: Those who complain that I ignored jus ad helium questions should know that, under a strict word limit, I chose to confine my comments largely to jus in hello concerns...

...Three cheers for France, Germany, Russia, and China...

...interest in hegemonic strength, the spirit of counterterrorist reprisal appears to have played a substantial role in the motivation for U.S...

...Perhaps those who make and embrace this argument are a bit too squeamish...

...Scalia's point is that the Constitution is a charter for self-government, not rule by hypereducated, politically well-connected judges...

...That was twenty years ago...

...When the Catholicism they once professed as children is no longer even a memory, their enlightened attitudes having bleached it all away, will they then be ready for that final leap of faith, to wit, a lifetime subscription to Commonweal...

...Jean Bethke Elshtain defends as just the war against Iraq on the basis of how it was waged, to the exclusion of the question of whether the war was justified in the first place...

...Yet the fact that by the time they have completed their studies huge numbers of students attending premier Catholic institutions neither pray, nor go to Mass, nor believe anything that the church teaches about the sanctity of marriage and unborn babies seems not to distress you in the least...

...I can imagine that women in the church don't feel like the "guest who entered the wedding feast not properly clothed" but feel more like the mat on which the invited guests wipe their feet...

...Unlike the first Gulf War, this one was undertaken without UN approval, and in the face of overwhelming international disapproval, including that of almost all major Christian denominations...

...CORROSPONDENCE Elshtain is wrong The confidence of Jean Bethke Elshtain ("A Just War," April 25) in the justice of Bush II's war against Iraq is equaled only by her confidence in her grasp of just-war theory...

...Patricia Donohoe White rightly worries about civilian deaths...

...Where you come down on preemption depends on whether or not you think that the use of coercive force against Iraq is a test case for preemption...

...Further, I am also not that impressed that most Christian denominations were in opposition, as most have lost serious contact with the just-war tradition...

...All that said, thanks very much to Commonweal and to Vitullo-Martin for the portrait...

...Brennan's "living Constitution" sounds very nice...

...She also points out that a critical moral distinction in play here is between intended and unintended killing...

...While not all deaths can be attributed directly to coalition actions, most were caused by coalition air strikes and missiles that hit hospitals and residential areas, as well as shootings at check-points, gun fights, and cluster bombs dropped in urban neighborhoods...

...JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP South Bend, Ind...

...One must be a sovereign state to be a member of the UN, meaning members do not cede their authority to make decisions about war and peace to that body...

...Lack of direct intention does not of itself remove culpability-neither does the "worry" heard in the voices of field commanders and ordinary soldiers...

...The bar to preemptive war shifts depending on whether your version of just war is strictly juridical and Westphalian or shaped, as mine is, by the theological tradition of the great pre-Westphalians: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin...

...In fact, the opinions in Bush v. Gore, which Scalia joined, are eminently defensible, even if reasonable people can and do disagree about them...

...Bad intentions In her use of "just war" language to rationalize U.S...

...I think this would be a far superior, appropriate, and applicable way to represent Christ to the world...

...John Maguire makes some strong points, but decisions about resort to force are left to the prudential reasoning of statesmen and women-this according to the Catholic Catechism and the UN Charter...

...The author speaks of how his sexual orientation-something of excitement, complexity, beauty, and one of God's most profound gifts-being deemed unfit for ordination confuses him and makes him feel the pain of rejection...

...In fact, you seize upon such statistics as evidence that at last Catholic higher education is working, inasmuch as it so plainly succeeds in provoking the young into questioning the many "received assumptions" they inherited from their first innocence...

...intervention in Iraq, Jean Bethke Elshtain either overlooked or misapplied the "rule of application" that governs the just-war test...

...As of May 13, the site's low estimate of the dead was 3,736 and the high estimate was 4,771...

...Bush's appeal to high moral principle in bringing down a corrupt dicta torship should be viewed in the histo ry of U.S...

...First, Vitullo-Martin repeats the standard argument that Scalia is unusually harsh, bitter, and rude in his opinions...

...If the forces encouraging this drift have grown considerably stronger in our day, it is naive to pretend that Catholic colleges can be isolated from those forces or easily counter them- or that these developments have nothing to do with the risks of questioning and reappropriation that are part of a mature faith...

...In this instance, the United States lacked UN Security Council authorization in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter...

...Whatever the solution to this age-old problem, we doubt that it will be found in gnashing of teeth, lashing out at the schools, or waving the banner of "apostasy" at nineteen-year-olds...

...It's just that not all true vocations are to celibate males...

...Elshtain acknowledges that reprisals are "largely forbidden within just-war teaching" but confines this observation to the norms that govern conduct within war (jus in hello...

...Mostly, however, it was something else...

...I consider that intervention a continuation of the first Gulf War, concluded by a truce-with Iraq in material breach...

...How much more painful and profound must it be having one's very gender, not a mere circumstance of sexuality, be the cause for rejection by the church...

...I appreciate the feelings your anonymous author expresses when confronted with the possibility the Catholic bureaucracy may forbid ordaining homosexuals...

...War is about killing people...

...Just-war theory requires that war be a last recourse after all other attempts to resolve differences have failed...

...Unlike many other pieces I have read on this subject, the anonymous author is completely free of anger and bitterness...

...Thank you for publishing "Made in God's Image: A Homosexual Priest Speaks Out" (April 11...

...There is no requirement anywhere in international law that a nation-state needs UN approval before acting in its own behalf...

...This is puzzling, for no preemptive war can be justified until there is conclusive, incontrovertible evidence that the enemy has decided to attack...

...You certainly deserve each other...

...I submit that the issue of defensive reprisal is also relevant to judging the criterion of right intention with respect to the decision to go to war in the first place...

...John Cort says a preemptive war requires "conclusive, incontrovertible evidence that the enemy has decided to attack...

...Second (and related), it is not-as Vitullo-Martin suggests-an "attack" on his colleagues for Scalia to assert that they are no better equipped to rule on the "right to die," and other difficult issues, than any nine random people out of the phone book...

...None...

...Wishing him well in all things, I want to tell him how proud he should be and to thank him for his ordained ministry and his ex ample Of faith...

...While this distinction is certainly relevant, it is hardly sufficient...

...If the authorities in Rome could read it, they might realize the inhumanity and stupidity of the threatened exclusion of homosexuals from the ministry...

...That Scalia is a better and more clever writer than most of his colleagues, past and present, does not mean that they were or are any more polite, restrained, or charitable, as even a quick review of the criminal-procedure and death-penalty dissents of, say, Justices Marshall and Brennan makes clear...

...Does Elshtain think that George W. Bush's doctrine of preemption is in conformity with just-war theory...

...Does it remove accountability...

...Finally, why should instances of U.S...

...I submit that the words remain as true, if not more so, with that one small revision...

...For Aquinas "repression of wrongdoing" is a legitimate casus belli and the obligations of caritas are not limited to the boundaries of principalities...

...By itself, the ouster of Iraq's brutal Baathist dictatorship does not meet the criterion of right intention (proper motive...

...JOHN C. CORT Nahant, Mass...

...We need more time...

...Success in toppling a tyrannical regime, as great a good as that is, does not meet, even retroactively, the criterion of proper authorization...

...What's just about it...

...At the very least, look back at what you published in this essay and imagine changing the word "gay" to "woman" or "married man...

...The rule requires that in a just war of defense, in which only just methods are used, it must be clear to a moral certainty that all requisite criteria to fight such a war are met...

...John 11:35 comes to mind: "And Jesus wept...

...How does gender make a woman unfit...

...I don't...

...This is why Pope John Paul II says that it is always a defeat for humanity...

...The failure to meet any one criterion of jus ad helium, qualifies the war as unjust...

...Surely those who argue that the Iraq war has been "justified and restrained" can admit that the killing of civilians is an evil consequence, however unintended, and therefore part of this war's moral cost...

...Leaving aside the question of U.S...

...Judging Scalia Julia Vitullo-Martin's recent discussion of Justice Scalia and his work ("Justice & Antonin Scalia," March 28) was, for the most part, refreshingly and scrupulously fair...

...That said, a few friendly amendments to the piece are in order...

...While we share the distress that Martin, Catholic parents, and thoughtful church leaders feel at being reminded that many young people begin to question and, indeed, abandon certain Catholic moral and religious teachings during the years they spend in college, this does not exactly come as startling news...

...support for such regimesin Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, et cetera-when it was in U.S...

...There is a good deal of evidence that for generations many Catholics (and others, too) have drifted away from church in early adulthood only to return later...

...Anonymous says the person of the priest does not "mirror the selfless, chaste love of Christ to those he serves because he is heterosexual" but "because he is willing to reaffirm the goodness of people made in God's image and likeness...

...support for repressive regimes be determinative in assessing the merits of the case of Iraq...

...ANDY GALLIGAN Tracy, Calif...

...There was no such evidence in this case...

...REGIS MARTIN Steubenville, Ohio The editors reply: If we sounded dismissive of the recent survey that so shocks Regis Martin, it was in part because of the survey's questionable methodological assumptions, in part because of the six-column headline bestowed on it by the New York Times, in part because of the polemical interpretation that conservatives want to put on the findings...

...Undiscriminating In her "A Just War," Jean Bethke Elshtain rightly states that the principle of discrimination requires that "everything must be done to minimize" the killing of civilians...

...This is a debated matter within just-war thinking...

...What about women...

...Even if these killings were "unintended," does that make them justified...

...The presence in rectories, sacristies, and chanceries of ordained women and married men would give celibate priests, straight and gay, much better insight into family life and help them integrate their own sexuality, whether straight or gay, in healthy ways...

...The same interests dictated support of a young Saddam Hussein against Abdel Karim Kassem in the 1960s and of an older Saddam against Iran in the 1980s...

...The sadness that pervades his article is deeply moving and powerful...

...Joseph Blenkinsopp is concerned primarily with issues I could not take up because of space limits...

...commer cial and strategic interests...

...Their testimony was perfectly clear: "Iraq is cooperating, however late and reluctantly...

...Though there is no official count of civilian deaths in Iraq (and it is unlikely that one will be forthcoming), www.iraqbodycount.net has been tabulating the numbers based on eyewitness accounts and media reports...

...So much the better, you imply, than the mindless drone "who never doubted what he had been taught...

...Scalia's point here is not to insult his colleagues (and friends), but rather to show his respect for the judgment of his fellow citizens...

...My failure to act against a murderer in the past does not mean that I am obliged to stand by when I see a murderer pointing a gun at someone now...

...STEPHEN COURT Rockford, III Abandon glibness Having read your April 11 Et Cetera, "Abandon All Hope All Who Enter," an astonishingly glib dismissal of the recent survey showing large numbers of graduating seniors from Catholic colleges and universities abandoning the practice of their faith, one is at a loss to imagine what possible evidence of apostasy could shock the sensibilities of Commonweal editors (revelations regarding hitherto unsuspected depths of homophobia, perhaps...

...Plus ca change...

...The authorities recognized to provide such evidence were the UN inspectors...

...He at least should have known better...

...EVA FLEISCHNER Claremont, Calif...

...intervention...

...RICHARD W. GARNETT South Bend, Ind...

...Elshtain appears to agree with this since she recommends prayerful consideration of alternatives to using force, but she must be aware that little consideration was given to alternatives in this instance...

...as Justice Scalia reminds us, though, it is in the end little more than a gauzy euphemism for "veto by judges, according to their elite sensibilities, of the legislative enactments of the majority...

...Does it mean that no restitution is called for or that these dead (many of them children and elderly people) are not even deemed worthy of being counted...

...Still, I have an urge to tell this man: No whining...

...Finally, Vitullo-Martin repeats uncritically the tired canards that Scalia was somehow the mastermind behind Bush v. Gore (though he authored neither the majority nor the concurring opinion in the case), and that Bush v. Gore somehow exposes Scalia as inconsistent, unprincipled, or even hypocritical...

...JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN Is Rome listening...

...Shame on George W. Bush and shame on Tony Blair, the first and only Christian socialist head of a major power...

...The director of vocations in my diocese (Rockford, Illinois) once told me that there really is no vocation crisis...

...Shortsightedness regarding the consequences of certain actions, ignorance about the effects of weapons, and the decision to make efficiency and speed the overriding criteria in reaching military objectives can put civilians at unacceptable risk, as can the choice of means, for example, the use of non-precision weapons like cluster bombs in urban neighborhoods, and the use of "kill boxes" in areas with civilian populations...

...JOHN F. MAGUIRE Berkeley, Calif...

...Indeed, my moral obligation rises in such a circumstance...

...My guess is that this is even more valid today...

...Father Anonymous obviously has it all together...

...An inspiration In the last several years I have read ominous statements on homosexuality by many educated Catholics such as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Vatican Spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Vails, and George Weigel, but never in my life have I seen such a wondrous article on the subject as "Made in God's Image," written by a faithful priest called Anonymous, a name he understandably feels he must use in our Catholic/Christian community today...

...We can only be grateful the numbers were low and that precision-guided weapons now make the jus in hello principle of discrimination more rather than less achievable...