The limits of allegiance
Garvey, John
to set up study groups to examine "the totality of relation- The next issue will be dated August 28. Following that, ships" between Ireland and Britain. No one is sure what this Commonweal will...
...You would ever feel free to make the choice to question is not what an army may be mean fight for Hitler...
...Of several minds: John Garvey only because they were ordered to do so, but because they were absolutely con-vinced of the need to defeat Hitler and the LIMITS OF ALLEGIANCE Axis powers...
...un- less people obey those in authority there will be chaos...
...he hoped While it is important to continue pres- of European students at dinner...
...They politics of the Irish Republic as she and her predecessors have took two seats from Mr...
...when occupied by the Nazis, France caved in...
...founder of Fianna Fail, lost her seat in the affluent district of Haughey says everything is on the table...
...Haughey asked Mrs...
...Thomas More, the loyal servant of the king, knew that his loyalty had limits...
...Denmark is arguably the only nation which comes out of World War ii looking good...
...If we allowed himself to be drafted into the of course...
...government with its first constitutional and international crisis Mr...
...disobey...
...Thatcher and the Irish people with another nationalist martyr...
...Scientists didn't like it, but for the most part went along...
...The fact that he was obeying orders was Eichmann's chief defense...
...Thatcher when they The media in the Republic hardly knew Kieron Doherty's meet...
...Then, in a massive act of resistance, the Danes managed to smuggle virtually every Danish Jew out of Denmark...
...means and there have been many interpretations...
...so is his teaching about laying up treasure for ourselves, and on loving our enemies...
...In Ireland they began to speak These reports were understatements...
...An army looks like a weak thing next to that sort of spirit...
...When America's support of dictatorships is allowed to go unchallenged in any serious way, some- thing important about America has been allowed to die...
...Soldiers and people with fat bank accounts are not kept from com-munion...
...good enough...
...deputies dies on hunger strike, he'll present the new Irish A timebomb is ticking...
...it is the pastoral effect of enforcing the laws we have, which are easier on mass murderers than on those who have remarried after di- vorce...
...Haughey was to continue his talks with Mrs...
...I talked to the chairman of the economy, but for Bobby Sands and the other H-Block the H-Block Committee eleven days before the vote...
...like that and Mr...
...intransigent...
...Military authorities had done their best to keep everybody in the darK, to isolate Oak Ridge, the Met Lab in Chicago, and Los Alamos, and to treat all general discussion of the bomb as a violation of security...
...They paid their cam- SEAN CRONIN paigns little attention...
...As long as questioning those in author- ity is seen as a special vocation, the prophetic call of a chosen few, we are in danger...
...There are loyalties deeper than the allegiance which is ordi- narily asked by the state or the church, loyalties to what state and church are supposed to be about, but too often are not...
...in the next few months...
...The example of Denmark has not been praised or studied enough...
...name, or those of his fellow-candidates...
...But early in I945, when the magnitude and the imminence of the bomb became apparent, the scientists--in a single, spontaneous, almost convulsive awakening--suddenly grasped the thing whole: the bomb was big enough to wreck our civilization, there was no de- fense, any determined nation could build one, an arms race could result in stockpiles of thousands, something had Commonweal: 424...
...The only unqaestioning loyalty we are allowed is our obedience to God, and even here there are questions and strug- gles: Job is more admirable than Abra- ham, because he questions God...
...FitzGerald will take his place...
...To take a less serious, but still very serious, example from the church, it is necessary to judge the hard-heartedness of Catholic canon law in the light of the Gospel...
...The Kieron Doherty is the likelier one to die...
...They said they would draw few votes, (Sean Cronin, just returned from Ireland, is the Washington that the economic issue would dominate all...
...There are exceptions: in fairy tales they have to do with orders which come from obviously magic sources...
...The Nazis gave up on that one...
...His goodwill may not be history helped him...
...No ought to be obeyed...
...She refused...
...they are admitted, and called on to repent, and be transformed, Questioning those in authority, and where necessary resisting them, is not disloyal...
...He ran all sure what that was in a wartime situa- German student and my friend's re-off to Sweden when he should have tion, and he was not at all sure that he sponse made me realize that the major stayed to defend his country...
...Denmark, occupied, resisted...
...someone asked...
...Poland is wonder- ful news...
...The English and Americans did little to stop the slaughter of the Jews...
...Are there no limits at all to what governments may do in the O NE NIGHT when I was in college I have obeyed any order given to him...
...It may be the result of deeper loyalties...
...If one of the elected destabilized the politics and the economy of Northern Ireland...
...For Ireland, the prospect just now is gloomy...
...resistance was for ex- traordinary or heroic people...
...It is not disloyal to wonder whether the institution --whatever it is --is being well served by those who are tem- porarily in charge, nor is it disloyal to judge an institution in the light of what it claims to be about...
...He had little political organization, but all of Irish relations between North and South...
...I don't think this can be extended to in- clude the orders of generals or judges...
...We have one good example in our time of a community which resisted, not assuming that...
...found myself sitting with a number wasn't comfortable about this...
...The strongly...
...Haughey...
...Thatcher may destabilize the .to run prisoner-candidates in the Republic's election...
...It is not the intention of the regu- lations surrounding marriage and divorce which is in question...
...But it is a betrayal of American assumptions about liberty to support a Somoza in the name of anti-Communism, and the argument that the Sandinistas aren't very decent either is not a worthy response...
...America simply should not support the sort of people who send home other people's heads as a warning to behave...
...JOHN GARVEY Of several minds: Thomas Powers PRINCIPLES OF ABOLITION EIGHT REASONS FOR GETHNG RID OF THE BOMB N 1945, even before the Trinity test proved an atomic bomb could be made to work, a sud-ddn wave of concern or alarm swept the laboratories where the new weapon had been fashioned...
...The intention of an anti- Communist foreign policy is not what is wrong...
...He could hunger strikers, Mr...
...The that he would have had the courage to sing for disarmament and accord be-name Of Willy Brandt came up, and a resist if he were ordered to do something tween nations, there is something even German graduate student reacted that was obviously evil, but he was not at more important to be considered...
...The question which be-came especially clear with Hiroshima, LOYALTY TO DEEPER LOYALTIES however, is this: is anything permitted to defeat an enemy...
...No one is sure what this Commonweal will return to its bi-weeidy schedule...
...There is more to ren about their obligation to society, to been brought up he would probably have this than the question of obeying orders, government, and to the church...
...We should not teach our children wholesale cynicism or an individualism which would do away with the idea of any obligation at all...
...It shows us that when resistance becomes a com- munal undertaking, a form of common sense, it can save the soul of a nation...
...That swine...
...Jesus's teaching on divorce is clear, and clearly opposed to divorce...
...In religious history the unques- tionable orders come from God, as when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac...
...And what will he tell Mrs...
...Brandt...
...It has been argued that there simply must be a more or less unchallenged chain of command for society to work at all...
...He had straight blond hair and watched a news special about America's ence itself...
...it is clear to most people by now that Communism is a bad idea whose time may be passing...
...They were proved correspondent of the Irish Times of Dublin...
...Should I b6 willing to serve...
...Wherever allegiance is equated with un- questioning obedience it has led people into trouble...
...small round wire-rimmed glasses, just defense, and heard soldiers talking about If given an order, should I assume that it like the Nazis in the movies...
...But his teaching on justice to the poor is also clear...
...Haughey could have won his election, despite But the border counties were on fire...
...When the Nazis threatened to enforce the law which re- quired Jews to wear the yellow star, King Christian let it be known that if they did so he would wear the yellow star himself, and call on all Danes to join him...
...ad hoc committee, dominated by the Provisional IRA, decided problems...
...this to a friend, this uncritical and im- doubt all of these men would obey or- This is an important educational matmediate defense of a form of patriotism ders, whatever the orders were, just as ter --educational, because it has everywhich murdered millions, and my friend previous soldiers were willing to bomb thing to do with what we teach our childadmitted that because of the way he had Dresden and Hiroshima...
...He name of self-defense...
...I burn with anger against you," God says to Job's comforters, who offered pious answers to Job's anguished ques- tions, "for not speaking truthfully about me as my servant Job has done...
...An Maze left the Republic without a government to tackle its...
...Given her head, Mrs...
...Thatcher says it has nothing to do with the constitutional right in a half-prediction: Sile de Valera, granddaughter of the arrangements between Northern Ireland and Britain...
...The prisoners in the ironically of "the special relationship" between the two...
...In disobeying Creon, Antigone is obedient to something more pro-foundly important than the laws of the city...
...permitted to do, or the limits to be placed "Of course," the German student an-I remembered these things as I on weaponry, but the problem of obedi- ,swered...
...I mentioned the tactical use of nuclear weapons...
...And although God's answer to Job seems a rebuke to the whole idea that God can be questioned, the strong implication is that an honest man must question even God...
...Thatcher to be less not believe the reports he was getting from workers in the field...
...The men who bombed Dres- teach a form of loyalty which assumes Nazi army, and in all likelihood he would den and Hiroshima did what they did not the decency of those in authority, if we 31 July 1981:423 allow our children to believe that a sol- dier should obey orders without ques- tion, or a citizen must pay taxes or obey the summons to join the army, we are laying the groundwork for more of the horror that has marked our century: total warfare, and the destruction of millions...
...The electors of Economist has suggested he may sabotage the talks "by insist- Cavan and Monaghan, two Ulster counties that are part of the ing that the Ulster Unionists be drawn into them and by Republic, gave him more than nine thousand votes...
...But we really must con- sider what obedience has brought us...
...It could have gone on Dublin South because she was "too strident on the North...
...FitzGerald was by proportional'representation and he won bipartisan believes in "a good neighbor attitude in the North--and good support...
...The vote insisting that the agenda be made explicit...
Vol. 108 • July 1981 • No. 14
