Correspondence Wars, just & unjust
COLEMAN, GERALD D. & BRUMMEL, DICK & FILTEAU, JERRY & Ferris, Paul & FLAHAVAN, (REV.) EDWARD & CALLAHAN, PATRICK & Moore, John C.
CORRESPONDENCE Thanks to Lopez Thank you for printing George Lopez's thought-provoking essay "Iraq & Just-War Thinking" (September 27). Please let me respond to a couple of points. First, I'd...
...Was the U.S...
...you wrote concerning the war on terrorism: "We believe this attack, and the means to defeat the Taliban and their terrorist associates, proportionate...
...It's called "Later Church...
...The original went like this: Ecclesial power remaineth, oremus, With those who can say, "Testiculos habemus...
...During the war in Kosovo, at a Pentagon briefing aired on CSPAN, a reporter asked the Pentagon spokesman about the accidental bombing of more than one hundred civilians in a transportation line...
...Priests in casual clothing with people from the parish...
...Perhaps it needs revisiting, for nothing Paul Ferris questions is now a violation of proportionality, as it has been construed by just-war theorists...
...JOHN C. moore Bloomington, Ind...
...REV...
...PATRICK CALLAHAN Aurora, Ill...
...Then children of all races moving helter skelter...
...I presume, or hope, that Washington will not make the same mistake...
...Rather, they conjure up tortured or duplicitous rationalizations that create the illusion of passing the just-war tests...
...The editors reply: There is much truth in John Moore's tracing the emphasis on personal choice and romantic love in modern marriage to twelfth-century Catholic theologians and canonists, but more truth in attributing the centrality those values came to play in marriage to the Enlightenment and before that to the Reformation (see Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self...
...To his factual queries: we have seen no evidence that more civilians were killed in Afghanistan than in the September 11 attacks, that the United States targeted civilians, or that we cooperated in the mistreatment of prisoners...
...GERALD D. COLEMAN, S.S...
...And when all reached the altar they joined their hands to dance and moved around in circles minus pomp and circumstance...
...Sexual abuse in any form is wrong and violent...
...As a nation, we need to think harder about the second part of your assertion...
...Imagine, in the midst of what these men have put their victims and their church through, Coleman wants us to "distinguish the range of activities that count as sexual abuse...
...But who among our youth can we regard as "expendable...
...Whose child does not deserve absolute protection from an established abuser...
...Poetic license The poem quoted (Correspondence, September 13) by Nina Polcyn Moore's late husband sounded very much like the gems written by the recently deceased Sister Rose Tille-mans, C.S.J., one of the treasures of our local church in the Twin Cities...
...Only in exceptional circumstances would a resort to force pass all seven or eight tests required for a war to be just...
...JERRY FILTEAU Laurel, Md.of women as pretty ridiculi...
...Poor folks followed closely from food shelf and from shelter...
...With him a woman bishop, playing on the flute...
...That they do so indicates a deficiency not in the content of just-war theory but in the character and political system that applies it...
...This illustrates the moral risk posed by addressing one of the just-war criteria-discrimination or noncombatant immunity-in isolation from the rest of the tradition...
...Dick Brummel's letter is thus valid but terribly woven with an angry and dismissive tone...
...The editors reply: Proportionality is not an easy criterion to apply, certainly not in the midst of war, as George Lopez points out ("Iraq & Just-War Thinking," September 27...
...The bishop walked unmitered in simple business suit...
...Did we not kill scores of civilians celebrating a wedding...
...So clearly was their aspect of friendships that they cherish...
...When the fighting was over, therefore, there was no effort to provide relief for civilians in the short term and aid for reconstruction in the longer term...
...If Iraqi forces do not collapse or revolt and the war results in urban combat in Baghdad, or if Iraq hits Israel with weapons of mass destruction and Israel retaliates with nuclear weapons against Iraqi cities, the massacre of human life could be horrendous...
...Did we not kill as many civilians in Afghanistan as were lost in the United States...
...So please go back to that clause and work from there...
...One hopes that Catholics ensure that this issue gets all due attention...
...Is anyone questioning the major reliance on air power alone to defeat our enemies in war...
...JERRY FILTEAU Laurel, Md...
...Protecting abusers Outrageous...
...Primary source To set the record straight, the final quatrain of the poem Nina Polcyn Moore quotes was borrowed from a poem by Clare Will Faulhaber, which was first published in the September 9,1988, issue of Commonweal, under the title "Ballad of Male Hegemony...
...There is no reason to hang that albatross around the neck of the very sensible observation made in your one good clause...
...Or should these questions be left to the Pentagon office of Just War and the Proportionate Means to Fight One...
...paul ferris Upper Marlboro, Md...
...Without criteria for determining that a resort to force would be justified, the presumption against war turns into pacifism...
...The just-war criteria, if taken seriously, in fact opera-tionalize the presumption against force...
...Why should a just war also be a fair fight, other than whatever implications it might have for satisfying the just-war criteria...
...Is anyone really thinking about a more proportionate response to unjust attacks...
...Finally, Lopez writes that the "unprecedented" "unbalanced military situation...has not led to any reassessment by Catholic leaders of what might constitute a 'just war.'" I don't see why it should...
...For Lopez's indictment seems precisely that the discriminate bombing led to disproportionate harm...
...This is clericalism at its most insidious...
...I would guess that Brummel represents a type of person who vitiates the old adage, "A friend is someone who walks in, when everyone else walks out...
...Did we not "look the other way" as our allies in the Northern Alliance committed war crimes by suffocating hundreds of combatants in metal containers on the backs of trucks and then surreptitiously bury them in mass graves...
...Something to think about...
...That's the only way to describe Gerald Coleman's apologia for sexual predators ("Zero Tolerance," September 27...
...First, the appearance of "personal choice and romantic love" in considerations of marriage should not be attributed to the Reformation but to the Catholic twelfth century...
...DICK BRUMMEL Kansas City, Mo...
...The theologians, canon lawyers, and popes of that century made the final decision: the essential ingredient for a valid marriage was the consent of the two individuals-not a church ceremony or the consent of the families...
...The author replies: A recent article in America suggests that every response is a valid one in light of the critical nature of the priest sexual-abuse issue...
...Has not air power become the primary means of fighting wars since the Gulf War...
...Sexual abusers are dysfunctional people who need care and correction, not to mention forgiveness...
...But the rest of the editorial was in need of repair...
...The spokesman answered, "We regret the collateral damage, but we will continue to service the robust target sets...
...A case can be made that air power in Afghanistan actually resulted in a more "just war" than World War II...
...Repair needed Your editorial on same-sex marriages ("State of the Unions," September 27) had one very good clause: "perhaps extending the blessings and disciplines of civil marriage to same-sex couples would satisfy important concerns about justice and fairness...
...Some sexual abuse (either qualitatively or quantitatively) must, according to Coleman, not be serious enough to justify a bar from ministry...
...I do not regard children as expendable, but I extend this same embrace to priests who have abused, one that Brummel seems to deny them...
...The problem, which I believe is Lopez's point, is that policymakers and foreign-policy elites do not take the criteria seriously...
...First, I'd like to caution against a conclusion that readers may draw from the essay, to wit, that the presumption against force stands opposed to the checklist of criteria in the just-war tradition...
...Not proportionate In your September 13 editorial, "Where Are We Now...
...The only criterion for proportionality seems to be our desire to limit American casualties...
...I (Continued on page 30) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) find it astonishing to be accused of supporting "sexual predators" when I raise a fair question about the nature of any sexual abuse...
...Second, Lopez provides a compelling analysis of how precision-guided munitions led to increased post-war suffering of civilians in Iraq and Yugoslavia...
...Fourth, I'd like to applaud Lopez for directly stating that "the major moral dilemmas facing the country right now lie in the damage levels that could be inflicted on Iraq...
...Third, it's not clear to me that the coming war in Iraq will present the same problem of delayed killing through destruction of infrastructure...
...The problem in both the Persian Gulf War and the Kosovo intervention was that force was used coercively rather than to defeat the enemy...
...While I could not find Thomas Eugene Moore's quoted poem in Rose's published writings in my possession, I leave it to the reader to judge if the following work from her collection In Catholic Circles isn't very much like his gem...
...EDWARD FLAHAVAN Saint Paul, Minn...
...response really proportionate...
...Second, your final paragraph questions the value of same-sex marriage by tying it to the oddball ideas attributed to Rebecca Mead: "a grand, individualistic romance detached from society's strictures...
...Empowering persons whose claim is testiculi Strikes millions of women as pretty ridiculi...
...And however far from the social realities of the day, romantic love entered the Western tradition in the romances and love poetry of the twelfth century...
...Before we escalate the present war against Iraq, perhaps the editors of (Continued on page 4) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) Commonweal could devote an issue to debate this subject of proportionality, instead of just following the trend of fusing the questions of just cause for going to war with the question concerning the just means of fighting one...
...How dare we even think of protecting the offender at the expense of a future victim, just so we can sing "Tu es sacerdos in aeternum...
Vol. 129 • October 2002 • No. 17
