April
25, 2008
What
About the War, Benedict?
By
Ray McGovern
Ray
McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in inner-city Washington,DC. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Pope
Benedict XVI arrived in Washington against a macabre backdrop featuring reports
of torture, execution, and war. He chose not to notice.
Torture:
Fresh reporting by ABC from inside sources depicted George W. Bush's most senior
aides (Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice, and Tenet) meeting dozens of
times in the White House during 2002/03 to sort out the most efficient mix of
torture techniques for captured "terrorists."
When
initially ABC attempted to insulate the president from this sordid activity, Bush
abruptly bragged that he knew all about it and approved. That comment and the
National Security Council Action Memorandum that the president signed on February
7, 2002 (see original at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.02.07.pdf
) dispelled any lingering doubt regarding his personal responsibility for authorizing
torture.
Execution:
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court with a majority of judges calling themselves Catholic,
was openly deliberating on whether one gram, or two, or perhaps three of this
or that chemical would be the preferred way to execute people. Always colorful
prominent Catholic layman Antonin Scalia complained impatiently, "Where does
it say in the Constitution that executions have to be painless?"
Scalia
did not seem at all concerned that the pope might remind him and his Catholic
colleagues about the Church's teaching on capital punishment; i.e., the cases
in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very
rare, if not practically non-existent."
It
was enough to bring this student of German history (and five-year resident there)
vivid memories of frequenting those places where precisely these kinds of torture
and execution policies were conducted at similarly high levels by Hitler's inner
circle-yes, including judges.
War:
Can the pope possibly be so suffused with his peculiar brand of theology that
he is oblivious to what happened when he was a young man during the Third Reich.
Is
it possible that papal advisers forgot to tell him that the post-WW II Nuremberg
Tribunal described an unprovoked war of aggression, of the kind that the Third
Reich and George W. Bush launched, as the "supreme international crime, differing
from other war crimes only in that it contains the accumulated evil of the whole?"
Could they have failed to tell the pope he would be hobnobbing with war criminals,
torturers, and the enabling cowards in Congress who refuse to remove them from
office?
For this
Catholic, it was a profoundly sad spectacle-profoundly sad. Not since WW II, when
the Reich's bishops swore personal oaths of allegiance to Hitler (as did the German
Supreme Court and army generals) have the papacy and bishops acted in such a fawning,
un-Christ-like way. The message to Bush and American Catholics: like Benedict,
Bush, too, is awesome; and whatever he decides to do now has a nihil obstat from
the pope.
During
the Thirties, with very few exceptions, the bishops (Catholic and Evangelical
Lutheran) collaborated with the Nazis. Meanwhile, Hamlet-like Pius XII kept trying
to make up his mind as to whether he should put the Catholic Church at significant
risk, while Jews were being murdered by the thousands.
Albert
Camus
In 1948,
in the shadow of that monstrous world war, the French author/philosopher Albert
Camus accepted an invitation from the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg.
To their credit, the Dominicans wanted to know what an "unbeliever"
thought about Christians in the light of their behavior during the Thirties and
Forties. Camus' words seem so terribly relevant today that it is difficult to
trim them:
"For
a long time during those frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up
in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost
if it did not utter a cry of condemnation.
"It
has been explained to me since, that the condemnation was indeed voiced. But that
it was in the style of the encyclicals, which is not all that clear. The condemnation
was voiced and it was not understood. Who could fail to feel where the true condemnation
lies in this case?
"What
the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and
clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never
a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man.
That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face
history has taken on today. (emphasis added)
"It
may be… that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise, or else
on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will
insist on losing once and for all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged
to it long ago.
"What
I know-and what sometimes creates a deep longing in me-is that if Christians made
up their mind to it, millions of voices-millions, I say-throughout the world would
be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals, who, without any
sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children
and other people." (emphasis added)
(Excerpted from Resistance, Rebellion,
and Death: Essays)
Sixty
years ago!
Perhaps
the Dominican monks took Camus seriously; monks tend to listen. Vatican functionaries,
on the other hand, tend to know it all-and typically caution the pope to be "discrete."
You saw that this past week with the pope in Washington and New York, as he forfeited
the opportunity to follow the biblical imperative to speak truth to power-to speak
out clearly, as Camus insisted, with whatever moral authority he could summon.
Catholics
All Around
Think
back to the visit and the many prominent Catholics who flocked to see the pope-many
of them officials with considerable influence in the Judiciary and Legislature,
with important players in the Executive Branch as well.
There
they were, with their families, the five Catholic Supreme Court justices, fresh
from detailed deliberations on how best to implement state-sponsored killings,
executions that are banned by the vast majority of civilized countries.
Justice
Scalia audibly salivated over how much noxious chemical should be shot into the
veins of a "condemned," and how quickly. (For those with strong stomachs,
C-SPAN captured the proceedings.)
I
am embarrassed to acknowledge that, like me, Scalia is the product of a Jesuit
education. He graduated first in his class from Xavier High School in Manhattan,
where the students wore distinctive military garb earning Jesuit high school rivals
the moniker "subway commandos." Scalia went on to graduate from Jesuit
Georgetown University with a bachelor's degree summa cum laude.
Despite
his advocacy of "soft" torture techniques like driving nails under fingernails,
Scalia continues to be lionized by many Jesuits and bishops alike.
In
the House
Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, erstwhile doyenne of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and now San Francisco
and minority leader John Boehner (R, Ohio)-also a Catholic-seem about to allocate
another hundred billion dollars to death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan
for the most reprehensibly crass of political purposes-the coming election. Congressman
Jim McGovern (D, Massachusetts) last week tried to guild the lily, noting that
Pelosi now insists that, in McGovern's words, "We're an equal branch of government;
we're no longer a cheap date." Right.
Sadly,
it appears that Pelosi's key functionaries on House Appropriations (both of them
Catholics) will cave in once again. It is not as though they do not know the right
thing to do. Just six months ago Appropriations chair Dave Obey (D, WI) declared,
"I have no intention of reporting out of committee anytime in this session
of Congress any such [funding] request that simply serves to continue the status
quo."
Subcommittee
chair John Murtha (D, PA) put it even more strongly a year before Obey did, and
came close to calling the occupation of Iraq a lost cause-which, of course, it
is. But it is not politic to say that before the election. Never mind the troops
on the front lines.
Obey
and Murtha caved last time. I will find it particularly devastating if Obey caves
again now, for I have always considered him among the best legislators in Congress.
Besides, we used to worship together at the Jesuits' Holy Trinity parish in Washington,
DC.
And since
Obey is from Wisconsin, he recognizes better than most others the McCarthy-ite
demagoguery coming from the likes of Texas Republican Michael Burgess, to the
effect that anything short of giving the president all the war funding he demands
is "basically giving aid and comfort to the enemy." Thirty years ago,
Obey told Holy Trinity parishioners that what drove him to a career in politics
was having to play the role of Joe MaCarthy at a school play when he was a young
teen.
Pelosi also
has been unusually candid in admitting that it is electoral politics, pure and
simple, that explain her resistance to holding President George W. Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors via the orderly
procedure given us by the Founders for precisely this purpose-impeachment in the
House; trial in the Senate.
If,
as widely expected, the war funding goes through, several hundred more American
troops are likely to die before some common sense can be injected into U.S. policy
next year-not to mention how many Iraqis.
Iraq
is a shambles. Two million Iraqis have fled abroad; another two million are internal
refugees. Am I the only one who finds macabre the raging debate as to whether
the attack and occupation of Iraq has resulted in a million Iraqis dead, or "only"
300,000?
Apparently,
the pope did not have any opinion on the Iraq war.
But
Torture?
Surely
the pope would speak out against the kind of torture for which our country has
become famous: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, CIA "black sites"-the more so,
since Jesus of Nazareth was tortured to death. The pope chose silence, which presumably
came as welcome relief to five-star torturer's apprentice, Gen. Michael Hayden,
now head of the CIA. The White House has made clear that Hayden is ready to instruct
his torturers to water board again, upon Caesar's approval.
Hayden
proved his mettle when he was head of the National Security Agency. He saluted
smartly when the president and vice president told him to disregard the Foreign
Intelligence and Surveillance Act and his oath to defend the Constitution. One
of Hayden's predecessors as NSA director asserted that Hayden should have been
court-martialed. Pelosi was briefed both on the illegal surveillance and the torture,
but did nothing.
Having
demonstrated his allegiance to the president, Hayden was picked to head the CIA.
The general likes to brag about his moral training and Catholic credentials. At
his nomination hearing, he noted that he was the beneficiary of 18 years of Catholic
education.
And
all the while it was quite clear he was positively lusting to be in charge of
water boarding and other torture techniques-whatever you say, boss. I was somewhat
crestfallen after adding up my own years of Catholic education-only 17. Clearly
I missed "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques 301."
Apparently
David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff also took that course.
Addington has been the intellectual (if that's the right word) author of torture
and the various strained legal justification for it. It was he who drafted the
(in)famous Jan. 25, 2002 memorandum, signed by then-White House counsel Alberto
Gonzales, upon which Bush relied in issuing his official authorization for torture
on Feb. 7, 2002.
Addington,
too, is Catholic. Like Scalia, he graduated from Georgetown summa cum laude.
Keep
It General; Focus on Others' Sins
At the UN, the pontiff pontificated
on "God-given human rights" and "massive human rights abuses,"
but pretty much left it at that. The Washington Post reported tongue-in-cheek
that the pope was "short on specifics and long on broad themes."
But
there was one specific. Here in the U.S., the pope opted to dwell again and again
on the pedophilia scandal-to the exclusion of much else. He is to be applauded
for meeting with victims of clergy sexual abuse and expressing deep shame, but
he got a free pass from the media in disguising his own role in trying to cover
the whole thing up.
While
still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed The Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith-the Vatican office that once ran the Inquisition. In that capacity he
sent a letter in May 2001 to all Catholic bishops throwing a curtain of secrecy
over the widespread sexual abuse by clergy, warning the bishops of severe penalties,
including excommunication for breaching "pontifical secrets."
Lawyers
acting for the sexually abused accused Ratzinger of "clear obstruction of
justice."
Very
few American bishops have been disciplined. And when Bernard Cardinal Law was
run out of Boston for failing to protect children from predator priests, he was
given a cushy sinecure in Rome; many believe he should be behind bars.
In
an interview with the Catholic News Service in 2002, Ratzinger branded media coverage
of the pedophilia scandal "a planned campaign…intentional, manipulated,
a desire to discredit the Church."
It
is nice that the pope has now changed his tune. And nicer still for him is that
he found himself in the congenial atmosphere of Washington, where it has been
a very long time since powerful miscreants have been held accountable.
So
What Did You Expect?
I
do wish my friends would stop asking me that.
While
it was good that the pope addressed the pedophilia issue head on, it seemed as
though he and his politically astute advisers made a considered decision to devote
inordinate amounts of time and energy to the subject. An all-too-familiar side-benefit
of this focus on below-the-belt sexual issues was that the pope was able to speak
in glorious generality on other major issues-war, torture, capital punishment-in
all of which, as we have seen, many of "the faithful" are deeply engaged-embarrassingly
engaged. Or am I the only one embarrassed?
I
had hoped-naively, it turned out-that the pope might encourage his brother bishops
to find the courage to state plainly what 109 bishops of the Methodist faith,
George W. Bush's tradition, declared on Nov. 8, 2005:
"We
repent of our complicity in what we believe to be the unjust and immoral invasion
and occupation of Iraq. In the face of the United States Administration's rush
toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent.
"We
confess our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while
American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands
of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die."
I
had thought that perhaps the U.S. Catholic bishops could adopt the kind of resolution
that 125 Methodist bishops signed on Nov. 9, 2007. Speaking truth to power, the
Methodists called for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the reversal
of any plans to establish permanent military bases there.
The
Methodist bishops' resolution noted: "Every day that the war continues, more
soldiers and innocent civilians are killed with no end in sight to the violence,
bloodshed, and carnage." Bishop Jack Meadors summed up the situation succinctly:
"The
Iraq war is not just a political issue or a military issue. It is a moral issue."
(emphasis added)
Holocaust
Museum in Jerusalem
Visiting
Yad VaShem, the Holocaust museum in West Jerusalem last summer, I experienced
painful reminders of what happens when the church allows itself to be captured
by Empire. An acquiescent church, it is clear, loses whatever residual moral authority
it may have had.
At
the entrance to the museum, a quotation by German essayist Kurt Tucholsky set
a universally applicable tone:
"A
country is not just what it does-it is also what it tolerates."
Still
more compelling words came from Imre Bathory, a Hungarian who put his own life
at grave risk by helping to save Jews from the concentration camps. Explaining
why, Bathory said this:
"I
know that when I stand before God on Judgment Day, I shall not be asked the question
posed to Cain: 'Where were you when your brother's blood was crying out to God?'"
Bush,
Bible, and "Religion"
According
to former President George H. W. Bush, George W. has "read the Bible straight
through-twice." Perhaps he skipped by that passage too quickly; or maybe
he is highly selective with respect to those he considers his brothers.
No
excuse for Benedict, though; he knows better. And yet he opted to squander his
quintessential chance to speak out and make a difference.
Methodist
bishop Meadors is right; the war is a moral issue. But President Bush has refused,
time and time again, to meet with his Methodist bishops. And now he has the implicit
blessing and nihil obstat of the pope.
The
bottom line is our challenge: to the degree that right and wrong, moral and immoral
considerations are to be injected into discussions about war, executions, torture-well,
let's face it. There is only us. As a post-Vatican II t-shirt once had it: "We
are the Church. What if we acted as though we believe that?"
Yes;
what if? Are we up to it? Shall we punt, like Benedict? Shall we behave like "obedient
Germans," waiting, as if for Godot, for top-down moral guidance we know in
our hearts will never come?
Augustine
wrote:
"Hope
has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things
are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be."
The
Founders gave us incredibly precious gifts we dare not fritter away. I sense a
lot of anger; I am confident we can summon the necessary courage. What about you?
Ray
McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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