EDITORIAL Bishops
confront culture on Iraq
In a national popularity contest, being Catholic usually means
drawing the short straw. In a hang em or fry em nation,
the Catholic church opposes the death penalty. In a Roe v. Wade
world, it says no to abortion. When the mood turns nasty against immigrants,
the Catholic church not only defends immigrants rights but also refuses
to make a distinction between legal and illegal.
What Catholics do -- when we do it well -- is see beyond the
knee-jerk reaction, political expediency or social myopia to the suffering
individual.
And last week, another case in point was made when Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton walked to the microphone at the bishops conference. By the time
he walked away he had placed the U.S. Catholic church somewhere between Iraq
and a hard place.
Gumbleton (weakened from a water-only hunger strike protesting the
silence of the U.S. Embassy in Honduras about data concerning the 1983 death of
Jesuit Fr. James Carney) quietly described the deteriorated condition of
ordinary people inside Saddam Husseins fort. They are desperately hungry
and have no utilities. He used the words of his guide, the Chalcedonian
archbishop of Bashra, Iraqs second largest and most devastated city.
Gumbletons narrative -- he was in Iraq eight weeks ago --
was chilling. The Detroit auxiliary bishop wanted his confreres to intervene
vocally as a body to ameliorate the effects on Iraqi civilians, particularly
children, of the U.N.- and U.S.-enforced barricade on humanitarian relief.
Gumbleton and other U.S. bishops and the pope believe President
Bush was wrong to go to war with Iraq. The Detroit bishop also wants some
acknowledgment of U.S. culpability for Iraqs internal crisis.
And this in a week when newscasters and politicians were drooling
over a possible renewed war with Iraq (meaning Saddam). While the details of
the bishops deliberations are outlined elsewhere (see page 9),
theres a larger point.
The U.S. bishops -- many of whom have served under two popes who
loudly declared war never again -- wrestled with their consciences.
They were willing to pit their Catholic teaching against public popularity,
personal ideology and others interpretations of Iraqi reality, not least
Husseins militarism.
To their credit, the overwhelming majority saw through the
papier-maché military posturing into the tragedy Gumbleton described.
Then they did what bishops do -- they found a compromise. But even that
compromise is sufficient to make the U.S. Catholic church unpopular in a nation
that, right or wrong, equates Hussein with Hitler and that proclaims on bumper
stickers, Kick His Ass, Get the Gas.
If the church should get the equivalent of the societal short
straw on this one, it should come as no surprise. Moreover, it should come as a
sign that maybe were doing something right.
National Catholic Reporter, November 21,
1997
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