A friend, that I talked with today, firmly believes, based on factual evidence of explosives in one of the demolished buildings, that the real truth behind the 9/11 disaster has not been exposed. For many years this was a message I did not want to hear, but now must give it consideration. The reason I did not want someone to tell me about evidence in this disaster is that I did not want to think and believe it, since I would feel compelled to act on what I believe.

Acting on one’s belief, be it that it is immoral for universities to host military training on campus or that Wal-Mart is unjust to its employees seems normal and natural to me but, in today’s society, seems to becoming something extreme.

When I was at Marquette High School, I was taught by the Jesuits to practice what I believed, especially in the areas of social justice and care for the poor. However, when I was adult and tried to put into action these beliefs some Jesuits, who were my teachers at high school, opposed and marginalized me for acting on my beliefs on the social justice issue of discrimination against persons with mental illnesses.

A few years ago when my article on the military training not belonging on a Catholic campus was published in the Marquette Tribune newspaper, there was a loud cry against me for my viewpoint. Last year when I had another viewpoint published in the paper, with a similar message, there was only a mild reaction, again personal not about facts of the message. Yesterday the Marquette Tribune published my latest viewpoint article that Marquette was the only Jesuit university in the country to host military department of Army, Navy/Marines and Air Force. I have not noticed any comments yet and doubt if there will be any response in the newspapers to come.

Marquette students are becoming trained to ignore any information that contradicts what the University wants them to hear. I was passing on flyers the other day on Army and Gospel values taught at Marquette and most students just ignored our presence. A few said thank you and no, a very few took the flyer. One student told me she could not accept the flyers because she was a ROTC member. I said that this was more of reason to read about Army Values vs. Gospel Values. She must not have understood what I said because she kindly replied that she was under contract at Marquette not to read it.

Now that the U.S government has got rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell I think we all should work on ridding our society of Don’t Tell, Don’t Act.

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