Today I attended an all day symposium at Marquette University where I recently received a “recession of a no trespassing notice.” The symposium was on “Peacemaking and Nonviolence in World Religions”. There were seven workshops throughout the day by professionals from around the USA and India to speak on Nonviolence in their areas of expertise, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Native American. Each speaker explained Peacemaking and Nonviolence in their faith traditions and two of the other speakers responded to each presentation. There was a little time for discussion after each presentation of the eight faith traditions.
Last night I had prepared a general question for each of the presenters: In your religious faith tradition is it morally justifiable to teach a person how to kill reflexively or instinctively without the use of conscious.” I varied the question to the presenter and to the faith tradition but was able to ask it to each one of the presenters question and answer period or at break time. Sometimes I needed to clarify the question. If one asked for an example of clarification I mentioned the conditioning of child soldiers in African that were taught how to kill on orders without conscience or thought. A few of the Doctors of Theology gave me some background on their faith and their answer but the unequivocal response of these eight experts speaking about their faith tradition was NO. Teaching killing without conscience, or instinctively was not moral, in their opinion.
When I finally got to the Jewish professor after the meeting he had the most time to prepare his answer. He had a well thought out answer but the bottom line was the same. A few from the Marquette Theology department and many in the audience knew when the question was asked publicly that I was talking about the teaching of reflexive killing, killing without conscience, in the three military departments (ROTC) located on the Marquette University, Catholic Jesuit, campus.
Coincidently, the symposium was held in the library in the same large room that some years ago we had first seen the movie Soldiers of Conscience We have been trying for years to have this movie sponsored by a group on campus and be shown publicly. In this award winning document, approved by the US Army, the idea of “reflexive killing” is explained by an ethics professor at West Point and there are scenes of how it is taught. Even the Theology Department and the Center for Peacemaking who had sponsored this symposium had refused to secure a room where we could show the movie to students. Now that the whole film, Soldiers of Conscience is on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEruXV0G_0Q ) we have put the internet address on the back of our flyers advertising it to students as the Marquette will not show on campus.
Last Friday Marquette Administrators announced that it was changing its policy that a permit was need to protest nonviolent on campus and today I got my Marquette Library card, and got seven Doctors of seven religious to Say No to Reflexive Killing
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