Evangelizing at Marquette
University

I am fond of quoting Jesus’ answer to the apostles when they asked him why they could not drive out the demons of a young boy when Jesus could. His response was that some demons could only be driven out by ‘prayer and fasting.’ This Lenten season we are trying, once more, to drive out the demons of militarism from Marquette University, a Jesuit Catholic University. We have discovered that we need to add to fasting and prayer a third power, evangelization.

Whenever we encounter something that fills us with hope and joy it is only natural to want to share it with others. Pope Francis, in his first major letter to the Christian community exhorts us to evangelize the message of the Gospel with joy. True evangelization starts with bringing the good news to the poor, suppressed and marginalized. Youth, young men and women, often have a diminished voice in our society today. At Marquette they know the values that Marquette says they stand for but seldom know that Marquette practices, teaching war and killing without conscience on campus. On the back of the flyers we distribute on campus is information on a movie called “Soldiers of Conscience” which compares the values of the military with people of conscience. While the military can show the film, Marquette, so far, has not allowed a public showing of the film, although the military authorized the filmmaking, it was nominated for an academy award and is now on YouTube.

Last Wednesday at our weekly Lenten vigils on campus, while a few remained in the lobby of Marquette Library to witness and pray two of us went out on the campus to distribute our flyers about Militarism at Marquette. In less than forty five minutes we distribute all of the nearly 200 flyers we had.

Hopefully some of the students read the quotes from the Pope on the scandal of war that is taught at Marquette and watch the film, which link was on the flyer.

Personally I am convinced that you cannot watch the film, Soldiers of Conscience with an open mind and not know that what Marquette teaching about war and killing on campus is against our conscience. Good evangelization reaches the conscience of a person with the Good News of the Gospel. Evangelization is a powerful tool.

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