WARNING: DANGEROUS VALUES ARE BEING TAUGHT AT MARQUETTE
St. IgnatiusLast October a student wrote in the Marquette Tribune (1): “A man with what appeared to be a military rifle ran past the first-floor windows of Lalumiere Hall around 7:45 p.m. on Oct. 10”. The student ran upstairs to find out what was happening. “On the mall, I found my gunman and seven or so more. Another platoon was conducting similar maneuvers across the lawn. They marched, they huddled around platoon leaders’ orders, and they aimed at air and yelled, ‘Bang’!” It was just ROTC students playing ‘war games’ on campus but it was still a “frightening and disturbing experience”.
The reality behind the “war games” on campus is the fact that Marquette is teaching ‘war’ to students from nine local colleges and universities in the Milwaukee metro area for the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force.
More dangerous than the ‘war games’ at Marquette are the teachings of these four military departments that are contrary to Christian values. For example, whereas the Army manual (2) teaches that Army values take priority, the Christian faith teaches: “The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel.” (3)
In the ‘60s during another ‘immoral and unjust’ war the Christian spiritual writer Thomas Merton wrote: “It is absolutely clear to me that we are faced with the obligation, both as human beings and as Christian of striving in every way possible to abolish war.” (4) In 1968 after successfully waging a campaign to rid Marquette of “institutional racism,” Marquette students turned their attention to stopping the teaching of war on campus. Inspired by the nonviolent action of the Milwaukee 14 in September of 1968 Marquette students and friends began a 40-year campaign to end military training at Marquette.
Now forty years later it is up to us—citizens of Milwaukee; people of faith; students, staff, teachers, and alumni of Marquette—to renew the movement to follow Gospel values at Marquette. This time the movement is not for racial equality but for peace.
(1) Marquette Tribune, Oct. 10, 2007 (2) Army Field Manual, [FM 22–100, Chapter 2–32], (3) Catechism of the Catholic Church 224 (4) The Hidden Ground of Love by Thomas Merton
