Baltimore Catholic peace activist Tony Magliano, in a November 25 article, describes the recent supper and dialogue involving his city’s Catholic Worker community and two bishops who were present for the U.S. Catholic bishops’ annual meeting (the plans for this dialogue were reported here).
On the evening of Nov. 12, several blocks away from the Waterfront Marriott Hotel, where the bishops were meeting, Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis and Bishop John Michael Botean, head of the Romanian Catholic Eparchy (diocese) of St. George in Canton, Ohio, sat down with us to talk about war-making, peacemaking, poverty and military chaplains in light of the teachings of the compassionate, nonviolent Jesus.
In the basement of historic St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Martha Hennessy, a granddaughter of Dorothy Day, said, “Based on my understanding of my grandmother’s life, I would conclude that priests should not serve in the military, as one cannot serve Christ and the chain of command at the same time. Part of a chaplain’s job is to make soldiers feel OK about doing their job, which is to kill, which Christ said we can’t do.”
Hennessy said Dorothy Day would not have approved of the earlier bishops’ dinner hosted by the Archdiocese for the Military Services, which saw military recruiters lobbying the bishops to send more chaplains.
She said she thought her grandmother would have said the bishops are being complicit with the permanent war economy.
Bishop Botean, who during the Iraq war courageously and prophetically wrote that the war was an “objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin,” said that unfortunately, the culture has more of an influence on the church than the Gospel does.
“It takes a lot of vision to see the simple message of Jesus in the Gospel,” he added.
Magliano’s full article is available at National Catholic Reporter.