At the height of the U.S.-led war in the Persian Gulf a year ago, a pop-radio station in Erie, Pennsylvania decided to take a poll. Who is the greater monster, the station wondered, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein or the Benedictine nuns who run Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace group based in Erie? It was a tight race, but…
A half-century later, Archbishop Joseph T. Ryan cannot forget that bloody September day in the South Pacific, 1944: “It was a Friday, the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows,” the recently retired head of the nation’s Catholic military archdiocese remembers. And it turned out to be a grimly appropriate memorial. That day thousands of American and Japanese were killed in…
Of the “peace” that followed the First World War, Pope Pius XI wrote in 1922: “This peace was only written into treaties; it was not , however, written into the hearts of men and women, who still desire to fight one another and to continue to menace in a most serious manner the quiet and stability of civil society.” The…
Americans are facing tough questions about their responsibilities in what’s being called a new world order—a new historic moment when ancient hatreds and long-ignored injustices have flared into ethnic and religious wars that have already claimed millions of victims. As the borders and assumptions of the Cold War years are redrawn, many find that their old moral coordinates are shifting…
Leaving Saudi Arabia recently, his mission as U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf complete, America’s newest war hero, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, was defiant but on the defensive: “Anyone who dares even imply that we did not achieve a great victory doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.” Since the war’s end, a lot of people have been talking…
The 43-day war in the Persian Gulf ended on Feb. 27 exactly as it began—amid controversy over its morality. Catholics who backed Operation Desert Storm and those who opposed it both found their positions validated by the events of the war. “The outcome of the war so well vindicated the arguments for its justice,” said Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, director…