Controversies: December 2003 Archives

The Irish Catholics of South Boston have won another round in court against the liberals who want to take over their St. Patrick's Day parade.

The parade has long been full of Irish, patriotic, and Catholic displays -- our parish was even represented one year by a float depicting an altar and promoting our indult Mass -- so the broad-minded liberals of Boston couldn't let that kind of institution go on. Oh, how atavistic!

For a while, they tried to force the parade organizers -- a private group, mind you -- to let a gay group join the parade, on the ground that the parade was a "public accommodation" and subject to anti-discrimination laws. That dispute led to lengthy court battles, the cancellation of the parade in 1994, and finally vindication.

Let's remember, folks, to get the rhetoric right here: since we approve of the court's judgment in Hurley vs. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, it's to be described as a "landmark decision"; otherwise, it would have been just the opinion of some right-wing kook judge. In this case, it was a unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court: the selection of groups to participate in a parade is a form of expression, and thus a matter of free speech.

Even that, however, wasn't enough to dissuade the leftists from their efforts, and the city last year let an anti-war group piggyback on the parade by marching at its end. So -- ya gotta love the names in this case -- parade organizer John J. "Wacko" Hurley and attorney Chester Darling are keeping up the fight.

Michael Novak puts Cardinal Martino's comments in perspective, saying the bishop "has not ceased being an embarrassment to his superiors."

The article is worth reading, as is just about everything Novak writes, but here's the most intriguing passage:

The big Vatican news of the past month has been the major change in the way Islamic terrorism has been directly confronted, with gloves-off honesty in the Jesuit periodical Civilta Cattolica, whose pages are always cleared by the secretariat of state. Over a third of the Christians of the Middle East have been driven out during the past decade, the journal reports, and it lists many abuses by extremists, against the background of much greater tolerance in the past. It also analyzes carefully just how the extremists function in practice.

The secular Left has co-opted the slogan "war is a defeat for humanity" from Pope John Paul II, but in the original passage, you'll see that the Holy Father isn't saying what they think he's saying.

He has used the words many times since, but he uttered the phrase in question almost four years ago, on January 1, 2000, and therefore could not have been speaking about the Iraqi War. He was talking about wars in general, but he enumerated legitimate reasons for war that were applicable to the original decision to remove the former Iraqi government. See the passage I highlighted below to see if that's a fair summary.

"In the century we are leaving behind, humanity has been sorely tried by an endless and horrifying sequence of wars, conflicts, genocides, and “ethnic cleansings” which have caused unspeakable suffering: millions and millions of victims, families, and countries destroyed, an ocean of refugees, misery, hunger, disease, underdevelopment, and the loss of immense resources. At the root of so much suffering there lies a logic of supremacy fueled by the desire to dominate and exploit others, by ideologies of power or totalitarian utopias, by crazed nationalisms or ancient tribal hatreds. At times brutal and systematic violence, aimed at the very extermination or enslavement of entire peoples and regions, has had to be countered by armed resistance.

"The 20th century bequeaths to us above all else a warning: wars are often the cause of further wars because they fuel deep hatreds, create situations of injustice and trample upon people’s dignity and rights. Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore, in addition to causing horrendous damage, they prove ultimately futile. War is a defeat for humanity."

Which is more contrary to human dignity, this...

...or this:

?

Cardinal Renato Martino, the reflexively anti-war prelate who predicted a gigantic disaster if Iraq's government was replaced by force, gets a little sad about poor Saddam:

"I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures," he said.

"Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," he said in answer to questions about Saddam's arrest.

Medical exams upon capture are perfectly legal and routine. Releasing a videotape of a prisoner is also legal, and proving that he was in custody serves a military purpose.

"It's true that we should be happy that this (arrest) has come about because it is the watershed that was necessary... we hope that this will not have worse and other serious consequences," Martino said...."But is seems to me to be illusory to hope that this will repair the dramas and the damage of the defeat for humanity that a war always brings about."

Why was it "necessary" to capture Saddam if the war itself was unnecessary? And if it's the result of a "defeat for humanity," then...what...huh...not quite understanding...brain overloading....

Joseph Lieberman said that if it were up to Howard Dean, Saddam would still be in power, killing Iraqis and threatening his neighbors. The same thing can be said -- and I say this with a heavy heart -- about many bishops.

Unlike the Holy Father, the good cardinal has been content to repeat the European line about war being obsolete without any nuance or reservation, and does not even bother to root his comments in the Gospel. You know who I feel compassion for? The Iraqis who lost their loved ones because of this man. I feel pity for Saddam because of the fate that awaits him if he remains unrepentant. But compassion? I'll reserve that for the mothers whose sons were dragged off and murdered, or used as cannon fodder in useless wars.