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DIVISIONS ON WAR
CHALLENGE CATHOLICS, FAITH COMMUNITIES
Oregonian, April
13, 2003
Author: SHELBY OPPEL
Sponsors of the antiwar
march Saturday in Portland included more than 20
Roman Catholic parishes, religious orders and other groups affiliated
with
Oregon's largest faith group.
Yet overall, a majority
of Catholics say they support the Iraq war. In
mid-March, three days before the war began, 62 percent of Catholics
nationwide told the Pew Research Center they favor military action to
end
Saddam Hussein's rule. Most of that group said their support was contingent
on whether U.S. allies took part.
Such division over
the war, not limited to Catholics, challenges faith
communities. They disagree about how much they want to hear about it from
their religious leaders. The entry of U.S. troops into Baghdad last week
did
not extinguish the debate.
Last week, the archdiocese
fired Frank Fromherz as justice and peace
director after he refused to stop sponsoring antiwar rallies as Archbishop
John Vlazny had asked. Fromherz contends his activism got him fired.
An archdiocese spokesman
said Fromherz was one of more than a dozen
staff members laid off for budget reasons. Vlazny has declined requests
for
interviews.
Fromherz, 49, who
had worked for the archdiocese since 1991, was one of
the strongest official Catholic voices in Oregon's antiwar community.
His
supporters have seized on his firing as proof that the archdiocese is
not
sufficiently committed to working for peace, and they have called on Vlazny
to speak out against the war.
"We are duty-bound
to critique it. (Vlazny) is duty-bound to critique it ,"
said Kay Reid, 64, who attends St. Philip Neri Catholic Church
in Southeast
Portland.
In November, the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, of which Vlazny is a
member, issued a statement saying the bishops found war with Iraq difficult
to justify. They called on President Bush to "step back from the
brink of
war."
In Oregon, top officials
of the archdiocese -- including Chancellor Mary Jo
Tully and Robert Castagna of the Oregon Catholic Conference -- spoke
against the war at news conferences and in testimony to the Portland City
Council.
But on March 19,
when the war began, the tone changed. The bishops' group
issued another statement, expressing regret and the need to pray "that
war's
deadly consequences will be limited." A week later, Vlazny echoed
those
themes in his March 28 column in the archdiocese newspaper, the Catholic
Sentinel. In public, he has said little on the topic.
In contrast to Vlazny
and many U.S. bishops, Pope John Paul II has spoken
out against the war since it began. He has declared it neither morally
nor
legally justified, and has expressed worry about how it will affect relations
between Christians and Muslims.
Jim Strassmaier,
a retired historian who attends St. Michael the Archangel
parish in downtown Portland, asked Vlazny in a letter to follow the pope's
example. In a reply, Vlazny said he had made a statement as a member of
the
bishops' group. Individual voices, Vlazny wrote, easily can be ignored.
In a second letter
to Vlazny, "I said that's not true, you would have enormous
attention," said Strassmaier, 67. "An unjust war is not a secondary
moral
issue that you get to be quiet on."
Bishop William Skylstad
of the Diocese of Spokane, who is vice president
of the national bishops' group, said U.S. bishops still question whether
the
Bush administration exhausted all alternatives. But once battle began,
their
role needed to change.
"We called for
using every resort to keep ourselves from getting to war,"
Skylstad said.
When the decision
to attack Iraq was made, "it was, 'OK, now we're in it.
Let's pray for a quick and just resolution to the conflict.' "
That approach is
fine with Kathy Juenemann, 58, who attends St. Matthew's
parish in Hillsboro.
"I think it's
very disruptive for a preacher to start preaching a political
viewpoint, because what some call justice is completely different from
what
other people call justice," Juenemann said.
"People that
are antiwar often preach that this is unjust to have anybody die.
But on the other hand, we can have 10 times the amount of people dying
because of the cruelty of Saddam," she said.
Otto Wild, a teacher
at La Salle High School, a Catholic school in
Milwaukie, organized a rally outside the archdiocese headquarters Thursday
to support Fromherz and call on Vlazny to speak out against the war.
With the war apparently
on the wane, "maybe (Vlazny) played his cards
right. It's over, it goes away," said Wild, 34.
The Rev. Stephen
Bossi of St. Philip Neri parish has preached twice about
the war since it began. He told parishioners that the debate wasn't about
whether they support the troops, because soldiers don't set foreign policy.
We must support them, Bossi said. But we can question the policy.
After his first homily,
"I'll tell you this -- people were lined up to thank me
because they were struggling with it. It wasn't that I answered all their
questions, but at least I clarified some things for them," said Bossi,
a Paulist
priest.
Shelby Oppel: 503-221-5368;
shelbyoppel@news.oregonian.com
Copyright (c) 2003
Oregonian Publishing Co.
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