A dove in good company

ANDREW GREELEY

_I get a lot of hate mail from conserva-
tive Catholics who are furious at my
criticism of the Iraq war. You have
no right to use your office, I am told, to
criticize our fine Christian president.
You are a disgrace to the priesthood. I
may leave the Catholic church because
of you. Why don't you quit the priest-
hood now and stop harming the
church? You are even worse than the
priests who abuse little boys.
Those are some of the printable
messages. At least half of the hate
letters are obscene.
I am also told that I don't sup-
port the troops. I do indeed sup-
port the troops, with the plea that
the government get them out of the
quagmire in which they're bogged
(as the administration's recent in-
telligence report makes clear).
Anyone who reads a column has
the right to attack the writer. I
don't mind the hate -- even the
obscenity of some of the haters. I
would be disappointed if my
columns, designed to make people
think, did not stir up some animos-
ity. Moreover, the favorable mail
exceeds the hate mail, though
sometimes just barely.
Yet I am curious that the writers
think that a priest does not have
the right -- and indeed the obliga-
tion -- to express a moral teach-
ing. If a priest believes a war is im-
moral, he should say so. Moreover, in my criticism of the Iraq war, I
have a priest of considerably more
importance than I in the same
camp -- and potentially much
more troublesome.
The pope.
His Holiness and his colleagues
in the Vatican have opposed the
war since the very beginning. John
L. Allen in his superb book on the
Vatican -- All the Pope's Men --
devotes 65 pages to detailing, day
by day, the Vatican's position on
the war. Allen comments that this
mobilization of the Vatican appa-
ratus around opposition to the war
is unique in modern history. The
papacy does not accept the theory
of unilateral preventive war. It
does not agree with the Bush ad-
ministration's foreign policy. It did
not think that all possible grounds
for a peaceful solution were ex-
hausted before the American at-
tack and, like most of Europe, it
__________
Why don't American
Catholics react to the
pope's warning about
the war?
did not believe that there was suf-
ficient evidence of weapons of
mass destruction -- and it turns
out that they and not the Bush ad-
ministration were right. It urged
that nothing happen until the
completion of the U.N. arms in-
spection -- and it turns out that
here again the pope was right and
the president was wrong.
''War,'' the pope said on Jan. 13,
2003, ''cannot be decided upon,
even when it is a matter of ensur-
ing common good except as the
very last option and in accordance
with very strict conditions, without
ignoring the consequences for the
civilian population both during
and after military operations.''
The teaching on the Iraq war is
not ''authoritative.'' Yet, ought not
Catholic conservatives, who virtu-
ally worship the pope, at least lis-
ten to him respectfully on this sub-
ject?
Why don't American Catholics
react to the pope's warning about
the war? Mostly, I suspect, because
they don't know about it. The na-
tional media pay little attention to
the pope save when they bash him
for something. The rhetoric of the
Vatican is often so complicated that
it is not entirely clear what is being
said. The Catholic media (official
diocesan papers), with some excep-
tions, are afraid to offend their su-
per patriotic leadership. Some par-
ish priests may be reluctant to
quote the pope on the Iraq war for
fear that their people will be angry.
A constant concern in the pope's
comments is fear of the death of
innocent civilians. Iraqi deaths
don't count, quite literally. The
Defense Department refuses to
count them. Some estimate that
Iraqi casualties are as high as
30,000. If the war goes on long
enough, Americans may kill as
many Iraqis as did Saddam Hus-
sein. Today, every time someone
dies in Iraq, Americans are blamed
because if they had not come,
these people would still be alive.
Yet, most Americans are uncon-
cerned about the death of Iraqi
civilians. They wear towels on their
heads and walk around in their pa-
jamas. They speak a funny language
and believe in a funny religion.
They scream at us with hate. Why
should Americans worry about
them? They're barely human.