______________
C O M M E N T A R Y
CHICAGO 
SUN-TIMES
FRIDAY
SEPTEMBER  24,
2004
 

PAGE 57

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.