Pacifist club attempts to open dialogue with ROTC
By TIM LOGAN
Senior Staff Writer
Editor's note: This is the third in a three-part series looking at the discussion concerning the place of ROTC at a Catholic university.
Over the last two years, Pax Christi has beat a steady drum against the presence of ROTC at Notre Dame. The Reserve Officer Training Corps isn't leaving any time soon, but Pax Christi, through a persistent and concerted effort to reach out to the very students whose organization they oppose, has started a dialogue that is helping people on all sides to understand each other's perspective, and keeping the issue on the front burner of campus debate.
It began again one day in September 1998, when Sheila McCarthy went to a lecture. McCarthy, then a sophomore theology major, was interested to hear what Father Frank Cordaro had to say. Cordaro is a pacifist and self-avowed Catholic radical who, a few months earlier, had been arrested for pouring a vial of his own blood on a B-52 bomber at an air show. Sheila had heard about the Plowshares Movement, as Cordaro's group was called, and was intrigued. So she went to meet him.
Before the lecture, Cordaro and Sheila talked, and the activist had a question for the student.
"`Well, why aren't you doing anything about ROTC on campus,'" Sheila recalled. "He was very direct. I made some excuse about how I was taking a War, Law and Ethics class, and he just cut me off and said `you just need three people: two to hold a banner and one to pass out flyers.'"
Before they finished talking, Cordaro had convinced McCarthy to do something, and he made her follow up. The priest put the sophomore on the spot, asking her to stand and invite the small audience to a protest against ROTC.
The next day, McCarthy and two others stood in the rain outside the Pasquerilla Center, where the military training program is headquartered. The three held signs and prayed the Rosary, but they did not get much response.
"It was exciting," said Mike Griffin, a seminarian who demonstrated that day. "But it was a bit underwhelming."
No one confronted them. Few seemed even to notice. But the trio decided to do it again the next week. This time, six more people came. The next week, another six showed up and, from there, the vigil grew into a regular weekly event. Gradually, a club took shape.
More than two years later, Pax Christi still gathers every Friday afternoon to pray for peace, although they have moved to the more centrally located Peace Memorial Fountain in order to be more visible.
In the last year, the group has held several open discussions about ROTC from a Catholic perspective. To these, they have invited ROTC students and professors, and in September, a Marine student even presented at one.
These dialogues have helped to build a bridge, but there are still deep divisions.
"I hate that there exists this us vs. them mentality, but it can't be denied there's tensions," said senior Shawn Storer, a founding member of Pax Christi. "People hold fast to certain things."
Pete Sweeney, a junior Air Force cadet, said that despite efforts on both sides to start dialogue, each still has misconceptions about the other.
"Both sides are ignorant of each other," he said. "I think people are still trying to figure each other out."
For one thing, Pax Christi has an image as "the anti-ROTC group;" that was how it began, after all.
As the club has grown, it has taken on a wide range of issues, but most of its public events still concern the military.
Also, it has sponsored talks such as one last year entitled "Ten reasons why ROTC should be banned from Notre Dame's campus." This understandably angered the ROTC community. Some people say that the peace movement on campus could be more diplomatic.
"The awareness they seek is awesome," said Andrew DeBerry, a sophomore Air Force cadet who is also involved with Pax Christi. "The way they go about it needs to be awesome, too."
Storer and his companions in Pax Christi understand this, and in their events this year, they have worked to involve ROTC students more, and make the programs more about dialogue and finding common ground than about politics and disagreement. They hope the shift will prove successful, and more effectively reach students of all stripes.
"Maybe it's personal," Storer said. "ROTC is made up of people, you can't talk to ROTC on an institutional level; you have to talk to people."
The cadets and midshipman training at Notre Dame and the officers who train them say they are more willing to listen to, and participate in, respectful dialogue, rather than the kind of protest which initially inspired some of Notre Dame's pacifists.
"Don't scream and yell. Don't throw blood on my airplanes about it," said Capt. Pat Casey, commanding officer of the Naval detachment. "Come and have a serious discussion about it."
Having that serious discussion is what Pax Christi has trying to do. And even though ROTC is here to stay, the peace group will keep talking, praying and persisting, hoping to make people think about what that means.
All News Stories for Thursday, February 1, 2001
