Brother Louis DeThomasis, FSC, Ph.D.
Chancellor
Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota
700 Terrace Heights #30
Winona, MN 55987-1399
December 18, 2007
Dear Brother Louis,
I am writing to express my concern regarding the veterans memorial that is being proposed for the Winona campus. I have other connections to Saint Mary’s University, but I am writing this letter from the perspective of an alumnus of the pastoral ministries program (class of 2003).
The e-mail that Ms. Meg Richtman sent on Nov. 20 stated that the university not only welcomes, but also encourages, all viewpoints on the veterans memorial. I greatly appreciated that gesture. People often speak of the Saint Mary’s University “community” as a way of expressing the common bond of those whose lives have been touched by the school. Maintaining that sense of community, however, requires an openness to the perspectives that each person has to offer—especially regarding matters that cut to the core of the community’s identity.
I believe that the proposed veterans memorial is the sort of project that the whole SMU community should have an opportunity to discuss. This project, by virtue of its size and prominent location, is bound to become one of the iconic images of the Winona campus and a symbol of the whole Saint Mary’s University community. That is why I would like to respectfully ask that you delay construction of the project for as long as necessary to allow a wider discussion of it among all Saint Mary’s University alumni, students, and employees. I believe there are legitimate grounds for such a discussion, which I will attempt to explain below.
I want to begin by clarifying that I have no objection to remembering those who have died in war. I have had friends and acquaintances in the military; my brother-in-law leaves for Iraq for fourteen months immediately after Christmas; and my grandfather participated in the invasion of Italy during World War II. In fact, I am currently helping my mother to post his wartime letters online; I suppose you could call our project a sort of memorial.
The question is not whether we ought to remember such people, but how we ought to do so. No public display is a neutral object: we choose to display images that reflect our identity and values. The images a university chooses to display, therefore, are a sort of extension of the classroom. Just as a good teacher carefully chooses what he says in the classroom, I think it is important to question what the veterans’ memorial will “say” to the tens of thousands of students who will pass by it over the coming decades.
In order to find out what the memorial is intended to say by those who have worked on it, I spent some time reading the Alumni Association’s literature on the memorial and talking to Ms. Richtman about the perspective of those who have worked on it. What I heard is that the memorial is not intended to glorify war; as Mr. Tyre has eloquently said, the intention is simply to offer a “thank you” to Saint Mary’s University alumni who have died in battle. I believe the university has also stated that the memorial is not intended to be “political,” which I interpret as meaning that it is supposed to be neutral on the subject of war.
Those are all good intentions. One of the points Ms. Richtman made, echoed by others who were kind enough to critique early drafts of this letter, is that proponents of the memorial have difficulty understanding why anyone would object to it. Part of my purpose with this letter, then, is to explain (as carefully and respectfully as possible) why those good intentions may not be clear to everyone who views the memorial. I would like to offer three observations along those lines.
First, in the context of its setting, the memorial seems to imply that military service and sacrifice is valued by the university more than other forms of service and sacrifice. I am not suggesting that it says as much in itself. I come to this conclusion based on the fact that the memorial speaks a great deal about service and sacrifice, but there is no correspondingly prominent public display anywhere on campus extolling other forms of service and sacrifice. In particular, there is no prominent display of Christ, the perfect servant who truly made the ultimate sacrifice: “This sacrifice of Christ is unique; it completes and surpasses all other sacrifices” (Catechism 614). It is Christ who is the “one who died for all” (2 Cor 5:14) and who “[made] peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20). Nor are there any prominent tributes to those who followed Christ’s example by overcoming evil through love: the Christian martyrs (including the many Lasallian martyrs), conscientious objectors, the saints, or the many alumni besides our veterans who have also rendered outstanding service to the world at great personal sacrifice. Prominent tributes to these other forms of service and sacrifice would help to “interpret” the meaning of the memorial in the context of Catholic faith. If the memorial is erected in isolation from such balancing symbols, however, a stranger visiting the campus would find small religious statues dotting the grounds here and there—and a huge set of arches representing the military in the center of campus. It seems inevitable that such a visitor would interpret that campus landscape in a way that is not consistent with the university’s strong commitment to many forms of service and sacrifice.
Second, concerning the memorial itself, I question whether it is really possible to erect a veterans memorial that is neutral on the topic of war—or whether, on the campus of a Catholic university, such a memorial ought to be neutral on the topic of war. The university insists that it is not building a “war memorial.” Point taken; it would be unfair to suggest that the memorial is all about war. However, I think it would be overstating the case to claim that the memorial has nothing to say about war. The five soaring arches that are the memorial’s most prominent feature “represent the five armed services of the United States,” according to the promotional literature, making the institution of the U.S. military quite literally the “over-arching” feature of the memorial—especially from the perspective of the casual passerby. Obviously, the U.S. military exists to fight wars. Even absent the arches, the lives of those honored by the memorial were tragically cut short by war. So, while the monument may not be a “war memorial,” those who stop to consider it cannot help but “remember war” at the same time that they remember the veterans.
This is not a bad thing in itself: the Church admonishes us not to forget the tragedy of past wars, and has paused to remember major wars on their anniversaries (see, for instance, “Message on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the End of the Second World War in Europe” and “Intervention of the Holy See at the 59th General Assembly of the United Nations on the Occasion of the Sixtieth Anniversary of the End of the Second World War” as well as Centesimus Annus). But for the Church, the act of remembrance always has as its purpose to “rekindle in all . . . a resolve to work for a firm political commitment to peace” (“Fiftieth Anniversary”). The Church is decidedly not neutral when it comes to war, which brings me to my third point. As far as I can tell, the proposed memorial does not include any sort of language that would help to interpret it in the context of Catholic teaching on war.
Yes, the Catholic tradition accepts the necessity of warfare in order to defend innocent lives, once certain very strict conditions have been met. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting Gaudium et Spes, says: “Those who are sworn to serve their country in the armed forces are servants of the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honorably, they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of peace” (paragraph 2310). It seems to me that it is this sentiment that is driving the memorial project, and those elements of the memorial dealing with individual veterans seem to express that principle.
However, I think it is urgent that the memorial not promote this principle in isolation from the rest of the Church’s teaching on war. A balanced presentation of Church teaching is always important, but especially when students may be making life-changing decisions partly based on the information that is presented.
If the proposed memorial goes ahead as currently planned, it will stand as a constant reminder to students of the sentiments expressed in Catechism 2310. But there will be no expression of the Church’s condemnation of war as a “scourge” that “is never an appropriate way to resolve problems,” but rather is “the failure of all true humanism” and “always a defeat for humanity” that causes “not only material but also moral” damage (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 497). There will be no plaque telling students of the Church’s strong “presumption in favor of peace and against war” (The Challenge of Peace 83), its promotion of alternatives to war (Compendium 498), or its strict requirements to justify “legitimate defense by military force” (see Catechism paragraph 2309). Nor will students learn about the Church’s teaching regarding the conduct of combatants during war (Challenge of Peace 101-110), and the near impossibility of fulfilling those jus in bello requirements in the context of modern warfare (Compendium 497). Students passing through the memorial will remain innocently unaware of the frequency with which the U.S. military has failed to uphold those requirements—including, just for example, the acts of war “aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities” that were committed during World War II and subsequently condemned by the Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes 80). That point is especially relevant in light of the expectation that Catholic military personnel are to disobey orders that contradict the moral order (Compendium 503), since all genuine service is ultimately oriented toward God.
If the memorial goes ahead as planned, the campus will have its permanent tribute to those who defended security by the use of armed force. But there will be no soaring arch or bronze plaque honoring those who chose to “resist injustice through non-violent methods” (Challenge of Peace 116)—a form of service that has a long and rich history in the Church.
Given the U.S. commitment to wage what has been called “the long war,” it seems more important than ever for students to be fully informed about such matters. If the memorial is erected with no reference whatsoever to the tragic nature of war, or to the Christian belief that war is not inevitable and that “peace is always possible” (John Paul II, 18th International Meeting of Peoples and Religions), then what message will it send to students? I fear that, in its silence on these matters, it will suggest a fatalistic attitude toward war that is contrary to Christian hope.
Exactly how Catholic beliefs and values ought to be more fully expressed in the veterans’ memorial is a question for broader discussion, which is part of the value of delaying construction of the memorial. I offer my own ideas below as possible starting points for such a discussion.
Had there been an opportunity for alumni input at the beginning of the planning process, I think I would have suggested raising money for a “living” memorial—one that would actively serve the needs of our rapidly growing population of veterans. Stone seems a cold way to honor veterans when so many of them struggle with poverty and homelessness right here in Winona.
Assuming that the Alumni Board has its heart set on the proposed memorial, I think the next best option would be to remove the arches that are its dominant feature. Doing so would shift the emphasis from the institution of the military to the alumni whose memory the monument is supposed to preserve, making it more like the widely accepted Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. At the very least, the university could stop referring to the arches as representing the five branches of the military; surely they could be said to represent something else?
Some of the Catholic identity concerns I have raised might be addressed by incorporating interpretive language from the Catholic tradition (i.e., quotes from the Scriptures, Christian saints and heroes, or Catholic social teaching) along the lines of the themes I mentioned above.
Finally, if the veterans memorial is erected without any modification to the current design, then it seems only appropriate that the university attempt to highlight its Catholic identity by erecting equally prominent public displays that more clearly reflect that identity. Perhaps another fundraising effort could be launched for that purpose. Personally, I would favor inscriptions from the saints and Scriptures in the walkways around campus, but obviously the exact nature of such a display would have to be the product of a wider conversation.
Brother Louis, although I do not expect a point-by-point reply to this letter, I would be interested in your response to three questions. First, would the university be willing to briefly delay construction of the memorial in order to conduct a wider consultation among the whole university community? Second, is there any possibility that the administration and the Alumni Board would consider modifying the proposed monument? And third, do you think the university would be open to erecting other, balancing displays along the lines I have suggested in this letter?
I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts with you, and look forward to your response.
Respectfully,
Jerry Windley-Daoust
Pastoral Ministries Class of 2003
