I am writing this letter in regards to the 'veterans memorial' that is to be put up centrally located on Saint Mary's University campus. My name is Jason Kern and I am a senior at Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary. I was recently reading the website with the information about the memorial and after thinking about the information I became quite concerned.
The first and main problem I have is that this project is due to begin construction soon and I had not heard about it all. I thought that I may have missed an email or something, and after asking around I could not find one seminarian who knew anything about the memorial. I even asked our representative on the student senate that goes to the weekly meetings and he told me they had never discussed it. I shared what I knew about the memorial and some of my fellow seminarians shared my concerns. The more I think about the project about to go underway the more I see the benefits of asking for a moratorium. This project needs to be discussed and thought through, especially since we are talking about something that will be permanent on our campus. Please consider this, so that at the very least we can share our full concerns about this memorial.
My second and surely more important concern is that I do not fully understand how a memorial as such fits in with a Catholic Institution. I recently read on the news that 151,000 was the most recent figure of casualties from the Iraq war. I have seen numbers that greatly inflate and deflate this, but the point is that too many people are dying. The Catholic Church upholds the life and dignity of each and every human person, there is no room for us to give the slightest idea that war is okay. In today's society, it is all but impossible to ever fight in a just war. It is my understanding that John Paul II directly asked our president to not enter into war with Iraq. There is no room in today's culture of death to give anyone the idea that war is okay or worse yet that we support war. Let's not memorialize our veterans with a piece of art, it is time to honor our veterans with a fund that helps them deal with the tragedies and horrors they experienced while serving our country. There are a number of options other than unneeded art on this campus that we can do. We need to make sure we are doing this in the right way and that is why I am asking for a moratorium.
I thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and passing it along to those concerned. Please know of my prayers for this process, I pray that this process will be guided by the Holy Spirit and through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary who is the Queen of Peace, we may come to do what is best for our veterans, our campus, and all of society. Live Jesus in our hearts!
Sincerely,
Jason Kern
