January 18, 2008
Dear Editor,
Memorials are loaded structures. I grew up in the South, a land laden in Civil War memorials. Every county seat has some memorial to Confederate soldiers who died in battle. It's a difficult thing to deal with when, 150 years later, the prominent sentiment is no longer 1866's “we want this statue to remember lost friends”, but instead 2008's “we want to live in a community that reconciles old racial divides and not be bound by tragedies and evils of our past”. That's hard to do with that piece of Confederate patriotism staring you in the face. Yet the memorials are even harder to tear down. They perpetuate division.
There is a movement by the Alumni association to create a large memorial on our campus to honor all military veterans connected to SMU. There are many reasons why I think that is misguided: if we should honor veterans, do so through scholarships. Set up a simple historical marker (there is a historical connection to WWII involved). But this memorial, as promoted and planned with huge, sweeping arches signifying the five branches of U.S. Military, makes a very divisive statement: that all military service is a sacrifice in keeping with Catholic teaching. And that statement simply is not true. Some wars may be just, and people may engage in wars according to informed conscience. But many wars have not met the criteria of just war. Just war theory is a complex teaching that seems dismissed by the grandeur of the memorial's proposed structure, which seems to elevate the U.S. military to transcendental status. Yet transcendence belongs to God alone.
I’m not against people in the military. Members of my family have served (one is in Iraq now), and I respect their decisions of conscience; if you are a student in the Reserves or National Guard, I respect your decisions as well. I'm not necessarily against all memorials, either. The Vietnam Memorial is a memorial which brings people together, and the thousands of names speak well to the scale of casualties, tragedy, loss, and some kind of peace with history. But that memorial is on federal land in the nation’s capital. Why is Saint Mary's considering such a sweeping memorial that makes a theologically questionable statement on private land, at a school run by an order that primarily educates the poor?
And if this memorial is divisive now, won't it likely be more so 100 years from now?
Sincerely,
Dr. Susan Windley-Daoust
Assistant Professor of Theology
