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Inside
NCR We
must not turn away or stop speaking out
Its a matter of opinion
whether the world needs more words about Kosovo, the Balkans, ethnic-cleansing
Serbs or Albanian refugees. This same dilemma rises to meet us in many
directions. The experts say there are 30- or 40-odd wars in progress just now
but even the experts cant agree. Anyway, its easier not to bother
noticing. Such conflicts are all a nuisance: so complicated. For starters,
its hard to lay blame for old hatreds that go back a thousand years.
Eventually we run out of clarity and patience and resort to the even-handed but
unfair prayer: a plague on all their houses.
Yet NCR sent Special Report Writer Patricia Lefevere off to
the Balkans to write more words. Conscience says we cant hide from the
wars until peace comes. Lefeveres account sifts again amid the rubble for
winners and losers and causes and casualties, for hints of hope. This is an
excellent account of the misery, but light on hope.
And that may be the challenge for now: not to solve what centuries
have failed to solve, but at the very least not to turn away. People of
conscience must bear witness. Suffering is one thing, but abandonment greatly
multiplies the suffering. We owe it to our common humanity not to abandon those
suffering this years misery. Injustice, violence and pain will have won
when good people stop noticing and stop speaking out.
The testimony will be more worthwhile if the reader feels the same
obligation to read.
At the Plowshares trial , Judge
James T. Smith Jr. refused to allow expert testimony. One such expert was Sr.
Rosalie Bertell, who wrote as follows to the judge:
You must be somewhat disturbed over the trial of Philip
Berrigan, Susan Crane, Stephen Kelly, SJ, and Elizabeth Walz. Your sentencing
was so excessively vindictive that I would guess that the action of these men
and women deeply challenged your "faith" and belief that Catholic doctrine
supported U.S. military activity, regardless of the judgment of the
churchs more prophetic members. By eliminating expert witnesses in
this case you eliminated my testimony. I am a Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart, and
also president of the North American Association of Contemplative Sisters. I am
also an epidemiologist with 30 years experience with communities exposed
to uranium mining and milling, and related polluting activities. I have been
working for the last three years with the veterans of the Gulf War who are
seriously ill.
In your better moments you must find that shooting
radioactive waste at ones enemy is outrageous behavior. How much more
outrageous is it to undermine the health of ones own military personnel,
and the women and children of the land which you have polluted. There is no war
theory which condones indiscriminate poison.
I hope that even though
you expressed your moral distress and confusion in an inappropriate way in the
court, you will on sober reflection realize that your silencing of the
defendants did not make the depleted uranium problem go away. As a Catholic
judge, you should be prepared to hear unwanted truth and respect the righteous
actions of those who clearly see and denounce a wrong. I will pray that you
find a way quickly to redress the wrong which you have done and reduce the
sentences of the Plowshares defendants. Silencing the messengers and prophets
has long been the pattern of behavior of false leaders. Do not continue on this
wrong path.
Another barred witness, Francis A. Boyle, professor of
international law, wrote: "Smith gave Phil Berrigan 30 months. May the mark of
Cain be upon Smiths head for the rest of eternity should Phil die in
jail!"
-- Michael Farrell
National Catholic Reporter, April 7,
2000
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