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Reclaim the Full Gospel of Life - David Batstone
Counting the Iraqi Dead - Fair.org
Blood on Our Hands - 100,000+ Iraqi WAR CASUALTIES - The Lancet UK Medical Journal study 10/29/04 - Think it's not about oil? Click here.
To "Err on the Side of Life" - Bush uses the "either with us or against us" tactic again
A Bi-Partisan plan to End the War on Iraq
The Larger Shame - Nicolas Kristof on the Hurricane of Poverty
Our true life is not this external, material life that passes before our eyes here on earth, but the inner life of our spirit, for which the visible life serves only as a scaffolding—a necessary aid to our spiritual growth. Seeing before him an enormously high and elaborately constructed scaffolding, while the building itself only just shows above its foundations, man is apt to make the mistake of attaching more importance to the scaffolding than to the building for whose sake the former has been temporarily put up.We must remind ourselves and one another that the scaffolding has no meaning and importance except to render possible the erection of the building itself. - Leo Tolstoy
"To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in and to a world and a Christian church that had asked for it - that had prepared the moral consciousness of humanity to do and to justify the unthinkable." - Father George Zabelka, Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, the atomic bomb crew.
An open letter to the Catholic bishops:
Reclaim the Full Gospel of Life
by David Batstone, Sojourners
Dear Esteemed Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States:
I write to you as a friend and brother in faith who is confused, and concerned, about your public stance on morality in the United States. A number of you have threatened to deny Holy Communion to all members of the Church who support the right of a woman to choose an abortion. Several of you have even issued in this presidential election year a ban on Catholic politicians - or even Catholic voters - from receiving Communion unless they recant their support for abortion rights.
I am not among those who would criticize you for taking a strong public moral position on behalf of the rights of the unborn. The Church has for a long time held fast to that conviction; it is consistent with, and an irrevocable thread to, the Church's "gospel of life." The word 'consistency' is significant here, for it is your lack of consistency in other grave matters that today undermines your moral authority.
I am quite familiar with Catholic social teaching - in addition to my editorial role at Sojourners, I am a tenured professor of ethics and moral theology at a Catholic university. Each semester I happily share with my students the depth and wisdom of the social teaching of the Church.
It is precisely because I am so familiar with the tradition that I am perplexed why you have chosen the abortion issue as a litmus test for "full communion with the faith of the church." Sorry to speak so boldly, but you have no basis for so selectively narrowing your rich moral tradition.
Allow me to pursue one example - though I could name others that you selectively choose to de-prioritize - at depth. We recently have witnessed in the United States a decision and act by our political leaders to pre-emptively invade a sovereign nation-state. The social teaching of the Church explicitly prohibits and condemns such aggressive behavior. Pope John Paul II certainly understands this fact, as he made clear in an audience with President George W. Bush last month.
Even on humanitarian lines, one would ask for irrefutable moral grounds that might justify the military attack of one country against the people of another. The fact that the Bush administration each day revises, redefines, and rewrites the reasons for taking the United States to war is sufficient proof that its justification was at best flawed and at worst fabricated.
I have not heard one U.S. Bishop even suggest that Holy Communion might be withheld for any politician who enacted, or voted for, the immoral pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Yet the consequent loss of human lives - both Iraqi and American - and the devastation of Iraqi society have been nothing short of tragic. Furthermore, this act of spiritual arrogance - invoking God's guidance while invading - has deepened historical animosities that surely will lead to more senseless bloodshed in the Middle East and across the globe.
A few weeks ago I was in Europe and saw on the newsstands a widely distributed German magazine (Der Stern) with a cover photo of the president of the United States. The photo was accompanied by the caption, "Morally Bankrupt." The cover captured a broad sentiment, which exists throughout Europe today, that the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq - not to mention the inhumane treatment exercised by the U.S. military against Iraqi prisoners - represented a shocking nadir of ethical behavior by a modern democratic state.
Why is it that the bishops of the U.S. Catholic Church are unable to see this serious breach of morality? Over 250 of you are gathered in Colorado this week, and you only see fit to make public pronouncements about a sole moral issue.
Friends and brothers, I fear that your narrow-mindedness is turning the voice of the Church into something far worse 
than irrelevant. You risk stumbling into hypocrisy. I urge you to reclaim the full gospel of life, and announce it prophetically to those who would trample on the rights of the defenseless - those who have already been born as much as those yet unborn.
Read also our ProLife/ProChoice page.
David Batstone is the Executive Editor of Sojourners magazine.
David's most recent book is Saving the Corporate Soul & (Who Knows) Maybe Your Own - Eight Principles for Creating and Preserving Wealth for You and Your Company without Selling Out - click the book cover to order online
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Counting the Iraqi Dead
March 21, 2005
On the weekend of the two-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, media outlets took stock of the war's death toll. But the national newscasts undercounted the most dramatic loss of life: the deaths of Iraqi civilians.
On the March 18 CBS Evening News, reporter Byron Pitts gave these figures: "Today, U.S. deaths number more than 1,500. There are no exact figures for Iraqi fatalities, but estimates are for every American killed, 11 Iraqis died." In other words, more than 16,500 Iraqi deaths.
NBC's Brian Williams (3/18/05) offered a slightly higher estimate: "So far, 1,513 American military personnel have been killed, 11,344 injured, and many of those are amputees. Estimates of the Iraqi death toll are hard to come by officially, but the civilian toll is thought to range from 17,000 to nearly 20,000 dead and beyond." ABC's World News Tonight did not appear to offer a similar count, but earlier this month (3/3/05) anchor Peter Jennings reported: "There are no official numbers of Iraqi civilian casualties, but Iraqi Body Count, an independent web-site that compiles media reports of the deaths there, says as many as 18,000 Iraqis may have been killed."
With his "and beyond" comment, NBC's Williams seemed to be referring to an estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties that none of the networks saw fit to mention: According to a study published in the respected British medical journal The Lancet (10/29/04), about 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war. The majority of deaths were due to violence, primarily as a result of U.S.-led military action. One of the researchers on the project said that the estimate is likely a conservative one (New York Times, 10/29/04). It's certainly a more scientific estimate than the Iraq Body Count figure cited by ABC, which is, as that project's website notes, a "compilation of civilian deaths that have been reported by recognized sources.... It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media."
Recent polling (ABC/Washington Post poll, 3/16/05) indicates that the vast majority of the American public believes that U.S. casualties in Iraq are unacceptable. One can only wonder what Americans think about the level of Iraqi civilian casualties; unfortunately, the media's count dramatically minimizes that death toll.
Get Active: Contact the network newscasts and ask them to include the Lancet study in their reporting about Iraq's civilian casualties.
CONTACT: ABC World News Tonight Phone: 212-456-4040
emailto: PeterJennings@abcnews.com
CBS Evening News Phone: 212-975-3691 emailto: evening@cbsnews.com
NBC Nightly News Phone: 212-664-4971 emailto: nightly@nbc.com
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Read More:
Blood on Our Hands - 100,000+ Iraqi WAR CASUALTIES - The Lancet UK Medical Journal study 10/29/04
To Err on the Side of Life?
By Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet
March 30, 2005
This week's phrase: "to err on the side of life."
It's a Bush-ism that frames an important and complex ethical debate in simplistic terms of black-and-white absolutes; a variation of the either-you're-with-us-or-against-us philosophy.
The phrase ingeniously plays off a commonly accepted bit of wisdom – "to err on the side of caution." Take out "caution" and insert the politically charged word "life" as in "pro-life," and the GOP base is energized while putting the evil "liberals" on the defensive.
Somebody should buy a Guinness for whomever in the Bush camp conceived the shibboleth. "Brilliant!"
To err on the side of life...
The implied message is clear: If Bush represents those who would rather "err on the side of life" (whatever that means), it puts anyone with other legitimate moral concerns in a defensive position, having to explain how they could possibly not want to "err on the side of life."
You'd have to be some kind of evil demon, like "the terrorists," to not want to "err on the side of life," right? After all, what kind of sicko would want to err on the side of death?
Hence, supporters of Terri Schiavo's parents accuse her husband of wanting to "kill" his wife so he can get the life insurance money.
The many Americans concerned about our conservative Congress' medical meddling are painted as people who want to "starve to death" a disabled person, which conjures up images of Nazi Party members.
Of course, such cynical, paranoid analysis misrepresents those who are legitimately worried that this could set a precedent, giving Uncle Sam the authority to trap people, against their wishes, in a vegetative state, not caring a whit about quality of life.
Besides, to accuse as wicked those who do not want to "err on the side of life" in this particular case is blatantly hypocritical and self-serving.
Why? Well, let's flip the question.
How come those protesting err-on-the-side-of-lifers are willing to commit civil disobedience and break the law by bringing Terri some water in her hospital bed, but don't err on the side of the life when it comes to the death penalty question?
Have you seen the number of people who have been released from death row after having their convictions overturned by DNA evidence? How come "pro-life" Christians don't demand that their Christian president reconsider capital punishment on the grounds that it is always better to "err on the side of life?"
What about passing legislation requiring automakers to manufacture cars that run on something other than gas or, at the very least, make more fuel-efficient engines? Wouldn't that be to "err on the side of life?"
How about tackling America's alarming child poverty problems? Wouldn't that be to "err on the side of life?" One in five American children live in poverty, which means There are millions of kids going to bed hungry every night as programs that assist some of these children are being slashed to pay for tax cuts.
Ministers of Market Fundamentalism preach tax cuts as the balm to heal America's economic woes. The kids? I guess they'll just have to wait until the "trickle down" makes it all the way down to them years down the line, just in time to drown in the rising tide that lifts all yachts.
What about those who supported the president's decision to "pre-emptively" invade Iraq? Why don't they seem to consider the possibility that just maybe those who oppose U.S. policy in Iraq are people who simply want to "err on the side of life?"
This is a classic case of blind men in a room with an elephant. One grabs the trunk and insists the animal is a snake. The other grabs the elephant's ears and is certain the animal is a bird of some sort. You know the parable.
We're all holding different parts of the elephant and insisting our narrow description is the one absolute truth.
Where's the leader we were all promised? If Bush is a plain-speaking "uniter, not divider" why is it that half of America's voters oppose his administration, along with the majority of the 6 billion people on this planet, according to numerous world opinion surveys?
A national discussion about end-of-life issues is too important of a conversation for us to allow ideologues to hog the microphone.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21623/
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A bipartisan plan to end the war
by Duane Shank - Sojourners
In October 2002, as the U.S. drive for war in Iraq was building, Sojourners organized a joint statement by church leaders from the U.S. and the U.K. In it, we noted that "To initiate a major war in an area of the world already in great turmoil could destabilize governments and increase political extremism.... It would add fuel to the fires of violence that are already consuming the region. It would exacerbate anti-American hatred and produce new recruits for terror attacks against the United States...."
Yesterday, two and a half years later, The New York Times reported on a new assessment by the CIA that "...Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat." The report went on to note that since the American invasion, Iraq has become "a magnet and a proving ground for Islamic extremists" and is "helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings, and other kinds of attacks...." Our words have rarely seemed more prophetic.
I have recently developed a new spiritual discipline. Each morning when I read the newspaper, I stop at the daily list of new U.S. casualties in Iraq to read each name aloud and say a prayer for that person and his or her family. And the numbers are growing - as of today, 1,722 Americans have died and more than 13,000 wounded. The chaos and insurgent violence resulting from the U.S. occupation is also leading to the deaths of more and more Iraqis, with no end in sight.
Some of our political leaders are finally beginning to wake up. Last week, a bipartisan group of members of Congress, led byRep. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), introduced the "Withdrawal of United States Armed Forces from Iraq Resolution." It calls for the administration to announce a plan by the end of the year for troop withdrawal - and to initiate the plan as soon as possible.
This week, Gallup released a new poll showing 59 percent of Americans oppose the war. In another poll released two weeks ago by the Associated Press, 52% of U.S. citizens said they disapproved of the way the Bush administration has handled the so-called war on terrorism - and 56% disapprove of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq.
As the death toll continues to mount, the administration remains mired in the quicksand of a disastrous war, and has refused to create an exit strategy or commit to a withdrawal date.
It's time to take action. Ask your representatives to support H.J.RES.55, the bipartisan resolution calling for a plan to end the war.
Duane Shank is policy adviser at Sojourners.
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The Larger Shame
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times
The wretchedness coming across our television screens from Louisiana has illuminated the way children sometimes pay with their lives, even in America, for being born to poor families.
It has also underscored the Bush administration's ongoing reluctance or ineptitude in helping the poorest Americans. The scenes in New Orleans reminded me of the suffering I saw after a similar storm killed 130,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991 - except that Bangladesh's government showed more urgency in trying to save its most vulnerable citizens.
But Hurricane Katrina also underscores a much larger problem: the growing number of Americans trapped in a never-ending cyclone of poverty. And while it may be too early to apportion blame definitively for the mishandling of the hurricane, even President Bush's own administration acknowledges that America's poverty is worsening on his watch.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After declining sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Mr. Bush.
If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.
Indeed, according to the United Nations Development Program, an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than a baby born in urban parts of the state of Kerala in India.
The national infant mortality rate has risen under Mr. Bush for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.
So in some ways the poor children evacuated from New Orleans are the lucky ones because they may now get checkups and vaccinations. But nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations. The U.S. ranks 84th in the world for measles immunizations and 89th for polio.
One of the most dispiriting elements of the catastrophe in New Orleans was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing 5,500, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.
"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."
The reasons for this are complex and partly cultural, but one reason is that Japan has tried hard to stitch all Japanese together into the nation's social fabric. In contrast, the U.S. - particularly under the Bush administration - has systematically cut people out of the social fabric by redistributing wealth from the most vulnerable Americans to the most affluent.
It's not just that funds may have gone to Iraq rather than to the levees in New Orleans; it's also that money went to tax cuts for the wealthiest rather than vaccinations for children.
None of this is to suggest that there are easy solutions for American poverty. As Ronald Reagan once said, "We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won." But we don't need to be that pessimistic - in the late 1990's, we made real headway. A ray of hope is beautifully presented in one of the best books every written on American poverty, "American Dream," by my Times colleague Jason DeParle.
So the best monument to the catastrophe in New Orleans would be a serious national effort to address the poverty that afflicts the entire country. And in our shock and guilt, that might be politically feasible. Rich Lowry of The National Review, in defending Mr. Bush, offered an excellent suggestion: "a grand right-left bargain that includes greater attention to out-of-wedlock births from the Left in exchange for the Right's support for more urban spending." That would be the best legacy possible for Katrina.
Otherwise, long after the horrors have left TV screens, about 50 of the 77 babies who die each day, on average, will die needlessly, because of poverty. That's the larger hurricane of poverty that shames our land.
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
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