[Announce] Report on Midwest CW Retreat and Witness in South Bend IN at University Notre Dame

[Robert Waldrop]

> Report on Midwest Catholic Workers March 26th 
> Witness at the
> University of Notre Dame against ROTC
>
> By Brian Terrell, Maloy IA Catholic Worker
>
> On Monday, March 26, Catholic Workers from some 
> 15 communities around
> the Midwest and their friends closed their 5th 
> annual Resistance
> Retreat by attending Mass for the feast of the 
> Annunciation of Mary at
> the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus 
> of the University of
> Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.
>
>
> After Mass, we retreatants knelt in silence 
> behind the basilica's
> ornate main altar in prayer before the relics of 
> Saint Marcellus. It
> is customary in Catholic churches to keep 
> remains of a martyr or other
> saint in the altar and here at Notre Dame the 
> saint whose bones lie at
> the center of the university's sacramental and 
> spiritual life are
> those of Marcellus. St Marcellus was a Roman 
> centurion and a convert
> to Christianity who was martyred in 298 during 
> the reign of the
> Emperor Diocletian, after he threw down his 
> sword and declared it is
> "not right for a Christian, who serves the Lord 
> Christ, to serve in
> the armies of the world."
>
>
> We exited the church through a side door over 
> which is carved in stone
> the famous motto, "God, Country, Notre Dame!" 
> and the seals of each of
> the armed services and went to the university's 
> administration
> building next door to perform a play based on 
> the trial and death of
> St Marcellus. The dramatic stage that the steps 
> of the well known
> "golden dome" of Notre Dame provided for our 
> presentation was enhanced
> by a vivid red banner celebrating Marcellus' 
> courageous refusal to
> kill for empire that was held up by Frank 
> Cordaro of Des Moines and
> Daniel Baker, 20 years old from Stockton, 
> California, who had only a
> month before left the US Navy as a conscientious 
> objector after his
> tour in the Iraq war brought him to the same 
> conclusions about
> military service and his faith the Marcellus 
> came to centuries before.
> Two coffins, one covered with the US flag and 
> one with the Iraqi flag,
> flanked the stage and put an ancient story in 
> it's  contemporary
> context.
>
>
> Michael Latsch of Duluth played a stellar 
> Marcellus in this short
> drama based on actual transcripts of the trial 
> from Roman archives and
> Father Jim Murphy of Portage, Wisconsin, drawing 
> on his experience as
> a defendant in Omaha's US Courts, was 
> appropriately rigid and
> dictatorial as judicial magistrate. Our little 
> play attracted the
> attention of passing students and others who 
> joined the audience of
> Catholic Workers. It also attracted the 
> attention of campus police who
> joined the drama as unwitting actors when they 
> approached the stage
> just as Marcellus was being warned by his 
> friend, played by Ben
> Jimenez, a Jesuit priest from Cleveland, to take 
> back his sword
> quickly before the approaching guards arrived.
>
>
> Arrive they did and curiously the police did not 
> attempt to disrupt
> the unfolding drama but went first to Daniel and 
> Frank holding the
> banner on the steps and took them into custody 
> after they refused to
> put it away. The audience continued to listen as 
> Marcellus made his
> witness of Christian nonviolence to the Roman 
> court while the
> contemporary guardians of law quietly ordered 
> Brenna Cussen, our host
> from the South Bend Catholic Worker, to leave or 
> face arrest. After
> Brenna refused to leave and was taken away, the 
> same offer was made to
> and refused by Roberta Thurstin-Timmerman and 
> Don Timmerman of Park
> Falls, Wisconsin, Ed Bloomer of Des Moines, 
> Steve Jacobs of Columbia,
> Missouri and Michael Walli of Duluth who were 
> simply kneeling silently
> next to the coffins.
>
>
> The last of these friends were removed  from us 
> as the Roman judge
> sentenced St Marcellus to decapitation and there 
> the play ends. As
> epilogue to the performance I read aloud from a 
> leaflet that was being
> handed out in the audience and other places on 
> campus- "Upon
> converting to Christianity, St Marcellus threw 
> down his sword saying,
> 'I am a soldier of Christ. It is not permissible 
> for me to fight.' For
> Notre Dame to fund and support ROTC to teach war 
> reverses the message
> of Jesus to love our enemies. As Midwest 
> Catholic Workers, we call on
> Notre Dame to stop sponsoring ROTC and to make a 
> deeper commitment to
> peacemaking. Students should not have to 
> compromise the Catholic value
> of nonviolence in order to fund their 
> education."
>
>
> Our plan for after the play had been for Brenna, 
> Frank, Ed, Roberta,
> Don, Daniel, Steve, Mike and I to solemnly carry 
> the two coffins,
> symbols remembering and mourning the dead of the 
> Iraq war, up the
> steps of the administration building where we 
> would have knelt in the
> rotunda where Brenna would have lead us in 
> praying the rosary. This
> sad task was left to me alone and even I was 
> apprehended, rosary in
> hand, as I bent to lift one coffin to carry it 
> up the long steps. An
> officer politely asked me if I understood that I 
> was trespassing on
> the campus of the University of Notre Dame. Of 
> course such beneficent
> and helpful deeds as I and my friends were 
> getting nicked for were not
> inappropriate or out of place on the campus of a 
> Catholic university.
> It was ROTC and not the Catholic  Worker, I told 
> the officers, that
> was the trespasser at Notre Dame. My invitation 
> to the police that
> they should join us in protesting ROTC was not 
> immediately accepted.
>
>
> The untimely detentions required another change 
> of plan as Brenna had
> also been prepared to read to the audience a 
> letter our group  wrote
> to Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the 
> university, before we
> went into the building. Fr Jim Murphy stood in 
> for Brenna and read the
> letter that said, in part- "We believe that 
> Notre Dame has ceded its
> autonomy as a Catholic institution of higher 
> education and compromised
> the values of its mission by allowing the 
> Department of Defense to
> exert financial and academic control over the 
> education of its ROTC
> students.  We call upon Notre Dame, first, to 
> reject military funding
> for ROTC."
>
>
> The sight of a Catholic priest in clerical garb 
> being shouted down and
> then led away by Notre Dame campus police while 
> calling for an end to
> "all Catholic affiliation with ROTC" and for 
> "committing the rich
> intellectual resources of our ecclesial 
> tradition instead to teach
> Christian non-violent love and the arts of 
> peace," was a scandal, that
> further dramatized the awful inconsistency of a 
> school attempting to
> teach Christian love and the arts of war.
>
>
> With the exception of  Fr Jim Murphy who got off 
> with a warning, those
> of us detained on the steps of the 
> administration building were
> released after a short detention with warnings 
> never to come to Notre
> Dame ever again and summonses to appear in court 
> "when notified" to
> answer trespass charges. John Heid, of Duluth 
> and Liz Fallon of South
> Bend were given trespass warnings while 
> leafleting and escorted off
> campus.
>
>
> Banners were hung in various places around the 
> campus including the
> large, centrally located "Stonehenge" war 
> memorial which was covered
> by a large sign reading: "Blessed Are The Peace 
> Makers." Joe Mueller,
> of Cleveland, and George Artiaga of St Louis 
> were caught in the act of
> correcting the memorial. Joe was released with a 
> warning and George
> spent a night in jail before charges of trespass 
> and disorderly
> conduct were dropped.
>
>
> As the police led me away from the scene of our 
> little "crime," I saw
> some students in tears, holding each other for 
> support. One alumnus
> who witnessed our theater followed the police 
> and me, berating them
> for treating us shamefully. The next day's 
> newspapers on campus and in
> the city of South Bend both published articles 
> with interviews of
> students and alums who expressed strong opinions 
> taking different
> sides in regard to our actions, to ROTC and to 
> issues of war and peace
> in general.
>
> In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin 
> Luther King, Jr. said that
> "nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a 
> crisis and establish
> such creative tension that a community that has 
> constantly refused to
> negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It 
> seeks so to dramatize
> the issue that it can no longer be ignored."
>
>
> We can have hope, then, that our small effort 
> will be fruitful, at
> least that it will foster honest discussion, at 
> most that it will be a
> part of a chain of events leading our church one 
> day to cease to offer
> moral cover for state violence in any of its 
> forms.
>
>
> We will continue to pray even as Fr. Jim Murphy 
> did, the prayer that
> the University of Notre Dame and its police 
> force attempted to shout
> down, to suppress, to criminalize: "We ask Our 
> Lady, Queen of Peace,
> to pray for Notre Dame, the preeminent American 
> Catholic university,
> that it might bear ever more faithful witness to 
> Jesus Christ, her
> Son, the Prince of Peace."
>
>
> -----------------------------
> List of Catholic Worker communities represented 
> and attending the Retreat:
> South Bend IN, Chicago IL, Akron OH, Cleveland 
> OH, Des Moines IA,
> Maloy IA, Kalamazoo MI, Luck WI, KC MO, Columbia 
> MO, St Louis MO,
> Winona MN, Duluth MN Yankton SD, Marlboro NY
>