This past weekend, I could not help watching the various television shows marking the one-year anniversary of the Russian attacks on Ukraine. These little documentaries were, of course, depressing: The death and violence and destruction visited upon Ukraine by Russia is too grim, as I have written about previously. They were also ennobling: The heroic struggle of the people of Ukraine — not just their military, but everyone — is an example of patriotism at its best, a love of country that is real and effective.
Attempts to compare the moral and political courage of Ukraine's people to our own political situation here in the United States yields a largely false comparison. We are blessed not to have a more powerful neighbor eager to rob us of our sovereignty. Threats to American democracy are internal, not external. Still, the inability of many Americans to defend our constitutional framework from the threats it did face in late 2020 and early 2021 is a sign of moral, not just political, failure. I would argue the stain from that failure should be indelible.
We Americans also have a more complicated relationship to military power than shown this past year in Ukraine. Our all-volunteer army is magnificent, but there is a price to pay in social cohesion when the task of defending the nation is not widely shared. I am old enough to remember calls for a year of national service, not necessarily military service. It was hoped the creation of Americorps during Bill Clinton's presidency would be seminal. Instead, it was a one-off. Now, polarization would make any attempt to revive a plan for a year of national service impossible.
Watching the interviews with these brave Ukrainians, from soldiers at the front lines to grandmothers assembling Molotov cocktails, I was reminded of the speech Winston Churchill gave in the House of Commons after the disastrous peace negotiations at Munich in 1938, in which the Western powers sacrificed a small nation to a fascistic neighbor in exchange for promises of peace. "And do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning," Churchill told the house. "This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time." The Ukrainian people have displayed their moral health and martial vigor all year. The olden time is new again in Kyiv and Kherson and Odessa.
This weekend, Tobias Winright, from St. Patrick's Pontifical University at Maynooth, Ireland and Maria Power from the Las Casas Institute, Blackfriars Hall, at Oxford, United Kingdom, published an essay at Temple Tracts about theological reflections on the Ukraine War. The authors provide a fine survey of statements and essays about the war from Catholic leaders and intellectuals — even from some journalists! The citation that comes closest to my thinking is from an essay by David DeCosse, published at the Political Theology Network, in which DeCosse stated: "the Ukrainian decision to fight raises hard questions that need answers about how well a singular reliance on Christian nonviolence can address the devastating harms of historical contempt and chronic oppression at the hands of a fascist, massive military power." Hard questions, indeed.
Winright and Power argue that the balancing of just war theory and nonviolent theory achieved in the 1983 U.S. bishops' pastoral letter "The Challenge of Peace" gets it about right. They conclude: "We recommend a return to the bishops' notion that Catholic theologians and ethicists of nonviolence and just war theory can work together in a complementary way, in recognition that both seek to make and build a just peace." It is not that they will achieve a common understanding. It is that they can keep each other honest.
Links
We tend to think politics is about ideas and policies and large demographic changes. It is also about smaller things like the competence of key individuals and the pettiness of internal machinations. This report at Politico about the Nevada Democratic Party is illustrative of the latter. After Sen. Bernie Sanders won the primary in Nevada, his supporters took over the state party apparatus. It has not turned out well.
This essay by Mark Silk at Religion News Service is an example of the former, a large idea, in this case, the importance of hearing from voices with which one disagrees, especially those voices capable of self-criticism. The decision by The New York Times to give conservative, evangelical Christian David French a column has caused all sorts of agita, but Silk thinks it was the right decision. Citing the many attacks on French coming from the right, Silk observes, "it's important to have a prophet without honor among his own kin writing in the Times." I agree entirely.
The 15 winners of best building awards from Architecture Daily have been announced and I like all the winners. The winner in the category for religious architecture is the hauntingly beautiful Chamber Church in Qingdao, China.
Until next Tuesday,
Michael Sean Winters
NCR Political Columnist
mswinters@ncronline.org
Twitter: @MichaelSWinters
