_Letters________________________

Terrorists’ motivations
I respond to your Essay “The Looming Showdown” (October, 2001). While you were pointing out the view of Arabs in your essay, certain elements were nonetheless disturbing to varying degrees. Therefore, I respond with a few observations.

To portray the conflict between terrorist forces and the United States as a conflict between Islam and the “forces of secularism and degradation” is troublesome for a number of reasons. First, it ascribes righteous motives to terrorism that are not necessarily the actual motives. While terrorists and their apologists may point to the undeniable culture of death and propagation of morally bankrupt behavior by the United States, what truly motivates them is the stature and prosperity of the United States, not its moral flaws. They may not like the negative influence we have on their culture, but at a more fundamental level, jealousy about our prosperity also plays a role. 

Like all other ringleaders of mass murder, they seek to explain their behavior by noting seemingly legitimate motives that hide their underlying diabolical intentions. Despite its many sins, America need apologize neither for its stature nor its prosperity. A call to cultural reformation made by those who facilitated and carried out the murder of 6,000 innocent people need not be viewed as a moral epiphany. We must repent and reform our culture, but to look upon these murderers as our enlighteners in that regard is perverse. For that, we have to look no further than the Holy Father and Church teaching. To the extent that the attack helps us in our moral struggles, so much the better. We need not thank murderers for the opportunity of introspection, though. 

It is simple wishful thinking that cultural and political reformation alone will result in the defeat of terrorists. The assumption that all anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world is driven by discontent over American foreign policy or fear of American cultural dominance is naïve. American foreign policy alone did not prompt the attack on our country. Such a claim denies that evil motivation plays a role in evil action. Despite that young Arab quoted in your piece, it is certain that America will be attacked again, even if we do not take military action in Afghanistan—not in response to a particular policy, but as a result of the raw contempt in which we are held, largely for our prosperity. American policy may put in place certain catalysts, but the fuel for the flames of ill will runs deeper than any policy change we might be able to make. Does anyone believe that the recent announcement of the Bush administration’s support for a Palestinian state will assuage those bent on attacking us? 

Your essay suggests that a military approach that results in innocent casualties is immoral and therefore should not be pursued. Indeed, wanton attacks on innocents are always unwarranted. One hopes that a policy of avoiding killing innocent people will be enforced in this war. However, as in all war, such casualties may occur. That possibility alone does not preclude the conducting of an effective campaign to defend our country. The alternative is to surrender to those forces that see no evil in deliberate murder of innocents in the name of a more moral culture. 

Finally, we need not have a perfect culture here at home in order to defend ourselves on the world stage. No country has ever had a perfect culture. Ours is most assuredly in need of more repentance and repair than many in history, but the patriot in me allows for pride in those institutions which allow us to make those changes and which give us the freedom to conduct a debate in which we have the opportunity to convert souls. There is much worth salvaging here and even sharing with the rest of the world. Asserting that MTV and Disney World are the only institutions unique to America under attack that we would be defending is offensive! 

Those of us who oppose the culture of death here will continue to do so. Not all Americans “have made peace” with it—many of the dead of September 11 among them, one assumes. So now we fight on two fronts: one here at home to defend the faith and another, abroad, to defend our prosperity and security. Not yet to have won on the first front does not render illegitimate the second fight. 

—Steve Ohlhaut of West Lafayette, Indiana

The purpose of my Essay was not to argue against the use of military force, and still less to attribute lofty motives to our murderous assailants, but to stress that we Americans should choose our foreign-policy goals and our military strategies with great care. We should recognize that some US policies needlessly enlarge the pool of resentful Muslims from which the terrorists draw their support. I wholeheartedly agree that there is much in the American way of life that is admirable, and should be shared with other nations. We should now distinguish carefully between those admirable traits and others which are morally neutral or worse. Similarly, we have the right to defend our nation by military action, but our strategy and tactics should be designed to minimize civilian casualties. As of this writing, the campaign organized by President Bush has admirably met these moral requirements. Regrettably, some past American military adventures betrayed a cavalier attitude toward the loss of innocent lives. —The Editor

Terrorists’ motivations
I enjoyed reading Philip Lawler’s article, “The Looming Showdown,” but was left with two nagging questions. 
Lawler believes that many Islamic zealots share his view of America’s cultural situation. He says that they hate us because of our moral decadence, mentioning Hollywood, MTV, sodomy, and abortion. The terrorists may be against these things, but if that is so, why isn’t Europe their primary target? There is a great deal more enthusiasm for abortion and sodomy on that post-Christian continent than in America, which has the most troubled conscience in the West. 

I was intrigued by Father Fessio’s comment, cited in the article, about “the number of people who hate the US or Christianity or both.” This suggests a very different perspective. Perhaps the terrorists are even more threatened by our good qualities than our bad ones. 

In his discussion of what he calls the “political causes” of that hatred, Lawler mentions the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He expresses understandable sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people, but it is hard to accept his implication that the only thing standing in the way of a peaceful resolution of the conflict is Israeli intransigence. He laments the fact that “America has been unswerving in support of Israel,” complains that US support is “a one-way street,” and in general makes no pretense of hiding his distaste for that tiny country. His bill of particulars against the Israelis rings hollow next to his portrayal of the Palestinians and their allies as completely blameless. In July 2000, the Israeli government was almost recklessly willing to make concessions. It offered 95 percent of what Yasser Arafat demanded and was willing to discuss that last 5 percent. The most recent intifada is the final result of their efforts. 

In the same issue of CWR, one comes upon an interview with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. It makes for chilling reading. The Grand Mufti is one of many Islamic and Arab leaders who have repeatedly declared that their goal is to destroy Israel and exterminate its people. Even the most cursory account of the acts of terror initiated by Palestinian groups—acts which are almost always targeted against women and children—suggests that one has to take them at their word. 

—Frederick Frankel Via Internet

America is the target, not Europe, because America is the world’s single superpower today. Again, it is not my goal to justify anti-American attitudes. Nor am I an apologist for Palestinian leaders (although I think it is a gross exaggeration to say that the Israeli government acceded to 95 percent of Arafat’s demands). There can be little doubt that much anti-American sentiment is sparked by resentment of our economic productivity and our democratic vitality. But if the logic of terrorists is flawed and distorted, that is all the more reason to make certain that our own moral reasoning is clear and coherent.  —The Editor

Belloc’s prediction
Philip Lawler’s editorial on the terrorist attacks is insightful. Catholics trying to get a sense of this thing should dig out Hilaire Belloc’s The Great Heresies and read his prophetic chapter on Islam. In 1938 he predicted the reemergence of Islam. He reminds us that Islam is essentially a heresy and therefore is intrinsically wrong-minded, and has been and will always remain a potential threat to the West. Unfortunately, he notes, as modern Western man has become more and more detached from his ancestral Christian and Catholic roots, and Islam has undergone a previously unknown state of material inferiority, we no longer understand or properly fear the threat. 

The unsettling thing is that formerly there was some element of good will between Islam and the West. We, though “infidels,” were formerly people of “the Word”—that is, we had some connection, in the minds of Muslims, with the great teachings of Mohammed, and were not totally to be despised. However as we have disconnected ourselves from the Word, and to the extent that we have tried to overrun their world with Planned Parenthood and unadulterated materialism, many in the Islamic world have escalated the means by which they will resist and attack us—for example, through terrorism, which was not formerly in the Islamic arsenal. The culture of death is provoking a proportional response; evil is begetting evil. 

That in no way justifies the events of September 11, and we must resist and go after the perpetrators, but if we fail to recognize that we have been dehumanizing ourselves and attempting to dehumanize others, then this frightening spiral of violence and evil may very well continue.

—Gavin Stephens of West Memphis, Arkansas

Support for the Crusades
It is has become depressingly common to read contemptuous remarks about the Crusades in the popular press, but it is disappointing, to say the least, to find a similar attitude in Catholic World Report.

What on earth can Michael Hirst and Nicholas Jubber mean when they say (“Together, More than Half the World,” August/September) that the Crusades “set the benchmark” for hostilities between the two faiths, and alleging that relations between Christians and Muslims were “scarred by the Crusades?” Long before the Crusades were conceived, the Christian West had been subjected to centuries of Islamic assault, from the conquest of North Africa and Spain, to the occupation of southern France and Sicily, and the sack of Rome (846) and Monte Cassino (883). Was Charles Martel also a “savage,” a proto-Crusader who poisoned relations between the faiths? 

The First Crusade itself was a response to renewed Muslim aggression, which after the Battle of Manzikert (1071) threatened once more to overwhelm the Byzantine empire. Islamic aggression against the West continued until the second siege of Vienna in 1683; no doubt it is only a matter of time before Poland issues an apology for Jan Sobieski’s relief of that city.

It is at least arguable that the presence of the crusading Knights of St. John in Rhodes, and their successful defense of that island in 1480, was instrumental in sparing Italy the horrors of the Ottoman Turk invasion. Surely the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II, conqueror of Constantinople, appears to have believed that this was the case; on his tomb he ordered to be inscribed the legend: “I designed to conquer Rhodes and subdue Italy.”

In view of this, perhaps, unadulterated contempt is not the fairest attitude to hold toward Crusaders. Indeed in an age when Muslims conduct murderous rampages against Christians from Sudan to Indonesia, it may be salutary to remember an age where smug indifference to the murder and enslavement of thousands of Christians was not thought to be the apogee of virtue.

—Terence Gallagher of Bayside, New York

Faulty analogy?
Philip Lawler’s Editorial, “Stem Cells and Moral Options,” in the October issue, questions how President Bush’s funding of research only on stem cells taken from already killed embryos is different from the moral position of those who would buy gold teeth taken from corpses in concentration camps.

The analogy is faulty. It implies that the embryonic corpses are mutilated for frivolous or venal purposes, when the purpose of the research is in fact to save lives. The analogy should rather be this: performing an autopsy on a corpse that was the result of a murder. Here a human being was killed, and his dead body is mutilated in order to gain knowledge that can bring the killer to justice or discover something that will save future victims. This is a legitimate application of the Principle of Double Effect, because the act in itself implies no acquiescence in the prior evil nor disrespect for the life that existed previously, and the effect of apparent disrespect is offset by the proportionately serious purpose. Similarly, stem-cell research in itself implies no acquiescence in how the embryos died or disrespect for the fact that the cells are from a source that was once a person.

So President Bush’s position is in fact principled. Now since he has explicitly stated that he will not condone research on any other cell lines, he has precisely not opened the door to using frozen embryos that “are going to die anyway,” any more than allowing autopsies somehow opens the door to killing mortally sick people to find out what the disease was. The fact that morally obtuse people are bringing pressure to use these frozen embryos does not imply that President Bush will give in to the pressure or that he should not have allowed research on the existing cell lines. Possible abuse does not make legitimate abuse illegitimate.
I agree that the existence of these frozen embryos is a scandal and the result of a grave evil, and that the evil is compounded if we simply toss them aside or kill them for “a higher purpose.” But that issue is not relevant to what President Bush did.

—George Blair of Cincinnati, Ohio

The gold-teeth analogy is imperfect, to be sure. But our correspondent’s analogy has much more serious flaws. The moral evil that occurs in the harvesting of stem cells is not just the mutilation of a corpse (as in an autopsy), but the killing of a human person. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever committed a murder simply in order to give the coroner some practice. Stem cells, on the other hand, are harvested from embryos that have been killed specifically for that purpose. So the stem-cell researcher—and we the taxpayers, who underwrite his work—cannot escape the recognition that the research is possible only because human beings have been killed for that purpose. As for the practical implications of the Bush decision, it is important to keep in mind that Congress could overturn the President’s policy if legislators do not find his arguments convincing. —The Editor

Praise for Courage
Thank you for publicizing Father John Harvey’s admirable and needed Courage movement of chastity for homosexuals. 

In your Interview (August-September), Father Harvey says that he does not know of a moral obligation for a man to change his homosexual condition. Yet every man has a natural obligation to preserve his health and perfect himself in a well-ordered way, using means which are not extraordinarily difficult. The homosexual orientation is a serious moral defect and threat to one’s self and others. So a man has an obligation to rid himself of that condition if he can do so using appropriate means. He is not excused from fulfilling that obligation without trying those means to attain that end.

Christians are also obliged to strive for perfection and a homosexual orientation is surely per se an obstacle to attaining perfection for oneself and others. One must try to rid himself of this defect using appropriate means. If these efforts fail, of course, a man can be sanctified by rightly adjusting to his inordinate inclination, and living a chaste Christian life, as Courage intends. But that does not mean he had no obligation to change his condition.

—Rev. Jerome Treacy, SJ of Clarkston, Missouri

In the CWR interview, Father Harvey pointed out that Courage supports individuals who make the effort to change their sexual orientation. However, he explained that Courage does not require members to make that effort, because the available methods are not entirely reliable. As Father Harvey put it: “We have no infallible psychological means, or even probable means, that will always lead a person—or even probably lead him—out of the condition.” —The Editor

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