The Society of Jesus should renounce all ties to the military
This past spring, the National Jesuit News, a U.S. newspaper reporting on the Society of Jesus, featured a glowing profile of a Jesuit priest who served as a chaplain in, of all places, Abu Ghraib, Iraq — not to minister to the tortured, but to the torturers. Happily, he has left Iraq. Alas, he now teaches the morality of war at West Point, where, incidentally, the police have banned me for life.
This report was shocking and scandalous to me and my Jesuit friends. I don’t understand how we claim to follow the nonviolent Jesus yet support someone who works in a torture center or an international war headquarters.