By Julie Godfrey Miller
Catholic Herald

Women in the diocese say 'Yes' to life

LADYSMITH --The Diocesan Council of Catholic Women and the Sister's Council sponsored a gathering, "Say Yes to Life," at Our Lady of Sorrows Church and School on March 29. The daylong event addressed a wide range of life issues.

Heavy snow that fell on parts of the diocese on Thursday and Friday kept some people from attending. In addition, the keynote speaker, Sr. Toni Harris, OP, was unable to attend due to a scheduling problem. A last minute substitute speaker was found.

Deacon Michael Cullen, parish life director of the Rib Lake, Chelsea, Westboro and Whittlesey cluster of parishes, agreed to give a short talk on history of the just war theory. He had given a presentation on the subject a few weeks ago at a gathering for religious education directors and coordinators.

With a few alterations in the schedule, the program went on.

After some welcoming messages, Bishop Raphael M. Fliss was the first speaker on the agenda. Before he began his talk, he mentioned a similar situation when the Council of Catholic women met in Superior some years ago and, at the last minute discovered they had no speaker. Fliss said he had just finished reading the pope's encyclical on the Blessed Mother, and volunteered to talk on that subject.

Addressing the almost exclusively female audience in Ladysmith, Fliss said the U.S. bishops have struggled for a long time with the concerns of women and recently, in 17 dioceses, conducted focus groups of women who work outside the home but are not employed by the church. The purpose was look at the relationship between their work and their spirituality. Fliss said over 300 women participated and it was so successful an improved version of the program will be made available to all bishops late in 2004. He added that the bishops are also developing a hands-on resource to help clergy and women to deepen their understanding of collaboration and how to apply it in their local areas.

"The sisters, the religious, all the women in the diocese are so very important to the life of this local church. ... I think my desire has always been to be helpful, supportive and above all appreciative of all you do. ... And so today as you deliberate on issues of life, I hope you will be aware of our own gratitude for who you are and what you have accomplished and all you continue to do in terms of issues of life," Fliss said.

A prayer service that followed conducted by Sr. Marianna Ableidinger, FSPA, of St. Anthony du Padua Parish in Lac du Flambeau. Together the group prayed to the Great Spirit facing north, south, east and west, in turn. Members of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, who are parishioners at St. Anthony, offered burning cedar to each of the four directions.

Following the service, Cullen traced the history of the just war theory, beginning with an understanding of what the original Christianity was like. He said there was no just war theory until the fourth century. With Emperor Constantine's Edict of Milan in 313, Christians were given the right to exist in the Roman Empire without persecution. "Before that date you couldn't be in the Roman army and be a Christian. One hundred years later, you couldn't be in the Roman army and not be a Christian," Cullen said.

Cullen urged the group to do some homework on the subject. "What was the original Christianity like? It was obviously based in the life of Christ and the Gospels. Before they're written down we see Stephen imitating the messiah -- the lord, the savior Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, the king of kings, the prince of peace -- by surrendering to death rather than to killing."

That belief continued for the first 200 years of Christianity. Cullen said, "Obviously people killed in that time, but they always knew it was wrong. In the Christian community, repentance was required."

Cullen added that very early catechetical materials on how a person entered the Christian community said that if a man was in the army he had to tell his officer that he was no longer able to take orders to kill or else he would have leave the military, because he belonged to a king who shed no blood.

Cullen, who has a long history of anti-war activism, said, "This is the nonviolent part that we have had to struggle with for so long now. Once we came to accept that violence could be acceptable in some circumstances, we got a double mind. ... We are saying we love but in certain circumstances you can kill. That's been with us for more than 1,600 years, and it muddled our brains so much. Through all of church history you see this double think, if you will, justifying homicide, be it on a personal level or justifying homicide for a nation."

Cullen said the popes of recent history have tackled this problem. He said the double think finally ended 1945, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

He explained that Christianity never took hold in Japan except in the region of Nagasaki where, despite great persecution, the faith grew. The bomb was dropped directory on Nagasaki's the Catholic cathedral, with 8,000 people inside at Mass. Cullen added that the Japanese couldn't stop the spread of Christianity but a U.S. bomb did it in 30 seconds.

After that, Cullen said, Catholics began to get a lead from the popes on the subject of war. It began with Pope John XXII's "Pacem in Terris" and culminated in Pope Paul VI's statement at the United Nations, "War never again." Pope John Paul II also visited the United Nations and repeated, "War never again."

Cullen summed up, "The shift has got to take place in us as the faith community. It will not take place in the community unless it takes place in us."

In the breakout sessions that followed, participants had nine workshops to choose from on topics ranging from the death penalty and bioethics, to the peace movement and legislative advocacy.

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© Superior Catholic Herald, 2003