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22 2 “Religious Training and Belief” In World War II, 10,110,104 men were drafted into the armed forces.1 At least 37,000 draft-age men were exempted from combatant or military service as conscientious objectors, or COs, under the Selective Training and Service Act. At least 25,000 men served in noncombatant roles in the military under an “I-A-O” draft classification. The number of I-A-O objectors could have been as high as 50,000, although precise statistics were not kept.2 Between 11,500 and 11,996 were classified as “IV-E” in the draft and assigned to perform alternative service in the Civilian Public Service.3 An additional 6,086 men were imprisoned for failing to accept any form of service.4 ◆ ◆ ◆ For most Americans, conscientious objection cannot be separated from opposition to specific wars and government policies. The growing unpopularity of the Iraq War was based not on moral opposition to war but on a lack of confidence in the reasons for going to war and in how it had been conducted. Iraq was increasingly viewed as the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, the Iraq War was being fought by an “all-volunteer army,” with the support of civilian contractors and a relatively small number of troops from other countries. There were few COs during the Iraq War. They were people who initially volunteered for military service and then decided, for one reason or another, that they could no longer participate in the war effort. Even after more than thirty-five years, the Vietnam War lingers in the public consciousness and continues to serve as fodder in political debates. Vietnam seemed to define what it meant to be “antiwar.” Hundreds of thousands of young men refused to enter the military. To be sure, Vietnam-era COs and war resisters included members of the historic peace churches. War was no more morally acceptable to Mennonites, Friends, and Brethren during Vietnam than during earlier wars. Yet in the Vietnam era, many COs did not come from churches with a pacifist history and did not even oppose war on grounds associated with organized religions. In United States v. Seeger, the Supreme Court ruled in 1965 that one did not have to profess belief in the existence of God to qualify as a conscientious objector.5 “Religious Training and Belief”   |   23 At least in the public arena, opposition to the Vietnam War was led by “New Left” intellectuals and students, “Old Left” radicals and pacifists, including World War II resisters such as A. J. Muste and David Dellinger, and activists from a church lacking a strong tradition of pacifism—Catholics. Religious opposition to the Vietnam War had a Catholic public face. Inspired by Dorothy Day of the Catholic Workers and Catholic theologian Thomas Merton, the Berrigan brothers—Daniel, a Jesuit priest, and Philip, a Josephite priest—made national headlines and graced the covers of magazines such as Time for their protests against the Vietnam War.6 In October 1967, Philip Berrigan along with Tom Lewis, David Ebenhardt, and Jim Mengel were arrested for pouring their blood over draft records in Baltimore. Then, in a 1968 incident receiving widespread national attention, the so-called Catonsville Nine— Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, David Dorst, John Hogan, Tom Lewis, Marjorie Melville, Thomas Melville, George Mische, and Mary Moylan—removed hundreds of draft records from a Selective Service office in Maryland and burned them with homemade napalm to protest the war.7 In court, the defendants made statements later recorded in Daniel Berrigan’s play The Trial of the Catonsville Nine. Daniel Berrigan stated: Our apologies good friends for the fracture of good order the burning of paper instead of children the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house We could not so help us God do otherwise for we are sick at heart our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children.8 The nine were convicted on November 9, 1968. Gordon Zahn, a World War II CO who would later become a sociologist and author of a number of books on war and peace, explained the activism of the Berrigans as part of a “Great Catholic Upheaval” that questioned the Catholic Church’s long-standing “just war” doctrine attributed to Saint Augustine and elaborated upon by Thomas Aquinas and others.9 Under that doctrine, war was justified when certain conditions were...

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