CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D.

Why Farewell to Arms?

Forty years ago this month, Pope Paul VI cemented his status as the first “Pilgrim Pope” by flying to New York City – the first pontiff ever to visit the new world. But more important, he used the occasion of his speech to the UN general assembly to establish a new public role for the Catholic Church as the world’s “Peace Church.”

Many people remember Paul’s famous line, “Jamais plus de guerre!—War never again!” But few Catholics remember the historical context he used in framing that line:

There’s no need for long speeches to proclaim the supreme purpose of your institution. It is enough to recall the blood of millions of people, the sufferings of unknown and unnumbered people, the useless massacres and revolting ruins that justify the pact that unites you in an oath which must change the future history of the world: No more war! No more war! It is peace, peace, which must guide the destiny of peoples and of all humanity.

And even today, many Catholics have not received his true message:

You confirm the great principle that relations among peoples must be governed by reason, by law, by negotiation –and not by force nor by violence nor by war, any more than by fear or deception.

The Pope’s outlook was shaped by two major developments: Europe’s definitive exhaustion with war, and the church’s response to modernity at Vatican II.

Like most Americans civilians, I have little of the first-hand experience of war that touched most 20^th century Europeans. But if you keep your eyes open in Europe, the signs are everywhere. My recent trip to Italy, Spain, and France gave me several opportunities to witness what has driven the Europe’s anti-war crusade for more than 50 years.

I spent one day, for example, in the Dolomite Mountains, high above Italy’s Veneto plain as the Alps rise toward Austria. Here one still sees graves and monuments to those who died in battle along the mountainous World War I front that Hemingway described in A Farewell to Arms. Four days later I attended Mass in Venice’s Franciscan church, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, and I noticed a strange object on the wall. The nearby plaque read, “This plaque commemorates God’s mercy on the evening of October 12-13, 1918, when this German bomb landed on the church roof but failed to explode.” (Both these sights reminded me of my visit many years ago to Innsbruck, on the Austrian side of the border. Visiting a friend’s Austrian relatives, I heard a woman describe the night when she, still a young girl, saw her apartment building explode as American planes bombarded her city.)

Ten days later, in Paris, I visited the Memorial a la Deportation, a powerful monument to the 200,000 French deported by the Nazis to death camps. Not far away, I passed a school bearing a plaque in memory of the principal, teachers, and students killed by the Nazis simply for being Jews.

But it was Madrid that offered the starkest signs of how revolted by war Europe has become. Ironically, Spain had little to do with World War II, so when Spaniards talk about life “Before the War” or “Since the War,” they always mean the civil war of 1936–1939. Like all civil wars, the Spanish Civil War meant “brother killing brother” – but it was also unique as Hitler’s test-laboratory for Blitzkrieg, and it led to nearly 40 years of fascism under Hitler-backed Francisco Franco.

The gigantic cross atop Franco’s tomb still dominates the mountainous horizon just north of Madrid, and an arch celebrating fascist victory still intrudes on the city itself. Franco’s Spain was not even welcomed into the European community, but King Juan Carlos has devoted his reign since Franco’s death in 1975 to democratizing Spain (Many Spaniards believe that, without him, fascism would return; it was Juan Carlos himself who personally rebuffed the attempted fascist coup in 1981).

During my Madrid stay, I visited the Reine Sofia Museum to see Picasso’s Guernica, often regarded as the 20^th century’s greatest painting. The massive canvas depicts one horrific night, April 27, 1937, when Nazi planes bombed the Basque town of Guernica. The hall where it hangs was mobbed throughout the hour I spent there. Adjoining rooms display smaller sketches and paintings, drafts for details Picasso later incorporated in his masterpiece. Another room displays photographs taken while Picasso worked on Guernica, showing the stages by which he constructed the complex scene.

These drafts and photos helped me appreciate the vast main canvas. Time and again, I saw, Picasso had begun with detailed, shaded figures of people or animals, only to finish by removing all nuances until all that remained were stark, geometric forms and graphic, even grotesque images of eyes, teeth, hands, breasts, feet. The result, projected on his wall-sized canvas, distills the terror of war down to its revolting essence. Standing before it, viewers can only ache inside – first for the anguish of that night’s victims, then for all victims of war touched by that same anguish, and finally for our own shame, that even Picasso’s great pictorial power could not prevent such anguish from recurring over the next 70 years.

Standing there I recalled the poster in my own den at home, which displays a detail from Guernica (a mother shrieking skyward, her murdered infant lying limp in her arms) next to a verse that echoes the image. CrossCurrents readers who want to understand Pope Paul’s anti-war fervor, as well as the nearly absolute anti-war posture of the Catholic Church since his UN speech, might try this simple exercise: Get a copy of Guernica (for example, just click on http://www.mala.bc.ca/%7Elanes/english/hemngway/picasso/guernica.htm) and gaze at it while reading aloud this accompanying verse:

Death where the pilot cannot see his victims death for the soldiers death for the mothers of soldiers death for the children death for the workers death for the old people death for the women on bicycles death from the air death from the planes death in metal fragments death that burns death that burns and clings to the skin and burns death for the people of another race death by fire death in a burning bed in a burning shirt death in shrapnel for the young girl’s womb death from the air death where the pilot cannot see his victims death for the wounded in hospitals death for the boy studying mathematics death for the soldiers death for the lovers death for the people death where the pilot cannot see his victims cannot see his victims cannot see his victims cannot see

Image and text together make it all too clear why Europeans generally, and European Catholics in particular, no longer believe (as many Americans still do) that war can be a glorious and noble endeavor.

Ironically the UN itself saw the tension between Paul VI’s message of peace and its own struggles over war: when Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the General Assembly in February 2003 to argue that Iraq’s WMDs required invasion, the UN draped a large blue cloth over its own copy of Guernica so it would not appear next to Powell on TV screens. As one reported commented, “The cover-up was a solemn reminder of the intensity of Picasso's images, and the power of art to give voice to war's horrors.”

Forty years later, Paul VI’s UN call to peace is yet to be answered—but it remains a compelling call for Catholics to hear, long after the arguments for war prove to be lies.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2005

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com

Dr. Swain’s opinions do not represent the views of this parish or any other official body.

Bernie Swain has devoted more than 30 years to adult spiritual formation in dioceses in the US, Canada, and France. Since 1991 he has maintained a private practice as trainer, teacher, and consultant to leaders in parishes and other religious organizations. He holds degrees in theology and political science from Holy Cross, Harvard, The University of Paris, and The University of Chicago.

His writings include Liberating Leadership (Harper & Row, 1986) and more than 200 articles in periodicals such as The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, The Miami Herald, The Catholic Free Press, The Pilot, Harvard Theological Review, and Liturgy.

A lifelong layperson, he lives in Boston with his wife and three children. Visit his website at:

http://www.CrossCurrents.us

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