FACT SHEET ON THE DEPARTMENT OF MILITARY SCIENCE AT MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY

Marquette University (MU) is one of 27 of the 31 Jesuit Universities in the country that host the military. MU is one of the few Jesuit universities that host all departments of the military, Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy.

The MU Department of Military recruits and trains young men and women for the military from Marquette and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as other members of the armed forces attending these or other educational facilities.
For more information in Military’s recruiting and training see the following web site at Marquette and UWM.
http://www.marquette.edu/rotc/army/ http://www.marquette.edu/rotc/navy/ http://www.uwm.edu/ugbulletin/SC/D_LS_mil.html

This Department of Military Science directly recruits and trains young men and women for the war in Iraq and and other places.

There might be some debate in the Roman Catholic Church about the pertinence of the ancient Just War Theory with modern warfare, however there is not much question that the war in Iraq is “unjust, illegal and immoral.” Statements from the Pope, Vatican and moral theologians, even at Marquette, back up the fact that this war is “unjust” according to Christian social teaching.

Most major religious faiths, world legal scholars and moral leaders also believe that this war is unjust.

To participate in an “ ‘unjust’ war is to cooperate with evil”, as Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian, believed in World War II. Franz Jagerstatter was a conscientious objector whom the Catholic Church holds up for veneration and imitation. He will be beatified, made a ‘blessed, Oct. 26, 2007 by the Catholic Church on in the Diocese of Lintz, Austria.

The values taught in the Department of Military Science are “nonnegotiable” and take priority in everyday life over “values developed in childhood and nurtured through experience” such as the Catholic Values taught at Marquette University. (From the Army Values Manuel)

This Department of Military Science is the only department in the University where the curriculum is not subject to review by MU

Under the Solomon Amendment, first adopted in 1994, expanded by Congress in 1997 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006 allows the Secretary of Defense to deny Federal grants to institutions of higher learning, if they prohibit or prevent ROTC or military recruitment. http://www.aacrao.org/compliance/solomon/index.cfm

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, pulished in 1992 addresses this issue of conscience.

“The citizen is obliged in cnscience not to floor the directions of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their demands are contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification in the distinction between serving God and serving the poiltical community.”