‘Bread Not Stones’ promotes social needs

Bishop Lucker calls for redirection of military spending

St. Paul - Pax Christi USA, the 14,000-member Catholic peace organization, came to Minnesota the last week of September with its "Bread Not Stones" campaign.

The program works to educate Americans about the exorbitant costs of military spending and urge them to call on their government leaders to redirect that spending to social needs, especially health care, education, tax relief for the poor and foreign aid.

The Twin Cities were among stops on a 30-city bus tour. At each stop, the bus team inflated balloon-style graphs and charts, some as high as 27 feet, that contrasted the costs of military spending with expenditures on human needs. The "Moneymobile" bus was leased to Pax Christi by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. It was painted with piles of money and a sign that said "Move Our Money: Invest In Our Kids."

The campaign visited the University of St. Thomas, the State Capitol and the University of Minnesota Law School September 28. At the latter, New Ulm Bishop Raymond A. Lucker, bishop president of Pax Christi Minnesota, spoke, as did Eric LeCompte, bus tour organizer who is a graduate of St. John’s University, Collegeville.

LeCompte said more than 35 U.S. bishops, including Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, have signed Pax Christi’s "Bread Not Stones" statement calling for the redirection of military spending.

Among the million statistics the campaign presents are the following:

Thirty-five million people live in poverty in the United States while $35 billion is spent annually on nuclear weapons and related programs.

- Eleven million children are among 44 million people who lack health insurance in the United States, yet the government spends only 4 cents on health insurance for every 50 cents it spends on the military.

- The United Nations Development Program estimates that basic health and nutrition needs of the world’s poorest people could be met for an additional $13 billion per year, about 5 percent of the 2000 U.S. military budget.

Bishop Lucker said in his University of Minnesota talk that the "Bread Not Stones" statement is directed principally to Catholics, with the hope that people of all religions will take it seriously. "We believe there should be an option for the poor, that the needy deserve our first attention," the bishop said. He asked also for reflection on the morality of a budget that fails to assist the poor.

The "Bread Not Stones" effort comes from "our belief in the teaching of Jesus" to love God wholly and love one another as he does. The central commandment of love found in the Sermon in the Mount is found in all religions, he said.

Central to Jesus’ teaching are nonviolence and social responsibility, he said, but "our national military policy is built on deterrence, revenge, retaliation, influencing, and enforcing our will by military strength."

From personal experience of the 38-year-old New Ulm diocesan mission, San Lucas Toliman in Guatemala, he told of CIA assistance for the overthrow of a democratic Guatemalan government and later U.S. support for massacres of villagers by the Guatemalan military. "As a country, we have responsibility for the effects of our actions," he said. "We are dealing with a social sin."

He recalled visiting Guatemala years ago when the battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin was moored off the Guatemalan coast. It had recently been refurbished for $500 million and soon thereafter was scuttled. Bishop Lucker asked Father Gregory Schaffer, pastor of San Lucas Toliman, how much had been contributed to the mission in 25 years. The answer: about $5 million.

"The arms race is a treacherous trap that ensnares the poor," he said, urging listeners to "see the connection between the arms race and poverty and injustices."

Courtesy of The Catholic Spirit