By: JD on 11/17/09
The British Armed Forces do not train people to kill, but to defend freedom and righteousness.
If Ms Hand thinks this can be done without resort to legitimate force, then she forgets that Man is a fallen creature with a capacity for evil.
That the Gospels highlights and quotes at least two soldiers indicates that there is no censure as such against the military.

By: PaxChristiYouth on 11/18/09
I have to applaud Ms Hand for her stance against the growing involvement of the armed forces in recruitment within schools.

At Pax Christi we are deeply concerned by the unethical ways in which a career in the armed forces is sold to young people. The reality of being trained and expected to kill and risk being killed in combat is hidden behind a veneer of glamour, adventure and career opportunity. In focussing their recruitment efforts towards young people in socially and economically deprived areas of the country the forces prey on young people’s vulnerability and that sense of hopelessness that sees a military career as the only or last resort.

A 2007 report by David Gee (freely available from http://www.informedchoice.org.uk/) explores these and many more of the ethical concerns surrounding the recruitment of young people to the armed forces. This is a useful resource when exploring the question of the army being involved in school in any form and particularly at careers events.

We need not question the validity or necessity of having armed forces when supporting Ms Hand in her moral stance. We can easily see that this Christian response coupled with the questionable ethics that underpin the army’s recruitment policy brings us to the conclusion that the armed forces and arms industries, through careers promotion, cadet forces and funding, should have no place in Catholic schools or indeed any school. It is essential that our young people are protected and empowered to make well informed and wise choices.

Matt Jeziorski
Schools and Youth Outreach Worker, Pax Christi

By: josephine on 11/27/09
By: frengen on 11/27/09 [Delete]
The armed services are, of course, trained to kill other men. Sometimes, inevitably, they kill women and children too.Many Catholics must have noticed that the Church "allows" different opinions on war-killing and judicial killing ( capital punishment) but that, in practice, today in this country, few lay or clerical members of the Church raise the issue which Catherine Hand has highlighted.We could perhaps properly recall that ,in Europe's 20th century wars, there were almost certainly more Catholics among the "bad people" ( Germans, Italians etc) than among "us". As for Ireland, better not to mention.I find it hard to see how young Catholics today should be encouraged to join the killing machine of an increasingly "secular" state, and one of the few "democracies" where a Roman Catholic is barred from becoming Head of State, and, in practice, will not become Prime Minister.This aspect pales into insignificance, maybe, alongside the more general ethical angle. the reaction of Mrs. Hand's fellow governors speaks volumes on the lack of proper reflection and debate of the rather important issue of volunteering to kill who one is told to.