'Action in the political field should be considered one of the most effective ways of bringing about a more just social order' — Pedro Arrupe SJ.
Prime Minister John Howard and his political rival, Labor leader Kevin Rudd, are offering right leadership and new leadership respectively. But evidently neither corresponds to their electoral pitch. There's been little morally 'right' under Howard's watch and Rudd's 'me-tooism' purports nothing new or decent.
Rudd's recent back flip on Labor policy regarding foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland's moral comment on the death penalty is hypocrisy given his self-promoting Christian image — Christ himself was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and the sublime victim of the death penalty. As Pax Christi director, David Robinson, states, 'Christ is being crucified today through the practice of torture.'
Leadership is the present pre-election focus and Australians are challenged to deem what essential human qualities and skills are required to govern well so that as a nation we can walk proud. Rather than pampered politicians, for exemplars I turn to Jesuit Fr Steve Kelly, and Franciscan Fr Louis Vitale, who were sentenced this 17 October to five months imprisonment for trespass at the Army's main interrogation training facility, Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
Fathers Kelly and Vitale's non-violent protest against the practice of torture by US military and intelligence and their subsequent imprisonment went virtually unnoticed by the press. On 19 November 2006, they attempted to give a letter protesting against the practice of torture to the Fort Huachuca commander, Major General Barbara Fast. Fast was formerly the head of intelligence for the US command in Baghdad and in charge of interrogators at Abu Graib where prisoners were physically, psychologically and sexually tortured.
The letter reads in part: 'We are here today as concerned US people, veterans and clergy, to speak with enlisted personnel about the illegality and immorality of torture according to international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions...
'We are here today at Fort Huachuca in solidarity with tens of thousands of people at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Georgia (formerly known as the School of the Americas) to say that the training of torturers must immediately stop. Nothing justifies the inhumane treatment of our fellow brothers and sisters. Torture by US military personnel has reached alarming proportions and has horrified people around the world.'
Fr Kelly was also impelled to act by a recent survey that