Sanctuary

ON SUNDAY morning, September 22, Paul Olimpieri, an AWOL Marine, took sanctuary in the Andover Chapel of the Harvard Divinity School. Two days later Military Police took him out. Then, with barely a whimper, the first "confrontation" of the fall dissolved into nothingness.

Nobody knows how to oppose the war effectively. To try to force an artificial confrontation between Krister Stendahl, dean of the Divinity School, and the Marine Corps is not an answer. But because the war has thrust itself into every part of American life, one grabs onto every opportunity to fight and every symbol of opposition. Each symbol is inadequate, but each one becomes important. Last week Olimpieri was important.

Stendahl, for his part deciding that he would "rather be wise and sensitive than clear," remained neutral during the sanctuary. It is Stendahl's first year as dean of the Divinity School, and he was certainly correct to avoid a rash statement of policy--whether favorable or unfavorable to the sanctuary. By doing so, he would have seemed emotional and impulsive and done a serious disservice to the Divinity School and to himself. Stendahl's single positive decision, to appoint a six-member faculty committee to serve as liaison with the students, was also correct.

But he stopped there, and he shouldn't have. At the time of his appointment last January, Stendahl said he hoped to see the Divinity School "become sensitive" to the injustices of society. During the two days of Paul Olimpieri's sanctuary, however, Stendahl refused to confront those injustices. He was under no obligation either to defend or to oppose the politics of Olimpieri's action; but without a word about politics, without a word about the war, and without a word about the Divinity School's stand on draft resistance, Stendahl could have responded to the situation. As a man in the service of God, he could have faced the young Marine and said, "We share your troubled conscience. We, too, are looking for answers. You are welcome in our community, and we will give you food and shelter."

THE Divinity School Faculty, for its part, was equally negligent. Last December, after eight Divinity School students had turned in their draft cards, the Faculty unanimously adopted a statement in opposition to the war in Vietnam and in support of draft resistance. "Accordingly," it read, "we are prepared to help bear the burdens of those who have been conscientiously led to extraordinary means of dissent." When Olimpieri took sanctuary on Sunday, Harvey G. Cox, associate professor of Church and Society, said he hoped the Faculty would "do something together." It didn't.

No one expected the Faculty to physically harrass the MP's when they came to arrest the Marine or to taunt them with cries of "Pigs! Pigs!" But, in Cox's words, one expected "something": Faculty members might have made statements of support, or joined the chain which bound Olimpieri to his wife and friends, or brought him food. In short, they might have shared symbolically in the Marine's protest.

The most conspicuous failure, however, was that of the students themselves. Tuesday afternoon, after Olimpieri's arrest, 100 of them met for over two hours to discuss the implications of the sanctuary. At the meeting the students failed to agree upon a position of support for the Marine, failed to address themselves to any of the issues which the sanctuary raised, and finally relinquished their responsibility to the Student Council which, that night, adopted a statement urging others "to join with us in similar acts of protest."

James B. Prior, one of the students who organized the sanctuary, said after the arrest that the University had proven its "complicity" with the war by remaining neutral. From the radicals' point of view, the statement was embarrassing. In the first place, on what grounds could they ask Stendahl, or Harvard, to establish its non-complicity by refusing to recognize a Federal warrant? And second, how could they expect the University publicly to support the Marine when they couldn't even persuade the student body to do so?

IN MANY ways these criticisms are criticisms of style. But they are substantive, nontheless. No action--by Olimpieri, Stendahl, Faculty, or students--is going to overpower the war machine. One's strategy, then, necessarily becomes that of symbolic protest and confrontation, which differ from publicity stunts in that they aim at raising issues for debate. And this tactic only succeeds when carried off dramatically.

Conversely, to the extent that the Divinity School was unable to dramatize Olimpieri's sanctuary, the sanctuary lost any value it might have had. Olimpieri, almost obscured by the events he set in motion, angrily charged after his arrest that he had been "used" by the students. He may or may not have spoken under pressure from the Marines. He may or may not have been entirely moral and intelligent in his reasons for leaving the Marines in the first place. But what is more important is that the issues his sanctuary raised--the war, the draft, resistance, and their implications for the Church--are painfully relevant. Stendahl has scheduled a colloquium for this spring on "Moral Responsibility in the University." The spring is a long time to wait.