The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (12) — Postscript: Becoming an A-theistic Quaker
The memoir concludes with an adaptation of a piece published twenty years ago in the inaugural issue of the journal Quaker Theology.
The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (11) — The Draft, Part 4: Decision
An escape hatch is opened. Can I, in good conscience, climb through it?
The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (10) — The Draft, Part 3: Watching and Waiting
The draft board holds a hearing but doesn’t listen, lays a snare that fails, and then goes silent while the FBI investigates me. While marking time, I embark on psychedelic adventures.
The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (9) — Sidebar 2: Letter to Father Robert
My letter to a priest from whom I’d requested a reference for the draft board, in which I explain that I must refuse, as Tolstoy put it, “to be ready on another’s command (for this is what a soldier’s duty actually consists of) to kill all those one is ordered to kill.”
The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (8) — The Draft, Part 2: Conscience and Conflict
I notify the draft board of my conscientious objection to war; the board refuses to recognize it. I quit school, leave home, and wait for the government’s ax to fall.
The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (6 & 7) — The Church, Part 4: Taking Flight | The Draft, Part 1: The Question of War
Two brief, closely-related sections. As I am slowly separating myself from Catholic piety, the necessity for a moral decision about war leads me ultimately to reject the Church and embrace pacifism.
The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (5) — The Church, Part 3: Seminary Again
Further vocational misadventures, including being ordered to watch an old horror film rather than study for a crucial midterm.
The Church, the Draft Board, and Me (4) — Sidebar 1: The Absurdity of Catholic Morality
“The house of cards that is the Catholic moral system was my childhood home”: a critical look, with autobiographical anecdotes, at the unsound and abusive nature of basic Catholic morality.
