Rach, nice post. That’s a really good article. I’ve been thinking these thoughts for years, and occasionally I’ve asked pointed questions, and nobody’s ever replied with anything resembling a coherent, relevant answer. Now someone has.
I don’t want to disagree with Charles Rice, several of whose books are on our bookshelf downstairs, so I’ll start by saying that, in large part, he and I agree. We agree that direct and intentional killing is always wrong, as the Catechism says. We agree that killing can only be permitted defensively, under the principle of double effect, and the Catechism agrees with both of us (2264: “…if [a man in self-defense] repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful.”) We agree that the doctrines of just war, just armed resistance, and just capital punishment–which would seem, at first glance, to involve acts of direct, intentional killing–are in fact only extensions of the principle of self-defense.
We agree on prudential matters: violence, at least for now, “is not the most effective way to save the lives of unborn children.” It would be “counterproductive.” “If we attempt to combat the abortion movement with force, we oppose its strongest weapon, the coercive power of the state, with our weakest.” We even agree that “It cannot… be legitimately concluded that the situation has disintegrated so far beyond other means of correction that armed rebellion is justified in whole or in part.” (I think that, in the fifteen years since this was written, we are much closer to that disintegration than we have ever been before, but he and I still agree that we’re not there yet.) So when either of us is talking about times where anti-abortion violence can even be considered, we are both of us speaking in the hypothetical, about a world in which the anti-abortion political and legal movements have completely broken down and, to quote the Catechism, “it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.” How far we are from that point is an open question outside the scope of this discussion, but it doesn’t matter–we’re clearly not there yet. God willing, we’ll never get there.
We also seem to agree on the basic meaning of the phrase “armed resistance.” His continual replacement of the Catechism’s wording with his own phrase “justified rebellion” seems to indicate that he’s envisioning something involving armies and generals and Civil War-style battlefields rather than the asymmetric, guerilla affair modern warfare has largely become, but it makes very little difference what paradigm we’re using as long as we agree that “armed resistance” means “resisting political authority using violence” and that it is bound by all the normal rules of jus in bello.
So we agree on the basics: if Scott Roeder had lived in a world where there was no longer any reasonable hope of a non-violent solution, where all other means of redress had been exhausted–if, furthermore, he had gotten together enough of an army to have a reasonable hope of actually ending abortion in the state of Kansas or even the city of Wichita, and if he could do it without causing the “greater miseries” Paul VI warned of in Populorum Progressio, then, and only then, his application of necessary force to bring George Tiller to justice (hopefully only imprisonment; perhaps more) would have been justified and even necessary. It would not be vigilantism; it would be a defense of life and a restoration of law.
In my post, I called that a “slight” difference from the modern situation. You took strong exception to my use of that word, Rach. All things considered, you’re probably right. The neutralization of the pro-life movement and the raising of citizens’ armies would constitute more than a “slight” difference from present circumstances.
The main area where Prof. Rice and I disagree is one of prudence. While we agree in principle that armed resistance against abortion could be justified, he spends much of the second half of the article saying that those circumstances could never come about. Essentially, he assumes that the anti-abortion movement will always be in the same state it is today: factious, unarmed, and permanently in the minority, with our strongest weapon (aside from prayer, obviously, which is always the strongest weapon) being, today and forever, counselling. He might even be right. But there’s no reason to think that circumstances–and therefore prudential calculus–are immune to change. Indeed, I’d like to sit down with him sometime and talk it out. At the very least, there’s nothing anywhere in his article to support his extraordinarily strong claim, “The use of violence in the pro-life cause must be utterly rejected.” Rejected for now? Certainly. Rejected forever? Possibly. Utterly rejected, without even looking at the prudential considerations? There’s no case for that in the article I just read.
In short, I do not disagree with any of Prof. Rice’s conclusions except that one, which leapt out of nowhere and contradicts a lot of what he’d already written. We both close the door on anyone looking to justify current anti-abortion violence–but, rather than slamming it shut with the force of unqualified condemnation, we both close it gently with prudential considerations and put the key on the mantle, where we might need to use it later. If we disagree, it’s only on how likely it is that we will ever find ourselves in circumstances where we might need to open that door again.
There are a couple of other minor points I would like to address from the article–I don’t think his “Able and Baker” example holds up under even cursory examination–but I sense the CAF character limit approaching, and I don’t want to double-post again.
Thank you so much for that article, Rach–I’ve craved something like it for years.
