Just War Doctrine

[itinerant1]

In my personal opinion, it is wrong to consider the killing of children as collarteral damage. I don;t see the possibility of a just war in the real world. It might be an interesting theological speculation or exerciss to go into discussions about what constituutes a just war, but I see this as a futile exercise divorced from reality. The reality of war is that innocent children are being killed, and in my personal opinion this is morally wrong.

Right. The U.S. led embargo on Iraq was more like a medieval war siege, the purpose of which was slow genocide.

Weapons of war have changed and that was one of my reasons for quoting Cardinal Ratzinger earlier in this thread: “There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war’.” (Cardinal Ratzinger)

Nuclear bombs, cluster munitions, and depleted uranium munitions are a few examples of the weapons of mass destruction used and produced by the U.S. The very possibility of a war being just is precluded by the use of WMD.

 

[itinerant1]

In our national highway system innocent children are being killed–accidents happen. We should take steps to prevent accidents, but we don’t conclude that the building and use of highways is immoral even when accidents do occur.

We can conclude, though, that driving drunk, speeding, reckless driving and other such factors that significantly increase the likeliness of death and destruction on the roadway is thereby immoral behavior…

 

[sidbrown]

In our national highway system innocent children are being killed–accidents happen. We should take steps to prevent accidents, but we don’t conclude that the building and use of highways is immoral even when accidents do occur.

It is immoral to text or to watch TV and to be drunk while driving on the highway, since you are putting innocent people in a close danger of death. Similarly with the weapons of war today. I don;t think there can be a just war in the real world of today since it is inevitable that innocent children and other civilians will be horribly hurt.

 

[Evenprimes]

It is immoral to text or to watch TV and to be drunk while driving on the highway, since you are putting innocent people in a close danger of death. Similarly with the weapons of war today. I don;t think there can be a just war in the real world of today since it is inevitable that innocent children and other civilians will be horribly hurt.

We can conclude, though, that driving drunk, speeding, reckless driving and other such factors that significantly increase the likeliness of death and destruction on the roadway is thereby immoral behavior…

So we agree that something (constructing and using highways) that will inevitably lead to civilian deaths is acceptable as long as we are responsible and take reasonable precautions (don’t text while driving or drive drunk). This certainly leads us to oppose the use of certain tactics and perhaps even certain weapons. Don’t bomb cities indiscriminately, &c. However, we can probably identify certain kinds of tactics, such as shooting enemy combatants, which are acceptable and are becoming more feasible with advances in targeting, battlefield coordination, and other technology.

I do not think that civilian casualties the other side inflicts upon itself can be counted in this analysis. Otherwise an unjust aggressor could render any military response unjust by threatening to kill portions of its own civilian population if it encounters opposition.

 

[sidbrown]

So we agree that something (constructing and using highways) that will inevitably lead to civilian deaths is acceptable as long as we are responsible and take reasonable precautions (don’t text while driving or drive drunk). This certainly leads us to oppose the use of certain tactics and perhaps even certain weapons. Don’t bomb cities indiscriminately, &c. However, we can probably identify certain kinds of tactics, such as shooting enemy combatants, which are acceptable and are becoming more feasible with advances in targeting, battlefield coordination, and other technology.

I do not think that civilian casualties the other side inflicts upon itself can be counted in this analysis. Otherwise an unjust aggressor could render any military response unjust by threatening to kill portions of its own civilian population if it encounters opposition.

Wars today are just wrong because you can’t avoid the terrible harm and sorrow that will come to innocent people in such an enterprise.

 

[Evenprimes]

Wars today are just wrong because you can’t avoid the terrible harm and sorrow that will come to innocent people in such an enterprise.

I hope you will not be offended if I suggest that such reasoning is theologically imprecise. Terrible harm and sorrow have always come to people in all wars, but consider that some are necessary, for instance to repel an unjust invader who would subject a civilian populace to brutal extermination. The Catechism lists the following as one of the conditions for just war:
“The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
So if the evil we are trying to eliminate itself involves the use of arms, you can imagine how the use of arms to eliminate it might not produce a greater evil.

 

[diggerdomer]

As to declaring a war unjust after it has started or ended, that is Monday Morning Quarterbacking.

Not according to Catholic just war tradition. This tradition involves not ONLY the criteria that should be met PRIOR to going to war, but also conduct DURING the war. Both sets of criteria must be met for a given war to be judged as “just” according to the Catholic tradition. The possibility of declaring a war unjust after it started is entirely consistent with Catholic just war teaching.

 

[phoage]

Wars today are just wrong because you can’t avoid the terrible harm and sorrow that will come to innocent people in such an enterprise.

Well; that makes the decision easy. If modern war is inherently unjust then we must unilatterally disband the military as it is, by its very nature evil. It will be nice to know that in the future, young men will not have to put up with the trials that we vets have endured for so many centuries. How long do you think this situation would continue?

Not according to Catholic just war tradition. This tradition involves not ONLY the criteria that should be met PRIOR to going to war, but also conduct DURING the war. Both sets of criteria must be met for a given war to be judged as “just” according to the Catholic tradition. The possibility of declaring a war unjust after it started is entirely consistent with Catholic just war teaching.

I am sorry I was not clear. Yes; Just War requires that the war not only be started in a just manner but be run in a just manner also. The decisions on operations however are still made without full knowledge of all the circimstances and so must be guesswork. This is what I was refering to.

Civilians are going to be effected by war. However, that fact does not justify the deliberate targeting of civilian life. Targeting civilian life is prohibited by just war doctrine and Geneva Conventions. For example, the targeting of water treatment plants in Iraq with air strikes in order to spread disease and death amongst the population was a direct violation of the above. This initial violation was followed by the limiting via embargo of chlorine and machinery imports necessary to resume water purification.

The deliberate targeting of civilian life and infrastructure is highly avoidable. If a military action, such as an air strike, or the use of a particular type of weapon will cause too much civilian destruction, albeit indirect and not intended, then such air strikes and weapons cannot be justified.

My water treatment plant is used for military and civilian. During a war the civilians get what is left after the military takes what it needs. My defence center has child care for the civilian workers on site. My Mosque is a strong point in the local defense network. My air defense radar site is in the middle of a housing developement. I will armor myself in you good intentions and use them to defeat you.

Nuclear weapons, like all weapons of mass destruction, kill indiscriminately and thus are rarely if ever able to be used with any moral justification. Radioactive fallout and radioactive contamination of the earth doesn’t make us very good stewards of God’ creation, now does it?

All weapons kill indiscriminately. There are no SMART weapons. Sometimes I doubt how smart the people aiming them are but they are the ones responsible. Nuclear weapons can be designed to be used and aimed to limit damage very precisely. They can also be misused. They are much more powerful than conventional weapons such as TNT, which is more powerful than the gun cotton it replaced, is more powerful than black powder, is more powerful than a bow and arrow. Weapons are tools; they can be used or misused.

As to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I said I would be willing to debate that on another thread but you might find my agreement with you on that subject astounding.

Patrick

 

[itinerant1]

Well; that makes the decision easy. If modern war is inherently unjust then we must unilatterally disband the military as it is, by its very nature evil. It will be nice to know that in the future, young men will not have to put up with the trials that we vets have endured for so many centuries. How long do you think this situation would continue?

From the fact that modern weapons of warfare make for unjust war, it does not follow that the military is “by its nature evil.” Every nation needs a strong military, at least for the defense of its citizens in the event of an unjust attack. As I am sure you will agree, it would be national suicide to eliminate the military altogether.

What needs to be eliminated are agressive (non-defensive) war, and WMD such as nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, cluster munitions, DU munitions, and so on; also, the use of torture should be summarily banned as violations of the integrity of persons.

“Last December [December 2008] 90 countries, including the UK, committed themselves to banning cluster bombs by next year. But the US was not one of them. So far 23 countries have ratified the convention. The UK has yet to do so, but the Foreign Office confirmed that it would form part of the government’s legislative programme before the next election.”

The U.S. “possesses about 31,000 tons of chemical weapons agent. Is currently destroying its stockpiles of mustard, sarin, VX, and blister agent under the CWC.”

 

[itinerant1]

All weapons kill indiscriminately. There are no SMART weapons. Sometimes I doubt how smart the people aiming them are but they are the ones responsible. Nuclear weapons can be designed to be used and aimed to limit damage very precisely. They can also be misused. They are much more powerful than conventional weapons such as TNT, which is more powerful than the gun cotton it replaced, is more powerful than black powder, is more powerful than a bow and arrow. Weapons are tools; they can be used or misused.

All weapons do not kill indiscriminately. Rifles and handguns can be used with high precision – just ask a good sniper: one shot one kill. I can fire a military assault rifle with extreme accuracy.

On the other hand, over 90 countries have agreed to ban cluster munitions because they do kill indiscriminiately, and result in excess deaths and injuries to non-combatants.

One can argue that small nukes, battlefield nukes can be used with precision. Perhaps, if one does not consider the resulting radioactive contamination of the environment that will have lasting ill effects on all life forms in the region, including non-combatants.

How smart are smart bombs? When I was backpacking with an Army Ranger Sergeant, he told me that their smartness has been over-rated. His job involved calling in air-strikes, and often the strikes had to be repeated because of the inaccuracies of the bombs.

 

[phoage]

Arguing that the military is OK if certain weapons are banned is somewhat nieve. There have always been weapons and tactics that were considered immoral; usually because they countered or eliminated someone else’s superiority. The only time weapons have been forgone, once invented, were when some other weapon or tactic made them ineffective.

Yes, rifles and pistols can be used with great precision. Check a TO&E and see how many snipers there are compared with regular riflemen. Some of the reasons for most armies changing from the strumgewehr to the assault rifle was the reduction in the range of combat, the lack of time to train recruits to become effective at longer ranges and an attempt to replace p(name removed by moderator)oint accuracy with rate of fire.

A shotgun is a weapon of mass destruction like a cluster munition; just not as wide an area of effect. As a note, when chemical munitions were used during WWI, they were already forbidden by the Hague Convention of the time. they were used any way.

As with war in general, it may take two to tango, but it only takes one to start an arms race. Anyone who does not join has effectively disbanded their military unilaterally in a fairly short time.

 

[itinerant1]

Arguing that the military is OK if certain weapons are banned is somewhat nieve. There have always been weapons and tactics that were considered immoral; usually because they countered or eliminated someone else’s superiority. The only time weapons have been forgone, once invented, were when some other weapon or tactic made them ineffective.

Yes, rifles and pistols can be used with great precision. Check a TO&E and see how many snipers there are compared with regular riflemen. Some of the reasons for most armies changing from the strumgewehr to the assault rifle was the reduction in the range of combat, the lack of time to train recruits to become effective at longer ranges and an attempt to replace p(name removed by moderator)oint accuracy with rate of fire.

A shotgun is a weapon of mass destruction like a cluster munition; just not as wide an area of effect. As a note, when chemical munitions were used during WWI, they were already forbidden by the Hague Convention of the time. they were used any way.

As with war in general, it may take two to tango, but it only takes one to start an arms race. Anyone who does not join has effectively disbanded their military unilaterally in a fairly short time.

You personal definition of WMD is gratuitously asserted and would be considered useless by the Geneva Conventions.

You are exhibiting the kind of thinking that got us into this mess, and keeps us there. It will take a different kind of thinking to get us out.

“War will exist until the distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today.” — John F. Kennedy

 

[sidbrown]

Arguing that the military is OK if certain weapons are banned is somewhat nieve. There have always been weapons and tactics that were considered immoral; usually because they countered or eliminated someone else’s superiority. The only time weapons have been forgone, once invented, were when some other weapon or tactic made them ineffective.

Yes, rifles and pistols can be used with great precision. Check a TO&E and see how many snipers there are compared with regular riflemen. Some of the reasons for most armies changing from the strumgewehr to the assault rifle was the reduction in the range of combat, the lack of time to train recruits to become effective at longer ranges and an attempt to replace p(name removed by moderator)oint accuracy with rate of fire.

A shotgun is a weapon of mass destruction like a cluster munition; just not as wide an area of effect. As a note, when chemical munitions were used during WWI, they were already forbidden by the Hague Convention of the time. they were used any way.

As with war in general, it may take two to tango, but it only takes one to start an arms race. Anyone who does not join has effectively disbanded their military unilaterally in a fairly short time.

Yes, nuch of what you say is true.

 

[minder_bender]

to itinerant1 & Phoage. You are right Itinerant1 when you observed that Jesus did NOT condemn soldiers. Jesus did not condemn ANYONE!. Which brings me to believe it is more the ATTITUDE with which you go about your duties which matter more. “Give to Ceasar that which is Caesars and to God that which is Gods”. I think we mix up where God stands in all of man’s affairs. He stands on that which is Love. This sounds “mamby pamby” but just think on it. Do you really think that God was only on the allies side during WW11? There were thousands of Germans who were true followers of God who also served in the army. It was their attitude which stated whether they were walking in God’s way. I believe this is true for everything we do. There always will be “caesar” demands & rules, expectations, accusations, attacks and justifications but what matters is whether we respond with & in God’s Spirit or not. Phoage, you wonder whether or not you sinned in your attitude in the war? Only you & God would know - but at this moment the Spirit of God is giving you opportunity to shed off any hidden guilt and give yourself more fully to HIS way. War is attack or defending because you think you are being attacked but war is of this earth for protection of possessions or lifestyle. A Christian is free NO MATTER WHAT! This is the Good News! Your ATTITUDE to events is what is Just of unJust.

Civilians are going to be effected by war. However, that fact does not justify the deliberate targeting of civilian life. Targeting civilian life is prohibited by just war doctrine and Geneva Conventions. For example, the targeting of water treatment plants in Iraq with air strikes in order to spread disease and death amongst the population was a direct violation of the above. This initial violation was followed by the limiting via embargo of chlorine and machinery imports necessary to resume water purification.

The deliberate targeting of civilian life and infrastructure is highly avoidable. If a military action, such as an air strike, or the use of a particular type of weapon will cause too much civilian destruction, albeit indirect and not intended, then such air strikes and weapons cannot be justified.

“Those who live by the sword…” is a figurative expression. We choose our own destiny. “Living by the sword” speaks more to a life of violence. Jesus did not condemn the soldiers trade. No soldier was commanded to leave the military service. Jesus merely told them not to oppress anyone unjustly. In fact, Jesus even spoke more congenially to those soldiers who were involved in His arrest, torture, and execution than he did with the Scribes and Pharisees.

No doubt communism and the Soviet Union represent the great evil of atheism and an atheistic world-view. Mother Mary requested prayers for the conversion of Russia.

However, the U.S. and Soviet Union engaged in unnecessary military conflicts fueled by ideology. The U.S. and Russia believed in the same ideological myth, i.e. that the world would be better off under a single form of government. The U.S. believed that government should be democracy and Russia believed it should be communism.

A couple of the many unnecessary military conflicts:

1. Vietnam; see McNamara and the Gulf of Tonkin
2. Afghanistan: The U.S. intentionally provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan; created Islamic terrorist groups to antagonize the Soviet Union; put the Taliban in power after the Soviet Union quit the U.S. initiated war, etc. See The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan : Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser

Nuclear weapons, like all weapons of mass destruction, kill indiscriminately and thus are rarely if ever able to be used with any moral justification. Radioactive fallout and radioactive contamination of the earth doesn’t make us very good stewards of God’ creation, now does it?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not even military targets. The Prez specifically chose civilian targets. He will have to answer to God for that one.

It’s an oft repeated belief that the Church is in no position to judge. Curiously, every prediction the Vatican made about the outcomes of a U.S. attack on Iraq came true, outcomes the Bush Administration originally denied would happen. Did the Vatican know more, or was the Bush Administration in denial?

On another note, many Americans think of WWII as the great war. After all, in hindsight, Hitler had to be stopped. But Americans did not want to get involved in another European war. And Roosevelt said he would send none of our boys to die in their war. Simultaneously, Roosevelt and his administration were working on a plan to pressure the Japanese into attacking the U.S. The result was a seven point plan followed by the Navy brass and the Roosevelt Administration. Historian Robert Stinnett wrote the final chapter on Pearl Harbor, complete with FOIPA requested Navy and White House documents that unveil the whole sordid affair. See Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

Some pro-Roosevelt historians are now saying it was a necessary strategy because America needed to get into the war. As for myself, I don’t agree with that. Manipulating a foreign power to attack your own people isn’t something anyone has tried, as far as I am aware, to justify according to just war doctrine.

As an aside, it is interesting the original draft of Roosevelt’s famous Day of Infamy speech was found, and it was written before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

[itinerant1]

Some reflections by Father Michael Baxter prior to the Iraq War on Catholic Conscientious Objection:

Part I

By Father Michael Baxter, C.S.C.:

Our church challenges us to always think twice before marching to the drums of war, argues Father Michael Baxter, C.S.C. What would you do if the U.S. goes to war against Iraq?

For most of this year, President Bush and his administration have been telling the people of the United States that their safety depends on a “regime change” in Iraq. In the culture of euphemism that pervades our nation’s capital, this means that Saddam Hussein will be ousted by military force and replaced by a president who behaves like the head of a client-state should.

Not surprisingly, Bush’s what-we-say-goes agenda has run into a few obstacles. Key members of the U.N. Security Council and all but one European ally of the United States strongly oppose it, and several Arab nations whose cooperation has been instrumental to recent U.S. endeavors in the Middle East say they will not cooperate with this one. Half or so of U.S. citizens do not think the circumstances warrant a full-blown military intervention.

One need not harbor any illusions about the pernicious nature of rule by Hussein and his cronies to deplore what the Bush administration is planning to do to Iraq. So even though a U.S. invasion now looks inevitable, we Catholics should do whatever we can to prevent what may prove to be an utterly senseless slaughter of innocent lives.

We should echo the pope’s repeated calls for the United States to refrain from aggressive military action (including the U.S.-led embargo) that brings undeserved suffering upon the Iraqi people. We should join with the new Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in condemning an attack of Iraq as patently unjust. We should use all our lobbying resources to dissuade policymakers from the present course. And we should attend the demonstrations that always emerge at the prospect of going to war.

We should do all of these good things. But in addition, we should do one more thing: We U.S. Catholics should raise a “mighty league of Catholic conscientious objectors.”

This slogan was used by Dorothy Day and others involved in the Association of Catholic Conscientious Objectors (ACCO), an organization that supported Catholics who refused to be drafted into the military during World War II for reasons of conscience. As one might expect, their number was not legion: 135 in all. But during the Vietnam war Catholic conscientious objectors numbered well into the thousands, more than any other religious group in the United States.

By this time, Catholic conscientious objectors had received a clear endorsement from the Second Vatican Council, which declared that “laws should make humane provision for the case of conscientious objectors who refuse to carry arms, provided they accept some other form of community service.”

This represented a definite development in the modern church’s teaching on war and peace. Until then the normative position in the church had been that Christians were duty-bound to defend the innocent against unjust aggression by means of military force, so long as it was applied in accord with the traditional definition of a just war: it must be applied by a competent authority, with a proper intention, as a last resort, for the sake of peace, with a probability of success, and without disproportionate destruction. But now the church affirmed the validity of pacifism as well as just-war theory, thus giving rise to two traditions of Catholic teaching on the morality of war and peace.

From these two traditions are derived two forms of conscientious objection: total conscientious objection (CO)—the refusal to participate in war in any form—and selective conscientious opposition (SCO)—the refusal to participate in particular wars or actions of war judged to be unjust on the basis of just-war theory. In their 1983 peace pastoral, the U.S. bishops gave unequivocal support to both CO and SCO.

This development in Catholic teaching did not arise, as some critics have argued, out of a naive '60s-type idealism that supposes sin and evil can be countered by getting everyone to “make love, not war.” On the contrary, the church has come to endorse conscientious objection because it stands against sin and evil.

To a large degree this new development in the church’s theology of peace is rooted in the hard lessons the church learned as it examined the behavior of Catholics under the Nazi regime. It was not, to say the least, exemplary. Bishops wrote pastoral letters declaring their devotion to the Fatherland and Führer, priests preached homilies calling upon their flocks to do their duty for the nation, and Catholic men, with only a handful of exceptions, went off to fight while their loved ones at home generally fully supported what was obviously an unjust war.

Thus it was in a spirit of repentance that the bishops at the Second Vatican Council wrote that “any action which deliberately violates [just war] principles and any order which commands such actions is criminal, and blind obedience cannot excuse those who carry them out.” And it was in a spirit of admiration for the lonesome witness of conscientious objectors like the Austrian Catholic farmer Franz Jägerstätter that they added, “We cannot commend too highly the courage of the men who openly and fearlessly resist those who issue orders of this kind.” The experience of Nazi Germany taught the church that conscientious objection is a staunch refusal to acquiesce in sin, a bold resolve not to cooperate with evil.

Cont…

 

[itinerant1]

Some reflections by Father Michael Baxter prior to the Iraq War on Catholic Conscientious Objection:

Part II

But the church’s teaching on conscientious objection applies to wars waged not only by the Nazi regime, but also by democratic countries such as the United States. For example, even though most moral theologians regard this country’s entry into World War II to have been just, they judge the obliteration bombing of German and Japanese cities and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to have been unjust—the latter described by Pope Paul VI as “a butchery of untold magnitude.”

The call for conscientious objection was also valid during the Vietnam War (which in 1971 the U.S. Catholic bishops said had become unjust due to the disproportionate evil it was inflicting), in the Gulf War (which many just-war theorists challenged on the grounds of last resort, proper intention, and proportionality), and in the present “war on terrorism” (on grounds of last resort and reasonable chance of success). And it certainly applies to any use of nuclear weapons on civilian areas.

And yet Catholics flew carpet bombing missions over Germany and Japan in World War II, carried out destructive operations in Vietnam, contributed to the most intensive air attack in history in Iraq, and currently sit in nuclear missile silos ready to turn the launch key on command. Granted, good scholars and soldiers can and do come down on either side of some (though not all) of these issues. But what I find troubling is that conscientious objection to war is not so much as a passing concern to most Catholics.

The problem, I believe, is that when it comes to war, too many Catholics, like so many others, pledge their allegiance to their country, right or wrong. They are obedient to the nation before all else: before the natural law, before divine law, before the words and example of Jesus Christ, before conscience. The problem is, in a word, idolatry. The nation-state has taken the place of God.

This is not an overstatement. According to Pope John Paul II, conscience is nothing less than a witness to God, whose voice and judgment penetrates to the depths of a person’s soul. As such, it can never be totally silenced, but it can be muted, garbled, and distorted by sin. Sin is something we cultivate internally with the help of our dissatisfied egos and disordered appetites and loves. But this process also operates externally, as our tendency to sin is reinforced by social, economic, and political forces, including nationalist ideologies.

This is why John Paul II denounces the way in which modern, value-free democracies foster ethical relativism and thus “turn into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” This is also why he has decried “the tyrant state” for arrogating to itself the right to dispose of society’s weakest and most defenseless members, from the unborn to the elderly. The pope’s chief concerns here are abortion and euthanasia.

“Abortion and euthanasia,” the pope writes in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, are “crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead, there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. From the very beginning of the church, the apostolic teaching reminded Christians of their duty to obey legitimately constituted public authorities (Rom. 13:7; 1 Pet. 2:13-14), but at the same time, it firmly warned that ‘we must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29).”

What we can take from the pope’s point is this: as Christians, our readiness to come forth as conscientious objectors is essential, it’s a matter of faithfulness to God. But if this applies to the pernicious practices of abortion and euthanasia, it also applies to the pernicious practices of war. Admittedly, the practices of abortion and euthanasia, according to Catholic teaching, are evil in themselves or “intrinsically evil,” while when it comes to war, there are two traditions of moral teaching, the pacifist and just war traditions. But I believe the call for conscientious objection is just as urgent, perhaps more so, given the way that the passions of the American people can be so easily manipulated into supporting war.

On this score, we should admit that Catholics have not been much different. In fact, the vast majority of Catholics are neither pacifists nor just-war adherents, rather they follow the “blank check” approach to war, which means they go to war whenever their national leaders tell them to. Like with most Americans, a spell descends upon Catholics once the president gets on TV to announce, interrupted only by the barking applause of a sycophantic Congress, that “we” are going to war. The apostolic witness is strangely inverted: we must obey men and women, rather than God.
**
Cont…**

 

[itinerant1]

Some reflections by Father Michael Baxter prior to the Iraq War on Catholic Conscientious Objection:

Part III

Conscientious objection to war should be seen as a way for the church to retain its apostolic witness. But what would this mean concretely? Suppose the Bush administration presses ahead with its plans for a “regime change” in Iraq. And suppose the U.S. Catholic bishops and moral theologians declare that waging war against Iraq at this time would be unjust. For the 375,000 Catholics in the armed services this means that they would be obligated to discern whether they can participate in this war, and if not, to change their duties accordingly. It would also mean that the 1,000 Catholic priests serving as military chaplains would be obligated to exhort these Catholics to examine their consciences in this way and assist some of them in coming forth as selective conscientious objectors.

If half of the Catholics on active duty decided to conscientiously object to participating in this particular war, that would be more than 185,000; even if it were as few as 10 percent, that would still be 37,500. Whether or not this comprises a “mighty league” of conscientious objectors, it would certainly make the papers.

It is not clear that raising a mighty league of conscientious objectors would halt an impending “regime change” in Iraq. But it would send a strong signal to the president, Congress, the Pentagon, and others that there are many Catholics in the United States —tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions—who will obey God rather than them; Catholics whose primary allegiance is to Christ and to the church and not (as Dorothy Day put it) “Holy Mother State”; Catholics whose membership in the Body of Christ forbids them to allow their bodies to be used for unjust purposes and evil ends. Catholics for whom conscience is a witness to the voice of God and who, in following their conscience, themselves become a voice of God, echoing the words of the ancient prophet: “nor shall they train for war” (Isa. 2:4).

+++++

Father Michael J. Baxter, C.S.C. teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana and serves as the national secretary for the Catholic Peace Fellowship.

 

[turboEDvo]

So, are we drawing a distinction in this thread between Just War Theory and Catholic application of Just War Theory or are we talking about Just War Doctrine specific to the Catholic Church? If the latter, can I have links to some resources? I’m right in the middle of a book on Just War theory, but it doesn’t apply any religion-specific thoughts to the arguments.

Thanks
Eamon

 

[itinerant1]

So, are we drawing a distinction in this thread between Just War Theory and Catholic application of Just War Theory or are we talking about Just War Doctrine specific to the Catholic Church? If the latter, can I have links to some resources? I’m right in the middle of a book on Just War theory, but it doesn’t apply any religion-specific thoughts to the arguments.

Thanks
Eamon

Have you read the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on War? It treats of “just war” under “The Right of War”.

 

[itinerant1]

So, are we drawing a distinction in this thread between Just War Theory and Catholic application of Just War Theory or are we talking about Just War Doctrine specific to the Catholic Church? If the latter, can I have links to some resources? I’m right in the middle of a book on Just War theory, but it doesn’t apply any religion-specific thoughts to the arguments.

Thanks
Eamon

Just War Doctrine

What is Just War?

Just War and Iraq

Of War by St. Thomas Aquinas

III. SAFEGUARDING PEACE
in the CCC