St. Joseph Church
Bristol, Connecticut

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti
Pastoral Minister

A Catholic View of War in an Age of Terror

It is typical of many articles and commentaries in the present day to speak of the change in warfare after the horror of 9/11. Of course, that is especially the case for the United States that had been spared the scourge of modern terrorism until 1993 with the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. The acts of modern terror have been the staple for the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Israel and other parts of the world for decades. What all instances of modern terror have in common is that modern technology, transportation and commitment to a cause can result in small and large scale violence and killing of innocent people. No longer is armed conflict limited to a remote battlefield, today the battlefield seems to be everywhere. With these changes Catholic moral thinkers and the Church as a whole are confronted with how to guide the faithful through sound moral-reasoning concerning war.

Since the time of St. Augustine in the 400's A.D. Christians have grappled with the moral problem of war and one's participation in it. In fact, for the first 300 years the Church forbade Christians from participating in war, with some small exceptions. The reasons for this are clear enough. Christians were forbidden to shed the blood of another, war was a violation of human solidarity under one Father, and often the pagan rites and moral lifestyle of the army was considered dangerous for Christian moral living. By 313 A.D. things began to change with the Roman Emperor Constantine's publication of the Edict of Milan which legally tolerated Christianity in the Roman Empire. Later in that same century, in 381 A.D., Emperor Theodosius formerly declared Christianity the official religion of the empire. With this development the interests of the Church and the State became almost indistinguishable from one another. So when the barbarian invasions from the Germanic tribes threatened the Western Roman Empire men like St. Augustine endeavored to morally justify the use of military force in order to preserve what he believed to be the higher good, civilization.

Throughout the centuries following on the work of Augustine other well known and respected theologians and jurists like Aquinas, De Vittorio, Suarez, Grotius and others elucidated principles directed toward moral clarity and action concerning war based on Christian faith. In the process of this lengthy discussion down through the centuries the Church developed what is called the "just war" theory. This theory of the just war is broken into two main parts: what are the conditions that must be met to morally justify going to war (jus ad Bellum), and the moral requirements that must be honored in fighting the war (jus im bello). These principles are as follows:

Jus ad Bellum

• Just Cause: Christians may engage in war only to defend the innocent. Offensive or preventive wars are not permitted!
  
• Legitimate Authority can only declare war: only those constitutionally authorized may declare war, in fact, war must be formally declared for Christians to engage in it.
  
• Right Intention: unconditional surrender of the opponent is not the goal of the war but rather the restoration of injured rights.
  
• Last Resort: all nonviolent methods must be exhausted before a war can begin.
  
• Probability of Success: there must be a reasonable and measured hope that injured rights will be restored without disproportionate damage to any resulting peace. A war may not be fought if it is probable that the evil results will outweigh the desired good.
  
• Proportionality: before going to war it must be demonstrated that good will outweigh the evil employed to restore injured rights.

Jus im Bello

• Discrimination: civilians and innocents are not to be targeted in war. Military action is to be directed solely toward combatants.
  
• Proportionality: only those means are to be used in war that honor the principle of discrimination and that means are used that confine the levels of destruction so that the evil used is outweighed by the good accomplished.

Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 1965 # 80

Modern day Catholic teaching recognizes that there are two options available for Catholics concerning participation in war. The first option for Catholics is the pacifist option that dates from the very beginnings of the Church. The second option is the just war option. Both of these options for Catholics presume against war and recognize that every party to war is involved with sin in some way. Even if war may be required in a circumstance of humanitarian intervention it is always to be carried out with the understanding and sobriety that the Lord does not wish killing and destruction in life. All attempts to turn such actions into a crusade violate the just war principles.1

The history of warfare, however, has gone its own way. In fact, there are no instances of any war that could match the just war criteria. So if that is the case why continue to espouse this doctrine? Well, because it flows out of the moral logic of being a follower of Jesus Christ in a sometimes dangerous and sinful world. Such a doctrine aims at constraining the activities of warring nations and having some standard by which to judge the conduct of these nations and their leaders. But have we forgotten the pacifist option?

The pacifist option recognizes the real dangers inherent in the world in which we live but opts for a radical imitation of Jesus Christ in offering nonviolent resistance to aggressors. While many have lamented that this option leaves many innocents to suffer the wrath of aggressors, like the world saw in Auschwitz, pacifists note that the pacifist option does not mean doing nothing in the face of evil, but rather, confronting and resisting evil with nonviolent techniques in the Spirit of Jesus.2

The new challenges that face Christians have been in development since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution beginning in Europe in the 18th century and spreading to the United States by the mid-19th century. With the destructiveness of modern weapons, especially with the invention of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, constraints on the use of force are more desperately needed. Even with the introduction of precision guided munitions in the recent decade war remains a bloody and destructive business.

With new technological developments many nations, groups and individuals may acquire weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, chemical or biological. These new threats are greatly straining the constraints of just war requirements and international law prohibiting aggressive war. Today, preventive war has become the option of choice for the Bush administration. The arguments for preventive war in the new political context of modern terrorism are tempting to accept. For, if it is known with a high degree of certainty that a nation or group may use weapons of mass destruction against another nation or group, it is argued that this requires pre-empting that nation or group in the interests of protecting civilians and preventing the launching of an attack against the pre-empting nation. This may sound logical but it is fraught with moral and political difficulties.

Firstly, if one examines the record of warfare almost every nation that has launched aggressive war has justified it by pointing out the great injustices, persecution and threat committed by the rival. One has only to think back on how Nazi Germany railed against the mistreatment of Sudenland Germans in Czechoslovakia and Germans in the Polish port city of Danzig. In more recent memory, Saddam Hussein felt compelled to invade Kuwait over grievances concerning oil. The problem for preventive war then becomes apparent, it can used to justify aggressive war and so the constraints of the just war suffers the death of a thousand qualifications. With those constraints effectively neutralized the international community will most likely become a place of perpetual war.

Secondly, it is difficult to really assess with any certainty what a possible adversary's intentions are regarding the structure of military forces and their possible employment for aggressive purposes. This is the classic situation that political realists call the "security dilemma". This security dilemma is the result of an international environment where there is no supranational authority to control nations. As a consequence, each nation must provide for its own security knowing that other nations may not help it to resist aggression. In the process of providing for its own defense other nations may view such measure as aggressive in nature and they will respond by building forces that they deem essential for security. Upon seeing this development the nation that began to build up its military forces will respond by building more forces to counter the build up in other nations and then we are off to the arms races! Because we live in an anarchic international situation no nation can escape the security dilemma. This dynamic of the security dilemma can yield fear and suspicion of another nation's apparent intentions. One can see this in the pre-WWI era and the Cuban Missile Crisis.3 In the case of the pre-WWI era this build up of weapons and the competition for national wealth and prestige pushed Europe over the abyss into four years of nonsensical carnage. In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. came to within inches of global disaster. The doctrine of preventive war was advanced during the early days of the Cold War but President Eisenhower and others rejected this doctrine as inconsistent with international security and American moral values.4

Finally, for Christians in particular preventive war is a de facto rejection of the biblical vision and reality of present and future Kingdom of God. This radical way of living that Jesus calls his followers to rejects violence and aggressive war. Yet, throughout most of Catholic tradition the Church has not only allowed for just war but has cited that it may be required to stop unjust aggression. So is the Christian peacemaker to be forever impaled on the horns of this dilemma? Perhaps we are, or at least we are until the fullness of the Kingdom God arrives. But we are also reminded that we are co-creators with God and others of this full arrival of the Kingdom, living the Kingdom values so eloquently expressed in the Beatitudes and the parables of Jesus. In fact, Jesus, the "living parable of the Father", calls his disciples to be living parables of the Kingdom of God.5 This will mean that as the Lord's followers our words and actions will continually, shock and scandalize many. They will be words and actions that do not conform to aggressive and violent ways, but instead, offer a vision of the alternative lifestyle of the Kingdom and the way things can be. Furthermore, all of this Kingdom behavior will take place amidst the real world with it real problems. This will require imagination and work that will proffer to the world nonviolent means of dealing with conflict and accepting the risks that disciples are called to accept in offering a vision of not a perfect world but a better world.

Notes

1 Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace:A Historical and Critical Reevaluation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960); Judith A. Dwyer, ed., The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought
(Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1994) pp.977-982; Gerard F. Powers, Drew Christiansen, S.J. and Robert Heenemeyer, eds., Peacemaking: Moral and Policy Choices for a New World (Washington, D.C.:
USCC/NCCB, 1994).

2 David Hollenbach, S.J. Nuclear Ethics: A Christian Moral Argument (New York: Paulist Press, 1983)

3 Alexander Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khruschev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (Norton and Co.: New York, London, 1997); Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace
(Norton and Co.: New York, London, 1997)

4 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon: This is Their Untold Story(Simon and Schuster: New York, 1983).

5 Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology(Crossroad: New York, 1974).


Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D.Min.
St. Joseph Church, Bristol, CT
November 11, 2004