St. Joseph Church
Bristol, Connecticut

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min
Pastoral Minister

In recent years there has been a concerted effort by many countries, non-governmental organizations and religious bodies at the United Nations to ban landmines on a world-wide basis. This has gained increasing attention and support among U.S. Catholic Bishops. Several bishops in the U.S. including Bishop Peter Rosazza of the Archdiocese of Hartford, have come out in favor of the ban on land mines. This is consistent with the Catholic moral tradition on war and peace. It is from this tradition that I wish to address the proposed ban on landmines.

The call to ban landmines is part of a larger effort to help control the enormous proliferation of automatic assault weapons, anti-personnel mines and small arms of every description in areas of conflict or potential conflict. These threats to internal and global security posed by landmines, the flow of arms, and especially the proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities have become topics of arms control and disarmament discussions that have enjoyed greater discussion in the past few years.

This interest in landmines and their banning and elimination, stems from a number of concerns. One concern is the protection of innocent civilians, especially children, from the effects of exploding mines. These insidious weapons are responsible for the maiming of 250,000 people in 68 war-torn and recently war-torn countries. Exploding mines add 800 people each month to this total !

Another concern in banning landmines is the indiscriminate employment of these weapons on civilians. For instance, many landmines were used in Sudan on civilians by government and rebel forces. In the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980's "butterfly bombs" were used by the Soviet Union. These landmines were made to look like toys and pens---some small object that would attract children to them. The strategy was to have children of the rebel forces injured by these mines. Islamic law and custom would require the father of the child, who was a member of the rebel forces, to take himself out of the fighting to tend to the injured child.

The three day International Conference on Mine Clearance June 1995, estimated that $33 billion is required to clear approximately 110 million mines in upwards to 60 counties. While nations like the United States have responded to this concern there has not been an acceptance of a ban on land mines by the United States. The best that governments could agree on were new provisions to the Landmine Protocol of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons that would place limits on mines.

The proposed ban on landmines has the approval and endorsement of the U.S. Catholic bishops. This position is consistent with the bishop's concern about modern warfare that arose from the Second Vatican Council, the U.S. Catholic Bishop's pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace," 1983 and subsequent letters and statements including, "Sowing Weapons of War: A Pastoral Reflection on the Arms Trade and Landmines," 1991.

The Catholic position on landmines flows from the insistence on the sacred dignity of every human person. It flows from the notion that human beings are not to be harmed in any way because the human person is God's special domicile in the world. Even if exceptions are made in the Catholic teaching on "Just War", this exception must strictly adhere to all criteria of the teaching ! Also, the Catholic teaching in both recognized and legitimate options of "pacifism" and "just war" presuppose against violence and lethal force !

The primary objection to landmines, based on the Just War teaching, is that they violate the principle of non-combatant immunity or discrimination--especially in their employment. The 110 million landmines scattered throughout the world pose extremely hazardous risks to civilians, especially children. In fact, these are the primary victims of landmines ! Thus, such insidious devices violate the discrimination principle and international law.

Landmines also fail to meet the criteria of proportionality. That is, the evil means that are employed cannot be demonstrated to yield a clearly defined good. They are marginally effective in a military sense, and unjustifiable in a moral sense.

Furthermore, landmines--like anti-personnel mines--are equipped with non-detectable materials that are not able to be picked up by the mine detectors, or x-rays of a wounded individual. This elevates the danger to mine-diffusing teams, and they contribute significantly to the possibility that non-fatal wounds would become fatal via medical complications and infections arising from undetectable fragments of shrapnel.

In the light of these concerns the U.S. Catholic Bishops support a ban on landmines. While this would be a small step forward in helping to reduce the violence in our world, it is a step nonetheless ! To believe that the end of the Cold War would automatically result in arms reductions is a dangerous illusion.

We know , in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King. jr., "...that progress does not roll in a wheels of inevitability." Progress comes from a concerted moral and political will that the seemingly impossible is possible. For Catholics, and other Christians it is the requirement of our baptismal commitment that compels to make concrete God's in-breaking Kingdom, in helping to co-create with God and others, a world that is safer for all people, especially children.

Respectfully submitted

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, M.A.
Pastoral Minister
St. Joseph Church

member of Board of Directors, Ex. Comm.
Office of Urban Affairs, Archdiocese of Hartford
chair, Justice and Peace Commission

Compiled by Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Created 8/14/1998