War: Always a Tough Call

Like most of you, the news that the United States and Israel had engaged in military action against Iran came as a surprise when I woke early on Saturday. I did watch the President’s speech that morning with the promise that the attacks would be swift, perhaps running for a week. Unlike the Iranian bombing of some months ago, aimed at destroying nuclear weapon production, this action seems to have had two different goals: the elimination of the present Iranian government, and concurrent with that, the uprising of a majority of the populace to install a more democratic form of life.
 
What does the Catholic Church teach about war? Well, it’s complicated because the landscape keeps changing. Military science has constantly evolved since long before the life of Jesus. Consider the stirrup. Wikipedia writes that “the stirrup, which gives greater stability to a rider, has been described as one of the most significant inventions in the history of warfare, prior to gunpowder.” It played a significant role in the strategies of the medieval crusades. However, the introduction of the crossbow in medieval times created both military and philosophical havoc. The crossbow operates like a medieval gun; the projectile can be preloaded and thus fired at will; the archer, by contrast, must load his bow and pull back the string.
 
But morally speaking, churchmen of the later medieval era had another, more ethical problem with crossbows: the weapon could pierce armor, the sum and substance of a warrior’s protection. Armor itself was now obsolete. It was not a long step to personal firearms, of the sort protected in the United States Second Amendment.
 
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in a chapter called “Safeguarding Peace,” paragraphs 2302-2317 address the complexities of peace and war. Para. 2307 states; “The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war.” In 2308 the Catechism concedes that circumstances arise where the danger of war exists and legitimate governments have unsuccessfully tried to settle differences through peaceful efforts. In this context the Catechism puts forward what we have long referred to as “just war theory.” Sts. Augustine [354-430 A.D.] and Thomas Aquinas ]1225-1274 A.D.] addressed these points during the first two millennia, and in 1992 the just theory was put forward thus in the Catechism, para. 2309:
 
The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.
 
 
All other means of putting an end [to aggression] must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
 
There must be serious prospects of success.
 
The use of arms must not produce evil and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
 
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
 
HUMAN SINFULNESS, WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS
 
The above principles for a just war go back almost two millennia, but each succeeding general iteration carries the same guidelines and the same liabilities. Take the first principle that “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.” The problem here is the challenge of reading the future, so to speak. Church wisdom, passed along through the ages, has had a torrid love affair with the word “certain.” The certainty of God can be found in the Gospels and the Nicene Creed. Beyond that, in the mix of sinful humanity, “certainty” is elusive. Put another way, on the first day of my graduate morality studies, a wise professor told us that “there will be many times when [in ministry and personal life] you will not be facing choices between good or evil. Rather, it will be a choice between unavoidable evils.”
 
St. Augustine is generally regarded as the father of the definition of Original Sin. His thinking on primordial human sinfulness was the product of a controversy sparked by the development of austere monasteries and hermitages. In the late 300’s many men and women fled the opulence and immorality of the cities for lives of fasting, prayer and discomfort in the extremes of the desert. The arduous lifestyle of monastic or hermetic [solitary] life led to the term “white martyrdom” or a life sacrifice without actual shedding blood. Historians look back upon early monasticism with great esteem but note that contemporaries believed the choice to embrace the hard way came solely from the human being—free will on steroids, so to speak—and hence a denial of God’s influencing grace. This overemphasis upon human will is known today as the Pelagian Heresy. [See Britannica for an excellent explanation.]
  
Augustine’s gift to Western thought was his theory of evil, i.e., that all our wills stand in absolute need of God’s redemptive grace. According to Augustine, we are born in sin, passed down to us biologically as descendants of Adam and Eve, the first “sinners” in the Garden of Eden. In recent centuries, the Church has tempered Augustine somewhat: it is not necessary to accept a literal or historical interpretation of the Adam and Eve narrative from Genesis; sexuality is a wholesome expression of love created by the Father. It is not the unfortunate gateway of evil into the world. And just a decade or so ago Pope Benedict XVI taught that unbaptized infants may enjoy heaven in the event of their untimely premature deaths.
 
Augustine’s emphatic teaching that all of us are sinners, though, is his prime legacy, at least in my view. Nowhere is this more evident than in discussions on warfare, where to this day the worst of all our evils come together. It amazes me when I recall that Nazi Germany, the operatives in the genocide of six million Jews, was the home of primarily Lutherans and Roman Catholics during World War II. Angelo Roncalli, a Vatican diplomat at that time, concluded that Roman Catholicism, as it was functioning then, had virtually ceased promoting moral justice. Roncalli was elected to the papacy in 1958 and took the name John XXIII. The first thing he did after his election was call a meeting of the world’s bishops for 1962. We know it better as Vatican II. Pope Leo XIV, incidentally, has called upon the entire Church—clerics and laity--to study the documents of Vatican II. [Regrettably, I haven’t seen a stampede in that direction yet.]
 
Naturally, the warfare in Iran—a complex moral set of actions and intentions —is on our mind. Take a closer look at the teachings of the Catechism cited above and then ask yourself two questions. First, how do the teachings measure up to present day questions of international relations, and second, how does present-day catechetical science address the morality of warfare?

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Coming posts:
 
“The Celts and Catholicism”
 
“Misunderstandings of Diocesan Annual Giving Campaigns”