“War may
sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is
always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by
killing each other's children. The bond of our common humanity is stronger than
the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for
choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together
for peace. We can make these changes - and we must.”
These words were
uttered by former President Jimmy Carter upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize
in December, 2002, as the United States was on the brink of war with
Iraq. We have
been in a near constant state of war in our world since those words were spoken
and we find ourselves in another tense moment as the western world debates how to
respond to the news that the government of Syria in its current conflict
used chemical weapons upon its innocent citizenry last month in an attack that
some reports claim killed more than 1,400 people.
Pope
Francis has been outspoken in his calls for peace in Syria and Egypt and all
the troubled places in our world and he is clearly advocating that we
find a way to that peace that doesn't involve more weapons, more war and more
killing. On Sunday, while calling for a September 7 day of fasting and
prayer for peace, the Holy Father said:
"My
heart is deeply wounded in particular by what is happening in Syria and
anguished by the dramatic developments which are looming. I appeal
strongly for peace, an appeal which arises from deep within me. How much
suffering, how much devastation, how much pain has the use of arms carried in
its wake in that martyred country, especially among civilians and the unarmed!
I think of many children will not see the light of the future! With utmost firmness
I condemn the use of chemical weapons: I tell you that those terrible images
from recent days are burned into my mind and heart. There is a judgment of God
and of history upon our actions which are inescapable! Never has the use of
violence brought peace in its wake. War begets war, violence begets
violence."
The U.S. Bishops have joined their voices to the Pope's
calling for dialogue over force.
All of
this, for me, begs the question: what should the Catholic response be?
And can war ever be just?
The
Catholic Church has long held a Just War Theory that there are times when war
can be considered something just and even acceptable; that there are times when
the greater good allows or even demands the action of nations and the use of
force to stop a greater evil from being perpetrated. The Catechism of
the Catholic Church puts it this way:
“The
strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require
rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to
rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time: - 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 it must
have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; - there must be
serious prospects of success; - the use of arms must not produce evils and
disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of
destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. These
are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the ‘just war’
doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs
to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common
good.” (#2309)
There is
a laudable intention behind notions like the "just war" theory -
notions that try to highlight other means of reaching peace; of avoiding
greater destruction and loss of life; of looking at the use of force as an
absolute last effort. But, I think perhaps the time has come for us to
think about this differently and to recognize that something like war never
belongs in a category of justice. That war is always wrong; always unjust
- even if it might be from time-to-time necessary. It is perhaps the very
notion that was can be just that somehow makes it slightly easier for us to
engage in it.
So much
of our contemporary Catholic theology finds its roots in the great ancient
philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. So enamored were medieval
theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure with the ancients that
they essentially engaged in an attempt to Christianize ancient Greek thought,
thus giving Catholic theology a firm framework upon which to
rest. This is true in the development of understandings of both justice
and the theory of the just war.
In
his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
explores justice and injustice in the world and comes to understand justice as
a distributive virtue concerned with what one deserves and whether or not one
receives what is due. He writes:
“Justice
is a kind of mean, but not in the same way as the other
virtues, but because it relates to an intermediate
amount, while injustice relates to the extremes. And justice is that in virtue of which the just man is said to be a doer, by
choice, of that which is just, and one who will
distribute either between himself and another or between
two others not so as to give more of what is desirable to
himself and less to his neighbor (and conversely with what is harmful), but so as to give what is equal in accordance with proportion;
and similarly in distributing between two other
persons.”
Justice,
for Aristotle, then has a proportionality about it. Justice involves
an equality and not an extreme in relations. The just person acts
justly when they act in equal proportion in a given exchange.
The great
doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, takes this Aristotelian definition of
justice and incorporates it into his Christian theological world
view. He writes in his Summa Theologica:
“And if anyone
would reduce [justice] to the proper form of a definition, he might say that
‘justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and
perpetual will’: and this is about the same definition as that given by the
Philosopher (Ethic. v, 5) who says that ‘justice is a habit whereby a man is
said to be capable of doing just actions in accordance with his choice.’”
So,
justice is rendering to each one their due. By this basic philosophical
definition, I think it is fair to say that no war is just. Modern warfare, by
its very definition, renders to far too many people death and destruction that
are certainly not their due. The 1,400 plus people who died in the Syrian
chemical attack were largely innocent civilians - they certainly did not
receive their due. There are 139,000 innocent civilians who have been
killed in the last 10 years in the conflict in Iraq (not the soldier actively
in combat), certainly they have not received their due. War renders far
beyond what is due.
The ever
growing violent situation of our world is a stark reminder that the Just War
theory is now defunct. This theory the Church has held onto for so
many centuries, is simply no longer an effective measure for understanding
military activity in our world. Weapons are far too powerful to ever be
used in a morally acceptable way. The effects of these weapons are
harmful to far too many non-combatant people to justify their use morally.
War, by
its very nature, is inherently directed towards an imbalance of justice.
When one looks at the innocent lives lost, the infliction of tremendous
harm in standards of living through the lack of clean drinking water, the lack
of medical assistance, the lack of electricity, and all of the things brought
about by warfare; it is obvious that the majority of those who are harmed by
warfare are innocent bystanders. They are by the very nature of
warfare being treated unjustly.
As I
earlier quoted President Carter, “War may sometimes be a necessary
evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a
good.” War is never a moral good and so it is not helpful as a
Church to be defining conflicts in terms of justice. There is always
an unease when Church leaders proclaim a conflict to be Just. As
we watch the bombs exploding, the people dying, the destruction of
infrastructure and lives, it is somehow difficult to look at that and say,
“That is justice.” It is simply destruction, pure and simple – even
when necessary.
The
Church should instead modify its teaching and develop a new category –
Necessary versus Unnecessary War. Remove the evaluation of warfare
from the moral realm – or rather, accept the fact that war is always immoral,
even when necessary. The world needs to accept the reality that any
war – all war – is a sign of human failure. There should never be
triumphalism, even patriotism, as one nation wreaks destruction upon another
nation – whether necessary or not. The only question that people of
good will should ask is, “How did it come to this?”
A
Necessary War Theory might ask similar questions. A Necessary War is engaged
in: 1) For self-defense – a nation has first been attacked by an aggressor; and
2) the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of
nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; and 3) all other means of putting
an end to it must have been exhausted and shown to be impractical or
ineffective; and 4) there must be serious prospects of success; and
5) the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to
be eliminated; and 6) the use of arms must be limited and proportionate; and 7)
every effort to strike only military targets and avoid civilian targets must be
made; and 8) the defending nation or community of nations must make every
effort to gain the approval of the world community.
The world
community must accept that although the world is perhaps a more dangerous place
than it has ever been before, it also for the first time in history possesses
the ability to find non-violent solutions to its problems. There
should be today no longer a need for war. Instead if nations
accepted in solidarity their connectedness and sought to address the other
issues of justice – health care, population, homelessness, hunger, etc. – the
imbalance of wealth that pits one nation against another would diminish.
By
eliminating a Just War theory, the Church would be free to be completely
committed to peace - always, everywhere, in every situation. The Church would
be free to encourage and even initiate dialogues that lead to peace and
connectedness among people throughout the world.
Blessed
Pope John Paul II, speaking in Madrid, Spain, in 2003 exhorted young people to
do just this calling on them to be “architects of peace.” He said:
“Peace,
we know, is above all a gift from on high which we must ask for with insistence
and which, moreover, we must all construct through a profound inner
conversion…Respond to blind violence and inhuman hatred with the fascinating
power of love. Keep far away from every form of exasperated nationalism, racism
and intolerance. Witness with your life that ideas are not imposed but
proposed.”
What is
the Catholic position? Jesus answered that in his Sermon on the Mount,
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
(Matthew 5.9) We are called to be instruments of peace in the world and
not to wait until guns are pointed to start the dialogue, but to be engaged in
that dialogue constantly so that we are not in the position of asking, "How did it
come to this?" We are called to be talking to the stranger, meeting them as brother and sister, feeding the hungry who are close and who are far away, sheltering the homeless wherever they are - these and so many things are the building blocks of peace. By the time it gets to guns and planes and bombs, there is very little peacemaking left to be done.
Following
the Falklands War in 1982, Blessed Pope John Paul II said, "Humanity
should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair
phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the
negotiating table that could and should have prevented it."
As this
Saturday approaches, let us embrace what Pope Francis is calling us to - a day
of true prayer and fasting for peace in the world. Let us encourage our leaders
to sit down at that negotiating table and seek the ways of peace together.
If we want peace, let us work for a true justice where every one receives
what is due to them - shelter, food, healthcare, safety, love, joy and harmony.
"God
gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can
choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes - and we
must.”
