Just War, or Just Another War?

One of the dangers in publishing a summary of faith in any tradition is that the summary itself becomes the substitute for the faith.  Summaries are intended to be outlines on basic ideas in the faith tradition; they are not intended to serve as an exhaustive treatment of every topic in the faith tradition.  Within the Catholic tradition this problem exists with respect to the Catechism of the Catholic Church on many topics, but most often in the areas of Catholic social doctrine where the issues are complex and the teaching on these topics is enormous.  Let us look at one example to prove the point:  the just war theory.  Here is the text of the Catechism on the just war theory:

2309 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 modem 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.

Leaving aside the language herein that highlights the reluctance of going to war that are often overlooked, the passage on just war is preceded by a number of paragraphs that oblige all Catholics to peace making and the path of non-violence in overcoming conflicts.  The recourse to war is seen as an exception to the rule of non-violence, not the rule itself.  The Church in no place commands her children to acts of physical violence against another person. In fact, a more thorough presentation of the topic is found in the magisterial text The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which prefaces the just war theory with numerous references to the papal magisterium, including this paragraph:

 496. Violence is never a proper response. With the conviction of her faith in Christ and with the awareness of her mission, the Church proclaims “that violence is evil, that violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems, that violence is unworthy of man. Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity. Violence destroys what it claims to defend: the dignity, the life, the freedom of human beings”.[1029]
The contemporary world too needs the witness of unarmed prophets, who are often the objects of ridicule.[1030] “Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defence available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risk of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death”.[1031]

The recourse to violence is further cautioned by recognizing the horrors of modern warfare that the Compendium recalls with great reluctance.  At the same time both the Catechism and the Compendium repeat the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that it is entirely just and proper to allow the right of citizens for conscientious objection to war and allowing for other forms of community service (cf. Gaudium et Spes #79).  This recognition further highlights the fact that resorting to the violence of war is not a moral obligation, but an exception to the moral obligation to work for peace and to employ non-violent means. 

Both the teaching on war found in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes and in Blessed Pope John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris radically change the Church’s posture on the position of warfare.  As Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) noted in 1966,

It (the Council) moved away from the static morality of the just war toward a dynamic morality of emergency.  It recognized the intricacies of the present situation, in which what ought to be is often impossible.  Here the alternative ‘all or nothing at all’, for all its seeming rectitude, turns out to be ultimately destructive of all moral effort.  Therefore, the attempt must be made to approach as closely as possible what is morally desirable.  Thus we can at least assert moral demands, even though we cannot achieve our ultimate moral objectives.  (Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, p. 241)

How are we to achieve the ultimate moral objective, which is a world without war and violence?  Certainly a great deal of effort must be made in the area of international diplomacy as an immediate response to present dangers.  Education in the ways of non-violence and conflict resolution are also essential in order for violence to be averted.  The future holy father also noticed another pedagogical approach at work in the magisterium of the Church in this regard:

The Council does not presume to set timeless norms for questions so complex in their technological, political, and historical ramifications.  Rather, it stirs up a feeling of inadequacy about the merely licit.  It sees the licit as no more than a very temporary concession in a history that finds man still in progress and still very far from doing what he ought to do, very far from doing what is genuinely right….The whole of human action is shown to be abysmally deficient when we begin to confess our moral attitude in this matter, and actually in all other matters as well, is far from what it should be.  We recognize that the small righteousness we manage to build up in ourselves is nothing but an emergency morality in the midst of our radical unrighteousness.  (ibid., p. 243)

The recourse to violence, then, is not the norm of human action, but also it represents a great deficiency in what is actually expected of humankind, i.e. the path of non-violence.  However, we find very many Christian moralists who spend a great deal of time justifying the use of violence and very little time upholding the principle of non-violence to which we are called. 

Granted, there is a concession made to the idea of a just war, but the criteria for being a just war is quite rigorous, and yet it seems that every war that comes around manages to meet the criteria of just war according to many Christian moralists.  As Erasmus noted centuries ago:

Some princes deceive themselves as follows:  ‘Some wars are entirely just, and I have just cause for starting one.’  First, I will suspend judgment on whether any war is entirely just; but who is there who does not think his cause just?  Amid so many shifts and changes in human affairs, amid the making and breaking of so many agreements and treaties, how could anyone not find a pretext, if any sort of pretext is enough to start a war?  (Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, p. 104)

No doubt we have seen the pretext for war in everyone’s lifetime, and how quickly we fall into the trance of the drumbeats of war, forgetting our obligation to work for peace at all costs.  Erasmus noted with painful detail the horrors and abominations of war in his own day, and that was the 16^th century!  How greater is the carnage, damage, and evils that modern warfare brings to the world that could be added to this description:

Add to this the fact that usually the greatest wars develop out of the smallest, and many wars from one.  For it has never proved possible to terminate a single war.  One war is linked to another, and drags along with it an interminable and inextricable chain of ills.  These ills are so many that their number can barely be comprehended, they are so atrocious that even an utterly wicked man cannot make right of them.  Yet these are the natural consequences of any war, however just.  Furthermore, the grounds for starting a war are sometimes false, not infrequently contrived, and for the most part doubtful.  Then the outcome of any battle is always uncertain, and finally, no victory is bloodless, and the fighting is always at the expense of the man who had least to gain by winning.  So that I am led to declare boldly that the god-fearing prince will be far more astute to maintain peace, however, unfair, than to embark on even the most advantageous war; for such a war will be preceded, accompanied, and followed by such an ocean of ills, so vast a swamp of wickedness, and so black a plague of immorality.  (ibid., p. 139) 

May all Christians say in unison by our words and actions the words Pope Paul VI proclaimed to the United Nations and that Pope John Paul II re-echoed in 2003:  “No more war.  Never again!”