May 17, 2006
"The Holy Father’s judgment is also convincing from a
rational point of view. There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a
war against Iraq". ---Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Prefect,
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, May 2, 2003
Although seldom taught or discussed publicly, it
is a morally binding presupposition of Catholic just-unjust war theory
that, before a person can justifiably kill another human being in war,
he or she must be morally certain that each and every one of the
Catholic standards for determining a just war has been met.1 No only
met, but strictly met. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, ß2309). They
must be strictly met before the war begins (jus ad bellum).
Furthermore, they must be strictly met in conducting the war" ---(CCC,
ß2312) moment to moment during the entire course of the war (jus in bello).
Moral Certainty
Evil does not become good simply because one is doing it with a
group of people or because a person with secular authority orders it. A
Catholic, whether bishop or lay person, is morally prohibited from
leaving his or her conscience or the Church’s moral teachings on the
doorstep of a battlefield. A declaration of war is not a moral carte
blanche authorizing the Catholic to kill other human beings. It is but
one of the conditions that must be strictly adhered to if the killing
in a war is not to be murder.2 If there is unresolved moral doubt
whether the just war standards are being strictly followed, the person
is morally forbidden to kill or to support killing in this instance,
regardless of the secular declaration of war. The Catholic Church places high regard on the sanctity of
human life and its belief that each human being—without exception—is
made in the image and likeness of God and is an infinitely loved son or
daughter of the "Father of all" (Eph 4:1–6). Because of the sanctity,
the holiness, of human life per se, the Catholic Church’s just war
theory starts from "a strong moral presumption against war which is
binding on all."3 This presumption can only be overcome by a strict
application of the Catholic just war theory. Otherwise the killing in a
war is unjust, that is, it is the evil of murder. Strict moral
certainty in the application of the norms of the just war theory is the
standard to which all Catholics are held when trying to overcome this
"strong presumption against war" that is intrinsic to Catholic moral
theology as taught by the Magisterium of the Church.
In Catholic moral theology there are accepted moral systems
whose purpose is to guide a person to a state of moral certainty when
there is practical doubt whether an act is good or evil.4 One of the
methods that human consciousness can envision to achieve moral
certainty, where moral doubt exists concerning which is the moral
course of action to choose, is designated laxism. Laxism as a way of
engaging in moral discernment for the purpose of achieving moral
certainty has been condemned by the Catholic Church (Denzinger,
Enchiridion Symbolorum, ß2101–2165, especially ß2103). This
condemnation means that specious moral arguments, those that are
possibly logically precise but which the evidence shows are highly
improbable in reality, may not be employed to justify a moral position
before God. Self-evidently then, borderline tenable moral arguments are
forbidden where moral law must be strictly observed, specifically when
related to the morality of killing another human being. To repeat,
laxism can never be used in any situation as a moral system to achieve
the moral certainty necessary to act in good faith before God
(Rm14:23)—and this self-evidently must include those moral situations
where strict interpretation of the moral law is obligatory. In their
various moral theologies the vast majority of Churches in Christianity
would agree with this understanding in principle, although each one’s
expression of it might differ.5
For example, let us look at the Iraqi War, where human life is
presently being destroyed daily. Given what is known about the war’s
inception and its conduct, rationally there can be no moral certainty
that the just war norms of the Catholic Church have been strictly met
or are presently being strictly met, jus ad bellum or jus in
bello—unless the moral system of laxism is employed to interpret the
evidence and to apply the just war standards. Consider but two facts
among many: How is the Catholic just war standard of non-combatant
immunity being strictly met when over 100,000 Iraqi civilians are dead
and hundreds of thousands more maimed?6 How is the Catholic just war
standard of a "last resort defensive war" strictly met, when the war
was clearly not the "last resort," since the government itself called
it a "preventive" war, and since the reasons given by the government
for starting this war were and have been shown to be incontestably
false and fraudulent. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction which
were aimed at the United States and capable of imminent deployment.
Iraq had no intention of attacking the United States in the immediate
future. Only a formally laxist interpretation of the evidence in the
light of the Catholic just war theory with its strong moral presumption
against war could arrive at or sustain a morally certain conclusion
that this first-strike offensive war on Iraq, which has left hundreds
of thousands of non-combatants dead and maimed, is morally just—jus ad
bellum or jus in bello.
If, according to Catholic just war norms, which only have
validity for Catholics within the acceptable moral systems of Catholic
moral theology, if then, there is not strict moral certitude that a war
is just and is being conducted justly— according to Catholic just war
norms, then the killing in it is unjust. In Catholic moral theology,
intentional unjust killing in Catholic moral theology is always
intrinsically and gravely evil, that is, —it is always murder. It is
never morally permissible. A laxist interpretation of the standards of
Catholic just war theory employed in order to achieve a pseudo moral
certainty that supports the unjust destruction of human life is itself
a grave evil, which if participated in at any stage with full knowledge
and full consent is mortal sin.
Laxism: Abandoning the Cross of Vocation
Laxism cannot be the moral system applied in interpreting the
word "intentional" where the destruction of human life is the issue.
When over a 100,000 civilians have been killed and hundreds of
thousands more have been maimed, spinning such indiscriminate
destruction as mere "accidental" or "unintentional" collateral damage
is a self-evident, morally-debased and morally-debasing falsehood,
orchestrated by "the Father of Lies who was a murderer from the
beginning" (Jn 8:44). It makes no moral difference whether an unjust,
intentional killing is being done by a private individual or by an
agent of government—if the killing is unjust, it is totally forbidden
because it is morally murder and murder is gravely intrinsically evil
without exception. Only a moral position arrived at through the moral
system of laxism could conclude with moral certainty that this present
war in Iraq adheres to the norms of the Catholic just war theory, e.g.,
that killing over 100,000 civilians and maiming hundreds of thousands
more is a strict application of the noncombatant immunity standard of
Catholic just war theory within the larger context of Catholic moral
theology.
But, as noted above, it is forbidden in the Catholic Church to
apply laxism in any situation, let alone as a moral system for morally
justifying homicide—regardless of the individual Catholic's rank in the
Church, e.g., foot soldier or bishop. This being the case, why then are
there tens of thousands of Catholics actively engaged in this war? Why
then are all the bishops of all the dioceses of the U.S.—except
one—justifying participation in it by those in their spiritual care?
Why are the Catholic bishops by silence permitting those who rely on
them for moral guidance to go to this war as if they, the bishops, were
morally certain, within the structures and strictures of Catholic moral
theology, that it is a just war in its inception and in its conduct? If
a person knows that the killing which is taking place is murder
(unjustified homicide), would he not communicate this in no uncertain
terms, especially if he were a spiritual leader on whom people relied
for their proper discernment of good and evil? After all, since murder
is gravely intrinsically evil, it is morally forbidden to cooperate
with it—even by calculated silence—in order to attain some other goal,
regardless of how noble the goal appears to be. Intrinsically evil
means, such as murder or abortion, cannot be used to achieve even the
best of good ends—nor can intentional silence concerning such means be
so used. Those who know that murder is taking place are called by God
to be the voice of its victims, not the moral support team for its
perpetrators.
The Spectre of Francis Cardinal Spellman
Something is awfully spiritually amiss in the United States
Catholic Episcopacy—as spiritually derelict as when the most powerful
Catholic Churchman in the country, Francis Cardinal Spellman stood up
during the Vietnam War and proclaimed, "My country right or wrong!" For
American naval officer Stephen Decatur, who first used this immoral
patriotic expression in 1815, to speak this way is understandable,
since it but reflects an individual’s philosophy. For a Cardinal of the
Catholic Church to publicly endorse that which is contrary to the
Prophets of Hebrew Scripture, to the Natural Law Morality of the
Catholic Church and to the very teachings of Jesus is evil. The
National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) permitted Spellman’s
statement to publicly stand unchallenged, knowing that innumerable
Catholics and others within his canonical jurisdiction and beyond would
assume it to be in conformity with the will of God as taught by the
Catholic Church and would support and participate in the war because of
it. At a bare minimum, was this chosen stance by the NCCB not that form
of material cooperation with evil so common to the person(s) that
William H. Whyte fifty years ago identified as "the organization man?" And, today? At what point, in the process of justifying by
silence the unjustified destruction of human life, does silence become
dereliction of a Divine duty, even if said silence is mandated by
institutional loyalty? At what point do individual bishops or an entire
episcopacy cease to be incarnationally Jesus’ disciples and become
Pilate’s deputies, washing their hands of any responsibility for the
agonia of bloodletting in Iraq? At what point does the tactic of
ignoring murder by myopically focusing one’s attention on diocesan
finances, liturgical music, corporate legal strategies and the minutiae
of ritual become outright evil? Cannot evil manifest itself as silence,
a silence that is the consequence of moral laxism? Cannot silence about
unspeakable evil—by those whom people look upon as their authoritative
moral leaders—make the unspeakable respectable and acceptable? Is what
has been done and is presently being done by the U.S. Government to
human beings in Iraq not unspeakable evil? In diocese after diocese in
the U.S. are not Catholics being left as "sheep without a shepherd"?
(Nm 27:17; 1 Kgs 22:17; Ez 34:5; Mt 9:36; Mk 6:34 ). Are they not being
left by their shepherds to "wander aimlessly" (Jer 23:2, 50:6–7),
oblivious to the cunning wolves of war who seek to devour them
spiritually and to use them to devour others physically? Or worst yet,
are not their shepherds providing the powerful wolves, whom they fear
or admire, with sheep’s clothing so that they can more facilely prey
upon the flock? In diocese after diocese in the U.S. are not Catholics
being left as "sheep without a shepherd" ? ( Nm 27:17; 1K 22:17; Ez
34:5; Mt 9:36; Mk 6:34 ) Left by shepherds to "wander aimlessly" (Jr
23:2, 50:6,7), oblivious to the cunning wolves of war who seek to
devour them? Or worst yet, are shepherds not providing the powerful
wolves they fear—or admire—with sheep’s clothing so that they can more
facily prey upon the sheep? In diocese after diocese in the U.S. are
not Catholics being left as "sheep without a shepherd" ? ( Nm 27:17; 1K
22:17; Ez 34:5; Mt 9:36; Mk 6:34 ) Left by shepherds to "wander
aimlessly" (Jr 23:2, 50:6,7), oblivious to the cunning wolves of war
who seek to devour them? Or worst yet, are shepherds not providing the
powerful wolves they fear—or admire—with sheep’s clothing so that they
can more facily prey upon the sheep?
Catholic Moral Law Protects Equally In Utero and Extra Utero Human Life
Again, to emphasize what can never be too strongly
emphasized when dealing with the matter of the sanctity of human life
as it relates to the destruction of human life: the Catechism of the
Catholic Church explicitly states that the just war standards are to be
applied strictly in order to achieve moral certainty. This is the
requirement in every instance where the sanctity of human life and the
possibility for the destruction of human life converge. If this were
not the case the Catholic Church’s moral stance against abortion would
collapse, because it is morally grounded in strictly using the highest
level of probability in Catholic moral law in favor of the presence of
a human person when the life in utero is subject to possible
destruction. But as noted above, this requirement of applying the
highest standard in Catholic moral theology in order to obtain moral
certainty, where the presence and sanctity of human life and the
possibility of its destruction intersect, is not limited to human life
in utero. Extra utero human life is every bit as much within the
protection and domain of this moral tenet. That is an indisputable
teaching of Catholic moral theology—regardless of who does or does not
employ it, or who employs it only in a "cafeteria" style, that is when
it does not interfere with other personal or institutional interests. Parenthetically here, it should always made abundantly clear
that the Catechism of the Catholic Church is explicit in teaching that
a government permitting or ordering someone to take a human life does
not relieve that person of his or her moral responsibility before God.
That person is required to evaluate strictly whether killing a human
being in a particular war, or this particular act of killing a human
being, is moral or immoral under the application of Catholic moral
theology as it relates to all homicide: The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the
directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands
of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the
teachings of the Gospel. Refusing obedience [emphasis in original] to
civil authorities, when their demands are contrary to those of an
upright conscience, finds its justification in the distinction between
serving God and serving the political community. "Rendering therefore
to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are
God’s." "We must obey God rather than men."
So states the Catechism of the Catholic Church (ß2242).
The "defense" that "The king (or the parliament) ordered me to do it,"
is no moral defense to unjustified homicide, murder. Such a
justification results from employing laxist moral thinking where strict
interpretation of the moral law is obligatory for overcoming the strong
and morally binding presumption against war. Laxism, as a moral system
for interpreting just war theory in order to morally validate in one’s
obedience to the laws of a state or to the directives of governmental
authorities, is as far removed from strict as hell is from heaven. For
Catholics the state is never the final arbiter of morality.
The conclusion from all this is that the U.S. Catholic Bishops
as a public entity, whose moral responsibility it is to correctly
inform the consciences of the people in their respective dioceses on
moral matters, are presently engaged in employing the forbidden moral
system of laxism to justify the mass destruction of human beings in
this war on Iraq, as well as, to justify their silence regarding that
destruction. Whether any bishop is sinning in doing this (Rm 14:23), no
one can judge outside the individual bishop and God, since only he and
God know his subjective awareness of the evil which he is engaged in,
which he is "morally" supporting, and which he is leading others to
"morally" support and engage. But what can be said with certainty is
that this watered-down, laxist episcopal use of Catholic just war
theory is having a trickle-down effect into the parish pulpits and
through them a corrosive moral effect on the immortal souls in the
parish pews. A piously silent episcopacy has created an equally piously
silent clergy which has in its turn nurtured a piously silent laity.
And all this, while tens of thousands of their fellow Catholics go off
to kill and maim other human beings 6,000 miles away in a war that does
not even have a remote probability of meeting with strict moral
certainty the required standards of the Catholic just war theory. But
in the end the silence that flows from episcopal chair to pulpit to pew
is nothing more or less than a disciplined organizational quietist
witness to the same erroneous and laxist interpretation of Catholic
just war theory that Cardinal Spellman advocated with reckless
flamboyance forty years earlier.
No Invincible Ignorance
In case what I have just said be less than fully understood, let
it be clarified instantly, and thereby close a potential moral
"loophole"—a moral "loophole" that practically every just warist who
has supported a war runs for, when the real reasons for the war and
what really went on during it are discovered and publicly revealed. No
Catholic bishop, nor anyone else for that matter, can use the
self-exonerating excuse of invincible, non-culpable ignorance in a
matter of morality related to homicide, unless he genuinely desired to
know—and actively sought to know—the factual truth of the matter at the
time of his decision: "Are there or are there not 100,000 Iraqi
civilians dead and hundreds of thousands more maimed with the numbers
increasing daily?" "How did this happen?" "How is it happening, if
Catholic just war principles are being strictly adhered to by the U.S.
government and properly taught to the Catholic soldiers by their
Catholic chaplains?" "Was the use of depleted uranium planned as part
of the war’s strategy and could this have been known or reasonably
assumed before the war began?" "Did or did not Saddam Hussein have
weapons of mass destruction?" "Did he or did he not have the technical
capability and the intention of using them against the United States in
the immediate future?"7 In Catholic moral theology, a person may not
claim invincible ignorance, and hence non-culpability for his or her
choices, if that person is playing the moral ostrich and sticking his
or her head into the sand of government lies and propaganda in order to
avoid seeing what one knows is there to be seen, but does not want to
see—for some reason. The intentional flight from awareness of facts and
truths, which if known would alter a person’s moral position, is itself
immoral. When it results in participating in or supporting the
destruction of human life it is gravely immoral, and one cannot then
employ the alibi, "I didn’t know," as an escape from moral culpability
However, personal ignorance—culpable or non-culpable—does not
preclude others from seeing and naming, with eternal life and eternal
death seriousness, the moral catastrophe that has befallen the U.S.
Catholic Church and many other U.S. Christian Churches. Moral laxism,
jus ad bellum and jus in bello, has been the de facto moral system
chosen by the U.S. Catholic bishops, and most U.S. Catholics and other
Christians, for justifying the killing and maiming of hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis, and for morally permitting tens of thousands of
American Catholics and other Christians to go off and do this killing.
If the Catholic bishops had adopted the same laxist moral system to
attain moral certainty with regards to the possible destruction of a
person via abortion, no one would be able to ascertain whether they
were for or against abortion. However, whether a person lives in the
womb or in Fallujah, laxism, as the chosen moral system for deciding if
a life can be justly destroyed, is an anti-witness to belief in "the
sanctity of human life from conception to natural death." Planned Ambiguity and Consent-bestowing Silence
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and each
bishop who is a member of it must immediately cease and desist from
engaging in this most grave evil. The Conference and each bishop must
unambiguously inform those for whom they are morally responsible that
Catholics must not support or participate in this war. The bishops must
be as unequivocally straightforward in their condemnation of
unjustified killing in Iraq as they are with their condemnation of
unjustified killing in the womb. They must insist that Catholics must
neither support nor participate in this killing because this killing is
murder, according to the required strict application of Catholic just
war theory standards within the context of Catholic moral theology and
moral systems.
There is no other morally acceptaible alternative. When confronted with
murder, silence serves the murders and those who profit from murder,
never the victims. Silence is a choice and therefore is subject to
discernment as to whether it is in conformity with the call of the
moral will of God as revealed by Jesus. The Bishops’ calculated witness
of planned ambiguity and consent-bestowing silence—not to mention the
jingoism that they are passively permitting to pass as Catholic moral
theology—is cooperation with and complicity in unjustified killing. To
justify a grave evil is to promote that grave evil. Silence gives
consent, especially where a serious moral matter is concerned and where
the silent person is understood to be an official moral leader.
For bishops to remain silent in the face of a grave evil,
knowing their silence will be interpreted and used as a sign of moral
acceptability, is to bestow upon evil a nonverbal, body language
"imprimatur." This then allows people to engage in the evil with a
clear conscience because the "imprimatur" communicates loudly and
clearly that, "We bishops may disagree with the policies, practices and
politics relating to this war. But, there is nothing about them that
would undermine our moral certainty that the strong moral presumption
against war has been overcome by the strict application of Catholic
just war theory. Therefore you may take part in this war and support it
if you wish." To confer upon a person a clear conscience in relation to a
form of homicide is to remove a major barrier to engaging in that
activity. It is also to supply a significant tool by which others can
recruit people for the activity. A silent, nonverbal, body language
"imprimatur" Such an "imprimatur" in a capitalist society or in a
communist society is worth its weigh in gold. To a government planning
to go to war or at war, it is worth more than ten battalions or ten
battleships or ten television networks. A silent, nonverbal, body
language "imprimatur," however, can also be cooperation with
unjustified intentional homicide. In the case of the present war in
Iraq it pointedly appears to be that—despite its enormous value in the
secular domain.8
Undermining Catholic Moral Authority and Moral Theology
The present episcopal witness is also publicly undermining the
entire structure of the Catholic Church’s moral theology and moral
authority in the United States and beyond. A moral authority that
authorizes by public witness a laxist system of moral discernment
regarding mass homicide has, thereby, concretely morally validated
every possible choice of human behavior. The semblance of a
justification can be found for any act—especially where some desire,
pleasure or self-interest of the actor is at stake. If the official
moral leaders and teachers of the U.S. Catholic Church can employ a
laxist interpretation of Catholic moral principles vis a vis the mass
homicide of war, rather than interpreting just war standards strictly
as required by the Church’s own teaching, then why cannot every
Catholic in every situation use the same laxist interpretive paradigm?
If the episcopal teachers of moral theology validate by their public
witness an Orwellian doublespeak inversion of meaning then the word lax
would be permitted to masquerade as strict. This would allow laxism to
appear to be an acceptable moral system when doubt exists as to whether
an activity is mass murder or not. Moral consistency would dictate that
the same Orwellian charade of moral discernment be available to all
Catholics in all moral matters.
Laxism would thereby become an acceptable moral system of
interpretation in relationship to all human behavior as serious as, or
less serious than, mass murder—albeit under cover of the nomenclature
of a newly defined meaning for strict. Lest it be perceived as absurd
that such an Orwellian inversion of meaning could take place in the
Church, consider the moral logic that has been used to render nugatory
in Christian moral theology Jesus’ teaching, "Love your enemies."
Burning Jews, heretics and witches at the stake, torture, wars,
abortions, political oppression, shaming, violent revolutions, slavery,
indeed practically every form of inhumanity and cruelty imaginable, has
been interpreted by the Christian Churches at one time or another to be
morally consistent with following Jesus’ command to "Love your
enemies." Where the moral will of some god other than the God revealed
in and by Jesus becomes the standard by which Christians make their
decisions, history shows that it takes almost no effort to logically,
theo-logically and emotionally "see" hate as love, fear as freedom,
evil as good, domination as service and lax as strict. The time has come for the Catholic bishops of the United
States to publicly repent, to publicly change their minds and their
behavior regarding this matter of human slaughter in Iraq. As their
silence has given consent to mass murder, as well as, consent to the
use of a condemned moral system (laxism), so now let them reclaim their
moral tradition and moral authority by saying, with one voice, in
language that the simplest soul can comprehend: "This war is unjust and
killing in it is murder according to Catholic moral theology.
Therefore, our Catholic men and women can no longer participate in it
or support it."
Unjustified Killing Is Not Open to Ex Post Facto JustificationFinally,
while it is not precisely on the topic of this essay, let there be no
belated, contorted, retroactive duck-and-cover efforts at
self-justification. It is morally unacceptable to maintain that, "While
we started the killing unjustly, we cannot now stop killing since we
are there killing. We will only stop killing the other side when the
other side, whom we have unjustly attacked, stops killing us and those
who have aligned themselves with us." Unjustified killing does not
become justified when the party, that the unjust lethal aggressor
intends to kill, defends itself from the lethal aggressor. In Catholic
just war theory, an international United Nations peacekeeping operation
may be morally acceptable in Iraq to restore order to a society which
the United States has ravaged. But the unjust, lethal aggressor
responsible for initiating the carnage and chaos has no moral right to
any longer be present in that society under the phony auspices of being
a concerned and benign peacekeeper. It is absurd to make the child
abuser the person in charge of the rehabilitation of the abused.
Nonetheless, an unjust lethal aggressor does have the moral obligation,
as does the child abuser, to finance the restoration of what is
destroyed—which of course can never include quenching the soul-searing
pain it has caused by the loss of life, limb, love, sanity and family
for hundreds of thousands of human beings in Iraq and in the United
States.
Blind Guides
The Catholic bishops of the United States today are doing great
harm to the Church Universal, to the U.S. Catholic Church, to the
people of Iraq, and to the American people. By their chosen silence
they have become moral accessories to unjustified woe, waste and
desolation in human life. Accessories are enablers. The bishops by
continuing to project, via their silence, an aura of strict moral
certainty with respect to this war on Iraq are a significant moral
support apparatus for recruiting for it, for voting for it, for
electing representatives who endorse it and for continuing to kill and
maim people in it. The U.S. bishops, however, by taking this morally
laxist position are acting in lockstep with a
seventeen-hundred-year-old modus operandi made visible in all the
Churches of Christianity—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Theirs is
but the contemporary Americanized meme of the old Constantinian
pastoral practice of pious and politically street-smart "blind guides"
(Mt 15:14) leading those they have kept blind down the primrose path of
holy homicide on behalf of the local power brokers, economic elites and
lords of war—instead of leading their flocks along the Way that the
Lamb of God teaches by word and deed.9
It is time to stop! A laxist moral system of interpretation is
forbidden because it undermines all obedience to morality. The de facto
witnessing to its validity is a most grave episcopal failure—especially
when applied where a strict interpretation is obligatory. Such a
witness is the public camouflaging of evil under the veneer of good and
beneath the trappings of Christian religiosity. It is giving a false,
misleading, Orwellian doublethink witness concerning the Way of Eternal
Life. It is placing "is" where "is not" belongs. A bishop’s supreme
obligation, as a bishop, before God and to his people is the salvation
of souls. Being a CEO administering and protecting the assets of a
corporation is a secondary episcopal occupation, if that. When the
latter of these tasks controls the interpretation of the former, rather
than the former controlling the operations of the latter, then an
about-face is the only way back to being faithful to the vocation to
which one has been called by Christ-God. This is a vocation to shepherd
along the Way of Eternal Salvation those whom God has entrusted to you.
It is a commission to protect His lambs, His anawim, from the craft of
the wolves of evil and to feed His sheep with the teachings of Jesus
and with Jesus.
Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance
to know whether we are not being duped by morality.
________________
Endnotes:
1. "In a case where he (a person) lacks certainty about the
rightness and goodness of a determined act, still performs that act, he
stands condemned by his own conscience." The Splendor of Truth
(Vertatis Splendor): Encyclical Letter addressed by the Supreme Pontiff
Pope John Paul II to all the bishops of the Catholic Church regarding
certain fundamental questions of the Church’s moral teachings.
"Practical doubt is equivalent to a verdict of conscience
forbidding the act until the doubt has been cleared up practically.
This principle, with its profound insight into truth, is held and
taught by all teacher in the Church." Bernard H‰ring, "Basic Principle
Regarding Doubt," in The Law of Christ, Vol I (Paramus, NJ: The Newman
Press, 1966), 171.
2. The generally accepted Catholic just war theory standards are as follows:
a) Just institution: the war must be declared by the legitimate authority authorized to declare war;
b) Just cause: only a defensive war can be morally just, offensive war of any kind is not morally justifiable;
c) Just intention: vengeance, hate, the unjust confiscation of
the wealth or the property rights of others, their labor force or their
markets are morally forbidden intentions;
d) Last resort;
e) Success is probable;
f) Just means: the means chosen must be indispensable for accomplishing the end;
g) Civilian or non-combatant immunity from attack;
h) Proportionality: the harm done to a people by a war cannot be
greater than the harm that would have occurred if the war did not take
place. No defensive strategy, jus ad bellum or jus in bello, that
exceeds the limits of proportionality is morally permissible.
For further elucidation of these standards see the following:
-- Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994), ßß2307–2317
-- Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, A
Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, (National Catholic News Service, 1984), ßß80–110. [ISBN
1-55586-863-0]
--Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace, A Reflection of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Tenth Anniversary of The
Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response (Washington, DC:
Office of Social Development & World Peace, United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops 1993), 9–11.
[http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/harvest.htm] -- John Howard Yoder, When War is Unjust (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984). [ISBN 0-80662-077-3]
-- Ronald G. Musto, The Catholic Peace Tradition (New York: Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1986). [ISBN 0-88344-263-9]
3. Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, A
Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, (National Catholic News Service, 1984), ßß66-78. [ISBN
1-55586-863-0]
4. Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Moral Systems in
Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: The Crossroads Publishing
Company, 1985), 318–319.
Moral Systems:
By this term Catholic theology means not the various
philosophical or theological systems of morality, law, etc., as a
whole, but the various theories as to how one is morally bound to act
where there is a serious doubt whether a [moral] law exists or whether
it applies to the case in hand and this doubt cannot be directly
resolved by closer study, etc. This question does not arise in a case
where a specific end must be achieved without fail (for instance, for
the validity of a sacrament: D 2101) [D, Denzinger, Enchiridion
Symbolorum, edited by Adolf Sch$mnetzer, Frieburg i, Br., 32nd ed.,
1963] therefore the best means to that end must be used. In other cases
the question is answered as follows: a) absolute tutiorism: one must always decide in favor
of the [moral] law, even when its existence is doubtful, so long as any
doubt at all remains of one's freedom from the law; this is a
rigoristic view which is impossible in practice, misunderstands the
moral nature of freedom as such and is rejected by the Church (D 2303);
b) probabiliorism: a person may decide in favor of
freedom only if the reasons against the existence of the [moral] law
are substantially sounder and more probable. To this it can be objected
that a [moral] law only binds if its existence is certain and that
there is a presumption in favor of freedom, a moral value willed by
God. But the Church allows this opinion (D 2175ff.);
c) equiprobabilism: freedom may be chosen if the grounds for it are as good as those for believing that the [moral] law exists;
d) pure probabilism: the presumption is in favor of
freedom if there are serious reasons in its favor and the claim of the
[moral] law is not certain. Probabilism and equiprobabilism in practice
usually lead to the same conclusion since it is no easy task to weigh
the reasons pro and con and the matter is always left to some extent to
one's prudent estimation. Together they represent the most common view
and if they are presupposed, then room is left in these doubtful cases
for other considerations;
e) laxism: the merest trace of a right to freedom
justifies one in deciding against the [moral] law. Since we are
normally concerned with a certainty that is only moral—not physical or
metaphysical—and therefore some semblance of an argument against the
[moral] law can generally be found, laxism would undermine all
obedience to [moral] law and general norms of conduct. It is condemned
by the Church (D 2101-2165, especially 2103).
See also:
F. J. Connell, "Systems of Morality," in New Catholic
Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Thomson Gale, 2002), 876–880. [ISBN
0-7876-7694-2]
Bernard Haring, "The True Basis of Morality," in The Law of Christ, Vol I (Paramus, NJ: The Newman Press, 1966), 175–189.
5. Because of the structure of human consciousness the
possibility of doubt is cognitively impossible to completely escape in
this world. Therefore, all human beings and by extension all Churches,
religions, theologies and philosophies have to work with approximately
the same set of moral systems elucidated above. How they work with them
and how they name them may or may not be consistent with Catholic moral
theology, but work with them they must since practical moral doubt is a
universal phenomenon. Yet choices concerning what is good and what is
evil have to be made in the face of it. Even if a person’s governing
law of conscience is not a precisely written panoply of moral rules and
regulations but something as simple and as straightforward as "To do
God’s will" or "To love as Jesus loves," or "To be a good person,"
there is no escaping the possibility of moral doubt arising in a
particular situation. Hence there is no way to avoid utilizing one or
the other of the moral systems in order to resolve "What is God’s will
here?" or "What does it mean to love as Jesus loves in this situation?"
or "What does being a good person call for here?". Likewise there is no
way to avoid one or the other of the moral systems in applying
concretely a highly detailed moral code, if that is one’s norm or law
of conscience. So while this essay is written through the lens of
Catholic just-unjust war moral theology, the moral realities it deals
with are not only Catholic, they are also catholic.
6. Lancet (2004). Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion
of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey. 364:9448;1857–1864.
This survey compared mortality data for the fifteen-month period before
the Iraq invasion (January 1, 2002, to March 18, 2003) with the
eighteen-month period after the invasion (March 19, 2003, to September
20, 2004). Les Roberts, Ph.D., Center for International Emergency
Disaster and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health, Baltimore, MD, was the lead investigator in the field. The Lancet article noted that the U.S. Government’s official
position on the issue of the Iraqi body count was stated by General
Tommy Franks, "We don’t do body counts." Investigator Findings: "We estimate that 98000 more deaths
than expected happened after the invasion outside of Falluja[h] and far
more if the outlier Falluja[h] cluster is included. The major causes of
death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular
accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion
violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were
widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed
to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition
forces were women and children. The risk of death from violence in the
period after the invasion was 58 times higher than in the period before
the war."
NOTE: The Lancet, published in Great Britain, is one of the
premier peer-review medical journals in the world, normally read only
by people who possess the expertise to comprehend the highly detailed
medical, scientific and mathematical concepts with which findings are
arrived at and presented. However, the results of this particular
research project made their way into popular mass media world-wide. The
entire study with commentary is available on The Lancet website
(www/thelancet.com).
It should also be noted that the information contained in this
study was gathered before September 21, 2004. An enormous amount of
carnage has occurred since that time.
7. The following is from an interview given by John F.
Donoghue, Catholic Archbishop of Atlanta, GA, a few days after the
beginning (3/19/03) of the war on Iraq and published in the Georgia
Bulletin (3/27/03), a Catholic diocesan weekly:
The Pope and other leaders had said we have to use diplomacy.
We’ve tried that and you constantly get the same answer back from
Saddam…I think Saddam does have weapons of mass destruction. I think
eventually he would make a preemptive strike on us…[President Bush] has
the right and the obligation to protect the citizens of this country
when he thinks all avenues have been exhausted…I think diplomacy has
run its course. How much proof do you need…I don’t know where else we
could go. He (Saddam) could have killed thousands of people with a
preemptive strike. I think he eventually would make a preemptive strike
on us…I don’t think human life means anything to him…Do you have to
wait until Saddam makes a first strike before you can go to war? I
don’t think so."
It is nearly impossible to rationally fathom how an intelligent
man—seeing scores of millions of people around the world publicly
demonstrating against the need for a war on Iraq, against the Bush
administration’s and the U.S. media’s claims that Iraq has weapons of
mass destruction—could with strict moral certainty come to the above
moral conclusion. It is even more difficult to understand how strict
moral certainty is achieved when the two top weapons inspectors and
evaluators of Iraq’s weapons programs for the United Nations, Hans Blix
and Maj. Scott Ritter, USMC, were continually and publicly saying there
are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor any capability of
producing such weapons in the foreseeable future. The Archbishop’s
ability to achieve strict moral certainty with regard to morally
endorsing the war on Iraq becomes even more strange once it is
recognized that he had direct access to one of the best intelligence
gathering operations on the planet, the Vatican’s Secretary of States
Office, and either did not consult it or did not believe it, since this
Office opposed the war as morally not justifiable. How can an Archbishop overcome with moral certainty the
Catholic Church’s morally binding strong presumption against war by the
strict application of the Catholic just war theory when the Vatican
itself is telling him the conditions for a just war under Catholic
moral teaching are not met here? Could he possibly be unaware of
Cicero’s historical validated caveat that, "The first casualty of war
is truth."? Does he not know that the renowned Catholic moral
theologian, Rev. Bernard H‰ring, says that: "The first rule of prudence
is factum non praesumitur, sed probari debet, a fact, an act or action,
may not legally be 'presumed" to exist or have taken place, but must be
demonstrated."
In order for Catholic just war theory—or any just war theory—to
properly function it depends on factual accuracy. Therefore strict
moral certainty in regard to the facts one is employing to justify
killing other human beings is mandatory, if the strong moral
presumption against war is to be overcome. How then, in the face of all
of the above, does a highly educated man rationally arrive with strict
moral certainty at the conclusion that going to Iraq and killing people
is morally justified, and then publicly communicate that conclusion to
those immortal souls who rely on him for authentic moral guidance in
discerning good from the snares and deceits of the Evil One?
8. On March 19, 2003, the day that the war on Iraq began,
Bishop Wilton Gregory, then the President of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops issued a formal statement concerning the war on behalf
of the U.S Catholic bishops. The statement contained many good and
noble moral and spiritual thoughts. But the critical sentence in the
entire statement is: "We support those who accepted the call to serve
their country in a conscientious way in the armed forces." By any
rational interpretation of that sentence, it has to mean that the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops is morally certain that the strong moral
presumption against this war has been overcome by the strict
application of the standards of the Catholic just war theory .
Otherwise no bishop could make such a public statement, because he
would then be in a state of moral doubt concerning whether the killing
and maiming of people that was to take place was justified. But as
noted earlier, in Catholic moral theology it is not permitted to act in
a state of moral doubt. One must only act with moral certainty—and in
those events where human life is subject to possible destruction or
where the validity of a sacrament is at stake, moral doubt can be
resolved and moral certainty attained only by a strict application of
the law. The moral maxim or reflex principle that can normally be
employed to achieve moral certainty, namely, "In doubt the possessor is
to be favored," is not morally available where the destruction of human
life is the issue of conscience. It goes without saying that the moral
system of laxism is also completely out of the question as a means of
achieving moral certainty where doubt exists regarding whether it is
morally justified to kill a person. Again to repeat what has been said
before but cannot be repeated too often because of a systemic
operational malformation of conscience throughout not only the Catholic
Church, but also, if truth be told, throughout most of the Churches of
Christianity: Because killing a person is legally justified, this does
not mean that in this particular instance (war or capital punishment)
it is morally justified. Likewise, because Catholic moral theology, in
the justified homicide tradition, accepts that it is sometimes possible
to morally kill a person, this does not mean that in this particular
case the conditions that Catholic moral theology demands in order to
acquire the obligatory strict moral certainty have been met.
It is not that Bishop Gregory as the spokesperson for the U.S.
bishops does not know how to explicitly and unequivocally declare that
something is morally unjustified and therefore prohibited as an option.
At one point he states, "Any decision to defend against Iraq’s weapons
of mass destruction by using our weapons of mass destruction would be
clearly unjustified." So here at least, in this one aspect related to
the war on Iraq, he is morally certain that the strict application of
Catholic just war theory would not allow for a particular tactic.
A parenthetical moral query in terms of Catholic just war
theory and the above moral declaration by the President of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops is critically pertinent here: Are not,
armor-piercing bullets and shells made with depleted uranium, weapons
of indiscriminate mass destruction? Why? Because when fired, depleted
uranium "tipped’ weapons set-off an uncontrollable and widespread
release of the lethal radioactive and toxic dust particles of uranium
oxide that kill and maim people randomly—and will continue this
unconfined death-dealing effect process well beyond the duration of the
war.
Consider the following scientific, medical and historical facts:
-- The U.S. left 300–800 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq after the first Gulf War;
-- Prior to that war the American military did an in depth
analysis of DU weapons and warned that the radiation and heavy metal
released by them under battlefield conditions could cause kidney, lung
and liver damage, chromosomal damage, neurocognitive disorders and a
variety of cancers;
-- The American Gulf War Veterans Association reports that of
the 670,000 military personnel sent to Iraq for Gulf War I half have
reported serious illness and one–third are chronically ill with most in
their mid-thirties at a time in their lives when they should be in the
prime of health;
-- DU, uranium 238, is a potent radioactive carcinogen. When
used to tip shells and bullets it produces aerosolized particles which
then enter lungs, open wounds, the food chain and water. Once taken
into the human body it can produce cancer of the lungs, bones, blood or
kidneys;
-- Four and a half billion years after a DU round explodes, the
radiation in the area of the explosion is still half as potent as it
was on the day it was released;
-- A child playing with a spent DU shell for one hour has
received in that hour twice as much radiation exposure as he or she
would have normally received in a whole year;
-- Tons of radioactive waste are polluting major Iraqi urban
centers. Spent DU shells litter the ground. Millions of DU rounds have
been poured into Iraq by U.S. and British military operations;
-- Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to radiation exposure than are adults;
--After Gulf War I pediatricians reported a six to twelve times increase in children in Basra with childhood leukemia;
--The Iraqi National Ministry of Health has produced for
international health conferences detailed epidemiological reports and
statistical studies showing a six-fold increase in breast cancer, a
five-fold increase in lung cancer and a 16-fold increase in ovarian
cancer;
--Dr. Huda Ammash dedicated herself to scientifically
documenting and reporting on the alarming rise of cancers and birth
defects in Iraq after Gulf War I. Two month after Gulf War II began she
was arrested by the U.S. Military and imprisoned. She was charged with
building weapons of mass destruction;
--A thorough understanding of the power of DU weapons, to be
weapons of indiscriminate destruction of people and of large areas of
land into the indefinite future, was completely available in the public
domain on a worldwide basis at least since 1995. Also available was the
fact the United States had employed such weapons on a significant scale
in Gulf War I;
-- Since DU weapons were used in Gulf War I without any sign of
remorse or concern for having used them, the probability was in the
99th percentile that they would be employed at least as extensively in
Gulf War II;
-- Dr. Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, wrote in an editorial
in the Baltimore Sun on October 6, 2002: "Do President Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld understand the medical consequences of the 1991 War and
the likely health effects of the next one they are planning? If they
don’t, their ignorance is breathtaking. Even more incredible, though,
and much more likely, is that they do understand but don’t care."
Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter on Catholic Moral
Theology, Veritatis Splendor, states that: "Certainly, in order to have
a 'good conscience’ (1 Tim 1:5), man must seek the truth and must make
judgments in accordance with that same truth." Bernard H‰ring in his
eminent treatise on moral theology, The Law of Christ, Vol. 1, says:
"The effort one is obliged to make in order to acquire certainty is to
be measured by the importance of the action itself and the consequences
which are anticipated." How, in light of all that has been said above,
is it even conceivable that a person strictly interpreting Catholic
just war theory could rationally arrive at a state of moral certainty
that such weapons were morally permissible? If they are not morally
permissible then Catholic soldiers, pilots, etc., would be morally
forbidden from using them because their use would be unjustified, that
is, the moral equivalent of murder or of attempted murder. Consider: If
a child dies from a cancerous brain tumor which was initiated by
exposure to the radioactive and toxic dust released by the explosion of
a DU weapon, who is her killer? George Bush? Richard Cheney? Donald
Rumsfeld? Condoleezza Rice? The U.S. Catholic Bishops? The soldier in
Iraq who is using this type of munition to kill the enemy? God? No one?
Is not Iraq today saturated with uranium contamination from
these DU munitions and is their toxicity not at this very hour
indiscriminately initiating and feeding the lethal destruction of
people’s internal bio-chemical milieu (neurological, reproductive,
genetic, respiratory, digestive, excretory, immunological), and will
this not continue into the indefinite future? How does a Catholic
bishop rationally arrive with strict morally certainty at the
conclusion that uranium tipped weapons are NOT morally unjustified
weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction? How does he arrive at
strict moral certitude that a war that has every intention of employing
such weapons on a large scale is a just war according to the stringent
standards of the Catholic Just War Theory? How does he arrive with
strict moral certainty at the decision to remain silent as members of
the Body of Christ who are in his spiritual care go off to kill and
contaminate and to be killed and to be contaminated by this heinous
instrument of indiscriminate destruction? What does respect for life,
reverence for life and the sanctity of human life mean when this is
what is included in it?
9. One of countless examples of the American Hierarchy acting
as "blind guides" leading Catholics into war, Catholics whom they have
kept as morally blind as themselves, occurs on April 18,1917. Cardinal
James Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, writes in a letter to
President Woodrow Wilson, that is signed not only by him but also by
the other U.S. Archbishops, "We are all true Americans…Our people, as
ever, will rise as one man to serve the nation." Cardinal Gibbons on
the threshold of the U.S. entrance into the demented hellhole of WWI
also writes, that when war is declared "the duty of a citizen [is]
absolute and unreserved obedience to his country’s call."
A second illustration of this terrible ongoing problem in
which many of the American Catholic Hierarchy are ensnared can be found
fifty years later in regard to yet another war of the U.S. Government.
In moral defense of a war—that the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton,
referred to in 1966 as "an overwhelming atrocity," that was taking
place in a country that in 1967 Daniel Berrigan, S.J., called "the land
of the burning children"—Cardinal John O’Connor, then Military Chaplain
O’Connor, wrote a 256-page book in 1968 entitled, A Chaplain Looks at
Vietnam. The Forward of the book is by the Republican Leader of the
U.S. Senate, Senator Everett Dirksen. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey
gives the book a wholehearted endorsement on its front and back flaps.
The back cover notes that "Commander John J. O’Connor…holds [an] M.A.
degree in Advanced Ethics." The book received extensive positive
coverage in the secular and the Catholic press and soon became a moral
and a morale handbook for military chaplains. It also became an
apologetics primer for bishops, priests and ministers who were morally
approving of members of their flocks going to Vietnam to kill people on
behalf of the American cause. Indeed, the Commandant of the Marine
Corps (General Leonard F. Chapman), acting as "top brass," issued an
official bulletin touting the book to officers in his chain of command
and stating that it provides "a reassurance for the serviceman that his
participation in Vietnam is just, and that he is fulfilling an
obligation to his country." [See below for an exact replica of this
order.]
It is telling, however, that nowhere in the 256 pages of this
Catholic Military Chaplain’s book is Jesus mentioned, let alone quoted,
even once, to morally justify a position that is taken. The book could
have been written exactly as it is if the incarnation, life, teachings,
death and resurrection of Jesus never happened. Any secular moral
philosopher could have written it. So why use the title, A Chaplain Looks at Vietnam, since
Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the presentation of the contents?
Why should a Christian Chaplain write and publish a book that any
philosopher or political scientist could have written word for word?
Why were so many major secular supporters of the war so zealous in
their desire to get this utterly unoriginal defense of the war widely
distributed? The answer, of course, is that the medium of a message is
as much a part of a message as the words. Chaplain O’ Connor brings to
the verbal message the loud and clear unwritten, nonverbal message that
the U.S. war in Vietnam is in conformity with the will of God as
revealed by Jesus, or at least as understood by the Church. Therefore
no Christian need have any qualms of conscience about going to Vietnam
and killing Vietnamese as President Johnson and his military staff so
order.
Ordination to the priesthood is here conscripted as a public
relations tool to place the war—for political, recruiting and combat
morale purposes—under the canopy of Divine approval, thereby allowing
every Christian symbol to be enlisted to sell it, to recruit for it and
to prosecute it. Chaplain is what "baptizes" the war. Chaplain is what
makes the war and makes participation in the killing and mayhem of the
war a legitimate Christian activity in the minds and hearts of most
everyday Christians. The same book written by Mr. John J. O’Connor, a
Vietnam veteran, would be very unlikely to make it even to publication,
let alone be the subject of the marketing blitz generated by A Chaplain
Looks at Vietnam.
Now, after being morally dead wrong on the most catastrophic
American moral breakdown up to that time, and after retiring as an
Admiral from the U.S. Navy and after being Chief of Military Chaplains,
John O’Connor is handed Cardinal Spellman’s former episcopal chair,
Cardinal-Archbishop of the most prestigious Catholic diocese in the
United States, New York!
However, the problem addressed in this endnote is not simply
the problem of two U.S. Cardinals, fifty years apart, whose religious
work on behalf of ventures in nationalistic militarism has resulted in
untold numbers of simple Christians killing and being killed, maiming
and being maimed, driving others mad and being driven mad. These two
members of the professional religious elite of their Church are but two
magnifying lenses through which to view the consequences of the
morally-blinding pathogen that has invaded the U.S. Hierarchy and
through it infected the entire U.S. Catholic Church. But, this moral
virus did not arise sui generis in the American Catholic Church or in
any other American Church. It was transmitted here as a highly-virulent
strain by European Christians from all their mainline
Churches—Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. For every American bishop,
priest or minister morally blinded in mind and heart by nationalistic
militarism under the cloaking device of Christian rhetoric and ritual,
there are ten thousand European predecessors who have carried this
moral disease across 1700 years. Cardinal Gibbons and Cardinal O’Connor
are but momentary vectors of a long-standing moral malaise in the
Church, which can perhaps be made somewhat more visible meditating on
the words of the Prophet Jeremiah:
Those who administer the Law have no knowledge of me.
The shepherds have rebelled against me,
following things that have no power in them.
Jer 2:8
Betrayal by the religious ruling class—in order to curry favor
with powers which they admire and lust after but which are in fact
devoid of any power to do what God wants done for humanity—is obviously
not a problem that first appears on the scene with the bishops of the
United States in the twenty-first century or even with the
Constantinianization of the Church in the fourth century. Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Isaiah and others are well aware of the problem hundreds of
years before Jesus.
The lust for powers that God does not want his religious
leaders to have—because these powers are impotent in bringing about, or
even hostile to bringing about, His divine design for the eternal
well-being of humanity—seem to be the primeval temptation to betrayal
and to evil that presents itself to people of heightened religious
consciousness. Jesus Himself at the very beginning of His public
ministry has to vigorously fight against this temptation in the desert.
Some Biblical interpreters see His battle against this temptation in
the desert—to choose the use of power other than that power which is of
God—to actually be the beginning of a lifelong struggle with the desire
to confront and conquer evil with something other than the power of the
one He knows Himself to be since the moment of His baptism: The
Suffering Servant (Is 42:1ff). The power of the Servant is the power of
self-sacrificial, nonviolent, forgiving, suffering love toward all,
friends and enemies. The temptation to conquer evil and death by
substituting the powers of the world for the power of the Servant is
only forever vanquished by Jesus, according to these interpreters, when
in Gethsemane He commands Peter to "Put up your sword," and when on
Golgotha He prays, "Father forgive them for they know not what they
do," and willingly accepts the consequences. One of these consequences
turns out to be death. The other turns out to be what every human being
longs for at the very root of his or her being: Resurrection unto
Eternal Life with God—who is Father/Mother/Parent/Love. 
_____________________
Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy,
Catholic priest, author/lecturer, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize nominee,
former U.S. Marine and a committed advocate of the non-violent path of
Jesus Formerly an attorney, he has also taught at the University of
Notre Dame, where he founded and directed the Program for the Study and
Practice of Nonviolence. Along with Dorothy Day and others, he helped
found Pax Christi -- USA. He has written a number of books, including Christian Just War Theory, The Logic of Deceit, August 9, Gospel Nonviolence, The Great Failure, The Only Hope, and The Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love, available from the Center for Christian Non-violence. In addition his articles have been published in The Catholic Worker, Sojourners, America, and numerous others.
_____________________
"There are some Christians who have renounced the god of war,
but more of our church leaders just remain silent. Is there any act of
violence that our government could do which would cause church leaders
who profess their love for the teaching of Jesus to make bold
statements of love? There is torture and they remain silent, there is
imprisonment without charges and they remain silent. There are anal
probes and sexual humiliation and they remain silent. There are
children and women taken hostages, and they remain silent. There is the
use of depleted uranium weapons which cause heinous birth defects and
they remain silent, there are bomblets which children think are toys
but which blow off limbs and kill them and the Christian leaders remain
silent. There is the hell fire use of white phosphorous and they remain
silent. There are proud boastful leaders who use Jesus' name while
committing acts of extortion, thievery and domination. Yet, most church
leaders remain silent".
----Karen Horst-Cobb
divine mushroom cloud: a call to worship
Lost sheep, such were my people;
their shepherds led them astray,
left them wandering in the mountains
forgetful of their fold,
whoever came across them devoured them.
Jer 50:6,7
"If there is any absolute moral law in Christianity, in
Catholicism or in Natural Law Morality, it is "Thou shalt not murder."
In moral law, murder is the intentional unjust killing of a human
being(s). Two Popes have said that the war by the United States
Government on Iraq is unjust. Killing in an unjust war is unjust
killing—murder. Yet, every bishop, archbishop and cardinal who is an
Ordinary of a diocese in the United States—save one—believes, to the
point of strict moral certainty, that the killing in this war is just.
moral certainty they have chosen in the midst of a most grave moral
matter, intimately connected with the sanctity of human life and the
recognition of the sanctity human life, to follow George Bush’s
interpretation of the moral will of God rather than John Paul II’s.
They have also countenanced, without even a whisper of protest, those
immortal souls in their spiritual care doing the same. Something is
very wrong here. ---Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
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