ARTICLES
April 2003 ARTICLES
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
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Was Jesus a Peacenik?
Catholics and Pacifism
By Christopher Zehnder
May a Catholic be a pacifist?
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, speaking at the February 16 Pax Christi Conference at Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles, said not only may a Catholic be a pacifist, he must be. "I think we fail in our duties as Christians and as a Christian church if we do not teach our young people that killing in war is wrong. It cannot be justified ever again," said the retired auxiliary bishop of Detroit and founding president of Pax Christi-USA, a Catholic peace organization. Gumbleton continued: "We must return to the authentic and real teaching of Jesus Christ. The way of non-violence. The way of active love."
Bishop Gumbleton claimed that developments within Church teaching "show that we are moving away from any acceptance of a just war theology." This theology, developed by St. Augustine "as a way to prevent war from happening," said Gumbleton, was, nevertheless, a departure from Jesus' teaching of non-violence. "The way of Jesus still to most people does not seem attractive or sensible," he said. "And in fact, even within the church, for a while. Well, I shouldn't say for a while. For 1,700 years we have diverged from that pure authentic teaching of Jesus."
A bold statement -- especially when one considers that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated under the reigning pontiff, still teaches the just war doctrine. "Gumbleton's a piece of work," said Charles Rice, professor emeritus of law at Notre Dame University in Indiana, when I read to him what the bishop had said. Bishop Gumbleton's teaching is what Rice calls "universal pacifism" -- and "that has never been the Catholic position; it never can be," said Rice. "The Catechism puts that to rest." But while "universal pacifism is totally inconsistent with the unbroken Catholic teaching," said Rice, "every Catholic has to be a selective pacifist."
Being a selective pacifist, said Rice, is "what the just war thing is all about. The just war is not a dogma, but a method of moral reasoning, because you have to analyze these things. And the three requirements are: proper authority, a just cause, and right intention. The Catechism lists further details: 'the damage inflicted by the aggressor. must be lasting, grave and certain;' war must be a last resort, with 'all other means. impractical or ineffective;' 'there must be serious prospects of success;' and 'the use of arms must not produce evils. graver than the evil to be eliminated.' Jus in bello, justice in fighting a war, requires proportionality and discrimination (non-combatant immunity from intentional attack)."
Though Rice thinks, that in questioning a particular war, there must be "a presumption that gives the benefit of the doubt to the people responsible for the decision" to go to war, this presumption is not absolute. At some point, an individual has to decide whether a war is just or not. "If you're looking at the German attack on Poland, with the government saying that they were responding to the threat of Polish aggression -- that's not credible. It's a false dichotomy to say you are opposed to the war or you favor war; every war is debatable. Every Catholic has to be a selective pacifist."
James Hanink, a professor of philosophy at Loyola-Marymount, agreed that Bishop Gumbleton's insistence, that the just war tradition and the teachings of Jesus are finally incompatible, does not represent the mind of the Church. "I don't think it's the spirit of the Gospels," said Hanink. "I think [Bishop Gumbleton] would have to give some case that he's privy to the teachings of Jesus, because I certainly wouldn't take them to be [the same as] Bishop Gumbleton's teachings."
"Gumbleton is spending moral capital that isn't his to spend," said Hanink. "I think there's many a person who wants to take the moral high road, and here's a way to do it on the cheap. So you say stuff like that, but it's historically unwarranted, it's scripturally unwarranted; natural law doesn't require it. We have the clear teaching of Jesus that it is possible to be a soldier and a clear practice of the early Church that it is possible to be a soldier."
But though Hanink holds that a Catholic may not reject the possibility of a just war, he thinks it is "in harmony with a Christian's vocation" to be a universal pacifist. "But I also think," he added, "that it is in harmony with a Christian's vocation not to be a universal pacifist."
Eschewing all violence, though, is fine if one is merely defending himself; but what if another is being attacked -- one's wife, children, neighbors, or country? Shouldn't the avowed pacifist use violence to protect them? "I think given the rightful emphasis on the universal call to holiness, what the pacifist has to ask in that situation is, can I effectively lay down my life for my brother -- mother, sister, spouse?" said Hanink. "I think sometimes a pacifist can do so; I think we haven't thought as creatively as we might about how pacifists could do so; but I don't think there is a universal obligation to practice a universal pacifism.
"I think sometimes you could lay down your life in a violent act, and it wouldn't be particularly effective," continued Hanink, "and sometimes you could lay down your life in a non-violent act, and it would not be particularly effective. It's not that we have to have effectiveness, but we have to work towards being effective. I could imagine situations in which a pacifist, in keeping with the universal call to holiness, could lay down his life by non-violence, and some people could always do so better. But I'm quite sure that some people could do so better by using violence; but it's a very restricted violence, and it can't be aimed at the destruction of the aggressor."
But how can someone defend another, save by meeting violence with violence? Hanink answered by giving examples. "You could simply interpose yourself," he said. "You could, on a larger scale, go to Iraq and be a human shield. You could, as St. Francis did, go and 'talk to the Sultan.' You could do as St. Maximilian Kolbe did and say, 'take me.' You could, when the Nazis come to the door to ask where the Frank family is, speak to their brutality and ask how they got that way and what you could do to get them to change -- thereby giving the Franks time to get away. And when the lynch mob comes down the street, searching for Jones, you could go out and confront them to give Jones a chance to escape." Etc.
In regards to warfare, Hanink thinks it's "quite in keeping with Catholic thinking to be what's called a de facto pacifist, with respect to modern warfare." Such was Cardinal Ottaviani, who thought a just war was not possible in the modern world, since modern armaments are too indiscriminate; the destruction they cause to civilian populations is not merely an incidental, "double effect," outcome.
This aspect of the question, Hanink thinks, has not been clearly enough enunciated by the "dove" side in the controversy over whether to use military force against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. "I think that the recent comments made by the Vatican, insofar as we look at them as political analysis and application of the just war, have been very disappointing," said Hanink. "It could be the case that some American politician or other talks about pre-emptive attack, but the fact of the matter is that the war started because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The war has never really ended; it is a truce that has certain requirements and they have been flagrantly violated. So I don't see this in any way to be preemptive. The problem is that, given the nature of weapons, there will be, almost inescapably, the indiscriminate killing of civilians. That's the bottom line; that's why it can't be justified."
And with a bow to President George W. Bush, Hanink said, "yes, there is an axis of evil -- evil is a perfectly appropriate word; but the fact of the matter is, you can't use weapons that indiscriminately kill innocent people." Christians ought to acknowledge this and recognize that, even if suffering and death be the result, we cannot resort to evil means in our self-defense. We have to acknowledge, said Hanink, "that suffering and martyrdom are to be expected in the Christian life. And we might just have to suffer. That's the way it is. If we don't suffer this time around, we'll suffer the next time around; and if we manage to get through our lives without this kind of suffering, there are many, many Christians who have not."
Unlike Rice, Hanink doesn't think that, at least today, anyone should give the government the benefit of the doubt in war. "I don't think that anymore," said Hanink. "If I lived in Liechtenstein, I'd think that; but I do not give the United States government the benefit of the doubt. I say, given your track record, show me."
Robert Waldrop, with the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, agreed that a Catholic could embrace an absolute pacifism. "It was embraced by the martyrs, who didn't resist when their own children were taken and tortured in the arena," said Waldrop. But he didn't agree with Gumbleton's assessment that Jesus' teachings required non-violence, for the case of the martyrs was a "special situation," said Waldrop, from which one cannot draw a universal principle.
Though he does not believe universal pacifism is required of Catholics, Waldrop said he "would certainly not advise anybody to join the military. Dorothy Day," he continued, "was a pacifist and believed it was possible to have a just war; but her critique was that the wars of the 20th century were not just wars. The just wars were, perhaps, more in the days when the knights rode off and had battles away from cities -- and that's kind of a stylized remembrance." Throughout the last century, and even today, said Waldrop, "the whole thing has gone in the direction of the military policy of total war -- the doctrine to go in with supreme power from the very beginning and completely destroy the will of the enemy to resist." Even the advent of "smart war" hasn't resulted "even in the possibility of limited war," said Waldrop, "because, actually, it is also coincident with the enunciation that you can destroy the infrastructure of the country, like we did in the first Gulf War, as a means of eliminating the enemy's ability to resist. So they can say it is discriminate warfare -- but that is not what conditions on the ground have seemed to indicate."
"No doubt about it, the whole nature of warfare has changed because of weapons of mass destruction," said Columban Father Thomas Cusack, who works in pro-life ministry at Loyola-Marymount and does parish missions and retreats throughout the Los Angeles area. Still, Father Cusack said he does not think Bishop Gumbleton's opinions are "in keeping with the teaching of Pope John Paul II, which authentically reflects the present position of the Church on warfare, that, even with these weapons of mass destruction around, there is just war."
But the Church has recognized the right to conscientious objection to war, said Cusack. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church," he said, "does state that the authorities should make some provision for those who object to war on the basis on conscientious objection, but that these people have to render some sort of service to the community, instead." The Catechism bases itself, here, on a passage in the Second Vatican Council's document, Gaudium et Spes, which states that "it seems just that laws should make humane provision for the case of conscientious objectors who refuse to carry arms, provided they accept some other form of community service." A footnote to the Gaudium et Spes passage, however, said Cusack, makes the point that the conciliar text "'makes no judgement on the objective moral claim of the conscience of the conscientious objector. It neither accepts nor rejects that the argument in support of such a position, it simply appeals, in the name of equity, to humane treatment under the law for those who experience difficulties of conscience with respect to bearing arms.'
"I would interpret this," said Cusack, "that a person could be a pacifist, totally and completely, and would be very much with the spirit of the Gospel and the spirit of what the Church teaches. As the footnote makes clear, the conciliar text is not making any moral judgement concerning the moral objectivity of the position. As I understand it, the Church would support selective pacifism. I think it's more or less a pastoral practice, rather than any kind of statement of or teaching of moral theology."
The Vatican Council's recognition of a right to conscientious objection to war, though merely pastoral in character, is far reaching in effect. According to a 1996 article by Tom Cornell in the magazine Salt of the Earth, before the council, most theologians, priests, and bishops would have rejected any idea that an individual could be a conscientious objector. Though Cardinal Ottaviani had asserted, after World War II, bellum omnino interdicendum ("war is to be entirely condemned"), he, nevertheless, thought judgment as to the justice of any individual war could not be left to individuals; it was a matter for the Church and governments to decide
But, by 1965, Ottaviani had changed his mind.
Though one of the leading "conservatives" at the council, Cardional Ottaviani, according to Cornell, championed recognition of the right to conscientious objection in the schema that became known as Gaudium et Spes, despite opposition from American bishops, led by Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York. Not only that, but, in part, because of Ottaviani, the council came to assert that "any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation."
It is said that, despite his general unpopularity with the council fathers, Ottaviani was given the longest and loudest ovation at the council, for his influence carried the day for the schema that became known as Gaudium et Spes. It also carried the day for what, to many before the council, seemed unthinkable -- the ecclesiastical support for an individual's right to object in conscience to a war. Without abandoning the just war tradition, the Church, it seemed, had said that a Catholic, in good conscience, could be a pacifist.