Iraqi War: Opinion

Sydney
20 April 2003

Seminary numbers increasing: rector

Anzac service starts busy calendar

Priest’s ministry of ‘bringing joy to migrants’

Easter at war - but hope for everyone

Many Iraqi families ‘destitute’

Pope’s play tops Carnivale Christi fare

Good Friday Holy Land appeal

Honour for doctors

New Melbourne bishop

12 years as rector at St John’s

Fr Michael’s legacy of laughter, not tears

Catholic schools still top of pops

Churches walk Way of the Cross together

Editorial: ‘Sex’ is not a dirty word

Letters: Worldwide celebration

Conversation: Bob Hartman, children’s author and storyteller - Tale spinner learnt his magic as a preacher

Voice of Youth - Cultural relevance and the Church

Iraqi War: Opinion

Easter is more lasting than a chocolate egg, students learn

‘Prophet of the new evangelisation’

‘Lap of honour’ and high 5s all round

Iraqi War: Opinion

By Bruce Duncan

Pope John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq war has been raising difficult questions for Catholics, especially in the United States itself.

The Wall Street Journal editorialised that “a strain in John Paul’s thinking … sits uncomfortably with 1500 years of Catholic teaching on the legitimate use to force, a teaching, moreover, that asks not when authorities have the ‘right’ to use force but when they have the obligation” (March 28, 2003).

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pope has not gone as far as Archbishop Renato Martino (pictured) of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace in denying a right to a just war in contemporary circumstances.

Really? For Pope John Paul told military chaplains that the “vast contemporary movement in favour of peace” gave evidence that “war as an instrument for resolving conflicts” had been repudiated by the “conscience of the majority of humanity”.

Several thoughts come to mind about this editorial. First, the Wall Street Journal recognises the importance of the just war tradition in the West as a continuing attempt to place limits on warfare and establish ethical norms for going to war and right conduct in war.

It is curious, though, that such a key journal from the capitalist heartland should be arguing against the Pope’s interpretation of the just war tradition.

Second, the editorial acknowledges that the US Catholic bishops recognised that people of good will may differ in their interpretation and application of just war teaching.

This point is worth highlighting, for a fundamental principle of Catholic moral theology is at stake here: namely, the right and need to follow one’s conscience while earnestly seeking the truth and informing oneself as well as possible.

And indeed, some leading Catholic commentators and strong supporters of the policies of the Bush Admin-istration have on these grounds contested the Vatican’s views.

Conscience assumes such a central role since such issues of morality stem not automatically from the core truths of Revelation, but are mediated through historical experience, empirical data and theories whichpeople may interpret differently.

Christians certainly take very seriously the commandment not to kill, but have long wrestled with the legitimacy of violence and war, especially through the just war tradition.

Nevertheless, the Pope, Vatican officials and bishops’ conferences worldwide mean their opposition to the war on Iraq to be taken very seriously.

It is hard not to see the strong spontaneous stand on a matter of such high moral principle and urgency as an exercise of what is technically termed the ‘ordinary magisterium’ of the Church.

The strength of the just war thinking is that it provides a means to identify the key moral issues that need to be addressed in assessing the justice of a war.

Though it is stretching and changing all the time to meet new conditions, the just war criteria establish a moral framework allowing not just contemporary debate across national borders, but with earlier generations as well.

The Wall Street Journal traces the just war tradition back to Augustine, as is commonly done, it must be said, but without realising how complex and problematical Augustine’s thought was and how it rested on earlier centuries of Christian restraint on war and violence.

Moreover, Augustine’s thought was forgotten for seven centuries until it was reinterpreted, and often misinterpreted, in the violent early Middle Ages.

The Church is clearly trying to shift the contemporary application of just war thinking.

The Pope is insisting that with all the modern instruments of global communication and mediation, war should be unnecessary.

He is not a pacifist and at times has supported military intervention, as in East Timor and Kosovo.

But he regards the Iraq war as failing the just war criteria, especially on just cause, proportionality, last resort and right authority.

Nor are the views of the Pope and Archbishop Martino necessarily divergent.

Both hold that with all the means available to the international community to discipline so-called rogue states, war should be legitimate only as the very last resort in extreme circumstances.

One hopeful sign now is that the revulsion against recourse to war on Iraq has swept the entire world.

Public opinion is becoming more distrustful of those urging war and more insistent that peaceful means be found to resolve conflicts.

It is not just the United Nations on trial. Especially so are the political leaders in the US, Britain and Australia, along with the neoconservatives in the Bush Administration, that have plunged our countries down the perilous path to war.

Undoubtedly there will be a political, and perhaps legal, reckoning some time for what many consider supreme and risky folly.

Meanwhile, those opposed to war, especially moral authorities like the Churches, have a duty to promote robust debate about the morality of this war.

Some Catholic advocates for the Bush Administration, like Michael Novak, argue that in the final analysis it is up to the political authorities to make decisions about war.

Yes, of course, only the political authorities can make such decisions, but that does not mean that the Church cedes its moral authority to governments, or supinely rolls over or remains silent.

Far from it.

The Church must speak on the moral issues clearly and firmly, without fear or favour.

It must energetically inform its constituents about its moral concerns, debate judgments about the current war and evaluate the evidence for war.

It must be ready to enter the lists of the democratic public forum and advance its arguments not on the basis of faith allegiance but on closely reasoned argument and evidence.

And it must be prepared to contest the decisions of political authorities through all the democratic means available.

With others, it can help develop a wider constituency of conscience on these issues.

It would be very surprising if there were no half-truths, misleading innuendo, disinformation or even outright lies to expose.

The Church must not allow itself to become complicit in such war propaganda.

But in the urgency of debate, how do we maintain courtesy and respect, especially recognising people’s rights of conscience to come to their own conscientious decisions, without betraying our most precious moral values and the hopes of perhaps many thousands of people whose lives are hanging in the balance?

Bruce Duncan CSsR co-ordinates the program of social justice studies at Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne and is a consultant for Catholic Social Services Victoria.