Some journalists have reported Tutti Frutti as abolishing the Church's traditional teaching on the Just War. This is untrue. Paragraph 258 has marks of careful drafting; but it actually implies the abiding validity of that body of teaching. I refer to such phrases as "it is easy to fall into an overly broad interpretation of this potential right ... it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a 'just war'".
What I find a trifle dodgy about this is: if you urge people not to invoke the principles of the Just War teaching, you may think you are simply discouraging them from saying"This war is just! Fight on!" But you are also discouraging them from saying "This war is unjust! Drop your weapons!"
Among traddy Catholic moralists there is agreement that Nuclear War could never be justified because the harm done would so vastly outweigh any conceivable good ... which means that the principles of the Just War on Proportionality of Harm are being invoked. At least on this side of the Atlantic, such a judgement leads to the further conclusion that (since a contingent intention to commit an immoral act is itself immoral) the policy called Nuclear Deterrence is itself immoral. PF, I suspect, shares this view in the following paragraphs of Tutti Frutti. (I am not going to waste my life trying to explain to people that no End can ever justify a Means which is intrinsece malum, because S John Paul II explained that very adequately in Veritatis Splendor para 80 sqq..) But the arguments PF uses are the same arguments which those of us in the Just War tradition use in order to condemn the policies of governments (including my own) which retain nuclear weapons.
In other words, PF runs the risk of undermining the very teaching on which he then relies in what he says about nuclear weapons.
But that is a characteristic of this Pontiff. The agility and aplomb with which he saws off branches he is sitting on is one of the eight wonders of the moral world..
6 comments:
It is a curious thing, that those great modern imperial powers who retain nuclear defence capability have never used them.
There has been no major imperial battle for the longest time ever, and all this without any application to the Catholic Just War Theory (JWT). Thank heavens JFK didn't apply the unilateral disarmament version of it, as the Soviet nukes were heading for Cuba, and so on through post-WWII military history.
Indeed, the application of the JWT by JFK would probably have lead to those very imperial wars that would be then designated 'just', but with the Soviets winning hands down. I bet they wouldn't have paid much attention to Thomas.
And so maybe today we can learn something from Russian Orthodox JWT and American Protestant JWT (pace JFK), when our own Catholic JWT in its strict application, would have probably brought war and suffering on a massive scale.
Thank heavens it is just a theory, and the magisterial hand has hovered very lightly over it.
Perhaps, if I may invoke JHN; the JWT is a doctrinal theory that is in need of some serious development. It requires change if it is to remain the same, if anyone is going to pay any attention to it, and if peace is to be maintained as it has been so far by ignoring it.
Dear Fr.
I am not a blogger and that is why this is posted anonymously. My name is Tony from Battle Creek Mi.
I am retired after 24 ½ years in the U.S. Navy. I participated in a combat tour to Afghanistan. Although I was a Navy Dentist my primary job was to make sure my Sailors and Marines were healthy and pain free so they could perform their mission. I am under no allusion that because I was a health care worker my hands are clean. At times I wonder if I participated in a just war. (A discussion for another theological/psychological session)
I am not being argumentative. Could you please help me understand? I agree that mutually assured destruction is an insane answer to world stability. However, I worry about the alternative. If I were the President and I unilaterally disarmed, would that not encourage unstable leaders to become more aggressive and possibly use their nuclear weapons? And if that occurred, would I not be culpable of the destruction because I had the means to deter such destruction. I teach High school moral theology, and these are the types of discussions I like having with my students. I just want to be sure I am Imparting correct theological Church Teaching.
I think the answer to Unknown's (21 October) question hinges on having the "means to deter such destruction". A President who possesses nuclear weapons does not, in fact, possess such means. He may possess the physical tools, just as some sticky-tape that he possesses might be a physical tool to make the First Lady stop nagging him after a long day of presiding. But he does not actually possess any moral means, because the only physical tool he has is morally unuseable.
The nuclear destruction of the human race through his enemies' bombs would, therefore, be an evil of which such a President, being morally powerless to prevent it, would in no way be guilty. And his subsequent violent death as an innocent man would be an infinitely preferable result to the perpetuation of human civilisation predicated on the loss of his immortal soul.
Perhaps a great many evils in high places, as in our own selves, come about because people say to themselves: "but the means are so close at hand...if I could just reach out...and really, wouldn't the real crime be not to" - when in fact, in moral terms, the means are not close at hand at all, but so completely inaccessible as to be non-means. (Though by no means a question on the same order or so clear-cut, the Comte de Chambord did the House of France proud and set an example to all rulers tempted by "little compromises" when he refused the tricolore.) But the proud old man in us whispers, striking a pose of noble tragedy, "well if it were I, I would go to hell if it meant I could stop a war like that."
As far as Father Edward's comment goes, it may be a very decent practical assessment of our success in achieving the end of peace. I unfortunately don't see that it does anything to engage with the immorality of the means we are using, however.
What I would like to know is whether it is always intrinsically evil to threaten that which it is intrinsically evil to do. That is, are bluffs evil? If I have a gun and I say to a mugger, "I'll shoot you," having secretly resolved in my heart to die before pulling the trigger, is that always evil? Fr Hunwicke, can you point us to the moralists' answers? But even if it isn't evil, it would not suffice to justify nuclear stockpiles, since the danger of their passing into the hands of successors who are not so resolved is greater than any potential good to be gained from one's own bluff.
The moral argument against nuclear deterrence rests on the assumption that it depends on an intention to use nuclear weapons in certain circumstances. Yet the leader of a nuclear weapon State may have no intention of ever doing so, and may even have made this well known. Yet deterrence still works because a potential adversary may doubt his sincerity and will ask the obvious question - why go to the expense of having a nuclear capability if it will not be used in any event?
The existence of nuclear weapons is a fact, and for 75 years they have had to be taken into account in the development of strategy. Mutual Assured Destruction, despite its unfortunate acronym, was by no means insane, although even before the end of the Cold War the credibility of 'extended deterrence' (the US commitment to the defence of Europe) meant that it had to give way to a doctrine of 'flexible response'.
Sprouting Thomas,
This is Unknown (Tony From Battle Creek MI)
“But he does not actually possess any moral means, because the only physical tool he has is morally unusable.”
“And his subsequent violent death as an innocent man would be an infinitely preferable result to the perpetuation of human civilization predicated on the loss of his immortal soul.”
“But even if it isn't evil, it would not suffice to justify nuclear stockpiles, since the danger of their passing into the hands of successors who are not so resolved is greater than any potential good to be gained from one's own bluff.”
3 excellent arguments to contemplate. I appreciate your comments.
IIRC, St John Paul II connected JWT to self-defense; voiding JWT will have some level of effect on self-defense, even if one does not use nukes to protect their home. One hopes that PF understands exactly what he's talking about, although that hope becomes more forlorn with every passing month.
Post a Comment