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 Just
War
According to Catholic Teaching
by Luiz Sérgio Solimeo
After the brutal September 11 attacks,
the United States must once again wage a war in a foreign
land.
As always, the problem of the legitimacy
of using military action for revenge as a means of re-establishing
justice comes to the fore. Thus, it is in the interest of
our readers to bring to their attention the traditional Catholic
doctrine on the subject.
Saint Augustine (354 - 430)
The great St. Augustine provided the
basis of Catholic doctrine about just war.
Considering whether war is always bad
or if there are circumstances when it can be just, he wrote:
According to the Gospel of Saint
Luke, Saint John the Baptist preached a baptism of penance
inviting all to convert and change their lives. People from
all walks of life came to him and asked what they must do
to change. This precursor of Christ answered each according
to his circumstances. "And the soldiers also
asked him, saying: And what shall we do? And he said to
them: Do violence to no man; neither calumniate any
man; and be content with your pay" (St Luke
3:14).
Saint Augustine comments:
If the Christian Religion
forbade war altogether,
those who sought salutary advice in the Gospel would
rather have been counseled to cast aside their arms, and
to give up soldiering altogether. On the contrary,
they were told: 'Do violence to no man . . . and be content
with your pay.' If he commanded them to be content
with their pay, he did not forbid soldiering.1
Military life is therefore in itself
perfectly legitimate. If the military as a cause is legitimate,
so also is the military's end: to wage war.
Nevertheless, the saint argues, there
are Gospel precepts like "resist no evil," or "turn
the other cheek," that seem to condemn the use of force
and thus contradict the licitness of military life and subsequently
of war.
He replies to these objections by
showing how these precepts apply to the interior life and
how one must be meek even when punishing another. Based on
this, Moses condemned the Jewish idolaters to death, not out
of personal hatred, but charity, thus preventing them from
remaining in sin.
In this way, St. Augustine's teaching
concludes that evils arising from military life and not military
life itself is forbidden: "non prohibet militia, sed
malitia."
According to the holy bishop of Hippo,
just war must seek to obtain or restore peace, and in this
sense, it is an instrument of peace. By peace he understands
the tranquility of order, the right disposition of things
according to their proper end.
Saint Augustine also defines just war
as a means to re-establish and vindicate violated justice,
and thus obtain peace. Therefore one can wage war to punish
a nation for the violation of just order. Nevertheless, in
the Augustinian concept of justice, this applies not only
to the natural law of individuals and peoples, but also justice
due to God as sovereign and lord. Thus both the systematic
violation of natural law or the denial of the right worship
of God can be motives for just war.
Likewise, just war was ordered by God
Himself in many episodes narrated in the Old Testament. On
the other hand, just war can also be waged against a country
that refuses to punish adequately its own citizens who acted
unjustly against an offended nation.
In other words, according to Saint
Augustine, just war can be waged when recovering goods or
legitimate situations or when restoring order and justice
violated by a people.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
Saint Bernard, the great troubadour
of Our Lady, the meek mellifluous Church Doctor, was also
a great orator and preacher of the Crusades, He was the
official preacher of the Second Crusade.
In his famous opusculum, De laude novae
militae (In Praise of the New Knighthood), Saint Bernard
addressed the Knights Templars — using St. Augustine's
arguments on the famous reply of Saint John the Baptist
to the soldiers — he wrote:
What then? If it is never permissible
for a Christian to strike with the sword, why did the Savior's
precursor bid the soldiers to be content with their pay,
and not rather forbid them to follow this calling?
I do not mean to say that the
pagans are to be slaughtered when there is any other way
to prevent them from harassing and persecuting the faithful,
but only that it now seems better to destroy them than
that the rod of sinners be lifted over the lot of the just,
and the righteous perhaps put forth their hands unto iniquity.2
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
This greatest of all Church Doctors
developed and completed the doctrine of just war in several
aspects.
Quoting Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas
returned to St. John the Baptist's argument favoring the legitimacy
of military life and, therefore, of war and added many other
points.
He introduced the concept of common
good as a basic element for the licitness of war.
The military profession must have
as its goal defending the public good, the poor and oppressed,
the cult due to God, and the Church. Soldiers are therefore
instruments of legitimate authority which prevents or punishes,
even with death, the misdeeds of criminals.
Quoting the sermons of St. Gregory
the Great, he justified capital punishment as a means to avenge
outraged justice, correct and instill fear in evil, and thus
re-establish and guarantee both the peace of society and the
Church and a nation's stability and prosperity. Such actions
are virtuous when motivated by the love of justice and charity.
For soldiers to fight in just wars,
the saint explained, supernatural or divine help, which are
the Virtues, is needed. The first such virtue is fortitude,
a supernatural help that makes man more courageous and perseverant
in the fight.
Bellicose action, he added, can only
be performed with wisdom and ability, when done with prudence,
which directs man's actions in life with rectitude.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas there
are three conditions for just war:
1) It must be declared by legitimate
authority. Saint Paul says: "He beareth not the sword in vain:
for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon
him that doth evil" (Rm. 13:4).
2) The cause must be just. He
quotes Saint Augustine: "A just war is wont to be described
as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to
be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted
by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly."
3) It must be waged with good
intention. "For it may happen that the war is declared
by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet
be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence
Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): 'The passion
for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific
and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power,
and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.'"3
Subsequent Doctors
Theologians after St Thomas like Francisco
de Vitoria (1485-1546) and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) completed
the Scholastic theory of just war with the principle of proportionality:
Besides a just cause, a summons by
legitimate authority, and a right intention, these theologians
teach there must be a balance between the good to be recovered
or preserved, the unjust situation to be remedied or prevented,
and the evils that necessarily come in the wake of war, particularly
the number of deaths.
All peaceful means must be exhausted
before having recourse to war.
These theologians point out that the
need for justification applies only to offensive not defensive
war, since the principle of legitimate defense in the face
of an attack is evident.
Doctrine of the Popes
The above-mentioned doctrine of the
Fathers, Doctors of the Church and Theologians, was accepted
and incorporated in the Magisterium of the Church as taught
by the Popes over the centuries.
Under the general title "Just
War at the Service of the Divine Precept of Peace," the
Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, France, succinctly summarized
the teaching of the popes on just war:
Order and peace can have recourse
to force. However, force, in itself, is incapable of restoring
peace, since peace is the fruit of the union of justice
and charity.
Some enemies of justice cannot
be led to accept the necessary conditions for peace without
the use of force.
The importance of a certain
good justifies entirely its defense by force against an
unjust aggression. The Catholic Faith must be included as
a most precious good. It is therefore legitimate to defend
the Faith with the use of arms.4
One of the Pontifical documents referred
by the Monks of Solesmes, is the Allocution to the Military
Committee of the American Congress, by Pius XII, on
October the 8th, 1947:
Law and order may at times
have need of the strong arm of force. Some enemies of justice
can be brought to terms only by force. But force should
be held always in check by law and order and be exercised
only in their defense. Nor is any man law into himself.5
More recent Popes have insisted on the principle
of proportionality and the means to employ in the defense
or recovery of a material or moral good. However, the fundamental
principles were already expounded by the great doctors and
popes over the centuries.
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