By Randall Smith
The upcoming synod may or may not address the Church’s doctrine on “just war.” So let me go on record: I don’t like war. Saying that isn’t much of a “profile in courage.” I mean, who loves war? I suppose some tyrants do. But that raises a problem. If tyrants seek wars to secure their positions of power, what are the rest of us who hate war supposed to do?
The Church has long upheld the legitimacy of wars fought in self-defense. Yet recent pronouncements from certain sectors of the Church seem to edge toward pacifism—the view that all war is evil. Perhaps this simply means that all wars of aggression by tyrants are evil. That would not be a new or especially troubling teaching. It would be a welcome change if we could get tyrants to abide by the principle.
But I still wonder about other possible causes of war.
Thus, for example, the United States went to war against England in 1812 for a number of reasons, but chiefly because the British navy was stopping American ships at sea, searching their crews, and “impressing” into British service anyone who could not prove U.S. citizenship. Attempts to escape were punished with severe flogging or even hanging. To put the matter too simply: the U.S. government demanded that this kidnapping of American sailors cease. The British refused. War followed. Was it immoral to go to war to stop the British enslavement of American sailors? War is evil, but so, essentially, was kidnapping American sailors and forcing them to serve on British ships.
Here is another dilemma. Suppose Adolf Hitler had not attacked Poland or France. But suppose it had become known that the Nazis were exterminating millions of Jews. Would that have justified an offensive attack on Germany to stop the killing? Or would any offensive declaration of war not in response to an attack on one’s own country be “immoral”? Again, I don’t like war, but I also want to be mindful of what those who lost loved ones in the Holocaust would probably (and legitimately) say if we insisted: “No, going to war to save millions of Jews from extermination would not be justified.” Really? Hitler marches his armies into Poland, and the world goes to war. But if he were only killing Jews, then no?
Reasoning of this sort seems to have prevented “civilized” countries such as the United States from “intervening” when the Hutus in Rwanda were massacring millions of Tutsis. We haven’t been attacked, and we don’t like war, so, unpleasant as it is, there’s really nothing we can do.
Maybe that’s true. But at least I would like to see a serious discussion of the pros and cons.
Here is another crossroads. Suppose Hitler had not attacked any European country (yet), but was threatening, and it was known, that he was developing an atomic bomb. Would the European powers have been justified in attacking him to stop that development? Should an attack on Nazi Germany to prevent Hitler from obtaining an atomic weapon be rejected a priori, based on the notion that all offensive wars are per se immoral? Maybe. But I’m glad I’m not the one who has to make those decisions (which, it must be admitted, is a rather cheap dodge).
As a general rule, I admire pacifists, especially when they are like Desmond Doss, the combat medic who refused to carry a weapon but became the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor after single-handedly saving the lives of between 75 and 100 wounded soldiers under intense fire during the Battle of Okinawa. Or when they are like the villagers of Le Chambon in France, who conspired together during the Second World War to hide and save thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. They, too, risked everything.
What is harder to admire are the pacifists whom author Philip Hallie criticizes in an essay on Le Chambon: those who “keep their hands clean” but allow the powerful to tyrannize the less powerful. “Too often I have found nonviolent people to be too patient,” Hallie writes, “patient with the murder of others. They let their nonviolent resistance go on and on while thousands of victims of violence were being killed every day.” They became “accomplices of the strong by their refusal to fight” and by their silent refusal to condemn. That is not hungering and thirsting for justice with a willingness to suffer for it. It is saying the right thing to feel good while doing nothing to get one’s hands dirty. One can remain “above all that.”
“One could obey the ethic of the no,” Hallie writes, “by being silent, and it was the silent majority in Germany and in the world that fed the torturers and the murderers with their silence. The murderers and torturers drank the silence like wine, and it intoxicated them with power.”
When are we going to hear from church authorities and others eager for “peace” serious and repeated condemnations of the torturers in China, Russia, and Iran? What about the treatment of people like Jimmy Lai and others in Hong Kong or Russia’s ongoing attempt to erase Ukraine? I thought the slogan was “No peace without justice.” Simply avoiding war is not the same as peace. What are we willing to sacrifice for the peace that comes with justice? Higher oil prices? Our clean hands? Nothing?
Take a look at the map in this Wall Street Journal article, “How China’s Navy Is Tightening the Noose Around Taiwan.” Destroyers encircle the island on all sides continuously. Chinese military planes make repeated sorties. This is not a “defensive” posture; this is preparation for an invasion. It would be nice to hear some condemnations of those developments and not only when the United States or Israel does something to try to counter the tyrants.
Not condemning the horrors of torturers, murderers, tyrants, and religious fanatics because it might cause discomfort and upheaval does not strike me as especially noble or “Christian.” It just seems cowardly.
About the Author
Randall Smith holds the J. Michael Miller Chair in Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. Among his books are Bonaventure’s Journey of the Soul into God: Context and Commentary, From Here to Eternity: Reflections on Death, Immortality, and the Resurrection of the Body, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture of Medieval Paris: Preaching, Prologues, and Biblical Commentary, Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide. His forthcoming book, «Mapping Bonaventure’s Itinerarium: Context and Commentary,» will be published by Emmaus Press this summer.