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How Catholic Teaching about War Has Changed: The Issues in View
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
A feature of the First World War, was the consistent condemnation of it by Pope Benedict XV and his unsuccessful efforts to bring about a negotiated peace. This paper argues that the Pope realised that the nature of modern warfare demanded a new evaluation of war and that his teaching began a real shift and development in this teaching that is clearly discernible in the teachings of his successors and the Second Vatican Council, and the work of Catholic theologians and movements. However, we can see how in many ways this shift has not been recognised in the wider church, shown by the reluctance of local church leaders to question or condemn particular conflicts. On the basis of this shift the paper argues that the Catholic Church, now committed to “virtual pacifism”, should base its witness to peace on two paradigms: first, the unmasking of wickedness, seen above all in the culture engendered by the possession of nuclear weapons; and second, a marked distancing from the powers and claims of the modern nation state.
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References
1 I am grateful to Dr Theodora Hawksley for comments on this paper.
2 The Pope refers to the feast of Our Lady's Nativity and calls on the belligerent nations “to leave nothing undone to hasten the end of this calamity…the rulers of the peoples [should] be satisfied with the ruin already wrought.”
3 The most important is what is now the authoritative work in English, Pollard, John F., Benedict XV The Pope of Peace (London: Continuum 1999)Google Scholar. Beck, Ashley, Benedict XV and World War I: Courageous Prophet of Peace (London: CTS 2014)Google Scholar was originally written to mark the Peace note anniversary and was reissued for the centenary.
4 Della Chiesa's initial training was in law and he gained a law doctorate from Genoa in 1875 as a layman. He carried on in this vein in Rome, although he did gain a theology doctorate cum laude before his ordination. In 1880 he got another law doctorate, with the highest honours, from the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici (Rope, H. E. G., Benedict XV, The Pope of Peace [London 1941], 23ff.)Google Scholar.
5 Section 5. The complete text of all Benedict's messages and letters is available from www.vatican.va.
6 This is made clear in many books about the weeks leading to war, including recent excellent additions such as McMeekin, Seán, July 1914 (London: Icon 2013)Google Scholar and MacMillan, Margaret, The War That Ended Peace (London: Profile 2014)Google Scholar
7 Over a million lives had been lost by the end of 1914.
8 “Cry out, cease not! Ah! May the fratricidal weapons fall to the ground, may they fall at last, stained as they already are by too much blood…that an end may come to the terrible scourge which now grips and throttles such a great part of the world.”
9 Much has been written on the changed quality of war evident in the conflict and the effects on wider society of advances in military technology in the previous century. One of the best studies is Pick, Daniel, War Machine The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age (London and New Haven: Yale University Press 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 An example of this applied to the 2003 Iraq is D. L. O'Huallachain and J. Forrest Sharpe (eds.), Neo-Conned! Just War Perspectives: A Condemnation of War in Iraq and the companion volume Neo-Conned! Again (Vienna, VA: IHS Press 20005)Google Scholar.
11 In my view this is what is done in Biggar, Nigel, In Defence of War (Oxford: Clarendon Press 2013), chapter 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Professor Biggar commends the ‘callous general’ who is prepared to tolerate a high number of casualties in the interests of likely success.
12 In this paragraph I am particularly grateful to Dr Hawksley for her observations.
13 Catholic Peacemakers: A Documentary History, volume 1 (New York: Garland 1993), p. 664Google Scholar.
14 What is particularly shameful, as I have pointed out elsewhere, was the lack of support the pope got from bishops, particularly in Britain and France (Benedict XV and World War I, pp. 36ff). The only place where he got much support was in Ireland: see Jérôme aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland 1914–1918 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press 2003). While the hierarchy was divided, at least until the botched introduction of conscription, some members of the episcopate, such as the Bishop of Limerick, were clearly loyal to the Holy See. In Britain the attitude of the bishops has to be seen in the context of how the whole country culturally rallied round the war effort: see on this Hynes, Samuel, A War Imagined (London: Pimlico 1990)Google Scholar.
15 Of course the popes have pointed out that these structures have often been ineffective and need to be strengthened; it is only really with St John XXIII in Pacem in Terris that really warm support is given to the United Nations, and St John Paul II's teaching that international bodies still do not have enough authority.
16 See Benedict XV and World War I, pp.54ff., which also gives the text of his prayer for peace and describes the First Communion initiative in 1915. At the end of the war he gave a statue of Our Lady Regina Pacis to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore where Mary has her left hand raised, as if to say ‘Stop!’
17 The Catholic Worker movement, founded two years after the encyclical, strongly rejected in the USA State welfare programmes in Roosevelt's ‘New Deal’.
18 ‘Making the Encyclicals Click: Catholic Social Teaching and Radical Traditions’, New Blackfriars vol. 93, issue 1044 (March 2012)Google Scholar, also my booklet Dorothy Day (London: CTS 2008)Google Scholar
19 Cavanaugh, W.T, Torture and Eucharist (Oxford: Blackwell 1998) pp.211ffGoogle Scholar.
20 P. 212.
21 ‘The Mystical Body of Jesus Christ’, Catholic Worker October 1939, quoted in my booklet Dorothy Day (London: CTS 2008) p. 41Google Scholar.
22 For the terrible details see Paul Furfey, “The Civilian COs” in Shannon, Thomas (ed.), War or Peace? The Search for New Answers (New York: Orbis 1980), pp.188ffGoogle Scholar.
23 Ibid. p.192 (at least one edition misprints the Pope as Paul VI).
24 Sheed and Ward 1945. See my brief discussion in Ronald Knox (London: CTS 2008Google Scholar) and in my paper “Was Ronald Knox a Theologian?” in the Colloquium ‘Ronald Knox A Man for All Seasons’ held at Heythrop college, 23–24 May 2013, publication forthcoming.
25 See James Finn, “Pacifism and Justifiable War” in Shannon, op. cit., p. 7, quoting John Courtney Murray.
26 Among editions of his writings focused on peace are Shannon, William T. (ed.), Passion for Peace (New York: Crossroad 1995)Google Scholar; Merton, Thomas, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York: New Directions 1966)Google Scholar and On Peace (London: Mowbray 1976)Google Scholar. See also my Thomas Merton (London: CTS 2009)Google Scholar.
27 See the account of this by Hauerwas, Stanley “Tragedy and Joy: The Spirituality of Peaceableness” in The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 135ffGoogle Scholar.
28 P. Murray, G.Flynn, with P. Kelly (eds.), (Oxford 2012).
29 For example by Paul Tillich in Theology of Peace (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press 1990), chapter 11Google Scholar.
30 Benedict's 1917 Peace note is referred to in a footnote to section 112.
31 On all this, see Hebblethwaite, Peter John XXIII (London: Chapman 1984), chapter 23Google Scholar.
32 Section 80.
33 The collection of essays edited by Thomas Shannon, referred to in note 22 above, explores the tension between pacifism on the one hand and the Just War doctrine on the other; see also Coleman, John, One Hundred Years of Catholic Social Thought: Celebration and Challenge (Maryknoll: Orbis 1991)Google Scholar especially the paper by Kenneth Himes, ‘Pacifism and the Just War Tradition in Roman Catholic Social Teaching’, pp. 329ff. In this paper I do not deny that there is a tension, even an inconsistency, but it is clear that if the Just War criteria are strictly applied we now all end up in the same place.
34 See David J. O'Brien “American Catholic Opposition to the Vietnam War: A Preliminary Assessment” in Shannon, op. cit., pp. 119ff., together with other essays in the volume.
35 Section 80.
36 E.g. Centesimus Annus section 52, which also refers to Benedict XV's first message as pope, Ubi Primum.
37 For a description of these moves by George Weigel and Michael Novak, see Mark, and Louise Zwick, , “The Iraq War and the Vatican” O'Huallachain, in D. L. and Sharpe, J. Forrest (eds.), Neo-Conned! Again Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq (Vienna, VA.: IHS Press 2005), pp.355ffGoogle Scholar. For a further critique of the position of Novak and Weigel over legitimate authority in relation to the Just War tradition, see William T. Cavanaugh “To Whom Should We Go? Legitimate Authority and Just Wars” in the companion volume Neo-Conned: Just War: A Condemnation of War in Iraq, pp. 269ff.)
38 Beattie, Tina, The New Atheists (London: Darton, Longman and Todd 2007), p. 86Google Scholar.
39 Nathan, Otto and Norden, Heinz, eds., Einstein on Peace (New York: Schuster, Simon and 1960), p. 365Google Scholar, quoted in Thomas Gumbleton, “The Role of the Peacemaker” in Thomas Shannon, op. cit. p. 225.
40 I am not suggesting that it is the only factor. In the latter years of the century one would add shifts in the understanding of nature and grace in Vatican II documents, particularly Gaudium et Spes, together with the effects of the new emphasis on dialogue, leading towards a conscious building up of peace rather than simply the avoidance of war.
41 Walter Stein (ed.), London: Merlin Press 1961.
42 E.g. First the Political Kingdom (1967) and Nuclear Deterrence: What Does the Church Teach? (1985)
43 The Church and the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience (Church House publishing 1982). See also Brown, David, Choices (Oxford: Blackwell 1983)Google Scholar.
44 By John Finnis, Joseph Boyle and Germain Grisez (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987). The only Englishman among the authors is primarily a lawyer rather than a theologian. The book strongly criticizes the American bishops for their consequentialist approach to the issue. Grisez is thought to have been an important influence behind Veritatis Splendor six years later.
45 www.justiceandpeacescotland.org.uk, search under ‘Trident’ or under the year. It is sometimes claimed that Cardinal Basil Hume resisted such a condemnation when he was President of the Bishops’ Conference as a result of the influence of Catholic military figures such as Michael Quinlan.
46 The whole message can be accessed from the Vatican website. See also the condemnation in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church (London: Continuum 2005)Google Scholar, paragraph 208. We have moved away decisively from a short-term toleration of the deterrent.
47 “War and Murder” in Stein, op. cit., p. 48. Anscombe had tried in the 1950s to prevent Oxford University from awarding an honorary doctorate to President Harry Truman.
48 Shown particularly since the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts – examples of this renewed military culture would be Armed Forces Day, the Military Covenant, and the success of charities such as Help for Heroes. The way in which funeral processions of repatriated soldiers through Royal Wooton Bassett caught the public imagination would be another example.
49 De Civitate Dei xv.4 (Bettenson ed. p. 599).
50 Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, pp.9ff., drawing on Rowan Williams, “Politics and the Soul: A Reading of the City of God”, Milltown Studies no.19/20, pp. 55ff. Williams is answering the charge of Hannah Arendt that Augustine led Christians to withdraw from political and public life. See also Markus, R., History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge, rev.ed., 1988)Google Scholar.
51 Theology and Social Theory, 2nd ed., (Oxford: Blackwell 2006), p. 394Google Scholar. See also Virginia Woolf, The Three Guineas, which also explores the link between opposition to war and distancing from the state (I am grateful to Dr Marije Altorf for this insight).
52 Cavanaugh uses this term to describe the role of torture in Pinochet's Chile.
53 A good example of how parts of the slide rule have not moved on would be the failure of the churches in Britain to challenge or condemn the NATO military action in Afghanistan since 2001.