From tolerance to revulsion: the changing Catholic approach to war
‘With war everything is lost, everything. There is no victory in a war: everything is defeated.’ – Pope Francis[1]
Until quite recently, war, was almost universally assumed to be an unavoidable part of the human condition. In virtually every culture and under virtually all types of governments, different peoples found reasons and rituals to suspend prohibitions on organised and at least somewhat legitimised use of deadly violence between them– they went to war. Every war would eventually end, but there would always be another one. People might hate war or glorify it, but only a handful of dreamers even contemplated trying to eliminate it.
In practice, the Christian approach to war was much like everyone else’s. Christian rulers, like all rulers, were always, and often primarily, leaders of armies. All Christian men who were not in Holy Orders were expected to be willing to join those armies. Sooner more often than later, armies of Christians went to war.
Christians were, and are, distinct in one important way: in their theory or theology of war. They have always seen war as a sign and result of the human rejection of God’s original peaceful ordering of creation. In the language of biblical theology, as expounded by John Paul II, every battle is an enlarged repetition of the primal act of deadly violence, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel (cf. Gen. 4: 8-16). Christians also have a distinct theological promise, that Jesus has redeemed humanity from all sin, including the sins of waging war.[2] Humans are created for peace.
This Christian peace, as popes, bishops, and theologians regularly reminded kings, lords, and anyone else who might listen, is not only a certainty in the kingdom of heaven. It is an aspiration for all earthly communities. However, until recently, Christian peace-loving co-existed quite easily with war-appreciation. War was seen as a prerequisite for justice. In the Old Testament, God often commanded war – victory was generally considered a sign of divine favour. Besides, although perhaps less spiritually, war was something that men did, just because they were fallen.
Over the last century, the leaders of the Catholic Church abandoned this almost casual acceptance of war. The Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Catholic Church not only renounced all desire for wars, but now denounces war with great seriousness. Instead, popes and bishops articulate a commitment to peace that is profound, practical, and yet supernatural.[3]
In the remainder of this article, I will sketch out and briefly comment on this development. Section Two provides some anthropological and Christian background. Section Three offers a sceptical historical review of the Church’s “just war teaching”. Section Four describes some of the forces pushing the Magisterium towards a new teaching. Section Five discusses tensions in the current teaching. Sections Six and Seven describe that teaching in more detail.
Current defenders of war are scarce and mostly timid,[4] but their once widely accepted arguments remain considerable. I already mentioned the protection of justice among peoples. War also develops nobility of character, camaraderie, piety, obedience, courage, intelligence, cunning, and sacrifice. More subtly, while war is violent and violence is bad, the violence of war is sometimes the most loving means of disciplining an errant enemy. Also, war controls and legitimises violence. Indeed, much as marriage civilises, orders, and sacralises sexual desire, war civilises, orders, and perhaps adds a tint of the holy to the violence in human hearts.
Even today, Christians can accept that war comes with virtues, including the nobility of giving up a life for the good of others. However, they should recognise that war and marriage are fundamentally different. Violent urges and sexual desires are both stained with sin, but sexual relations are essentially good. Underneath all lust there is always some striving for the divine attribute of love and some fundamental connection to the divine gift of procreation. In contrast, the evil of war’s core activity – killing humans – is unmixed. The various virtues and rituals that accompany war cannot bring out the good of violence, because violence has no good in it. A too easy Christian acceptance of the goods of war, even of the necessity of war, amounts to a too comfortable relationship with sin. Christians should always and strongly prefer the goodness of peace.
In the fifth century, Saint Augustine expressed this preferential option for peace as a truth of human nature. ‘For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace.’[5] The claim is quite bold. An objective study of both history and psychology, especially young men’s psychology, might conclude that military glory is often truly desired more intensely than peaceful living. Christians, said Augustine, must not draw that conclusion.
Any comprehensive and truly Catholic teaching on war needs to be based on Augustine’s peace-loving model of human conflict, but it must also recognise the enduring appeal of war, as well as explaining how the peace of Jesus, which is not peace ‘as the world gives’ (Jn. 14.27), [6] relates to the imperfect peace that the world actually can give. The teaching should also deal with the genuine virtues in war. Finally, pending the Second Coming of Jesus, the world will never be sufficiently peaceful for every single sword to be turned into a ploughshare (cf. Isa 2.3-4). The Church must explain when it is right to turn ploughshares into swords (cf. Joel 3.10).
No teaching can balance so many considerations in any but the broadest terms. Much as with marriages or politics, in war sin and virtue are so inextricably entwined that specific counsels on particular wars and potential wars will always be imperfect: demanding either too little or too much of people, accepting too much or the wrong sorts of evil, too unrealistic or too complacent. The best teaching is likely to change over time, in response to changes in military situations, politics, societies, and technologies.
In retrospect, the overall Catholic war teaching probably did not change fast enough. It should have responded sooner to the intensification of warfare that accompanied the Christian world’s economic development. From as early as the 14th century or perhaps as late as the 17th century (historians disagree), Christian rulers started to muster more soldiers for longer periods, to construct more, and more deadly, weapons, and to take Christian warfare into more of the world. The trend to increasing destruction in wars, which was irregular but clear,[7] had no significant effect on what popes and bishops did or said. Throughout, they continued to speak of peace, but to tolerate or even encourage many wars. They articulated rules for when and how to fight them, but the rules had at most a modest constraining effect. The most noticeable break in this pattern of near-indifference came during the Spanish conquest of the Americas early in the 16th century, when some influential theologians expressed serious moral objections to the wars against the indigenous population. The king of Spain listened with concern, but the wars continued almost unabated.[8]
In that case, as in many others, Christian rulers did continue to pay intellectual tribute to their religion’s disdain for unjust and disordered violence. They provided more or less flimsy claims of just reasons for their increasingly murderous hostility. In the Americas, they were fighting for the true faith against pagans. In Europe, there were wars against heretics. Much more often, though, the claimed injustice was part of a political dispute that could easily have been resolved peacefully – if rulers truly wanted peace more than war.
Catholic theologians largely shared the unconcern of the religious and secular hierarchies. For example, in his massive Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas dedicates only one article to the overall morality of war.[9] In that brief discussion, he mentions the horrors of war, but his main concern is to determine who has the sufficient authority to start one. A few centuries later, the distinguished 1566 Roman Catechism dedicated less space to killing in war than to capital punishment. Its quickly declares that a soldier ‘does not sin’ when he ‘takes away the life of enemies in a just war’, provided that he personally is motivated only ‘by the desire to serve the public good’. Where a modern reader might expect a discussion of what constitutes a war’s justice, the Catechism moves on to note ‘the instances of carnage executed by the order of God’.[10] A few centuries later, most secular thinkers about war replaced any remaining “just war” concerns with the amoral pragmatic approach embodied in Carl von Clausewitz’s saying, published in 1832, that ‘war is merely the continuation of policy by other means’.[11] Few Catholic thinkers were interested enough in the morality of law to object.
Historians of the Church’s approach to war generally offer much less war-tolerant narratives than the one I just sketched out.[12] They present material that supports their pacific themes: papal dedication to peace and the Church’s exigent criteria for entering and fighting wars. Such proof-texts are deeply unrepresentative. Until just before the beginning of the 20th century, almost no Catholic or other Christian moralists, let alone Christian princes, denied the need for, or the advantages, glory, and virtue of, fairly regular deadly combat among princes, republics, and empires.
The Church’s stance was not especially bellicose by any pre-20th century standard. The first, quite sparse opposition to waging war on principle appeared only in the 16th century. Systematic efforts to reduce the number and scale of wars were almost unknown before the development of “pacifism” at the very end of the 19th century. A new word was needed to describe essentially unprecedented plans to defuse potential wars through binding arbitration and to reduce war’s lethality through strict limits on military equipment and conscription. Some Catholic leaders were friendly to this developing anti-military realpolitik. However, enthusiasm for a novel and largely secular movement was necessarily limited under Pius X, pope from 1903 to 1914. He condemned all secular governments, as well as the ‘lamentable spectacle…presented by the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty’.[13] Catholic pacifists hoped to evade the resistance to change by creating a consistent tradition of a Catholic ‘just war teaching’, one that had steadily restrained and deeply lamented war.[14] In fact, though, the Church’s 20th century teaching that wars should be scarce, minimally destructive, and just according to a high standard of justice was a real novelty. Its history can be divided into two chronologically overlapping phases.
In the first phase, which lasted roughly from the First World War to the Second, popes condemned the barbarity of modern warfare and cautiously supported the new pacifist agenda, but always argued that, ‘[T]here is no one who cannot clearly see what a singularly important role the Catholic Church is able to play, and is even called upon to assume, in providing a remedy for the ills which afflict the world today and in leading mankind toward a universal peace’.[15] The Church’s newly discovered unwavering opposition to all war, set into the recently confected anti-war and exigent Just War tradition, was part of this natural leadership role.[16]
In the second, not yet ended, phase of the modern war teaching, the Vatican became even more anti-war, but stopped demanding that the pope and bishops play central political roles. The endorsement of this realistic modesty was eased by the widespread, and initially accurate, expectation of a substantial Catholic influence on political cultures after the Second World War. Later, as that influence waned, Catholics tried to recruit pacifistic allies from other religions. Even later, the Catholics became prophets crying for peace in a largely uncomprehending secular wilderness (cf. Jn. 1.23).[17]
The Church changed its approach to war in response to huge changes in the world, especially the world of war. Here are eight of them.[18]
1. Worse wars: As I noted earlier, war has become much more destructive. All types of weapons, from knives to nuclear devices, have become more powerful, more accurate, and less expensive. More countries can afford standing armies. More people live in cities, where lives are easier to destroy and disrupt. Because armed forces find the indiscriminate killing of civilians and the massive destruction of buildings so easy, these techniques are used more often. The result, as Pius XII complained, is that often ‘the international conventions which aim to make war less inhumane…are treated as dead letters’.[19] Francis, even more clearly than his predecessors, draws the policy conclusion: ‘We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits’.’[20]
2. Better peace: While wars have become more awful, peacetime has become more attractive. Outside of war zones, the of lives most people in the modern world are longer, healthier, more comfortable, and less marked by physical violence than those of their premodern ancestors. Since many of the gains depend on complex technical, economic, and social systems that war destroys, war does more damage than ever before. Also, mass literacy and media have deepened and broadened the awareness of the difference between war and peace – making war less acceptable.
3. Optimistic alternatives: The early pacifists argued that the procedures which have allowed for so much commercial and social intercourse between otherwise hostile nations could also be used to prevent war. The pacifists’ arguments, combined with first the fear and then the experience of tremendously destructive wars, persuaded political leaders to negotiate some military restrictions and controls. Popes since the Second World War have strongly encouraged such pragmatic thinking. Paul VI explained to the United Nations that the organisation had been created to support ‘the great principle that relationships between nations must be regulated by reason, justice, law and negotiation, and not by force, violence, war, nor indeed by fear and deceit.’[21]
4. Political pessimism: In 1915, Benedict XV told European leaders to ‘remember that Nations do not die; humbled and oppressed, they chafe under the yoke imposed upon them, preparing a renewal of the combat, and passing down from generation to generation a mournful heritage of hatred and revenge.’[22] He was thinking primarily of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and was quite right to predict more trouble in Europe. More generally, the inevitably great misery inflicted in modern wars increases the danger that the end of one war brings only a temporary and embittered pause before the next.
5. Existential fear: The nuclear rivalry that followed the Second World War was more than just another ratcheting up of the technologies of destruction. As Pius XII explained and declared in 1954, a full-scale nuclear war would amount to ‘the pure and simple annihilation of all human life within the radius of action. Under no circumstances is this to be permitted.’[23] In 1963, John XXIII called for ‘the realization that true and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust’.[24] Nuclear weapons have invalidated the traditional advice to princes: ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’.
6. More critical reflection: One reason that Christians has always accepted war so readily is that they, like almost all humanity, saw manly strength in bearing arms, glory in military victory, and nobility in honourable defeat. Those virtues now look less present and less impressive in war, thanks to modern wars’ destructiveness, the replacement of brave soldiers with amoral machines, and perhaps a reduction in the willingness to accept sin in societies. War remains appealing to many solders, politicians, and voters, especially when the warmakers’ cause is considered just. However, for many people, revulsion now rivals respect. Particular wars are often judged to be pointless and unnecessary horrors.
7. Loss of just causes: For premodern Catholics, many wars were holy. The killing was doing God’s work when it protected Christians in the Holy Land, defended Christian lands from Moslems, helped convert pagan natives in the Americas, and extirpated heresies in Christian Europe. The holiness of the numerous “crusades” helped Christians reconcile their religion of peace with the ubiquitous cult of military glory. More recently, some Catholics treated the defence of their own nations as a quasi-holy military cause. They were ignoring papal criticism of bellicose “nationalism”, but both Pius XI and Pius XII did consider atheistic Communism a possible enemy in a war that might qualify as holy. The fall of Communism and the increasing godlessness of former Christendom have reduced the appeal of modernised versions of the Old Testament’s divinely demanded carnage. At least arguably, the loss of divine approval for any wars has made all wars look less justifiable.
8. Greater distance: For centuries, popes steadily declared their neutrality in all military disputes that were not related to the Church’s legitimate interests, but popes and bishops thought that they had legitimate interests in many, perhaps most conflicts involving Christian rulers. The clergy were sometimes neutral voices for peace, but they were probably more often partisan in war. Even after the Vatican’s own military aspirations disappeared, its interest in supporting Catholic governments continued to undermine its self-image as purely and impartially peace-loving. John XXIII was the probably the first pope to see the Holy See’s worldly weakness as “prophetic” strength (cf. 2 Cor. 12.10).[25] Since John’s time, the Church has been widely recognised as forcefully opposing all war and all policies that push towards war. Of course, the opposition to war comes easier when the alternatives of military and political Catholicism are no longer available.
In 1845, when John Henry Newman defended the unchanging truth of developing Catholic doctrines, he dismissed the idea that Christianity ‘ever accommodates itself to the circumstances of times and seasons’ as not ‘compatible with the special idea of revealed truth’.[26] However, if the Church is to have a helpful social teaching, it will need to do something very close to what Newman rejected: accommodate its thinking about social and political challenges to the particular virtuous and sinful circumstance of specific times and seasons.[27] Experience and circumstances will lead to changes in the papal and curial counsels, because the Magisterium, which is not infallible in such temporal matters, will sometimes misread the relevant ‘signs of the times’ (Matt. 16.3) and will fail to respond appropriately to them once they have been read. A wise social teacher will be a humble one.
Humility and the admission of fallible development were quite distant from the indignation that marked, and in retrospect marred, all papal responses to the secularising world until, roughly speaking, the Second Vatican Council. However, the pride has largely been replaced by humility. Catholics can and should now not only accept that the war teaching has changed but rejoice that it has improved: from a weary acceptance of war to a firm commitment to as much peace as the fallen world can possibly provide, and from a too easy acceptance of almost any current social and economic order to a commitment to reshape the world so that societies and economies support peace.
Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical Popularum progressio contains the first mature expression of the new approach: ‘peace is not simply the absence of warfare…it is fashioned by efforts directed day after day toward the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God, with a more perfect form of justice among men.’[28] The same pope expressed the new serious and steady commitment to peace in more passionate terms to the United Nations: ‘never again war, never again war! It is peace, peace, that has to guide the destiny of the nations of all mankind!’[29]
The change of heart leaves open the status of the old teaching about just war. Obviously, the longstanding complacent tradition has been jettisoned, but what about the invented peace-loving tradition of a constraining set of conditions for justice in war? Should Catholics still determine the justice of potential and actual wars by applying the specified criteria? Pope Francis seems to think not. For him, the new approach totally supersedes the old. In a footnote to the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, he refers to ‘a concept of “just war” that we no longer uphold in our own day’.[30] His more spontaneous comments have been even stronger: ‘There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!’[31] Some Catholic experts in military ethics would prefer to reconcile the old and new approaches, partly in the hope of contributing to debates about the international law of war.[32] Their goals are laudable and their logic is sound, but they miss two basic issues.
First, the creators of the new just war tradition made a serious practical error. Their supposedly tough criteria did not, as they hoped, actually reduce the frequency and severity of war, even among Christians. Some bellicose governments and would-be governments have simply ignored the strictures. Others have respected them only enough to provide just-war justifications, often quite strained ones, for their military ventures. If anything, the conviction of having a good end, a just cause, has all too often provided ethical cover for the use of bad means, that is unjust types and levels of destruction.[33]
Second, too much attention to the just war criteria risks giving too little attention to the new teaching’s central principle: ‘War…is always a defeat for humanity’, in John Paul II’s pithy phrase.[34] No war can be more just than it is evil. Ethical clarity is easily lost in endless debates over the rights and wrongs of a combat whose very existence embodies a fundamental moral defeat.
Still, the acceptance that war is a defeat does not negate the teaching that destructive violence may sometimes be the least bad response to the reality or imminent threat of destructive violence. As the Second Vatican Council declared, ‘Insofar as men are sinful…governments cannot be denied the right to legitimate defence…’.[35] The Church teaches that such unwanted but welcomed violence should be limited as much as possible. Some just war teachings may help establish some limits.
This is truly confusing, because in effect, the Church now has three distinct, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory responses to the evil of war, to the many sins that encourage war, and to the many sins that war encourages. Each response expresses one way in which imperfect humanity, gathered together in imperfect societies, can try to overcome the sinful desire to destroy people identified as enemies. I have just described the first one: to reject war completely in principle, because violence ‘is an unacceptable evil [that] never solves problems’,[36] and in practice to reject war more often than sensible people might think is reasonable or even possible. I have also pointed towards the second response: to accept – in fear and trembling, in desolation and distress – that war is unavoidable, sometimes necessary, possibly controllable, and can have good aspects mixed in with the overwhelming bad ones. I will discuss this response, which is what is left of the just war teaching, in the next section. In the final section I will discuss the third response: to cherish and build peace.
Catholic philosophers and legal theorists have long worked in universal, indeed catholic, terms, but popes only started addressing their thoughts about war and peace to ‘the entire world’[37] and to ‘all men of goodwill’[38] in the middle of the 20th century. Since then, they have developed three universal messages about war.
First, because modern war, even when it is not nuclear, is much more evil than premodern war, it needs to be resisted more strongly. The scale of violence in the Second World War led Pius XII to this conclusion in 1944: ‘the theory of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date’. In response, the Church endorses various technical approaches, from treaties and negotiations to voluntary disarmament. However, such measures will always be insufficient, because the evil of wanting war is essentially a moral one. John XXIII wrote, ‘Everyone…must realize that, unless this process of disarmament …reach men's very souls, it is impossible to stop the arms race, or to reduce armaments…’[39]
Second, nuclear weapons are much more evil than other weapons. It took some time for the Magisterium to agree fully with the Catholic philosophers who declared that atomic bombs were too destructive for their use ever to be considered legitimate.[40] However, the Second Vatican Council discussed ‘the peril of a war which would reduce everything to ashes’, saying that, ‘Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or vast areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.’[41] Indeed, the Council fathers declared that the possibility of nuclear war ‘compel[s] us to undertake an evaluation of war with an entirely new attitude’.[42]
Third, this re-evaluation of war points to the need for significant progress in both moral judgements of war and the practical responses to the threat of war. For the world to be ‘redeemed from its sad and fatal bellicose conflicts’, Paul VI declared the need for ‘a new spirit which must animate coexistence between peoples, a new outlook on man, his duties and his destiny’.[43] ‘Is this an impossible hope?’, John Paul II asked.[44] In the midst of the Second World War, Pius XII feared that it might be. He said that this ‘apocalyptic expression of a civilization’ showed that ‘constantly increasing progress of technology is accompanied by an ever deeper decrease of the spirit and of morality’.[45] Later popes have eschewed explicit pessimism in favour of asking for solutions to the many practical problems that can spur wars. These problems are, as I will explain in the next section, numerous and serious. If all of them must be solved to eliminate the spurs for war – not to mention the need to tame the reasonless human desire for violence – then Benedict XVI was certainly right to warn against ‘naïve optimism’ about the prospects for true and durable global peace.[46] The Church still has to deal with war.
The Church’s current dealing is largely in line with the predominant thinking of humanitarian organisations.[47] Pius XII endorsed the key principle in 1944: ‘There is a duty…to do everything to ban…wars of aggression as legitimate solution of international disputes…’[48] The delegitimization of aggression disqualifies the stated justifications of at least one side of most wars that belligerents have ever tried to justify. There is no right to conquest, no right to take military action simply to regain lost honour or lost prosperity, and no justification for military efforts to force settlements of trade or border disputes, including the peaceful desire to secede from a current political jurisdiction.
The Vatican does recognise, with hesitations and cautions, that one side’s aggressive war can make the other side’s defensive war almost necessary, and perhaps something like just. However, the anti-war popes have consistently supported efforts to defuse all aggression through negotiations. When Francis asks the Russians and Ukrainians to ‘work together for peace’,[49] he is extending a tradition that extends back at least as far as Pius XII. In August 1939, that pope responded to the prospect of European war by declaring that, ‘The danger is imminent, but there is still time. Nothing is lost with peace. Everything can be with war.’[50] The statement is remarkably radical. Before the turn in the papal approach, almost all Catholics would have assumed that something, indeed such valuable things as honour, glory, and significant privileges, were easily and almost always lost with peace.
Still, the Magisterium continues to accept that military action can sometimes truly be necessary. John Paul II referred to the ‘brutal and systematic violence [that]… has had to be countered by armed resistance’.[51] Benedict XVI endorsed the global community’s ‘responsibility to protect’[52] members of the human family from what international law describes as ‘genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity’.[53] The humble papacy’s support for responsibility to protect (R2P) does not extend to the endorsement, let alone the management, of specific military interventions. The United Nations, or other suitable international organisations, should take charge.
R2P, which is not limited to times of war as conventionally understood, is a fairly recent addition to the body of international “humanitarian law”. Earlier agreements aimed to limit the harm done in war to disarmed soldiers and non-combatants.[54] Benedict XVI said that these efforts to create jus in bello, or justice while fighting, show that ‘the truth of peace exists even in the midst of war’.[55] His reference to peace is significant, because jus in bello is sometimes used to describe rules of war that aim only at keeping the fighting fair, as in a duel. Such efforts are abhorrent the Catholic Church’s current anti-war teaching.
I should note that R2P is not included in the supposedly traditional Catholic criteria for just war (jus ad bellum), but those tests had largely been ignored throughout the second phase of the Church’s anti-war teaching. The criteria take up only one of the sixteen sections the 1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church dedicated to ‘Safeguarding Peace’.[56]
The third Catholic response to the sinful and ineradicable human desire to fight wars is to work to reduce that desire: to build peace. The elements and suggested techniques of pacification of hearts, minds, peoples, and governments have not yet been gathered into a single, well organised Vatican document. However, five clear themes of peacemaking arise from the relevant encyclicals and the fifty-five annual papal messages for the First of January World Day of Peace.
A state of mind: The creation and maintenance of true and lasting peace require all people to reconsider their normal, “instinctive”, fallen, violent response to whatever is perceived as provocation. We must all find a new way of thinking with new habits and new understandings of courage, justice, and mercy. In Paul VI’s words, ‘Peace must take hold of the consciences of men as …a moral necessity…deriving from the innate demands of human coexistence.’[57]
A reordering of society: John XXIII wrote that truth, freedom, love, and justice are the foundations of peace. He also explained that the recourse to peace, rather than war, requires the unifying recognition that our enemy is also a fellow-member of the one great human family.[58] Subsequent popes have provided a long list of changes in this global family’s structure and relations that are necessary foundations of a peace-supporting global order. Paul VI wrote of honouring human rights, finding universal fraternity, stimulating international development, and promoting justice for the poor. John Paul II added learning forgiveness, the development of and respect for conscience, and the care of creation. Benedict XVI inserted education, religious freedom, and respect for truth. Francis has pointed to respecting the environment, the protection of migrants, and overcoming a culture of indifference.[59]
A Christian mission: During the war-accepting centuries, Christians often noted, sometimes with a certain complacency, that the peace which Jesus offers Christians (Jn. 14.27) is not of this world, suggesting that it was also not very relevant to the wars of this world. Similarly, the blessing of peacemakers in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5.9) was somewhat breezily interpreted as a generally unreachable counsel of perfection. Over the last century, the Church has gradually shifted towards seeing Jesus – in his explicit peace-teaching but more profoundly in his death, which brings peace to all humanity (cf. Eph. 2.24) – as the necessary foundation of any realistic effort to replace war with peace. John Paull II was very anxious to bring all religions and all people of goodwill into the battle for peace (cf. Eph. 6), but he clearly thought that Christian revelation gave believers sometime like a significant advantage – and responsibility. ‘[T]his divine promise [Jn. 14.27] fills us [Christians] with the hope, indeed the certainty of divine hope, that peace is possible, because nothing is impossible with God (cf. Lk. 1:37). For true peace is always God's gift, and for us Christians it is a precious gift of the Risen Lord (Jn. 20:19-26).’[60]
The centrality of forgiveness: For John Paul II, the greatest use of the divine gift of peace was the recognition that ‘for the establishment of true peace in the world, justice must find its fulfilment in charity…. There is no peace without forgiveness’.[61] In turn, ‘forgiveness is inspired by the logic of love, that love which God has for every man and woman, for every people and nation, and for the whole human family.’[62] This call for forgiveness as a political act is arguably the most distinctly Christian aspect of the Church’s current teaching on war. In the Christian understanding, our forgiveness of each other is always in some way a participation in the reconciliation and forgiveness brought by Christ’s Paschal Mystery, even when the forgiving person is not a believer. Whether or not that is right, John Paul II made the quite practical point that ‘societies, States, and the international community itself need forgiveness in order to renew ties that have been sundered, go beyond sterile situations of mutual condemnation, and overcome the temptation to discriminate against others without appeal.’[63]
The value of nonviolent witness: During the war-accepting centuries, Church authorities expected all men who were not in Holy Orders to obey legitimate orders to fight and kill in war. Catholic leaders and thinkers saw no goodness in the Anabaptists and other Christians who refused to take up arms. Their literal following of the Sermon on the Mount was considered to be merely a threat to the civil order.[64] The Magisterial rejection of such “nonviolence” faded with the Second Vatican Council, which tentatively endorsed the idea that governments should respect individuals who refuse military duty ‘for reasons of conscience’.[65] Still, the beatification of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer executed for conscientiously refusing military service under the Nazi regime, had to wait until 2007. By 2017, however, Francis firmly endorsed ‘nonviolence as a style of politics for peace’.[66] Although the Magisterium certainly does not think governments should abstain from all military violence, it now expresses deep admiration for individuals who call for exactly that total non-violence, for example the American Catholic lay leader Dorothy Day. Her ‘rejection of war was a matter of religion, an act of faith’, according to a priest who knew her well.[67]
Because war is so tempting to humans, peacemaking is hard work. Here is a brief description.
It starts long before any particular war. Francis tells us to ‘arm our children with the weapons of dialogue’.[68] To prevent the bitterness that leads to wars, we must address the many dimensions of social injustice and political belligerence. Hate-filled political populism, militaristic nationalism, and all sorts of xenophobia must be discouraged. A just system of international law must be supported. The resolution of disputes among nations through discussion, arbitration, regret, and forgiveness must be encouraged, as must all trust-building cross-border organisations.
When a war seems imminent, peacemakers try to calm anger, encourage discussion, and bring in outside nations or organisations to promote or impose peace. Even when they fail, their work continues. In the midst of war, it is never too early to negotiate or to develop plans for post-war reconciliation and rebuilding. It is never too late for generosity and compromise on the terms of peace. It is always time to argue in favour of peace at a price that some combatants think is too high. It is often reasonable to look for peace-promoting interventions – economic or even military – from outsiders.
After war, peacemakers try to soften the bitterness that can lead to violent revenge. They work to help former enemies determine truth, establish justice, accept responsibility, find the grace of forgiveness, and develop trust. Peacemaking is the work of commissions that function over months and years, but also of schools, institutions, and organised interaction that help the next generation grow up in peaceful fraternity.[69]
I close with a summary and a personal judgement. For millennia, history has too often been a story of wars. For most of its history, the Catholic Church was too complicit in the culture of organised and legitimised violence. More recently, the Church has learned to hate war as it hates all sins. It now needs to teach the world to, in the words of Pope Francis, ‘write a new page of history, a page full of hope, peace and reconciliation’.[70]
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[1] Francis, General Audience, March 23, 2022
[2] See John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, sections 7-11.
[3] For a very sympathetic summary of the changes, see Hrynkow & Power (2019), ‘Popes’.
[4] Biggar, In Defence of War is a heartfelt, but typically tepid, contemporary apology.
[5] Augustine, City of God, Book 19, Chapter 12.
[6] Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
[7] Historians generally agree about the existence of a “military revolution”, but differ on its timing, extent, and effect on war-related casualties. See, for example, Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate and Oka et al, ‘Population is…’.
[8] Cervantes, Conquistadores provides a sympathetic summary of both the theological debates and the effect on the ground.
[9] Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.II.40
[10] Catechism of the Council of Trent, 422 (Part Three, Chapter Six, translation altered).
[11] Neff, War and the Law of Nations provides references and clear background.
[12] A classic pacifistic history is Bainton, Christian Attitudes. Reichberg, ‘Historiography’ provides a more realistic appraisal.
[13] Pius X, Pascendi, 40. To be fair, he was referring to religious novelty.
[14] For invented traditions see Hobsbawm, ‘The invention of tradition’. For broader thoughts about how the present influences our historical narratives, see Ricoeur, ‘La mémoire’. The pacifists’ historical misreading was done in good faith. Historians, like everyone else, tend to find what they are looking for.
[15] Pius XI, ‘Ubi arcano’, section 41.
[16] For example, Pius XI, ‘Address to nurses’ August 27, 1935. In Moines de Solesmes, Enseignements, 188-190.
[17] Moines de Solesmes, Enseignements traces these developments through the 1950s. Also see Reichberg, ‘Discontinuity’.
[18] The first sections of Latham, ‘Warfare Transformed’ provide a complementary analysis.
[19] Pius XII, ‘Speech to Romanian Journalists, Oct 27, 1942’. In Moines de Solesmes, Enseignements, 328 (my translation).
[20] Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 258.
[21] Paul VI, ‘Address to the United Nations’.
[22] Benedict XV, ‘To the Peoples Now at War’
[23]Pius XII, ‘Address to World Medical Association’.
[24] John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, section 113.
[25] For the Vatican’s remarkably ambitious political ambitions from Benedict XV to at least the early years of Pius XII, see Chamedes, ‘The Vatican’.
[26] Newman, An Essay, 10 (Introduction, section 7).
[27] See Hadas, Counsels of Imperfection, Chapter 1.
[28] Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, section 76.
[29] Paul VI, ‘Address to the United Nations’.
[30] Francis, Fratelli Tutti, fn. 242.
[31] Francis, ‘Audience with Foundation Gravissimum Educationis’.
[32] For example, Miller, ‘Pope Francis’
[33] Samuel Moyn, Humane sees this sort of ethical hubris in recent American approach to the use of military force.
[34] John Paul II, ‘Address to the Diplomatic Corps’
[35] Second Vatican Council, ‘Gaudium et Spes’, sections 78-9.
[36] John Paul II, ‘Message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace 2005’, 4.
[37] Pius XII, ‘Speech to the Sacred College June 2, 1943’, Moines de Solesmes, Enseignements, 335.
[38] John XXIII added this phrase to Pacem in Terris, changing the encyclical from an internal Church document to a universal one.
[39] John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, section 113.
[40] See G. E. M. Anscombe et al, Nuclear Weapons.
[41] Second Vatican Council, ‘Gaudium et Spes’, sections 4, 80.
[42] Ibid, section 80.
[43] Paul VI, ‘Message for the Observance of a Day of Peace, 1 January 1968’.
[44] John Paul II, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 1984’, 3.
[45] Pius XII, ‘Christmas radio address, 24 December 1943’.
[46] Benedict XVI, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2006, 13.
[47] The relevant chapters of Neff, War and the Law of Nations and Reichberg, ‘Historiography’ trace out the two interlaced traditions.
[48] Pius XII, ‘1944 Christmas Message’, section 58 (emphasis added).
[49] Francis, General Audience, March 23, 2022
[50] Pius XII, ‘Radio address in the imminent danger of war’.
[51] John Paul II, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2000’, 3.
[52] Benedict XVI, ‘Address to the United Nations’.
[53] United Nations General Assembly, ‘2005 World Summit Outcome’, sections 138-139.
[54] See ICRC Advisory Service on International Human Law, ‘What is International Humanitarian Law?’ Slim, Solferino 21 provides an acute historical commentary.
[55] Benedict XVI, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 1 January 2006’, section 7.
[56] Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 2309. https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/V/
[57] Paul VI, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 1974’.
[58] See John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, Chapters 3 and 4.
[59] The titles of the messages, with links are available at https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/messages/peace.index.html for Paul VI, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace.index.1.html for John Paul II, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/messages/peace.index.html for Benedict XVI, and https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace.index.html for Francis.
[60] John Paul II, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 1 January 1992’, Section 9.
[61] John Paul II, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 1 January 2004’, section 10.
[62] John Paul II, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 1 January 1997’, section 1. See also Simpson, ‘Transcending Justice’.
[63] John Paul II, ‘Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 1 January 2002, section 9.
[64] Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations, 386.
[65] Gaudium et Spes, section 79.
[66] Francis, ‘Message for the Celebration of the Fiftieth World Day of Peace, 1 January 2017’, section 1.
[67] The description is from a appreciation written by her spiritual guide, Father John Hugo, (Hugo, ‘Dorothy Day’) shortly after her death.
[68] Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 217.
[69] Cahill, Blessed are the Peacemakers provides a reasonable summary of the new teaching.
[70] Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 231.