#just war

[many-sparrows]

The Catholic Worker, 1937

[unsolicited-opinions]

Good afternoon. Besides your material support for military self-defense in case of attacks, do you consider yourself to be ultimately and philosophically "anti-war"?

This is an awkward question.

"Material support" suggests I've funded, supplied, or participated in defensive military action. I haven't.

Instead of asking me for an ethical view, you asked me an identity question about how I see myself (or wish to be seen by others): "do you consider yourself to be ultimately and philosophically 'anti-war'?"

Your question seems to imply a false binary: Wars of self-defense vs. Illegitimate wars (although I agree defensive wars are categorically different from other conflicts).

"Ultimately and philosophically" is semantically meaningless in this context.

"Anti-war" isn't defined.

So let's pretend you asked better questions.

Do you believe war is horrific and tragic?

I feel nauseated when I hear people describe war as cleansing, glorious, redemptive, or inevitable because it's none of those. These are rationalizations and ways to shore up public support for wars.

War is traumatic, destructive, and should be avoided whenever possible. It's not conceptual or abstract, it's real. It involves real pain, real suffering, and real death. I grieve what it does to soldiers, civilians, and entire societies.

Do you oppose war as a tool of conquest, expansion, or domination?

I oppose wars of aggression, empire, and ideology and I oppose wars waged to subjugate or erase. I oppose the use of force to impose beliefs, and oppose the strong using force to prey opportunistically on the weak.

Do you believe all war, aside from defensive action, is equally wrong?

No. I'm not a pacifist.

Being a pacifist requires moral flattening and erasure of context and nuance.

There's a difference between pursuing peace and pacifism.

There's a difference between force used to target active combatants and force used to target and massacre civilians.

There's a difference between launching a war and fighting a war in response to an attack.

Do you believe force is ever justified to defend civilians or prevent atrocities?

Yes, but that doesn't mean anyone can just invoke the word "resistance" and expect to be taken seriously and I resent the intellectual dishonesty of using this approach to justify atrocities.

Defensive violence has moral weight only when it's actually defending human life, not when it's used to target civilians, murder children, or wage holy war.

Example:

On October 7th 2023, Hamas murdered 1200 Isrselis. At least 809 were civilians. A least 40 were children. About 280 were women. 25 were over 80 years of age. They kidnapped 252 Israelis.

Claiming this is an example of defensive war or "resistence," requires willful ignorance or intellectual dishonesty from the person making the claim.

Responsibility matters. Sequence matters. Intent matters. Who broke the peace matters.

So are you anti-war?

If you're asking if I mourn war, hate it, and believe it should be avoided whenever possible, yes.

If you mean I refuse to excuse war crimes or cheer for destruction, yes.

But if you're asking if I oppose all force equally, no matter who’s killing whom, or why? Absolutely not.

That kind of pacifism sometimes pretends to be moral clarity, but it's actually intellectual laziness and moral collapse.

Cultural relativism and moral subjectivism don't make us more moral, they erase distinctions between the moral and the immoral.

Instead of lazy relativism, empty pacifism, or moral posturing, I prefer ethical models that evaluate violence by purpose, context, and consequence.

Anon -

The first ethics text I ever read (as a college freshman in the 1990s) was The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachels, and I continue to recommend it as a outstanding introduction. You can download a PDF of it here.

After that, try Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars.

[victusinveritas]

[willowandlily]

speedpaint for my earlier post👍

[protoslacker]

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war,” said the statement on Wednesday, attributed to James Massa, chair conference’s committee on doctrine. “A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’. That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’ “When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ.”

James Masa quoted in in an article by Richard Luscombe in The Guardian. Pope says ‘world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants’ amid feud with Trump’s White House

Pontiff denounces leaders who invoke religion to justify war, after US bishops offer him support after Vance remarks

[eighthman-bound]

In light of everything that’s been happening, I hope it’s okay if I share this scene from a Doctor Who VNA book/ Big Finish Bernice Summerfield story, Just War-

"You say you come from the future, and I know for certain Germany will win the war, that means this Reich will go on for a thousand years."

Bernice laughs, "I’m sorry but that’s just not true. This Reich doesn’t even last for 1000 weeks let alone 1000 years. Oh yes, fascism disappears as a political force in your lifetime Oskar. By the 1990s where my ex husband comes from the only people wearing the Nazi uniform were sad little blokes who can’t get it up any other way. A few gangs of glue sniffing thugs had the swastika tattooed to their foreheads but they never learnt what it really stood for. They hang around on street corners spitting and swearing, trying to shock their parents but they weren't up to anything other than petty vandalism and beating up immigrant women and children. In other words fascism ended just where it started. Your only legacy will be their hatred, their ignorance."

[lawrenceop]

Pope of the Rosary

HOMILY for the memorial of Pope St Pius V

Acts 13:13-25; Ps 88; John 13:16-20

The Dominican pope and saint we celebrate today has a special place in my heart, not only because of the ancient Liturgy of the Roman rite that is attributed to his reforms, but moreover because he is truly “the pope of the Rosary”. It was St Pius V who established the Hail Mary in the form we now know as the universal norm; it was he who first wrote about the form of the Rosary that we all know and love, and he promoted it universally in 1569, and finally it was he in 1571 who led the city of Rome and the Rosary Confraternity members in prayer when the Christian world was under attack by the Muslim Ottoman naval forces, and he subsequently established the feast of the Holy Rosary to be celebrated on the 7th of October in thanksgiving for the victory won on that day by the Holy League, which he had personally financed for the defence of the Christian people in Europe. 

Concerning the form of the Rosary, he asserted that “St Dominic invented this method of prayer, which is easy and suitable to everyone and which is called the Rosary or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It consists of venerating this Blessed Virgin by reciting 150 Angelic Salutations, the same number as the psalms of David, interrupting them at each decade by the Lord’s Prayer, meanwhile meditating on the mysteries which recall the entire life of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

According to his biographer, “Pius always turned to prayer when faced with serious matters and never neglected anything that pertained to his office. For he considered it the Pontiff’s special duty to intercede before God for the sins and the needs of his people.” Thus he gathered the people of Rome in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva to pray the Rosary in 1571, and he encouraged people to join the Rosary Confraternity, which continues to this day, as a great spiritual army gathered in prayer under the banner of Our Lady; indeed, it is my privilege as Promoter General of the Rosary to oversee the growth of this Confraternity. Like him, we should always turn to prayer and have prayer as the foundation of all our actions and considerations. 

Hence St Pius, we’re told, “was so devoted to the Most Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, that he prayed the rosary every day, even though as pontiff he was occupied with many concerns.” This suggests that in the 16th-century it was still unusual to pray the Rosary daily, but Pius V clearly meant to give us an example to follow, which Our Lady of the Rosary would confirm in 1917 when she said in each of her six apparitions at Fatima: “Pray the Rosary every day to obtain peace”. 

In our own time, we are acutely aware of the lack of peace among nations, which stems from a fundamental unrest in the human heart. Our Lady, therefore, prescribed a daily Rosary, that is to say, daily prayer which would lead us to rest in Jesus through Mary, and to receive from Christ the peace which the world cannot give, the peace that comes from God alone, and from knowing and loving him as St Pius V did so ardently. 

It is certainly still necessary, in extreme situations, to defend oneself when one is under direct attack, and this is true both for individual persons and for a people – St Pius V shows us this by his saintly example, as he draws on the ever-valid ‘just war’ principles enunciated by his Dominican brother, Francisco de Vitoria, and others. However, at the same time, and following the example of Christ and the requests from heaven of Our Lady, it is always necessary, every day, that we should pray for the gift of peace, and strive to be peace-makers; our first impulse as Christians is not to live by the sword, but by prayer. As Our Lord says in today’s Gospel: “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.“ Indeed, blessed as the peace-makers, and blessed are those who commit to praying the Rosary every day for true peace, even as St Pius V had done. Thus, he said that “By the Rosary the darkness of heresy has been dispelled, and the light of the Catholic Faith shines out in all its brilliance”.