Herem Warfare

[Brother Adam]

What is the proper Catholic response to questions about Herem warfare (Joshua's Conquest of Canaan) in the Old Testament where "innocent" people are slaughtered who are under the ban?

[Bennn]

I think it would be wise to know in what kind of time people lived back then. The human mind was still darkened, and was not yet capable to receive the full glory of the Gospel. The war of Joshua was on the one hand Divine punishment on the people who burned their children for moloch (like abortion today), religious prostitution, sodomy, and other sins that cried to Heaven for vengeance. On the other hand it was Gods way of fulfilling the promise made to them, that they would inherit the holy land, which had been soaked with the blood of innocents by the barbarous tribes. An example of this is when Joshua cut off some pagan king's thumbs, the king responds that it was a just sentence for him, because he had also cut off the thumbs of many kings and let them serve at his table.

The Israëlites and the rest of humanity were not yet capable to receive the fulness of Gospel truth, such as loving your enemies, not repaying violence with more violence. They had to be prepared first during the centuries to come, before the Christ would come to teach them the true ways of God. But before that, the Lord let the Israëlites inflict just punishment upon the Canaänites, because back then it was still mostly the only language they understood.

In these times, when humanity has been illuminated by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it would be highly immoral to exterminate people because they commit infanticide in abortionclinics, make sex their religion, and lust after their own gender (how severe these crimes may be), because the Lord has taught us that He has patience with them, so that they might have a chance to convert before death and the Last Judgement, and we should immitate that Divine patience by preaching repentance and forgiveness through the sacred Body and Blood of Jesus, but without violence.

Pax Domini,
Ben