The Catholic Church's Stance On The War On Terrorism And Conflict

[White Knight]

I know Pope John Paul II disapproved of the War in Iraq, however what was his opinion on the War on Terror?

[Red Knight]

The war in Iraq is a sub-component of the overall War on Terror.

[Maggyie]

I would say I have an opinion, but it's an under-informed opinion. I don't have a lot of time to really stay on top of the news from day to day, or to do any in-depth research, so I think I'll just shutter my mouth.

My impression was that John Paul II was in favor of the War on Terror - he didn't say much about Afghanistan, for instance - but obviously he either didn't consider Iraq a legitimate front, or else thought that particular front should have been engaged in a different, non-military way.

[kujo]

Multi posts

Edited April 30, 2007 by kujo

[kujo]

Multi-posts

Edited April 30, 2007 by kujo

[kujo]

I did a Google search for JP2 and the "war on terrorism" and I found this article:

[quote][url="http://www.cjd.org/paper/jp2war.html"]Pope John Paul II calls War a Defeat for Humanity: Neoconservative Iraq Just War Theories Rejected [/url]

by Mark and Louise Zwick

The most consistent and frequent promoter of peace and human rights for the last two decades has been Pope John Paul II.

From Iraqi War I to Iraqi War II, he has echoed the voice of Paul VI, crying out before the United Nations in 1965: War No More, War Never Again!

John Paul II stated before the 2003 war that this war would be a defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.

In the weeks and months before the U.S. attacked Iraq, not only the Holy Father, but also one Cardinal and Archbishop after another at the Vatican spoke out against a "preemptive" or "preventive" strike. They declared that the just war theory could not justify such a war. Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran said that such a "war of aggression" is a crime against peace. Archbishop Renato Martino, who used the same words in calling the possible military intervention a "crime against peace that cries out vengeance before God," also criticized the pressure that the most powerful nations exerted on the less powerful ones on the U.N. Security Council to support the war. The Pope spoke out almost every day against war and in support of diplomatic efforts for peace.

John Paul II sent his personal representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, a friend of the Bush family, to remonstrate with the U.S. President before the war began. Pio Laghi said such a war would be illegal and unjust. The message was clear: God is not on your side if you invade Iraq.

After the United States began its attacks against Iraq, FOX News actually reported the immediate comments of the Holy Father, made in an address at the Vatican to members of an Italian religious television channel, Telespace: "When war, as in these days in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more urgent to proclaim, with a strong and decisive voice, that only peace is the road to follow to construct a more just and united society," John Paul said. "Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of man."

Americans were largely unaware of the depth and importance of the opposition of Church leaders to an attack on Iraq, since for the most part the mainstream media did not carry the stories. In the same way, many Americans were unaware that Pope John Paul II spoke against the first Gulf War 56 times. Media in the United States omitted this from the commentaries on the war. Many have also been unaware of the number of Iraqis killed in that war (not to mention the war which recently "ended"). In February 2003 Business Week published an interview with Beth Osborne Daponte, a professional demographer who worked for the Census Bureau. The first Bush administration tried to fire her because her published estimates of the number of Iraqi deaths conflicted with what Johnsonville brat Cheney was saying at the time. She was defended by social science professionals and was able to keep her job. Her estimates: 13,000 civilians were killed directly by American and allied forces, and about 70,000 civilians died subsequently from war-related damage to medical facilities and supplies, the electric power grid, and the water system.

In the past few years, Catholic neoconservatives have been attempting to develop a new philosophy of just war which would include preemptive strikes against other nations, what might be called a "preventive war." George Weigel has published major articles defending this position since 1995. First Things magazine published his articles and editorially agreed with this point of view. The present Bush administration has used these writings to defend the strike against Iraq. Shortly before the war began, through the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, President Bush sent Michael Novak to go to Rome to try to justify the war to the Pope and Vatican officials. Catholic News Service reported that the two-hour symposium was attended by some 150 invited guests, including lower-level Vatican officials, professors from church universities in Rome and diplomats accredited to the Vatican. Since with one voice Rome had already rejected the argument for a preventive war, Novak took the approach that a war on Iraq would not be a preventive war, but a continuation of a "just war," Iraqi War I, and actually a moral obligation. He argued that a was also a matter of self-defense, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was an un-scrupulous character, and therefore it was only a matter of time before he took up with Al Qaida and gave them such weapons.

Novak did not succeed in convincing Church leaders-in fact, some commentators reflected that his efforts might have had the opposite effect. Novak's credibility in this argument was perhaps under-mined by his employment at the American Enterprise Institute, heavily funded by oil companies, some of whom began advertising in the Houston Chronicle for em-ployees to work in Iraq even before the war began. Administration officials denied for months that the goal of the war on Iraq was related to oil. On June 4, 2003, however, The Guardian reported the words of the U.S. deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz (one of the major architects of the war). Wolfowitz had earlier commented that the urgent reason given for the war, weapons of mass destruction, was only a "bureaucratic excuse" for war. Now, at an Asian security summit in Singapore he has declared openly that the real reason for the war was oil: "Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defense minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

John Paul II has sought to distance the Catholic Church from George Bush's idea of the manifest Christian destiny of the United States, and especially to avoid the appearance of a clash of Christian civilization against Islam. Zenit reported that in his Easter Sunday message this year John Paul II "implored for the world's deliverance from the peril of the tragic clash between cultures and religions." The Pope also sent his message to terrorists: "Let there be an end to the chain of hatred and terrorism which threatens the orderly development of the human family." As he had done in his invitation to religious leaders from many faiths to Assisi at the beginning of 2002, he reached out again to leaders of other religions: "May faith and love of God make the followers of every religion courageous builders of under-standing and forgiveness, patient weavers of a fruitful inter-religious dialogue, capable of inaugurating a new era of justice and peace."

Catholic World News quoted the Latin-rite Bishop of Baghdad, Bishop Jean-Benjamin Sleimaan as saying in the Italian daily La Repubblica that the Pope's high-profile opposition to a war on Iraq has helped to avoid a sort of Manichaeism that would set up an opposition between the West and the East, in which Christianity is linked to the West and Islam to the East.

While the Iraqi War II turned out to be "short," violations of "just war" principles abounded. Bombing included such targets as an open market and a hotel where the world's journalists were staying. While most television and newspaper reports in the United States minimized coverage of deaths and injuries to the Iraqi people, reports of many civilian casualties did come out. CBS news reported on April 7 stories of civilians pouring into hospitals in Baghdad, threatening to over-whelm medical staff, and the damage inflicted by bombs which targeted homes: "The old, the young, men and women alike, no one has been spared. One hospital reported receiving 175 wounded by midday. A crater is all that remains of four families and their homes-obliterated by a massive bomb that dropped from the sky without warning in the middle afternoon." The Canadian press carried a Red Cross report of "incredible" levels of civilian casualties from Nasiriyah, of a truckload of dismembered women and children arriving at the hospital in Hilla from that village, their deaths the result of "bombs, projectiles."

As talk escalated about a U. S. attack on Iraq, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, began stating unequivocally that "The concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church." His comments had been published as early as September 2002 and were repeated several times as war seemed imminent.

Cardinal Ratzinger recommended that the three religions who share a heritage from Abraham return to the Ten Commandments to counteract the violence of terrorism and war: "The Decalogue is not the private property of Christians or Jews. It is a lofty expression of moral reason that, as such, is also found in the wisdom of other cultures. To refer again to the Decalogue might be essential precisely to restore reason."

Preparation of a new shorter, simpler version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church will soon begin and, according to reports and interviews with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, it will probably include revisions to clarify the section on just war, as the official version has done against capital punishment in a civilized society. Cardinal Ratzinger will head up the Commission to write the new catechism. In an interview with Zenit on May 2, 2003, the Cardinal restated the position of the Holy Father on the Iraq war (II) and on the question of the possibility of a just war in today's world.: "There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a "just war."

In almost every one of his addresses to groups large or small and in each visit to other countries, such as his recent visit to Spain, John Paul II has cried out for peace.

At the Ash Wednesday Mass this year the Pope reemphasized the theme that peace comes with justice: "There will be no peace on earth while the oppression of peoples, injustices and economic imbalances, which still exist, endure." He insisted that changes in structures, economic and otherwise, must come from conversion of hearts: "But for the desired structural changes to take place, external initiatives and interventions are not enough; what is needed above all is a joint conversion of hearts to love."

In his Easter message the Holy Father drew attention not only to the Iraq War, but to "the forgotten wars and protracted hostilities that are causing deaths and injuries amid silence and neglect on the part of considerable sectors of public opinion." The official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano carried the Pope's Easter message of peace with a headline in very large letters, Pace (peace), taking up a quarter of a page. He has asked Catholics to pray and do penance and ask Christ for peace, a peace "founded on the solid pillars of love and justice, truth and freedom."

Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, July-August 2003.[/quote]

[quote][url="http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/publications/article19.htm"]"Hawks, Doves, and Pope John Paul II" [/url]

August 12, 2002.
By Father Drew Christiansen, S.J.

The "just war" tradition is fast becoming a contested field of ideas in Catholic circles. The growing division of the Catholic community on issues of war and peace was on clear display recently at the annual "Social Ministries" meeting in the nation's capital. There, an audience of diocesan social action workers vigorously challenged the pro-just-war sentiments voiced by a range of speakers.

At one extreme of this debate are peace activists like members of Pax Christi USA who reject the very usefulness of the traditional just-war theory. They can conceive of virtually no circumstances that would justify the use of military force. As Sister Kathy Thornton, president of the Catholic social-justice lobby Network, said at a recent anti-war rally, "To (our) legislators we're saying the most patriotic thing you do is to say 'no' to war."

At the other extreme are "the enablers," especially politically conservative Catholic intellectuals. They are a permissive just-war school that would legitimate most uses of force contemplated by the United States government. For them, the primary function of "just war" is to enable government to employ force in the pursuit of justice. They are skeptical, if not scornful, of applying just-war norms to limit the savagery of war.

In this debate, the middle may turn out to be the cutting edge. It is there we find people wrestling with the complexities of Church teaching, rather than simply overthrowing the tradition or using theology to bless war as an instrument of policy.

For example, other conservatives like John Finnis and Germain Grisez are aiming to fashion a coherent, pro-life moral theology. In doing so, they have developed a more restrictive understanding of what constitutes a just war.

Another broad party in the middle consists of those who take a similarly stringent view of just-war principles. This group speaks of a "presumption" against the use of force and seeks to limit the scale of war by applying just-war criteria restrictively.

Here one finds the U.S. Catholic bishops, who in their statement, "Living with Faith and Hope After September 11," endorsed using non-violent alternatives before resorting to war. Behind the scenes, there are people like University of Notre Dame peace-studies professor George Lopez and the staff of the U.S. bishops' Office of International Justice and Peace, directed by Gerard Powers. Above all, you have Pope John Paul II challenging the culture of death in war making as in abortion.

John Paul stands at the heart of this debate. His sweeping teaching on war and peace might be summarized: "If you want peace, seek justice (nonviolently) -- and forgiveness." That was the thrust of the Pope's message for the World Day of Peace, observed January 1.

Last month, while welcoming the new Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, the Holy Father counseled, "The pillars of peace in your land, as everywhere else, are justice and forgiveness: the justice that seeks to ensure full respect for rights and responsibilities, and equitable distribution of benefits and burdens, and the forgiveness which heals and rebuilds troubled human relations from their foundations."

To some proponents of the just-war tradition, the Pope's insistence on forgiveness in the midst of "the war on terrorism" sounds worryingly softheaded. The Holy Father -- as critics see it -- has been muddling the teaching with his cautious warnings about the consequences of violence and pleas for forgiveness.

These hard-line just warriors feared that the Second Vatican Council's call to look at war "with a whole new attitude" was a fuzzy notion to begin with. They criticize the U.S. bishops for their articulation of a presumption against the use of force as a premise of just-war theory.

On the other hand, many of these same just warriors were reluctant to accept the Holy See's pleas for "humanitarian intervention" or peacekeeping operations in places like Haiti and Bosnia in the 1990s, believing U.S. troops should be reserved for war fighting alone. And, they chafe at any hint that the just war theory is intended to limit military options and not just permit the use of force in "a just cause." Catholics among them keep a stiff upper lip whenever the Pope speaks of the dangers of war.

Most of all they worry that official Catholic thinking is slipping into closet pacifism. In his book, "Morality in Contemporary Warfare" (Yale, 1999), James Turner Johnson contends that modern Catholic teaching -- going as far back as Vatican Council I in 1869 -- has inclined toward pacifism out of revulsion for the lethality of modern war. The late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder came to the same view from a pacifist direction, in his book, "When War Is Unjust" (Orbis, 1996).

What is clear is that the teaching has evolved markedly since Vatican II in the 1960s and especially under the leadership of Pope John Paul II.

During and after the Persian Gulf War, the Holy Father repeatedly voiced his skepticism of war as a tool of international policy. In his 1991 encyclical letter Centesimus annus, the Holy Father referred to that conflict in declaring: "No, never again war, which destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war."

What does Pope John Paul II's teaching have to say to the contending parties, and the rest of us? Though scarcely noted at the time, Centesimus celebrated non-violent resistance as the cause of Communism's collapse in Europe. It also contained the seeds of his essential teaching on non-violence, war and peace. Above all, it argued for the effectiveness of non-violence in confronting injustice in the world.

First, the Holy Father teaches that violence always brings a train of woe in its wake. For that reason, we should be skeptical when people say the use of force can resolve conflicts in any real and lasting way. Second, a lesson he drew from the overthrow of communism is that we must "learn to fight for justice without violence" in both domestic and international conflicts. Third, he believes the community of nations should undertake "a concerted worldwide campaign for development" as an alternative to war and a condition for peace.

Although a persistent voice on behalf of nonviolent solutions, the Holy Father also called for "humanitarian intervention" or peacekeeping in trouble spots like Bosnia, Central Africa, and East Timor, even if that meant using force to "disarm the aggressor." His advocacy of humanitarian intervention as much as his praise for nonviolence is contributing to a rethinking of Catholic thought on the use of force in world affairs.

Similarly, the Holy Father's World Day of Peace message allowed for a nation's right of defense against (global) terrorism. However, while this too should inform Catholic just-war thinking, the right of defense is not the heart of his message. It must be read in the broader context of his teaching on international affairs.

An updated and complete Catholic theology of war and peace, following John Paul II, must grapple with an array of components. These include the culture of death, the effects of violence, the usefulness of non-violence as well as just war, the need for justice through development, and the place of forgiveness in peacemaking.

By that standard, the stale U.S. debates between pacifists and just warriors, and between less and more stringent just-war types, have very far to go.

As a first step, it is natural for Catholics to take a fresh look at the just-war theory in light of September 11 and the war against terrorism. Catholic teaching, though, ought not evolve solely in response to circumstances. It must move ahead in view of the Church's theology of war and peace as well as its reading of the signs of the times. Pope John Paul has set the stage for a reformulation of Catholic thinking about war, peace and non-violence. Will the squabbling factions in the U.S. debate engage him?

Father Drew Christiansen, S.J., is a Senior Fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1998 he served as director of the Office of International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.[/quote]

And finally...

[quote][url="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20011211_xxxv-world-day-for-peace_en.html"]Pope John Paul II's Message for the World Day of Peace 2002[/url]

There exists therefore a right to defend oneself against terrorism, a right which, as always, must be exercised with respect for moral and legal limits in the choice of ends and means. The guilty must be correctly identified, since criminal culpability is always personal and cannot be extended to the nation, ethnic group or religion to which the terrorists may belong. International cooperation in the fight against terrorist activities must also include a courageous and resolute political, diplomatic and economic commitment to relieving situations of oppression and marginalization which facilitate the designs of terrorists. The recruitment of terrorists in fact is easier in situations where rights are trampled upon and injustices tolerated over a long period of time.

Still, it must be firmly stated that the injustices existing in the world can never be used to excuse acts of terrorism, and it should be noted that the victims of the radical breakdown of order which terrorism seeks to achieve include above all the countless millions of men and women who are least well-positioned to withstand a collapse of international solidarity—namely, the people of the developing world, who already live on a thin margin of survival and who would be most grievously affected by global economic and political chaos. The terrorist claim to be acting on behalf of the poor is a patent falsehood.[/quote]

[kujo]

Personally, I think that the War in Iraq has been bungled and fumbled and is NOW a component of the overall war on terror. We have to find a way to fix our mess there because failure to do so would create even more distrust and hatred of America which would breed even more terrorists that hate us.