Wednesday, 16 May 2012

LEX CHRISTIANORUM - LAW BY ANDREW M. GREENWELL

 Lex Christianorum

A Commonplace Blog Dedicated to the Law of the Christian Peoples and the Natural Law

  About Me

Corpus Christi, Texas, United States
I am a Catholic layman in the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas, married with three children. I am a practicing lawyer in civil litigation and civil appellate law. Email me at
 apozoverde@gmail.com

Read my articles on catholiconline.com

Read my articles on catholiconline.com











gaudet gula Cerberi.

Home

Angilbert (fl. ca. 840/50), On the Battle Which was Fought at Fontenoy

The Law of Christians is broken,
Blood by the hands of hell profusely shed like rain,
And the throat of Cerberus bellows songs of joy.

Angelbertus, Versus de Bella que fuit acta Fontaneto


Fracta est lex christianorum
Sanguinis proluvio, unde manus inferorum,
gaudet gula Cerberi.

 

Tuesday, May 15, 2012


God's Glory Appears: The Need for Beauty in Theology

IN HANS URS VON BALTHASAR, the theory of aesthetics--the theory of human perception of beauty, and human response to it--is a central, if implicit, chord of his ethics. Von Balthasar sees human perception and response to beauty (which deals with the created order) as analogous to human perception and response to the divine glory (which deals with Christ and God). The latter response (to divine glory) of a man to Jesus, is fundamentally the moral act. Jesus Christ is God's glory made manifest in a unique way, and man's perception of that glory demands a response, one of free submission and love, to Christ's form.  Confronted suddenly with Christ, all responses to beauty become relativized or subordinate to Christ without thereby losing their worth.  After all, they are still theophanous, or God-revealing, in a sense.

For Von Balthasar, morality may be said to be a preeminent form of aesthetics. They run parallel in analogous channels. Aesthetics is human response (love) to the Word in the created world (which gives rise to beauty). Morality is the human response (love) to the Word in the God-Man Jesus (which gives rise to glory).  In a middling channel, as it were, is our response to our neighbor, where the image of God in man radiates the God behind it in a particular way, to be sure in an order infinitely below the Christ-form,  but still commanding a moral response. 

Balthasar's understanding of the word "glory" is biblical. His theory is founded upon an elaboration of the Hebrew word kabod (כָּבוֺד) or the Greek word doxa (δόξα). Kabod and doxa are the words most frequently used in the Scriptures to refer to the divine beauty that manifests itself in the vestiges of God in the created order, in the forms of the world. "Since reality is always charge with divine presence," Steck states, "it is always possible for graced eyes to find in worldly form the reflection of the absolute," the Logos. Beauty points beyond itself to the implicit creator behind it.  "Thus, divine beauty, glory, has its analogue in earthly beauty."  Steck, 12.  There is an "analogical tie" between beauty and glory.  Steck, 12.

 The Mosaics of Monreale, Palermo: Jesus Christ Pantokrator.

The appearance of glory in Christ--the "Christ-form"--is unique, decisive, and absolute. While glory lies behind earthly, created forms, Christ is the divine glory itself made flesh. "Christ is himself absolute truth, goodness, and beauty in concrete form. He makes visible that to which every other instance of truth, goodness, and beauty can only point." What is implicit in the created order becomes explicit in Christ through the created order, i.e., his human nature. Because the glory of God shines both through created things and supereminently in Christ there is an analogy that may be drawn between aesthetics (the human response to glory in created things, eros) and morality (the human response to glory in Christ, agape). The appropriate response to the divine image in our neighbor (also agape), is deeply tied to our response to Christ, and, unlike our response to beauty (which is psychological and may even, if corrupted be sentimental or maudlin), our response to our neighbor is a moral response. Moral response to glory, which certainly does not exclude the affective or psychological part of man, is nevertheless something entirely different from psychological, sentimental, or emotional response which is the typical reaction when confronting beauty.

Importantly, for von Balthasar, when one encounters Christ, one does not only encounter truth, good, and being, one also encounters beauty.  Christ is beautiful.  Indeed, he goes beyond beautiful to being glorious.

While the appearance of God's glory in Christ and our response to it is preeminent, one must not therefore reject the appearance of God's glory in creation and our response to it.  One might say that the former is the response to the Logos in faith, while the latter is response to the Logos in reason.  Therefore, the former is theological, the latter is philosophical.  But (as one might expect in a Catholic theologian) they are mutually supportive, and not in opposition.
Ultimately for von Balthasar, non genuine theology of glory--and thus no adequate Christian theology--can be achieved without the inclusion of beauty as a part of the philosophical substratum of theological reflection.

Steck, 12.

The aesthetic response that von Balthasar identifies is not that of Kierkegaard's aesthete.*  Unlike Kierkegaard's aesthete who lives for himself and whose aesthetic response is self-regarding, the human who responds to beauty is, in von Balthasar's view, drawn out of himself and is other-regarding.  Human response to beauty is similar to human response to truth, to good, to being.  In fact, neglect of beauty distorts our response to truth, to good, and to being.  For von Balthasar, beauty is a transcendental.**  Just as there can be a theology of truth, of good, of being, there can be a theology of beauty or a theology of glory.

Von Balthasar finds this theology of glory is "at the enter of the most important and creative theologies in Christian history."  Steck, 11. 

[Von Balthasar] finds indicators of this theology in the themes that reappear in the works of these great thinkers [Irenaeus, Augustine, Anselm, Dante, Pascal, and Hopkins]: the ever-greaterness of God, the eros of human longing which Christ awakens, the orientation of nature to the advent of grace, the sacramentality of the world's images, the shattering of human understanding before the "whylessness"*** of God's love as revealed in Christ.
Steck, 10.  Von Balthasar thus extracts from Catholic tradition his theology of glory.  He ties it with the Catholic concept of the "analogy of being"†  By tying these two together, he concludes that "divine beauty, glory, has its analogue in earthly beauty."  And beauty then becomes important "because it assists in a theological reflection on divine glory."  Steck, 12.  This connection is some important for von Balthasar, that "no genuine theology of glory--and no adequate Christian theology--can be achieved without the inclusion of beauty as a part of the philosophical substratum of theological reflection."  Grace builds upon nature.  Theology of glory builds upon aesthetics.

Beauty is also necessary "because it alone can preserve the connection between truth and goodness."  Steck, 12.  Truth, good, and beauty belong as a trinity.  Remove beauty from the mix and truth and good separate into separate spheres.  Truth becomes empirical science with its "thin" view of nature.  Cold, ugly, inhuman.  Remove beauty and good devolves into what is useful, one falls into utilitarian or pragmatic ethic.  Again, cold, calculating, inhuman.  "For beauty indicates that the world is already more than simple facts and that its goodness is more than the determination of costs and benefits."  Steck, 13.

It is beauty that makes us wonder about truth.  It is beauty that makes us desire to do good.  Beauty also allows us to be open to truth and good, particularly the true and the good in divine revelation.  "For von Balthasar, the beautiful form heralds creation's openness to 'something more.'"  Steck, 13. 

Finally, it is beauty that provides a pedagogical aid to truth and good.  It allows metaphors, images, parables, etc. to describe truth, to encourage the good.  Imagine a world where you tried to encourage your fellows to do good if you could not tell the parable of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son.  Imagine a world where you tried to encourage your fellows to truth, without an icon of the Pantokrator or without the image of a Crucifix.  Imagine getting your fellows to love God without Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring or without St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Jesus dulcis memoria.  Imagine enjoining them to love the created world and give thanks to the Lord for it without St. Francis of Assisi's Canticle of the Sun.

Our love for God ought to be opulent, and only beauty allows for that to happen.
__________________________________________
*Kierkegaard divides human response or spheres of existence into three: aesthetic (life "for self"), ethical (life "for others"), and religious (life "for God").  This division is discussed in a variety of his works, including Either/Or, Guilty/Not Guilty and Stages on Life's Way.
**Steck defines the transcendental "being" as "the most general and universally predictable [sic] {I think this should be predicable} feature of reality, transcending yet including all of them." Steck, 11.  The other transcendentals (one, good, true, and beautiful) are nothing other than being under other aspects.  "Insofaras being is undivided in an existent, it is 'one.'  Insofar as it is knowable, it is 'true.'  Insofar as it is lovable, it is 'good.'  Insofar as it is both knowable and lovable (at once), it is 'beautiful.'"  Steck, 11.  There is some controversy about whether beauty is a transcendental and whether St. Thomas believed it to be. 
***This word ("whylessness"), used by von Balthasar, is obviously a neologism in English.  It is used by e. e. cummings in his poem "enterno(silence": "an i breathe-move-and-seem some perpetually roaming whylessness" to describe the thoughts of someone meditating in autumn of impending winter, clearly a reference of an aging man contemplating the imminence of his death and the whylessness or meaninglessness of life.  It is the utterance of a man unsinging, not a man singing.  As used by Steck and von Balthasar, "whylessness" seems to have a positive connotation of the utter gratuity of grace.  Is is the "whylessness" of a man singing, of a man in love.  Ultimately, there is no "reason" for God's grace, it is "whyless," it is nothing but an utter act of gratuitous love.  It is like a lover answering the question, "Why do you love me?"  "I don't know," is the response, "I just do."  Any mention of attributes ("you're beautiful," "you're kind," "you make me happy," etc.) is, in a sense, a diminishment of authentic love is is "whyless."  The notion is taken by Von Balthasar from the writings of Meister Eckhart who in his Sermons and Tractates wrote about the "whyless" nature of our response to God and the "whyless" nature of love, of creation, or grace (Âne warumbe / sunder warumbe). 
†Analogy of being (analogia entis) is a central concept in Catholic theology.  Very simply, it stands for the proposition that there is an analogy between God's absolute being, good, truth, unity, and beauty and contingent, created being, truth, unity, and beauty.  Though the difference between created and creator is infinite, there remains yet an analogy between the qualities of the created and Creator.  So we are able to predicate things we learn from created reality (the beauty of a beloved, fidelity in marriage, life, goodness) supereminently to God and not be lying or saying false things about him, but saying something meaningful and true, even if very limited.  We can do this by reason, which allows for natural theology.  It is also done in revelation.  How else could Jesus compare God's love for his people to a hen's love for its chicks? (Cf. Luke 13:34).

Posted by Andrew M. Greenwell at 7:31 PM 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Monday, May 14, 2012


God's Glory Appears: Von Balthasar's Ethics

OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS, we are going to review Christopher Steck's book The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar.* Though as Steck indicates, von Balthasar never wrote any synthetic treatment on moral theology or ethics, Steck attempts to glean an ethic from von Balthasar's prodigious corpus, specifically from his multi-volume works The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (7 vols.), Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (5 vols.), and, to a lesser extent, his Theologik (3 vols).  (There is also a short essay, "Nine Propositions of Christian Ethics," from which Steck draws.)  I have read some--though by no means all--of von Balthasar's work.  His thought is complex, and I have hardly scratched its surface, much less mastered it.  I shall therefore rely on Steck's efforts to "assemble a coherent theory of ethics out of his [von Balthasar's] approaches to related concepts--e.g., human agency, anthropology, and freedom."  (Steck, 5)  Necessarily, we will be looking more at "Steck on von Balthasar" than on von Balthashar himself independently.  I assume, therefore, that Steck presents a fair depiction of von Balthasar's ethical thought. (Though Steck himself sounds a warning: "Given the richness and depth of von Balthasar's ideas and their unsystematic presentation, however, there probably can be no definitive interpretation of his ethics.) As an aside, the title to this series is taken from Steck.  He presents this phrase--God's glory appears--as the central kernel of von Balthasar's ethical thought. (Steck, 1)



At first glance, I find some of Steck's overview in his introduction troubling.  There are some things he suggests can be found in von Balthasar's thought (which he compares and contrasts with Karl Rahner's and Karl Barth's thought) which are disconcerting.  There are other things he says which pique my interest and which suggest some real insights.

First, the attractive aspects.  To begin with, Steck characterizes von Balthasar's ethics as Christocentric.  It seems obvious to me that any Christian ethics must be Christocentric.  No flags here.**  While a natural law theory has the benefit of allowing us to speak with non-believers, there is no Christian natural law advocate that would suggest that the natural law is the last word on ethics.  The natural law is necessary, but not sufficient for salvation.  The natural law does not save, though it might help from landing us in Hell.  Who other than Christ can forgive us for our violations of the natural law?  Moreover, Christ saves.  Christ provides supernatural grace.  Christ is the way to human fulfillment in the sense of eternal beatitude.  It is Jesus that shows a way beyond the natural life of man.  Homo non proprie humanus sed superhumanus est!

A second attractive feature seems to be where Steck says that von Balthasar (and Rahner, and Barth) want to stress the relationship with God as covenantal (or personal). As I see it, a relationship with God ought to be a one-on-one relationship, although it is never one that takes us outside the natural law or the confines of the Church. Nevertheless, in stressing a personal relationship, there seems to be a danger of minimizing the public covenants within which this personal covenant must exist.  We are not each a church.  We are not each a people of God.  We are not each our own magisterium.  We do, however, each have our own conscience, and our own intimacy and personal relationship to God.

Third, von Balthasar's ethic wants to stress how God's relationship "constitutes, at least partially, our identity."  I should think God's relationship ought to be transformative, and should help form who we are.  And yet, our unique identity does not make us something other than we are.  Regardless of who we are as an individual, we are still human.  Our relationship with God does not make us something other than men.  I think Blessed John Paul II captures the concept that Christ perfects nature well when he exclaimed to man and his families: "Become what you are!"

Fourth, Steck argues that von Balthasar's ethical thought was deeply influenced by St. Ignatius of Loyola.  (Von Balthasar was a Jesuit between 1929 and 1950.)

The deep grammar of von Balthasar's ethics and theology resonates powerfully with the Spiritual Exercises [of St. Ignatius].  Therefore, his project might be understood as a contribution to this task of articulating an Ignatian theology and ethics for the Christian community. . . . Because of [St.Ignatius's] influence, we can appropriately describe von Balthasar's ethics as an "Ignation reconfiguration" of divine command ethics.

Steck, 5.  Steck suggests that von Balthasar's ethical thought--which drew little from the Thomistic well--was more able than Karl Rahner's thought in making this Ignatian character bloom.  The Ignatian principle to seek and find God in all things (which includes persons)--buscar y hallar Dios en todas las cosas--is quite lovely.  While the implied deprecation of St. Thomas is not welcome, I find the Ignatian angle worth exploring. 

Now, the worrisome things. Steck labels von Balthasar's ethics as a "command ethics," one based upon divine command, i.e., voluntarism.  Steck, 1.  Steck admits that this "runs counter to the general trend in catholic ethics."  Steck, 1.  He argues, however, that von Balthasar is able to get around the problems necessarily or frequently associated with voluntaristic ethics (nominalism, a-rationality or arbitrariness in God's commands, the chasm between what is divine and what is human stemming from the rejection of the analogy of being) through his theory of aesthetics.  Through his theory of aesthetics, von Balthasar is able to overcome the problems with a voluntaristic ethics, but also keep the benefits of such an ethic (e.g., absolute sovereignty of God, God's freedom, and "interpersonal encounter").***  Then he suggests that von Balthasar's enterprise should abrogate the traditional natural law ethic and replace it.†

Steck suggests that there are certain benefits associated with a voluntaristic ethic that cannot be obtained through a natural law ethic.  The "living presence and sovereignty of God in one's life; the Christian life as the intentional response to God's work in salvation history; the covenantal encounter, which stakes a particular claim on the human agent; the vocational call, which comes in prayerful consideration of what God wants for oneself."  He suggests that these are "kept on the margins" by those Catholic theologians that espouse a "strictly natural law reflection."  Steck, 2.  I have no idea why the first two don't fit in with natural law thought.  As to the last two--which deal with special calls, with vocations, with the evangelical counsels--I cannot see how they contradict the natural law, unless one believes that one can have a call or a vocation to violate the natural moral law or that the evangelical counsels violate natural law norms.  I do not see the natural law ethic as suffering from these flaws.

 Fr. Christopher Steck, S.J.

__________________________________________
*Christopher Steck, S.J., The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Herder & Herder, 2001).
**Christocentrism can be so absolute as to disregard any reality about man outside the New Testament covenant.  In an extremist case such as Karl Barth  (who draws from John Calvin's theology and similar apprehensiveness on the natural moral law), it results in an absolute rejection of the natural moral law, and all ethics are based upon positivism.  This sort of Christocentrism is erroneous,whatever its sincerity, because it seems to forget the subject that Christ came to save: a human.   It also seems to go against St. Paul's letter to the Romans and the overwhelming weight if not unanimity of the Catholic tradition until the Protestant Reformation, which, in various ways, rejected the natural law doctrine of the Church.  (The Protestant tradition, one may note, has been particularly ineffective in holding the front against the collapse of morals in the West.  In most cases, they have been accommodating.  This is largely the result of their rejection of natural law.)  We have addressed Karl Barth's hostile relationship with the natural law in prior postings.  See "Karl Barth's Response to Natural Law: Nein!," "Karl Barth's Tin Ear: Notes, But No Melody,"and "Karl Barth: Rubbing out the Image of God in Man."  As Steck summarizes Barth's thought: "An ethical system of universal moral norms threatens to squeeze human activity, and thus human identity, into a uniform mold that hides the existential quality of human activity--that is, its capacity to manifest an identity-shaped response to a grace that is always concrete, historical, personal, and ultimately determinative of our being." Steck, 3.  Based upon Steve Long's work, we have also had cause to address von Balthasar's (and others in the Nouvelle Theologie group) rejection of the concept of natura pura (pure nature).  See, e.g., the multi-post series on this blog: Balthasar's Theological Vacuoule, Parts 1-5.  (These can be accessed by going to the label "Hans Urs von Balthasar on Natural Law").
***I have a difficult time seeing how an "interpersonal encounter" arises from voluntarism and is not found in a realistic or natural law theory based upon reason.  Although I advocate a traditional natural law theory, it has never seemed to have minimized the "intepersonal encounter" with God through the Sacraments, prayer, lectio divina, meditative prayer, or contemplative prayer.  I think the "interpersonal encounter" may be a code word for finding an escape hatch out of the universal law. 
†"Ultimately, I want to go beyond a descriptive claim about von Balthasar's ethics (i.e., it is a form of divine command ethics) to a specific, normative claim: the central commitment of divine command ethics--that the moral obligation conforming the individual depends in a substantive way on the divine will-can and should be part of Catholic theological ethics."  Steck, 2.

Posted by Andrew M. Greenwell at 4:25 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , ,

Saturday, May 12, 2012


Terrorism an Intrinsic Evil

TERRORISM IS AN OFFENSE AGAINST GOD AND MAN. It would not be far off to say that it is a moral crime that cries out to heaven with a vengeance. "Terrorism," says the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, "is one of the most brutal forms of violence traumatizing the international community today."  Terrorism "sows hatred, death, and an urge for revenge and reprisal."  From a moral standpoint, it represents an inexcusable violation of the natural moral law.  Its crime arises from the fact that it target complete innocents, destroying both property and person, without regard to innocence or guilt of the victim, and without the justification of defense.  (Compendium, No. 513)  It acts outside both law and morals.  It is an inhumane, intrinsic evil.  "Terrorism is to be condemned in the most absolute terms."  (Compendium, No. 514)

To the extent that the root causes of terrorism can be addressed, there is a moral obligation to try to alleviate those conditions.  (Compendium, No. 513)  Accordingly, there must be "a courageous and lucid analysis of the reasons behind terrorist attacks."  (Compendium, No. 514)  Additionally, there is a place for removing "the problems that in certain dramatic circumstances can foster terrorism."  (Compendium, No. 514)  The terrorist may be responding in an inappropriate way to long-term trampling and the suffering of injustice, real or perceived.  Therefore, the fight against terrorism is not limited to punitive or physical defense alone, but should involve efforts to reach the heart and minds.

That being said, it remains true that no condition whatsoever justifies the terrorist act, and a society has the near absolute right to defend itself against such a threat.  (Compendium, No. 514)  Even confronting this absolute moral evil, however, requires moral response.  Defending against an immoral act does not justify immoral response, and so the struggle against terrorism must comply with "moral and legal norms," with respect for human rights, and be within the rule of law.


One of the principles that must be recalled is that culpability for terrorism is "always personal," and it is therefore unreasonable to place culpability on religions, nations, or ethnic groups as a whole.  (Compendium, No. 514) 

Of all the execrable acts of terrorism, the most offensive are those in which the terrorist declares himself acting in God's name.
 
It is a profanation, and a blasphemy to declare oneself a terrorist in God's name. In such cases, God, and not only man, is exploited by a person who claims to possess the totality of God's truth rather than one who seeks to be possessed by the truth. To define as "martyrs" those who die while carrying out terroristic attacks distorts the concept of martyrdom, which is the witness of a person who gives himself up to death rather than deny God and his love. Martyrdom cannot be the act of a person who kills in the name of God.

(Compendium, No. 515)

The Muslim who advocates, sponsors, or participates in terrorism in the name of Allah stands condemned under the natural moral law as an offender against both man and God.  He acts in the spirit of darkness, pursuing the vicious desires of Baal, and not in the spirit of light, pursuing the suavity of God.*

Posted by Andrew M. Greenwell at 5:21 AM 2 comments
Labels: , ,




* Note from me, BAFS.


CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC ARABS CALL GOD ALLAH!

The world cannot provide any evidence (NOT ONE IOTA) that even one single practising MUSLIM healthy of mind and body has even been found guilty in an International Court of Common and Natural Law of any ACT OF TERRORISM IN THE NAME OF ALLAH!

   commits a colossal mistake when he uses the term Allah as if meaning the GOD OF THE MUSLIM and the term God as if meaning the GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN. 

It is sad to see him repeating a slogan from the Judeo-Zionist Propaganda media, which discredits his credibility to some extent.

It has already been proven thousands of times by thousands of American experts and professionals themselves that the attacks of 11 September 2001 on US soil were carried out by Israel and the American government itself!  And that Muslims and Sheikh Usama Bin Ladin (who died in December 2001) are INNOCENT of those State-sponsored crimes!


** commits another blunder when he states that the Jewish Holocaust (an abominable hoax AND I CAN PROVE IT!) "stands out" of all the genocide committed in the world.

  "Among these, the Holocaust of the Jewish people, the Shoah, stands out: "the days of the Shoah marked a true night of history, with unimaginable crimes against God and humanity."  THIS IS PROPAGANDA, MY DEAR!


B.A.Frémaux-Soormally
Freeman-on-the-land
Servant of GOD alone and of no man or government
Standing under Common and Natural Law and not under Corporate Admiralty Freemasonic Law which is a RACKET!
  
(Note sent by Email this day - 16 May 2012 - to Andrew M. Greenwell) 

 

 

Thursday, May 10, 2012


Laws are not Silent in Times of War

CICERO STATED THAT IN WAR there is no law, silent enim legis inter arma, for laws are muted, are silent among arms.*  The force of arms is what happens when the force of law collapses.  But though this is true in one sense, it must not be true in another sense.  There are certain laws which those involved in war must take into account and never transgress.  While war may be morally engaged in if one follows the traditional just war ius in bello principles, these presuppose certain limits.  The Compendium identifies those intrinsically evil acts which are never justified as part of the horrors of war.  They are crimes against God and crimes against humanity.

The first of these areas involves the treatment of the innocent, which is to say the non-combatant.  Those engaged in warfare have a "duty to protect and help innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggression."  This includes those "precepts of international humanitarian law," such as those contained in the Geneva conventions.  (Compendium, No. 504) "The principle of humanity inscribed in the conscience of every person and all peoples includes the obligation to protect civil populations from the effects of war." (Compendium, No. 505)  Wholly excluded from war's destructive force is intentionally targeting innocent civilians. Massacres of innocents, removal of innocent populations from their homes, forced transfers, ethnic cleansings, rape of women as a method of warfare. These are some of the means that are absolutely prohibited.

 "Genocide No. 1" by Daphne Odjig

Genocide is particularly odious:

Attempts to eliminate entire national, ethnic, religious or linguistic groups are crimes against God and humanity itself, and those responsible for such crimes must answer for them before justice. The twentieth century bears the tragic mark of different genocides: from that of the Armenians to that of the Ukrainians, from that of the Cambodians to those perpetrated in Africa and in the Balkans. Among these, the Holocaust of the Jewish people, the Shoah, stands out: "the days of the Shoah marked a true night of history, with unimaginable crimes against God and humanity." **

(Compendium, No. 506)

Not only is genocide something absolutely proscribed from a moral standpoint, it is something that imposes upon nations an affirmative obligation to prevent.  Under appropriate circumstances, it justifies the use of force against the wrongdoer.  And those responsible should face justice.
The international community as a whole has the moral obligation to intervene on behalf of those groups whose very survival is threatened or whose basic human rights are seriously violated. As members of an international community, States cannot remain indifferent; on the contrary, if all other available means should prove ineffective, it is "legitimate and even obligatory to take concrete measures to disarm the aggressor." The principle of national sovereignty cannot be claimed as a motive for preventing an intervention in defense of innocent victims. The measures adopted must be carried out in full respect of international law and the fundamental principle of equality among States.
(Compendium, No. 506)

Often forgotten are the means of sanctions and the moral rules that govern their use.  While sanctions are often preferable to war, one must recollect that sanctions ought not to be used as a means to punish innocent populations.  For this reason, economic sanctions--whose effects are indiscriminate and usually fall on innocent populations, especially the weak and vulnerable among them--ought to be used only with great circumspection. 

Sanctions, in the forms prescribed by the contemporary international order, seek to correct the behavior of the government of a country that violates the rules of peaceful and ordered international coexistence or that practices serious forms of oppression with regard to its population. The purpose of these sanctions must be clearly defined and the measures adopted must from time to time be objectively evaluated by the competent bodies of the international community as to their effectiveness and their real impact on the civilian population. The true objective of such measures is open to the way to negotiation and dialogue. Sanctions must never be used as a means for the direct punishment of an entire population: it is not licit that entire populations, and above all their most vulnerable members, be made to suffer because of such sanctions. Economic sanctions in particular are an instrument to be used with great discernment and must be subjected to strict legal and ethical criteria. An economic embargo must be of limited duration and cannot be justified when the resulting effects are indiscriminate.

(Compendium, No. 507)

 ____________________________________
Cicero, Pro Milone, IV.11

Posted by Andrew M. Greenwell at 4:03 AM 8 comments
Labels: , , , ,

Monday, May 7, 2012


War: What is it Good For?

AS AN INSTRUMENT OF AFFIRMATIVE or ordinary policy, war is condemned by the Church. The Church has cried against war like a bell ringing its tocsin: "never again some peoples against others, never again! no more war, no more war!"* (Compendium, No. 497)   Indeed, a "war of aggression is intrinsically immoral."  (Compendium, No 500)

Particularly modernly, the Church has condemned the "savagery of war." War does not justify itself; it must be justified. With the rise of modern technology, war has become particularly brutal, particularly inhumane. War is a physical evil always. It is a "scourge." Not only is war a physical evil, more often than not it is a moral evil also, and moral evils always seem to come in its dark train. "The damage caused by an armed conflict is not only material, but also moral." (Compendium, No. 497) 

War is difficult to control: indeed, it seems to devour its participants and embroil them in barbarism. It nurses hatred, desire for vengeance, and bitterness between peoples.  War is "the failure of all true humanism." (Compendium, No. 497)  The "terrifying power of the means of destruction--to which even medium and small-sized countries have access--and the ever closer links between the peoples of the whole world make it very difficult of practically impossible to limit the consequences of a conflict." (Compendium, No. 498)

The sheer brutality of violent war and the physical and moral evils that are always part and parcel of its consequences is what underlies the Church's desire to remove those circumstances that often give rise to war: injustice, poverty, exploitation.  Instead of promoting war, the Church seeks to promote peace, to promote the cooperation between peoples, to promote their physical and moral development and thereby obviate if at all possible the violence of war as an instrument of policy.

While wars of aggression are always condemned as intrinsically evil, the Church recognizes that war is sometimes forced upon a nation.  A nation "that has been attacked" has the "right and the duty to organize a defense even using the force of arms."**  (Compendium, No. 500)  In such circumstances, the Church has fashioned a "just war" doctrine which both outlines when a defensive war may be morally fought and how such defensive war may be fought.  Traditionally, therefore, the Church has divided its "just war" doctrine into two: jus ad bellum and jus in bello.



The traditional elements of jus ad bellum--when war may rightly be entered into by a nation--are outlined in the Compendium:
  • There must be a just cause of war.  That is to say, the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be "lasting, grave, and certain."
  • There must be a right intention.  In other words, the just cause must be the motive and not just a pretext for entering into the war.
  • All other means to obviate the aggression must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; the defensive war must be a last resort, and so there must be a practical necessity for it.
  • there must be serious prospects of success if war is entered into;
  • the resort to arms must not produce evils and disorders greater than the evil sought to be eliminated.  In other words, entering into war must appear to be proportionally the better result than not entering into war.
The weighing of these conditions and the prudential decision that are therein entailed are the responsibility of the authority who has the responsibility for the common good.

Since nations have a right to defense, it follows that they have the right to possess "sufficient means to exercise this right to defense," including the existence of armed forces.  (Compendium, 500, 502)  However, the "possession of war potential does not justify the use of force for political or military objectives," nor does it justify the imposition of "domination on another nation."  There is always an obligation to "do everything possible 'to ensure that the conditions of peace exist.'"  (Compendium, No. 500)

Once engaged in war, there are certain moral restrictions upon how war is to be fought.  These rules are called jus in bello.
  •  particularly brutal weapons (chemical, biological) are not to be used;
  • the non-combatants are to be considered immune from direct and intentional attack;
  • force must be proportional to the end sought;
  • prisoners of war must be treated with benevolence, and they may not be threatened with death, starvation, rape, torture, or inhumane conditions, etc.
  • no intrinsically evil means are to be used (e.g., rape, genocide, weapons of mass destruction)
  • reprisals are not to be engaged in (if the opposition violates the jus in bello, it does not justify reciprocal violations).
Particularly given the experience of World War II and the invocation of the "Nuremberg defense" (where a military officer seeks to defend himself from immoral action based upon the defense that he was following the orders of a superior officer), the Church insists on personal responsibility of each member of the military:

Every member of the armed forces is morally obliged to resist orders that call for perpetrating crimes against the law of nations and the universal principles of this law. Military personnel remain fully responsible for the act they commit in violation of the rights of individuals and peoples, or of the norms of international humanitarian law. Such acts cannot be justified by claiming obedience to the orders of superiors.
(Compendium, No. 503)

Finally, the Church insists on respect for the rights of conscientious objectors, yet also insists that these shoulder their duties to the common good:
Conscientious objectors who, out of principle, refuse military service in those cases where it is obligatory because their conscience rejects any kind of recourse to the use of force or because they are opposed to the participation in a particular conflict, must be open to accepting alternative forms of service. "It seems just that laws should make humane provision for the case of conscientious objectors who refuse to carry arms, provided they accept some other form of community service."
 (Compendium, No. 503) (quoting VII, Gaudium et spes, 79)

 ______________________________________
*John Paul II, Address to the Diplomatic Corps (Jan. 13, 2003), 4.
**Problematic is the notion of preventive war.  When is a preventive war justified as a defensive war?  "[E]ngaging in a preventive war without clear proof that an attack is imminent" would seem prohibited.  But if there is clear proof of an imminent attack, a nation may engage in preventive war.  (Compendium, No. 501)
 

Posted by Andrew M. Greenwell at 5:21 AM 11 comments
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

1 comment:

  1. BAFS19 May 2012 at 03:15

    May 2012 – Texe Marrs Secrets Volume189
    Friday, 18 May 2012, 22:50
    www.texemarrs.com
    Secrets (Volume 189)
    Old Catholic Catechism:

    “Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation!”


    “Mozlems who reject Jesus, but believe that Mohamed is a Prophet and that Ala is God, who reject the entire Holy Bible, Old and New Testament, but believe in the Islamic Koraan, they too are headed for heaven. Why? Because they are Catholics whether they know it or not!” TexeMarrs

    NEW RATZINGER’S CATHOLIC CATECHISM

    “Everybody is a Catholic in the world unless of course you are an Atheist, believe in no God. If you have a God, he can be Krishna of the Hindus, he can be Ala, he can be Zoroster of the Zoroastrian Church, ha ha ha ha, he can be Jehovah and not Jesus of the Jewish faith and you are a good Catholic. In fact the New Catechism, Pope Benedict says that, yes, the New Catechism of Pope Benedict says that Jews are simply our elder Brothers, and that Protestants are separated Brothers, and that Mozlems don’t need to know Jesus as Lord because they just go their own way in their own faith, and all of these groups are saved and they are all headed for Heaven, and they are all part of the Catholic Church. It’s one big happy fallacious group!” Texe Marrs


    YOU try and make sense of this, I quit!

    BAFS
    19 May 2012

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)