The Failure of Peace: War

This is a little piece I wrote for a publication of the Montreal Archdiocese a while back. It was meant to introduce people to the Compendium mentioned below.

    On Holy Thursday, 1963, Pope John XXIII published a letter to the world entitled Peace on Earth.  It marked the first official declaration of the Roman Catholic Church supporting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the peace building efforts of the United Nations. In it he declared that “it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice” (PT, 127).   The Secretary General of the United Nations organized a major international conference to study the document.   Two years later, in October of 1965, his successor, Paul VI visited the United Nations. This was one of the first international voyages of a Pope in over a century. His address to the General Assembly of the United Nations concluded with a cry that echoed around the world: “never again some peoples against others, never again! ... no more war, no more war!” 

     A few weeks later the bishops assembled at the Second Vatican Council approved a document called The Church in the Modern World whose fifth chapter (in Part II) is devoted to peace.  While the chapter retains the right of States to defend their populations from aggression, it argues that we must to everything possible to avoid the scourge of war especially by supporting effective international instruments for resolving conflicts and promoting economic equity.  

     In March of 1967 Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical letter to the world entitled On the Development of Peoples in which he argues that working for economic development is another way of building peace.  Pope John-Paul II echoed this approach in Centesimus Annus when he stated that “another name for peace is development.  Just as there is a collective responsibility for avoid war, so too there is a collective responsibility for promoting development” (CA, 858).  The text from Paul VI inspired the Canadian Bishops’ Conference to found the Catholic Organization for Development and Peace forty years ago.   

     One of the members of the commission that prepared the reflection on peace in The Church in the Modern World was Cardinal Carol Wotyla, later John-Paul II.  Apart from his personal experience of war in Poland, his participation in the work of this commission may be said to account for his outspoken and repeated condemnations of the wars in the Middle East and his untiring efforts to promote peace around the world.

     The Social Doctrine of the Church is well summarized in chapter 11 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.  The third part of this chapter argues that war is the failure of peace. Many States, it says, do not have “effective means to provide effectively for their own defence.” From this flows the importance of international and regional organizations at the service of the common good that can promote peace (Compendium, 499). 

     Wars of aggression are intrinsically immoral (Compendium, 500).  Military intervention is always a last resort when all other efforts to resolve a conflict have been exhausted and when the damage caused by the conflict is greater than what will be caused by military action.  In these cases there must be serious prospects of resolving the issues. Preventive wars, without clear proof that an attack is imminent, raise serious moral and juridical problems. (Compendium, 500).  

     The requirements of legitimate defence justify the existence of state-controlled armed forces at the service of peace. However, every soldier is morally obliged to “resist orders that call for perpetrating crimes against the law of nations and the universal principles of this law” (Ibid, 502).   Moreover military action must always envision the protection of the innocent.  Civilian populations cannot become the target of military action (Ibid, 504).  Above all, “attempts to eliminate entire national, ethnic, religious or linguistic groups are crimes against God and humanity itself and those responsible… must answer for them…” (Ibid, 506).  Catholic Social Teaching has repeatedly supported the International Criminal Court (Compendium, 507).

     The publication of Pacem in terris and The Church in the Modern World occurred at a time when a major transformation was taking place in the production of the arms that fuel wars.  Up until then States turned to their national industries to produce the arms required in times of conflict.  However, after the Second World War, international arms industries began a permanent production of arms which they then attempted to sell wherever they could.  Rather than having States indicate the arms they needed, this new international arms industry did its own research and began lobbying governments to purchase their latest innovations.  All the documents mentioned above make a point of denouncing the international production and sale of arms as a major force fuelling wars around the world.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2315) takes a very strong position in this regard:

“The arms race does not ensure peace. Far from eliminating the causes of war, it risks aggravating them. Spending enormous sums to produce ever new types of weapons impedes efforts to aid needy populations; it thwarts the development of peoples. Over-armament multiplies reasons for conflict and increases the danger of escalation.

Catholic social teaching proposes “general, balanced and controlled disarmament” (Compendium, 508).   “The arms race does not ensure peace.  Far from eliminating the causes of war, it risks aggravating them,” (Catechism, 2316).  Most specifically condemned are arms of massive destruction, anti-personnel landmines and the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (Compendium, 509-511).  These latter are a serious issue at this point since they are used extensively in internal and regional conflicts and are so readily available that they encourage new conflicts (Ibid, 511).  Similarly “the use of children and adolescents as soldiers in armed conflicts… must be condemned.” (Ibid, 512).  Finally, terrorism is condemned in the most absolute terms (Compendium, 514).

     The Roman Catholic Church has a rich tradition of resistance to war and a well constructed theology to deal with the subtleties of contemporary issues.  The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church provides an excellent introduction with many references.