Edwin G. Ehmke

On War, Conscience, and Politics

It's a familiar scene. Someone speaking before a religious group brings up the subject of peace or social justice. Suddenly an agitated audience member interrupts, asserts that the Church has no business interfering with politics, and then either sits down seething, or as is sometimes the case, storms out perhaps never to be seen again. Silence. The meeting haltingly continues, but the disruption has taken its toll.

Such behavior is extreme; nevertheless it represents one of the most important problems facing today's Church. When confronted with teachings on such matters as peace, immigration, and poverty, many Catholics lapse into apathy or even opposition since these were not part of the religious and moral world of their youth. This is another facet of the “Catholic Puzzle” that I wrote about 18 months ago, that is how to explain the fact that the Catholic Church, with a very strong set of social teachings, displays, on the parish level, such a low level of personal social concern. Part of the answer may lie in our failure to relate our faith to what goes on in the public, corporate, and political spheres.

Those who discount Church's role in social justice are not unusual. In A People Adrift , Peter Steinfels cites studies indicating that a significant percentage of today's Catholics do not relate their politics to their faith. Historically, this is understandable. From the early days of our republic, Catholics have struggled to reconcile their dual allegiances to Church and state. Immigrants from abroad, often belonging to cultures far different from the dominant English, they have –at least until the 1960's— fought to integrate themselves into a larger American mainstream. It is easy now to forget how John Kennedy had to stand before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association and convince his audience that he believed in an absolute separation of Church and state. As late as the 1949, Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power, was on the bestseller lists. It is certainly no wonder that the hierarchy often played down the effect of faith upon political choices.

It was relatively easy to do this. For the most part, during the twentieth century, with the sometimes contentious exception of aid to parochial schools, the Catholic and civic religions have been largely in sync. By 1960, the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray had helped dispel the notion that good Catholics could not be good Americans; Catholics were proving themselves fervid anticommunists; John Kennedy had been elected President; and, after Vatican II, even Blanshard toned down his criticisms. Complete harmony seemed possible, and even imminent.

Yet cracks appeared, and over the years broadened. These fault lines are apparent in many areas— abortion, capital punishment, immigration, economics, and medical ethics, for example-- but here I would like to focus upon that of war and individual conscience. It has become increasingly clear that the decision to go to war is a moral matter about which individuals have a responsibility to form and exercise their consciences. So long as people of faith could regard their government as both well intentioned and ultimately right, they could dismiss inconsistencies as aberrations that would ultimately be corrected. Vietnam, however, put this confidence to the test, and for many Christians represents a watershed in the way they thought about moral responsibility on both the individual and public level. Prior to Vietnam, neither the Church nor our government recognized the individual's responsibility to judge whether a war met moral criteria. Since the Catholic Church was not pacifist, condemning all war, Catholics could not be conscientious objectors. Cardinal Spellman's statement “Right or wrong, my country” was perhaps extreme, but on the whole represented the thinking of many Christians. The Jesuit magazine America, for example, supported the war wholeheartedly (although Commonweal did not).

By the mid-sixties, however, attitudes were shifting. Organizations such as Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Catholic Peace Fellowship began to criticize the war on moral grounds, calling for US withdrawal. In 1968 the U.S. bishops in their pastoral letter Human Life in Our Day called upon the government to recognize Catholic selective conscientious objection:

Nor can it be said that such conscientious objection to war, as war is waged in our times, is entirely the result of subjective considerations and without reference to the message of the Gospel and the teaching of the Church; quite the contrary, frequently conscientious dissent reflects the influence of the principles which inform modern papal teaching, the Pastoral Constitution, and a classical tradition of moral doctrine in the Church, including, in fact, the norms for the moral evaluation of a theoretically just war.

Then, In 1971 they issued a statement declaring that the war did not meet just war criteria and was therefore immoral.

Just War thinking was introduced into Christian thinking by St. Augustine, and further refined and expanded during the Middle Ages and later. For a war to be moral, it must meet two sets of criteria: is it for a just cause, and is it conducted in a just manner. The details are elaborated in any number of documents, including the catechism; what I would like to do here is place the bishops' letter within the broader context of war and conscience. The theory obviously was not new; what was new, however, was its use by individuals subjecting the war to the tribunal of their own consciences, that is, the recognition that the decision to go to war is a personal as well as a state matter.

These statements' public nature and their appearing during the discussions on selective conscientious objection suggest not only that the government is not the last word on war, but that we as individuals can and must evaluate conflict within a moral framework. Is it right or is it wrong? The bishops recognize the right of a state to defend itself and the duty of citizens to aid it in service to the common good—but not without moral scrutiny. “No state may demand blind obedience.” Conscience now assumes a central place. In their 1993 Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace the bishops write:

The task of peacemaking requires both just structures and a properly formed conscience. Our policies and structures of peace will reflect the integrity of the individuals who design and participate in them. For people of faith, this commitment involves a life-long task of reflecting on Sacred Scripture, cultivating virtues, understanding and applying wisely the Church's teaching on peace and praying for guidance. We are grateful for all that has been done in the past decade by so many to help form consciences, and we are aware of how much more we can and must do to better. And some may, after examining their consciences, judge a war to be immoral...

As we hold individuals in high esteem who conscientiously serve in the armed forces, so also we should regard conscientious objection and selective conscientious objection as positive indicators within the Church of a sound moral awareness and respect for human life.

Recent statements by the military archbishop echo this.

Just war theory can be problematic; its criteria are clear, but their application becomes enmeshed in ambiguities and sometimes can result in some pretty perverse judgments. (I'm not aware of any incidence when a government has refrained from war due to its application of the just war theory.) As a practical matter, in the realm of public policy discussion, they may have some value since they are addressing a government and a society whose values do not always conform to and often conflict with those of its individual members. For those individuals (and for governments, though they are less likely to do so), however, there is another way to approach the problem.

The bishops continue. In addition to just war theory, there is another longstanding Christian tradition: nonviolence.

One must ask, in light of recent history, whether nonviolence should be restricted to personal commitments or whether it also should have a place in the public order with the tradition of justified and limited war. National leaders bear a moral obligation to see that nonviolent alternatives are seriously considered for dealing with conflicts. New styles of preventative diplomacy and conflict resolution ought to be explored, tried, improved and supported. As a nation we should promote research, education and training in nonviolent means of resisting evil. Nonviolent strategies need greater attention in international affairs.

This complements recent Vatican statements that cast doubt upon, given the power of both nuclear and conventional weapons, any state's ability to conduct a just war. From Pacem in Terris (1963):

126. Men nowadays are becoming more and more convinced that any disputes which may arise between nations must be resolved by negotiation and agreement, and not by recourse to arms. 127. We acknowledge that this conviction owes its origin chiefly to the terrifying destructive force of modern weapons. It arises from fear of the ghastly and catastrophic consequences of their use. Thus, in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice. In this article I do not compare, evaluate, or even describe either of these approaches in any sort of detail although it may be apparent that my sympathies lie with the latter. The important point is that each of these calls upon us, as individuals to place war before the tribunal of conscience and to do so in an educated, thoughtful manner. This is not only an option; it is a responsibility.

For those who answer that such decisions should be left in the hands of a wiser and more prudent government, the Church has recently issued a graphic reply: the beatification of Franz Jaegerstaetter, a young Catholic executed during World War II because, though not a pacifist, he on moral grounds refused to fight on behalf of the Nazi regime. This beatification has infuriated some Catholics. As is the case with the application of other social teachings, it challenges our comfort level. But then, Christianity has a way of doing that. Notes: On the “Catholic Puzzle” see Bane, Mary Jo. “The Catholic Puzzle: Parishes and Civil Life”, in Mary Jo Bane, Brent Coffin, and Richard Higgins, Taking Faith Seriously, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005.

Steinfels, Peter. A People Adrift: the Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003, p. 80. A good place to find references to all sorts of studies.

Blanshard, Paul. American Freedom and Catholic Power. Boston:Beacon Hill, 1949. Blanshard, blatantly anti-Catholic, argued that Catholicism and democracy were incompatible. In our contentious time, this book exemplifies a style of journalism that we all need to avoid.

McGreevy, John. Catholicism and American Freedom: a History. New York, Norton, 2003 is an excellent study of the interplay between Catholicism and the idea of American freedom. See especially Chapter 9.

Settje, David. “Dueling Catholic Periodicals: America’s and Commonweal’s Perceptions of the Cold and Vietnam Wars, 1964-1975.” Catholic Social Science Review: 9, 2004. http://www.catholicsocialscientists.org/

National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Human Life in Our Day, November 15,1968. http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/68-11-15humanlifeinourdaynccb.htm

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Statement on the Catholic Conscientious Objector, October 15, 1969. http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/peace/objector.shtml

U.S. Catholic Conference. Resolution on Southeast Asia, November, 1971.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, May 3, 1983. http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/TheChallengeofPeace.pdf.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace, November 17, 1973. http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/harvest.shtml.

Pope John XXIII. Pacem in Terris, 1963. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j- xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Guidance on Questions of Conscience and Military Service, August, 2007. http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/peace/GuidanceonQuestionsofConscienceandMilitaryService.pdf