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Ethics and War: A Catholic View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Joseph C. McKenna S.J.
Joseph C. McKenna S.J.*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Extract

World War II and Cold War I have influenced the moral appraisal of diplomacy much as they have influenced all systematic analysis of international relations. Commentators are now more aware that the wide gap between what is and what ought to be cannot be nullified by exhortation or legal formula or inexorable institutional evolution. They appreciate more profoundly the structure and function of power. They have learned from Mukden, Wal-Wal and Munich that accommodation can be more costly than resoluteness, and that an ethic dissociated from the world in which men live cannot give adequate moral guidance for men's living. Nevertheless the commentators remain reluctant, on both political and moral grounds, to accept Realpolitik's ethical outlook on the use of force. The shortcomings of yesterday's total victory have been too sobering; and Hiroshima's destruction has left a scar upon the conscience. Moral judgments on diplomacy are accordingly less simplist, less absolute, more troubled and uneasy than in the pre-war decades.

The moral theories that have attracted most attention among students of international politics are either Protestant Christian or secular humanist in their basic orientations. This is not to say that these orientations are clearly distinguishable in any particular statement; more or less of them can be found in Niebuhr, Wolfers, Butterfield, Lefever, and Osgood among others. Less well known is a view that can be classified as Catholic or Scholastic. In the hope that this could illuminate, if it does not modify, the problems and the answers as conceived by the better known theories, the present study will put forth such a view. The position will be stated first, with such explanation as might be needed for understanding it, and some indication of differences from the Protestant and humanist conceptions. The theory can then be applied to varying hypothetical projections of the contemporary international scene.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 1960 , pp. 647 - 658
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1960

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References

1 See Wolfers, Arnold, “Statesmanship and Moral Choice,” World Politics, Vol. 1 (01 1949), pp. 175–195 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butterfield, Herbert, Christian Diplomacy and War (London: Epworth Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Lefever, Ernest W., Ethics and United States Foreign Policy (New York: Meridian Books, 1957)Google Scholar; Osgood, Robert E., Ideals and Selfinterest in American Foreign Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).Google Scholar Niebuhr, Reinhold has written voluminously on the subject; Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940)Google Scholar is fairly representative of his views. See also Corbett, Percy E., Morals, Law, and Power in International Relations (Los Angeles: John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, 1956)Google Scholar; and Thompson, Kenneth W., Christian Ethics and the Dilemmas of Foreign Policy (Durham: Duke University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

2 Differing with the Logical Positivists, Scholastics hold that the first premises of ethical reasoning can be validated. At issue between the two schools is the meaning of intellectual “intuition,” as a type of cognition. For the Scholastic this is the mind's equivalent of the eye's visual apprehension; the mind “inspects” the two terms of a judgment and understands that one can be predicated of the other.

3 An adequate statement of the objectives and methods of Catholic moral theologians appears in Davis, Henry S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1938), I, pp. 1–6.Google Scholar

4 Some of these topics are treated in Code of International Ethics, Comp. International Union of Social Studies, trans, and ed. Eppstein, John (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, rev. ed., 1953).Google Scholar The new quarterly journal, World Justice, published by the Research Center for International Justice at Louvain University, will deal comprehensively with such questions; see “Our Program,” ibid., Vol. 1 (Sept. 1959), pp. 5–14.

5 See Osgood, op. cit., p. 314, citing Harold Stearns; and Osgood's own comments, pp. 6–7.

6 Vanderpol, Alfred, La Doctrine scolastique du droit de guerre (Paris: A. Pedone, 1919)Google Scholar, presents the classic scriptural objections to war, along with responses drawn from patristic and other theological commentaries, pp. 16–23. Martin Luther, it may be noted, did not at all regard Matthew 5: 38–42 as prohibiting coercion either by governmental authority in the interest of public security or by parental authority in the interest of child ren's education; see Luther's Works, XXI, The Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat, ed. Pelikan, Jaroslav (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1956), pp. 105–115.Google Scholar John R. Bodo has pointed out that during the early nineteenth century, pacifism had no place in the main stream of American Protestant thought; see The Protestant Clergy and Public Issues, 1812–1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 226–227.

7 See Vanderpol, op. cit., pp. 171–195; Brière, Yves de la, Le Droit de juste guerre (Paris: A. Pedone, 1938), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar

8 See de la Brière, op. cit., pp. 18–45. The principal pertinent texts are: St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, ch. 5; Letter no. 38, ad Marcellinum; Letter no. 189, ad Bonifacium; Letter no. 229, ad Darium; City of God, Bk. XIX, chs. 7, 12, 13, 15. Decree of Gratian, Cause XXIII, Questions 1–4. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part II–II, Question 40. Francisco Vittoria, De Jure Belli. Francisco Suarez, Disputatio XIII, De Bello. English translations of most of these works can be found in various patristic collections. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has published translations of Vittoria and Suarez. Generous excerpts will be found in Eppstein, John, ed., The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations (Washington: Catholic Association for International Peace, 1935).Google Scholar

9 See Vanderpol, op. cit., pp. 29–32; Eppstein, John, “A Commentary,” introductory to Code of International Ethics, pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

10 See Code of International Ethics, pp. 84–85, 123–124; Delos, J. T. O.P., “The Dialectics of War and Peace,” Thomist, Vol. 13 (10 1950), pp. 562–564.Google Scholar

11 See Vanderpol, op. cit., pp. 32–38.

12 See Lefever, op. cit., pp. 23–24.

13 See Niebuhr, op. cit., chs. 1 and 2.

14 See Osgood, op. cit., p. 22.

15 See de la Brière, op. cit., pp. 56–60; Delos, op. cit., pp. 549–550, 557–559; Code of International Ethics, pp. 123–124.

16 Probabilism is explained by Davis, op. cit., I, pp. 93–94, 99–100.

17 Stratmann, Franziskus O.P., would require certitude of moral guilt, The Church and War (New York: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1928), pp. 59–71 Google Scholar, stating his conclusions most clearly on pp. 65–66. More recently Stratmann has questioned the legitimacy of inflicting death even on an enemy soldier without being certain of his personal moral culpability, “War and the Christian Conscience,” in Thompson, Charles S., ed., Morals and Missiles (London: James Clarke and Co., 1959), pp. 24–27.Google Scholar For the opposite view, see de la Brière, op. cit., pp. 32–34, 64–73, 171–174.

18 See Stratmann, , The Church and War, pp. 66–67 Google Scholar; Ryan, John K., Modern War and Basic Ethics (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1940), pp. 28–29, 94–95, 123Google Scholar; Murray, John Courtney S.J., Morality and Modern War (New York: Church Peace Union, 1959), pp. 9, 12.Google Scholar

19 See Code of International Ethics, p. 123. “Hope” of success is not synonymous with “certitude” of success, see Murray, op. cit., p. 16; de la Brière, op. cit., pp. 76–77.

20 See Kecskemeti's, Paul analysis in Strategic Surrender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), ch. 9.Google Scholar

21 See Code of International Ethics, p. 126; Vanderpol, op. cit., pp. 95–99.

22 See Vanderpol, op. cit., pp. 85–88.

23 See Kennan, George P., American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 62–72, 101–102.Google Scholar

24 See Code of International Ethics, pp. 126–130.

25 See Delos, op. cit., pp. 318–324.

26 See Vanderpol's remarks on doubtful possession, op. cit., pp. 126–128.

27 See Ryan, op. cit., pp. 34–36; Ford, John C. S.J., “The Morality of Obliteration Bombing,” Theological Studies, Vol. 5 (09 1944), pp. 272–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 On the principle, see Ryan, op. cit., pp. 104–105; Ford, op. cit., pp. 289–290. On its permissive applications, see Code of International Ethics, pp. 134–137.

29 See Ford, op. cit., passim, especially pp. 290–295, 298–302; and Ryan, op. cit., ch. 9; the latter was written, however, before the problem became actual in World War II.

30 See Stimson, Henry L., “The Decision to Use the Atom Bomb,” Harper's Magazine, Vol. 194 (02 1947), pp. 100–101, 106–107.Google Scholar

31 See Zamayon, Pelayo O.F.M., Cap., “Morality of War Today and in the Future,” Theology Digest, Vol. 5 (Winter 1957), pp. 4–5 Google Scholar; John C. Ford, S.J., “The Hydrogen Bombing of Cities,” ibid., pp. 6–9; John R. Connery, S.J., “Morality of Nuclear Armament,” ibid., pp. 10–11.

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