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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2018
Gerald Schlabach wrote that a key test of progress for Catholicism in its dialogue with the historic peace churches on nonviolence and the use of force would be that the church's teaching on nonviolence would become “church wide and parish deep.” While modern Catholic social teaching has recognized nonviolence since the time of the Second Vatican Council, and Pope Saint John Paul II gave nonviolence strong, formal endorsement in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, the church's teaching on nonviolence is hardly known in the pews. If they are familiar at all with Catholic teaching on peace and war, most Catholics would know the just-war tradition, especially through the US bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace. But the newer and still relatively slight teaching on nonviolence is hardly known at all. Only by rare exception do Catholic preachers address issues of peace and war.
9 See Schlabach, Gerald W., “Just Policing: How War Could Cease to Be a Church-Dividing Issue,” in Just Policing: Mennonite-Catholic Theological Colloquium, 2002, ed. Kauffman, Ivan J., Series, Bridgefolk, no. 2 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2004), 19–75Google Scholar.
10 For Vatican II's cautiously phrased endorsement of nonviolent resistance, see Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), §78, in Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, ed. O'Brien, David J. and Shannon, Thomas A., expanded ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010)Google Scholar. John Paul II's strong endorsement of nonviolent direct action is found in his reflections on the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 in Centesimus Annus (On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum), §23 and 25, in O'Brien and Shannon, Catholic Social Thought. In §51, he endorses nonviolence in both domestic and international affairs.
11 See The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, in O'Brien and Shannon, Catholic Social Thought, §§604–88; for the bishop's articulation of the just-war canon, see §§80–110.
12 Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.” See also Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, February 18, 2007, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/angelus/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ang_20070218.html.
13 Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace,” §6.
14 Gaudium et Spes, §78 reads: “We cannot fail to praise those who renounce the use of violence to the vindication of their rights and resort to methods of defense which are otherwise available to weaker parties too, provided that this can be done without injury to the rights and duties of others or of the community itself.” The last part of the sentence assumes, of course, that rights will be secured by other, i.e., violent means, an assumption clarified in §79.
15 See “Nonviolence Conference: Message from Pope Francis at the Opening of the Conference on Nonviolence and Just Peace,” Pax Christi USA, April 12, 2016, https://paxchristiusa.org/2016/04/12/nonviolence-conference-message-from-pope-francis-at-the-opening-of-the-conference-on-nonviolence-and-just-peace/. For the pope's citation of Gaudium et Spes, see §79, para. 5. See also Joshua J. McElwee, “Landmark Vatican Conference Rejects Just War Theory, Asks for Encyclical on Nonviolence,” National Catholic Reporter, April 14, 2016, https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/landmark-vatican-conference-rejects-just-war-theory-asks-encyclical-nonviolence. McElwee's reporting gave rise to the widely held misperception that the conference aimed at rejection of the just war, when its primary purpose was to deepen the stream of thought known as “Just Peace.”
16 USCCB, The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace: A Reflection of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Tenth Anniversary of “The Challenge of Peace” (Washington, DC: USCCB, 1993/2001), 10Google Scholar.
17 Paul, Pope John II, On the Hundredth Anniversary of “Rerum Novarum”: Centesimus Annus (Washington, DC: USCCB, 1991)Google Scholar, §23.
18 See Yoder, John Howard, When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 72–73Google Scholar; also see USCCB, Harvest of Justice, 11: “Obligations to develop and employ nonviolent alternatives to war ‘raise the threshold for the recourse to force.’”
19 For Yoder's ideas on making just war credible to nonviolent eyes, see Yoder, When War Is Unjust, 71–80.
20 See Called Together to Be Peacemakers: Report of the International Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Mennonite World Conference, 1998–2003, abridged ed., Series, Bridgefolk (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2005), 59–60Google Scholar, §§187–88.
21 One implication of this debate is that just-war thinkers should be more critical of one another's use of the just-war tradition when it is used to rationalize the use of force uncritically in a permissive way. Peer criticism would make just-war analysis more credible in others’ eyes.
22 Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace,” §6.
23 For the church's position on R2P, see Pope Benedict XVI's Address to the United Nations General Assembly, April 18, 2008, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080418_un-visit.html.
24 See Weiss, Thomas G., Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), 110Google Scholar.
25 Ibid. See also Thomas G. Weiss, A History of Humanitarianism (forthcoming), chap. 4, p. 10 [rev. ms]. On the development of the concept of the Responsibility to Protect, see Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention, 97–132.
26 Cited in Weiss, A History of Humanitarianism, chap. 4, p. 10 [rev. ms.].
27 The Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect at the City University of New York, Graduate Center is a major source of documentation on R2P. See http://www.globalr2p.org/resources/335. For ongoing reviews and explorations, see Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's annual reports on R2P from 2010 to 2012.
28 See Ban Ki-moon, “A Vital and Enduring Commitment: Implementing the Responsibility to Protect,” UN document A/69/981-S/2015/500, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/798795?ln=en, §22.
29 Ibid., §26.
30 Ibid., §31.
31 See Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention, 115–17, 120–21, on the adaptation of the just-war criteria as “precautionary principles” of R2P.
32 See Thomas G. Weiss, “In Libya, Political Will Catches Up with the R2P Norm,” World Politics Review (online), June 28, 2011, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/9309/in-libya-political-will-catches-up-with-new-r2p-norm; and Weiss, , “Military Humanitarianism: Syria Hasn't Killed It,” Washington Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2014): 7–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://www.futureun.org/media/archive1/reports/MilitaryHumanitarianism-WeissTWQ.pdf.
33 On the imperfect success of R2P, see Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention, 169–73.
34 See, for example, Robert Kagan, “The Twilight of the Liberal World Order,” Brookings Institute, January 24, 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-twilight-of-the-liberal-world-order/.
35 On the evolution of thinking on responsibility to protect, see Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention, chap. 4, “New Thinking: The Responsibility to Protect,” 97–132; and on the institutionalization and implantation of the principle, see chap. 5, “So What? Moving from Rhetoric to Reality,” 133–73.