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Modern Wars and Catholic Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Luigi Sturzo  and
J. P. Turley
J. P. Turley
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

THE WARS with which we are concerned in the present study are those which had their beginning with the American wars of Independence and in Europe with those of the French Revolution, after-wars followed by the Napoleonic campaigns. From that time up to the present—a period of more than a century and a half—all the wars waged by states and peoples called civilized, though differing from one another by reason of military technic, by reason of political and moral motives, by reason of extent and importance, have had certain characteristics in common, which from the sociological point of view enable us to group them together. For that reason, we call them all modern wars.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , April 1941 , pp. 155 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1941

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References

1 We have indicated the date 1911 and not 1914 as the beginning of the wars which we call cyclic, because we begin with the war of Italy against Turkey for the possession of Lybia. The connection with the great war is not doubtful for an accurate observer. The Lybian war weakened Turkey; the Balkan countries seized the opportune moment to fall upon it. When the first Balkan war ended, the second developed, growing out of the intrigues of Vienna intended to weaken Serbia. The outcome of these wars brought about the maturation of Austrian designs in the Balkans. Well-known at this time is the request of Austria made in 1913 to the Italian government to move against Serbia and the refusal of President Giolitti, because that would have been the one war of aggression not foreseen by the Pact of the Triple Alliance. What Austria did not dare do in 1913, she did in 1914, taking as the pretext the crime of Sarajevo and refusing every proposal of mediation. The year 1914 is closely connected with 1911, just as 1939 — the beginning of the present war — is connected with 1935, the beginning of the war of Italy against Abyssinia. The sequel is well known.

2 Such justifications have been repeated by pro-Fascist Catholics in the recent war against Abyssinia; and to think that from 1911 to 1940 less than 20,000 Italians went to Lybia as permanent emigrants!

3 The two volumes were put into one: “La doctrine scolastique et le droit de guerre,” Paris, Pendone, 1919.

4 Robert Smith, New York, 1930.

5 Longmans, Green & Co., 1939.

6 These had three ways of justifying themselves: (a) Italy needed expansion because it was overpopulated and without resources — although Pius XI had said, and the Osservatore Romano had repeated, that although that was true it did not constitute a right of recourse to war; (b) Italy wished to bring civilization into a country still barbarous — but this motive (which caused floods of rhetorical discourses to pour forth) had been called an insufficient justification for war by the Civiltà Cattolica of Rome; (c) Italy had the right to reparations for wrongs received at the hands of the Negus — but in fact, no one could demonstrate that such reparations (if really due) could not be obtained by other means than a war to the finish and the destruction of an empire and its reduction to a colony. Moreover, first at Paris and then at Geneva, in August and September, 1935, France and England had made proposals very favorable to Italy, on the basis of which it was hoped to obtain the consent of the Negus.

7 Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London, 1938.

8 For more than 15 years the Catholics, Mgr. Schramek at the head, collaborated in the Czechoslovak government.

9 See full text in The Pope Speaks — The Words of Pius XII (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1940)Google Scholar.

10 On January 27th last, the speaker of the Vatican Radio, commenting on the attitude of the Catholic Church toward different governments said: “The Church refuses to interfere in the methods of governments favored by the different régimes, but she will raise her voice whenever men attempt to render her mission impossible. The Church will never permit the children of the faithful to be brought up in an atmosphere of cruelty. She will never submit to the uncertainty arising from the fact that the existence of Divine Law is being denied in relations between peoples, so that the coexistence of strong and weak nations becomes impossible. Men must be free and therefore the Church will never submit to the claim that “Might is right.” It is much easier to apply such words to Germany than to Britain.

11 One must take into account that while Poland, Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg have direct relationships with the Holy See by means of permanent diplomatic representatives, Greece has no ambassador, minister or extraordinary envoy at the Vatican.

12 See the article of Mgr. Civardi, Luigi in the Osservatore Romano of September 11, 1940Google Scholar.

13 A practically identical appeal was made in January by Mgr. Bartolomasi, army bishop of Italy, where it was said that the war must be won, cost what it may.

14 Mgr. Colli, head of Italian Catholic Action, has put out a circular to the effect that Catholics should be good citizens during the war, “praying and working.”

15 At this point it is my duty to recall that the Prince-Bishop of Trent, C. Endrici, who in 1916 refused to publish the pastoral letter of the Austrian bishops justifying the war against Italy, was put under arrest on military orders and threatened if he did not agree to resign from office. He resisted, refused to nominate one of his vicars and appealed to Rome. The Austrian government desired an immediate disposition of the case of the bishop; but Benedict refused to make it, postponing the examination of the matter to the end of the war. There will be similar examples today, but the press of the totalitarian countries is not free and the correspondents of the foreign press either do not know how to write or cannot write news hostile to the regime. It is to be noted also that the Bishop of Trent in 1916 felt that he was supported by the population and the Austria of that day, however authoritarian it was, certainly was not totalitarian.

16 The well-known French Jesuit scholar of international law, P. De La Brière, pointed to a similar case in connection with possible French intervention in favor of the Republicans of Spain.