Port 80

As a fairly right-wing Catholic, I often find myself coming into conflict with some of the social justice concepts promoted by some Catholic groups. While fighting for a living wage is laudable, I don’t support calls for a “new economic order” - based on a quick comparison between those countries that are starving (North Korea) and those that are thriving (South Korea), capitalism seems to work pretty well. Likewise, I can’t support calls to close the School of the America’s unless they are backed up with facts - such as an analysis of the percentage of all graduates involved in human rights abuses. Anecdotal evidence is worthless - if I look for organizations which have had some members involved in human rights abuses, I can make a good argument for the dissolution of the papacy. (Remember the Crusades and the Inquisition?)

As a result of this difference in opinion, I’ve been involved in more than one debate over the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. Although the war was regrettable, I think that it was both justifiable and necessary. I don’t care that Saddam might have been providing religious freedom to Christians (an argument posed by one anti-war acquaintance) — he was still murdering the Kurds, the Shias, and anyone who happened to get in his way. Weapons of mass destruction or not, the world is undoubtedly a better place now that there’s one less thuggish dictator in it.

Nevertheless, it has bothered me to no end that I could be coming from the same base of moral assumptions as those Catholics with which I so vehemently disagree. Either I was missing something fundamental in the Catechism, or someone was twisting religion to support politics. Neither of these possibilities sat well with me, and I’ve been thinking over this particular issue for a long time.

This week, I think I found part of the answer. The differences involved may be due to a difference in perspective on current events. It seems that those Catholics with which I disagree look at events and see an evil, while I look at the alternatives and see a far worse evil. This may be because I study the dark side of human history — wars, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and dictatorships — far more than is normal. Perhaps I have become desensitized to minor evils — when there are debates over illicit nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, I really can’t find the energy to care about Laci Peterson and Kobe Bryant. A murder and a rape simply don’t register very high on my scale of personal evil.

One quick illustration of this difference in perspective can be found in this week’s Catholic Telegraph (Vol 172, Issue 36, 9/5/2003), in a piece titled “The challenge of piece on earth,” by Fr. Kenneth Overberg, S.J. I’m going to take the liberty of going through this piece point by point and noting the differences in perspective - a constructive Fisking, if you will.

Early in August, Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement titled “Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Reflections on Two Anniversaries.” His reflections received little or no notice in the media, even the Catholic press. Perhaps that is because his topic was not an issue such as gay marriages or church scandals. His letter focused, instead, on the survival of the human race and the earth itself.

Survival of the Earth itself? The Earth has survived asteroid strikes, 90% extinctions of species, massive tectonic shifts (my home in Southern Ohio used to be under a shallow sea), and ice ages. I doubt that the human race could destroy life on Earth even if we tried, much less the planet itself.

Clearly, it is important to pay attention to Bishop Gregory’s remarks. It may be difficult, because it is so easy to get caught up in political rhetoric and nationalism. Our first challenge may simply be openness to church teaching.

Nitpicking on rhetoric: Declaring the self-evident importance of a statement, discounting the validity of other statements on the same topic, and demanding unquestioning acceptance of that statement is not a way to win over cynics.

The two anniversaries were the publication of Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), Blessed Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical, and of The Challenge of Peace, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter. The occasion for Bishop Gregory’s reflecting on these two documents on war and peace was the anniversary of the the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States.

Why the Hiroshima bombing? And why the emphasis on the United States? Lest this fact slip our memory, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings took place in a time of war — a war that the United States did not start. Furthermore, these were by no means the worst bombings of the war. Dresden, Cologne, and Tokyo were all bombed to horrific degrees in firebombing attacks. However, the use of atomic weaponry seems to hold a special fascination for some, regardless of the fact that far more people were killed in bombing raids using conventional incendiary weapons.

Bishop Gregory states that these two documents, though written in a different time, “retain a power and wisdom for us today.” In today’s world, we face escalating violence, terrorism in many forms, preventative war, and the Bush Administration’s desires to develop new nuclear weapons.

Bush should be flattered - out of four items, he received one direct and one indirect mention. This places him above al Qaeda (one mention), Kim Il Jong and North Korea’s nuclear program (zero mentions), Iran and its nuclear program (zero mentions), the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir (two very shaky mentions), and China’s desire for the reunification of Taiwan (zero mentions) as a threat to world peace.

So what power and wisdom to Pacem in Terris and The Challenge of Peace offer us? The goal of John’s encyclical is peace; the foundation for this goal is human dignity. Peace on Earth affirms that all people are equal in nature and dignity. Based directly on this human nature are universal and inalienable rights. Recognition of and respect for both the person’s dignity and these universal rights is the only sure foundation for a just and peaceful world. The Challenge of Peace expresses the bishops’ profound skepticism about the moral acceptability of any use of nuclear weapons and highlights the negative impact of the arms race. Only if the spending on arms is reversed will there be sufficient resources for many human needs around the world. Of course, both documents say much more!

Again, an issue of perspective raises itself with regards to the moral use of nuclear weapons. I would argue that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (perhaps 250,000 killed, using large estimates) were a moral imperative if they obviated the need for an invasion of Japan (1,000,000 American deaths alone expected).

In light of this wisdom, Bishop Gregory reminds us all that peacemaking is “a permanent commitment, an integral part of our Christian witness.” He invites us as individuals and as parishes to ponder and discuss a series of questions — and then to act.

Among his questions are these: “How can we pursue the ‘peace on earth,’ based on ‘truth, justice, solidarity and liberty’ as envisioned by Blessed Pope John XXIII, in a world marked by deep divisions, systemic injustice and violence and underdeveloped international institutions?” “What more can be done to develop the tools on nonviolent conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peace building so that we can fulfill our obligation as citizens and as a nation to work for the avoidance of war?” “Will not new doctrines of preventive use of military force undermine serious efforts to limit the occasions when force will be necessary and justified?” “How can we pursue genuine nuclear disarmament, not merely as an ideal but as a moral imperative and a policy goal?”

Perhaps this is my cynical side speaking again, but I think that complete worldwide nuclear disarmament is impossible, and a bad idea to boot. I am aware of only one culture in history that voluntarily gave up a weapons technology — the Japanese. The Japanese systematically eliminated firearms from their culture during the Middle Ages in order to preserve the existing social order. However, this disarmament required strict government control and a relatively isolated area of technology. How will it be possible to eliminate nuclear weapons without the very sort of “preventative use of military force” that the author abhors? Furthermore, gunpowder isn’t a dual-use item. Uranium and nuclear physics, however, are both useful in the creation of peaceful nuclear power.

Additionally, the fact that major powers possess nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them rapidly is perhaps the only fact preventing the widespread development and use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction today. If North Korea did not face the prospect of massive U.S. retaliation, they would be far less circumspect in their development and deployment of nuclear devices. Furthermore, a nation willing to use battlefield nuclear devices against an opponent without similar arms could effectively dominate almost any land-based war. Perversely, it is precisely the threat of nuclear retaliation that has likely saved countless lives.

It is also worth noting here that fixating on nuclear weapons is probably unwise. The most indiscriminate weapons in existence today are probably biological weapons, followed closely by chemical munitions. (I suspect the next runner up is the entire field of long-lived scatterable antipersonnel mines.) While nuclear weapons are by no means designed for surgical strikes, they can be targeted precisely and the duration of their effects is relatively limited. If they are aimed at densely populated areas, nuclear weapons are no different from conventional explosives in their ability to inflict civilian casualties - it simply took one weapon to attack Hiroshima, whereas Tokyo was struck by thousands of incendiary bombs. The net effects, however, were exactly the same.

How will you respond to the challenge of creating peace on earth?

This is perhaps the only paragraph about which I agree with the author. There is indeed a challenge of peace before us. This is precisely why I feel that this challenge deserves and a more thorough examination than it is often given by some within the Catholic Church. If it was so easy to establish peace as to throw away the weapons of war, the world would already be at peace. However, weapons are ultimately tools, both made and employed by humans. It is the existence of evil and malice within the human population of the world that has created the weapons of war, and it is this same evil that frequently makes it necessary for the just to defend themselves with force. We cannot lay the blame for war upon nuclear weaponry or assault rifles any more than we can lay it upon the club and the sling. Human failure and sin alone bears the responsibility for war, and only when we have seen the elimination of these two causes for conflict will we see peace. Until then, the just must be ready to defend themselves with more than kind words alone.

Only the dead have seen the end of war. — George Santayana