Port 80

I’ve been working to research a post discussing the recent arrest of two University of Dayton Students at Ft. Benning while they were protesting the SoA/WHINSEC. The full post will be coming over the next few days, but I’ve discovered something that merits comment during my research. I’ve been re-reading some of the statements of the USCCB prior to the war in Iraq, and have stumbled across this line:

[A previous letter] raised serious questions about the moral legitimacy of any preemptive, unilateral use of military force to overthrow the government of Iraq.

I can understand the concerns raised by the Bishops about a preemptive use of force, or about any use of force at all. But why exactly was the word “unilateral” included in this statement? If an action is immoral, then it will never become moral, no matter how many people support it. Likewise, a moral action cannot become immoral if not enough people wish to undertake that action. “Consensus morality” doesn’t hold together any better than does “consensus science.” Have the Bishops forgotten principles of morality that are taught in second-grade religious education classes?

The other option is simply that “unilateral” is included because, alongside “preemptive” it was one of the major political charges leveled against the Bush Administration’s push to war in 2002. However, this possibility is hardly less disquieting. Why is morally irrelevant political terminology being inserted into what should be a statement wholly derived from the teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church? Did the Bishops simply decide to play politics for a change?

I am forced to hope for a third alternative, that the statement was sloppily written, and the word “unilateral” was inserted without careful consideration. However, it is a dark day indeed when my fondest hope is that the USCCB has not thought through what they are saying. One should never assume malice when incompetence will suffice for an explanation - in this case, those are my only two options.

A Catholic moral framework does not easily fit the ideologies of “right” or “left,” nor the platforms of any party. Our values are often not “politically correct.” Believers are called to be a community of conscience within the larger society and to test public life by the values of Scripture and the principles of Catholic social teaching. — USCCB Administrative Committee, Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility