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Michael Novak at it again: Bush si, Benedict no

Michael Novak at it again: Bush si, Benedict no

Last updated on: April 16, 2008 at 1:58 pm by Matthew

Michael Novak at it again: Bush si, Benedict no 2008-04-16T13:58:24-05:00 Matthew

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Michael Novak seems to think the last two Popes were speaking more pro forma when they denounced the wars waged by the United States in Iraq. Stuart Reid over at the American Conservative hit it on the head, (“Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr. Novak?”), pointing out the amazing inconsistency (or, not so amazing) in Novak personally, energetically having tried to rally the troops to approve of the Iraq war, yet now passing off the Pope’s criticisms as “what popes are intended to do”.

It seems to be a dividing line for orthodox thinking Catholics: opinions about the Iraq war, and the problem of war in general. Many really don’t seem that bothered by it. Some are, but grudgingly concede war because of more utilitarian and pragmatic motives. Fewer still seem to have truly internalized the teaching of Popes from this last century: is there another example of a line of teachers so firmly opposed to modern warfare, and so firmly convinced of the viral nature of warfare on our society–how it not only fails to procure peace, but ends up corrupting the best that remains in us?

I remember a friend of a friend relating his experience fighting in the Salvadoran civil war, saying how they thought they were fighting to save their livelihood, but ended up losing everything they fought to preserve, by becoming one with the darkness they sought to oppose.

In 2005 Daniel McCarthy (over at the American Conservative) wrote about the glaring incongruity in many American Catholic conservatives option for war: pithily, he expressed it as “Bush si, Benedict no.”

The church is not competent to deduce the likelihood of strategic success or to address other purely prudential considerations of Just War doctrine. But there remain moral considerations in going to war about which a pope certainly can speak with authority, if not with infallibility. Neither John Paul II nor Benedict—whose intellect neoconservative Catholics have in other contexts praised —needs reminding about what the Catechism says. In Benedict’s case, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he supervised its recent abridgement. In a May 2003 interview reported by Rome’s Zenit news service, Ratzinger was asked about the justice of the Iraq War in light of the Catechism. He agreed that Just War doctrine may require revision, as Weigel and other Catholic neoconservatives have suggested—but in a more, not less, restrictive direction.

The pope [John Paul II] expressed his thought with great clarity, not only as his individual thought but as the thought of a man who is knowledgeable in the highest functions of the Catholic Church. Of course, he did not impose this position as doctrine of the Church but as the appeal of a conscience enlightened by faith. The Holy Father’s judgment is also convincing from a rational point of view: There was not sufficient reasons to unleash a war in Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war.’

As for “preventive war,” Ratzinger flatly stated in September 2002, the “concept of a ‘preventive war’ does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.” The then-cardinal’s remarks also suggested that the United Nations, rather than George W. Bush, would be the proper public authority to decide upon war with Iraq: “the United Nations … should make the final decision,” he said. “It is necessary that the community of nations makes the decision, not a particular power.”

The doctrine of papal infallibility does not, of course, extend to Benedict’s remarks as a cardinal nor even, for that matter, to any of John Paul’s opinions about the Iraq War, however well informed they were. But there is no mistaking the gravity of their views. If, as both men believed, the attack on Iraq in 2003 was unjust, support for the war becomes unconscionable. Novak, Neuhaus, and Weigel have spent much of their careers battling relativism, arguing forcefully that there is moral truth at the core of even the most contentious and divisive issues. There is a moral truth, they would surely agree, at the heart of the Iraq War—the justice of the war is not something that is ultimately moot or merely a question of perspective. The war in Iraq is a matter of moral right and wrong. Catholic neoconservatives say it was right; Benedict says it was wrong.

What did Ratzinger say? Again:

The Holy Father’s judgment is also convincing from the rational point of view: There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a “just war.”

As for Pope John Paul’s judgment, one can clearly see how he argued for an even stricter application of the principles of just wars during his ponitificate. As William Portier pointed out in an essay written in 1996 in Communio:

The pope seems clearly, in the words of Bryan Hehir, to be tightening “the moral barriers against the use of force.” If he has not abandoned “just-war” theory… he has made the evaluation of its conditions sufficiently rigorous to move the use of military force close to the periphery of moral discussion. The consternation of both pacifists and proponents of just-war theory at the pope’s recent statements might be a sign that he has begun to think with the “entirely new mind” urged in Gaudium et Spes (n. 80). Indeed, we could interpret recent papal pronouncements on international conflict as an ongoing attempt to carry forward the project outlined in Chapter V of Gaudium et Spes. While leaving the door open a crack for the serious possibility of “humanitarian intervention,” the pope seems possessed at the same time of a profound evangelical skepticism about using military force as a means of securing justice. This holy skepticism is evident in both his opposition to the Gulf War and his extreme reluctance to urge international military intervention in Bosnia.

There have been no shortage of Catholic theologians arguing for the injustice of the war in Iraq (like La Civilta Cattolica), but this seems to have little effect on the thinking of many American Catholic conservatives. And the words of Pope John Paul left little room for uncertainty:

No to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between States, the noble exercise of diplomacy: these are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences. I say this as I think of those who still place their trust in nuclear weapons and of the all-too-numerous conflicts which continue to hold hostage our brothers and sisters in humanity. At Christmas, Bethlehem reminded us of the unresolved crisis in the Middle East, where two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, are called to live side-by-side, equally free and sovereign, in mutual respect. Without needing to repeat what I said to you last year on this occasion, I will simply add today, faced with the constant degeneration of the crisis in the Middle East, that the solution will never be imposed by recourse to terrorism or armed conflict, as if military victories could be the solution. And what are we to say of the threat of a war which could strike the people of Iraq, the land of the Prophets, a people already sorely tried by more than twelve years of embargo? War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations. As the Charter of the United Nations Organization and international law itself remind us, war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations.

Russell Shaw recently laid out his argument for why the war was/is unjust:

Leaving aside rhetoric and name-calling — and there has been plenty of both in this debate — the main reason for the difference concerns differing prudential judgments. President Bush and his people believe the consequences of not going to war — especially the risk of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction ending up in the hands of terrorists — would significantly outweigh the bad consequences. The Holy Father and his people clearly believe that whatever good might come from overthrowing Saddam Hussein would not be proportionate to the bad results, such as provoking more terrorism, adding fuel to the burgeoning Christian-Muslim conflict already being played out in other areas of the world, and causing long-term damage to the United Nations and the international common good. For the most part, I think the Vatican and the White House share the same moral principles, but they disagree about the likely outcomes of various courses of action.

On the whole, I believe the Vatican’s view is the correct one.

There was a time that I might have agreed with Shaw here: but in light of more recent developments, principally the revelations about the Bush administration’s policies on torture, I believe this alleged sharing of the same moral principles is erroneous. The principles that the Bush administration seems to possess allow the use of evil means to achieve good ends: the Hobbesian/Pragmatic tradition in certain schools of conservatism (which, I would argue, is not at all authentic conservatism), that says, “you gotta do, what you gotta do.” The Catholic and classical tradition instead argues that evil done intentionally for any reason will always undermine the common good. Any apparent good it obtains will eventually be exposed as illusory.

This is the nature of the dividing line between orthodox-thinking Catholics in this country, it seems to me. How seriously do you take principles, notably the one that evil must never be done (CCC 1761), and that good ends do not justify evil means, and that even if it would save the world entire, it would never be right to sacrifice the life of even one innocent child. The contrary morality is what I have called before, the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan morality: sometimes, grudgingly, you just have to get your hands dirty. We may have assassinated and engaged in criminal acts in our foreign policy, but this is what you have to do in this messy world to save lives. Such is the common gross misunderstanding of reconciling means and ends. A Hobbesian state goes to war to preserve its interests against antagonistic rival states. As Christians, we should be cautious, lest we surrender allegiance to a line of “prudential judgment” that is not just or prudent at all. Elizabeth Anscombe, who opposed England’s entrance into WWII, expressed this brilliantly (“The Justice of the Present War Examined”):

In these days, the authorities claim the right to control not only the policy of the nation but also the actions of every individual within it; and their claim has the support of a large section of the people of the country, and of a peculiar force of emotion. This support is gained, and this emotion caused by the fact that they are “evil things” that we are fighting against. That they are evil we need have no doubt; yet many of us still feel distrust of these claims and these emotions lest they blind men to their duty of considering carefully, before they act, the justice of the things they propose to do. Men can be moved to fight by being made to hate the deeds of their enemies; but a war is not made just by the fact that one’s enemies’ deeds are hateful. Therefore it is our duty to resist passion and to consider carefully whether all the conditions of a just war are satisfied in this present war, lest we sin against the natural law by participating in it.

The teaching of Christ does not accept Hobbesian principles: rather, it works from entirely different eschatological ones. Indeed, the principles of natural law are available to all; but in a world of sin, they can be difficultly available. But at the end of the day, Christians are working for a social order that terminates in a supernatural destination, and this is why the harmony of just war teaching and pacifism (rightly understood) expresses that deeper dynamism of grace building on, and yet surpassing, nature. We can see this in the very development of Just War Theory, as Michael Baxter has illustrated:

The Church’s teaching on the morality of war originated out of a pastoral concern. As historians have told us, the just war tradition is a set of conditions or principles used to determine when it is just to go to war, and what is just to do within a war. These principles emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries, and were expanded and elaborated over time, especially during the Middle Ages, largely in order to determine if, in going to war, a person had sinned. We can see this in canon law. No violence and bloodshed on certain days, e.g., Sundays, certain feast days, or during certain times of year, e.g., Lent. Certain weapons were outlawed as too hideous, too lethal, e.g., the crossbow, because it could pierce armor. People coming back from war would confess their sins, and it was necessary to determine the gravity of the sin in order to come up with the appropriate penance. And this led to an accumulation of guidelines, bits of wisdom, rules and regulations, and penitential practices, such as the practice of soldiers returning from war doing forty days of penance. In this context, the teaching on just war was, first and foremost, a form of pastoral reflection and discernment. And it was in this respect an ecclesial discourse.

But a shift occurred in modern times, around the time of Grotius, such that “just war theory” came to be seen primarily as a set of norms for managing the affairs of modern states in the arena of international politics. At length, it came to be seen almost exclusively in this way. In this later context, just war teaching was transmuted into an ethical theory, tied to a theory of statecraft, wherein the state, and politics, is depicted as inherently violent. One of the most influential propagators of this theory was the German sociologist Max Weber. And Weber, as it turns out, was formative of the thought of the Ernst Troeltsch, whose thought, in turn, was formative in the discourse of Catholic social ethics in the United States.

I have already alluded to the way that this legacy paved the way for a utilitarian method of doing social ethics, a method devised by professional ethicists in order to mitigate the violent dynamics of modern nation-states. But another feature in this development is that things associated with religion are relegated to, and cordoned off within, a different sphere of life.

As Catholics, our responsibility in the public square is not simply the maintaince of this worldy order. We are working for a higher order. We are called to not just “not violate” the natural law, but to follow its origin in charity to its final conclusion: to restore all things in Christ. This is why the Popes have seriously implored Catholics to follow the higher order of the beatitudes, even in politics.

Finally, the Church as teacher has the unique responsibility of clarifying the principles of moral reasoning, as well as their particular application. Just because our President has the unique responsibility of making the decisions of statecraft, does not mean the Pope cannot call him to account. Why? As St. Thomas points out (ST I-II 99.2.ad2):

It was fitting that the Divine law should come to man’s assistance not only in those things for which reason is insufficient, but also in those things in which human reason may happen to be impeded. Now human reason could not go astray in the abstract, as to the universal principles of the natural law; but through being habituated to sin, it became obscured in the point of things to be done in detail. But with regard to the other moral precepts, which are like conclusions drawn from the universal principles of the natural law, the reason of many men went astray, to the extend of judging to be lawful, things that are evil in themselves. Hence there was need for the authority of the Divine law to rescue man from both these defects.

The Church is fulfilling its role in clarifying moral issues of great importance. What amazes me is that those who argue for the justice of the war in Iraq, claim to be “conservatives”; as McCarthy points out (see above), this is a liberal position in conservative dress (i.e. neo-conservatism). The authentic conservative position is opposition to the war.

(Updated 3:32PM EST)

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