As The United States continues to take both military and diplomatic steps towards war with Iraq, American Catholic Bishops have said that if America were to go to war against Iraq under the present rationalizations, they would not meet the Catholic criteria for a “just war.”
On Nov. 13, American Catholic Bishops put the Just War Doctrine into effect when they met for their annual fall meeting in Washington. According to a statement issued after the meeting, it was asserted that since there is no clear evidence that Iraq is about to attack America, no war against the country would meet the Just War criteria.
Dr. Kevin Cassidy, of the Politics Department and Peace and Justice Department, said that the Just War conceptions are “not just the Catholic Just War doctrines, it’s the Just War theory that has been used for centuries…in terms of how to think about the ethics of war.”
The Just War Doctrine is usually accredited to St. Augustine. Through the centuries, four criteria have been developed to meet the just war standards; the danger to a nation must be grave; all other means of solving the problem must be exhausted; there should be a good chance at success; and finally that the said war will not create more evils or disorder.
American Bishops felt that the war against Iraq does not meet the last criterion, and it may create more “evils and disorders” than it would eliminate.
Assistant professor of Religious Studies Rev. Frank Hannafey, S.J., said that the Bishops are “concerned about the severe consequences” that come with war and that the criteria would help assure the Bishops that “some kind of good comes out of it [war].” However, Hannafey said, “if a greater evil is caused, they cannot, in moral terms, justify it.”
Cassidy said that “the people who are trying to consider the ethics, the justifiability of a war” will use the criteria, but we cannot hope for our own politicians to follow this doctrine because “politicians are usually just concerned with what is there own interest.” Cassidy has hopes that the Bush administration will listen to what the Bishops have to say, not because they hold any political sway, but because “the Bishops have a role of shaping public opinion, at least Catholic public opinion.”
As far as Catholic and/or religious public opinion at Fairfield, it seems like all that Catholic schooling has paid off. Students interviewed by The Mirror were largely opposed to the war in Iraq for a combination of political and religious reasons. Cassidy said that “it’s the task of religious people to take these things seriously.”
Heather Morassini, ’05, said, “Catholic religious teachings says that the entire world are our brothers and sisters, we are a community.” She and other students said that our reasons for going to war are mostly political or economic and therefore can’t be justified in a religious sense. “There are not enough good reasons to sacrifice one’s life to go Iraq to kill other people that have nothing to do with this issue of economics.”
Many Fairfield students are calling for a peaceable change in government that would not risk innocent life.
Nadya Encarnacion, ’05, summed it up when she said “if we can really avoid it we should, Christ came to bring peace.”
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