The Just War Doctrine Of The Catholic Church

Jan Sobieski of Poland and his victory over the Turks at the Siege of Vienna

It may seem odd that a religious institution would have a Just War Doctrine. The Catholic Church has been around for over 2,000 years. The papacy had been existence for 900 years before there was a king of England. The Church has seen the rise and fall of empires. As an institution it has directly been involved, sanctioned, tried to prevent, and forbidden wars. The Just War Doctrine is contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The murder of a French priest by ISIS adherents is a warning to not only the Catholic Church it is a warning to the West. The West must make the decision to destroy ISIS. That decision must be made by recognizing the fact that ISIS must be named as Islamicist terrorism and ISIS is evil. ISIS savagery has dictated the rules of engagement. Savagery must be met with savagery on the battlefield.

I have heard the arguments that we must be careful in how we define ISIS so as not to increase their membership. In spite of putting that specious line of reasoning into practice their attacks increase. They increase because ISIS does not care how they are perceived by their co-religionists or the West. ISIS recruits do not care how they are perceived by the West.

There are many reasons young men are attracted to ISIS. Sexual sadism and murder is one of the key reasons. The chance to fulfill their perverted fantasies is a key recruitment tool for ISIS. Religious belief is the rationalization to justify their perversions.

If we cannot recognize evil and define good then we are helpless in the face of the slaughter. We should recognize the virtue of our martyr's, but we should also recognize the virtue of our defenders.
More talk from Pope Francis on the Battle of Lepanto, the Siege of Malta, and the Just War Doctrine is also necessary to extol the virtue and necessity of defending against and destroying ISIS.

The key paragraph in the Just War Doctrine:

All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war. Despite this admonition of the Church, it sometimes becomes necessary to use force to obtain the end of justice. This is the right, and the duty, of those who have responsibilities for others, such as civil leaders and police forces. While individuals may renounce all violence those who must preserve justice may not do so, though it should be the last resort, "once all peace efforts have failed." [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 79, 4]

Just War Doctrine

All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war. Despite this admonition of the Church, it sometimes becomes necessary to use force to obtain the end of justice. This is the right, and the duty, of those who have responsibilities for others, such as civil leaders and police forces. While individuals may renounce all violence those who must preserve justice may not do so, though it should be the last resort, "once all peace efforts have failed." [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 79, 4]

As with all moral acts the use of force to obtain justice must comply with three conditions to be morally good. First, the act must be good in itself. The use of force to obtain justice is morally licit in itself. Second, it must be done with a good intention, which as noted earlier must be to correct vice, to restore justice or to restrain evil, and not to inflict evil for its own sake. Thirdly, it must be appropriate in the circumstances. An act which may otherwise be good and well motivated can be sinful by reason of imprudent judgment and execution.

In this regard Just War doctrine gives certain conditions for the legitimate exercise of force, all of which must be met:

1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

3. there must be serious prospects of success;

4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition" [CCC 2309].

The Quiet Heroes

Admiration is not always the immediate reward for heroes. Those that choose to do what is right are at times on a very lonely and perilous path.

The story of the Ulma family in war torn Poland is heartbreaking and tragic. Their story will move you to anger and some tears.

Their story is not about despair. Their story is about bringing light to the darkness of unrepentant evil. They chose to help their neighbors, a decision that cost them everything, at least in this life.

The Ulmas’ deserve our admiration not only for their actions. They also deserve our admiration for reminding us that there is hope and faith. Hope and faith that some will walk the right path no matter how dark the world seems to be.

"The Ulma Family (killed in 1944): During the Holocaust, penalties for aiding Jews in Western Europe were lenient or non-existent.

In Poland, by contrast, the punishment was execution, often applied collectively. Yet Polish and Jewish historians estimate that several hundred thousand Poles were engaged in such efforts.

Wiktoria and Józef Ulma were among them. These were devoutly Catholic, modest farm folk with six children (Wiktoria was pregnant with a seventh) who took the Fifth Commandment seriously.

Knowing the risks, they nonetheless hid two Jewish families. After being denounced, they and the Jews they hid were killed by the Germans. The Ulmas’ cause for beatification is under study in Rome. As a German pope, Benedict XVI is said to have wanted to beatify the Ulmas, but unfortunately did not have the time."

Götterdämmerung: The Twilight Of The Gods

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

The Twilight of the Gods for the European Union has started with Brexit.

Those that remove God from His throne never pull down the throne. That throne that no one sits upon becomes like Tolkien's One Ring and there will be those mortals that seek to sit upon it to impose law and judgement, but never mercy.

The idea of free trade between the European nations was a noble idea but as it has been said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It was not enough to dabble in the economics of free trade. The management of production followed. One nation may fish and another nation must restrict their fishing. That still wasn't enough. Eventually the bureaucrats decided that the new European man must be produced.

Leon Trotsky wrote in 1924 in Literature and Revolution about the "Communist man", "man of the future"

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

That dream, or nightmare is far older than Trotsky. One may judge it by the results that it produced in the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, Germany, and the former Soviet Union.

Lest Americans become too smug we should remember we have our own problems. A city that is all of 68 square miles in size imposes its' will on a nation of 3.79 million square miles. Ruled by bureaucrats that seek to create the new American man.

To create the new superman you must first wipe away history and culture. Once that is done then the new superman is unable to defend himself in the battle over ideas. The new superman becomes the bureaucrat. Conscience becomes whim and individual freedom is lost.

After the Brexit vote some in Britain said that some decisions are too important to be left to the voters. That idea eventually leads to any decision is too important to be left to the voters. I suppose that some men are more super than other men after all.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

This is a video of Homs Syria. The destruction photographed by the drone reminds me of the destruction of cities during WWII.

The following quotes from WB Yeats and Hilaire Belloc is perhaps the best narration to accompany the sinister buzzing of the drone.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
WB Yeats

The Barbarian by Hilaire Belloc

The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marveling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers.... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles. - Hilaire Belloc