Reconciling faith with service to country

Military personnel, theologians weigh in on ‘just war’ theory

By Rebecca Bostic
The Catholic Sun

Commander Brian Neumann has served the U.S. Air Force since he was 23 years old. He has been Catholic for the past seven years, but his Christian faith has always helped him cope with the challenges his line of work presents.

“Any time you’re in a conflict, man, having faith in God just really helps,” said Neumann, who oversees the academic aspect of pilot training at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale. “Obviously you lose people in a conflict and having God as an additional crutch really not only helps you, but helps you help others.”

As much as his Catholic faith influences his life, Newman was not troubled by the differing opinions his Church and the Air Force held at the outset of the war in Iraq in 2003.

“Was I conflicted? No, not really, because as an American you have your duties and responsibilities,” he said. “To me, it didn’t conflict at all.”

Conscientious objection

“A soldier needs to follow his conscience,” Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Phoenix Diocese said. “And he needs first to inform his conscience as well as possible. To do this the Church makes great efforts to provide solid teaching to soldiers and military chaplains. If a soldier considers a conflict unjust, then he is obliged not to engage in it.”

The Archdiocese for the Military Services helps soldiers to discern potential conscientious objection and military chaplains are a large part of that process.

“We work very hard with our chaplains to deal with young people who have questions about their participation in warfare,” Tom Connelly, vice chancellor of the Archdiocese for Military Services, said.

“I’m not sure that any of us knew our minds at 18,” he said. “As they work through the issues and they start reading and thinking and praying, the military has a pretty good system for helping people figure out whether they have conscientious objection.”

Conscience formation is something that Larry Fraher, a faculty member at the Phoenix Diocese Kino Institute, hopes is truly occurring.

“The Catholic soldier has to commit himself or herself to forming their conscience and making decisions based on that formed conscience,” Fraher said. “We’re in a position where formed Catholics could have serious conscientious objections” to the war in Iraq.

“According to each individual’s conscience, they have to make those decisions on whether to object to the situation or not,” he said. “The Church hasn’t said this is a war that can be validly justified.”

A just war?

The “just war” theory offers seven conditions that must all be met for a war to be considered justified, Fraher said.

The conditions include that the war is a last resort, is waged by a legitimate authority and must be in response to a suffered wrong.

The ultimate goal of the war must be to establish peace and it has to have a reasonable chance of success.

Also, proportionality in violence inflicted is required along with the discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

A war must meet all seven conditions in order to be a just war, Fraher said. “The current situation in Iraq doesn’t meet the seven conditions in totality.”

The just war theory itself is an active debate among Catholic theologians, especially pertaining to Iraq. There are some who don’t believe it is possible to wage a just war in the 21st century.

“When you’re dropping bombs from 35,000 feet, how can you be certain it is not killing non-combatants?” said Fr. John Dear, a pacifist Jesuit priest who has written 20 books on peace and nonviolence.

Although scholars may not classify the Iraq war as meeting the theory’s requirements, Connelly points out that the Vatican never said the war in Iraq was not just.

The late Pope John Paul II “clearly wasn’t happy with the war and he wanted far more steps taken,” Connelly said. “The words that came out of the Holy See were very carefully measured. If you go back and look at what he said, he was not pro-war, but the whole range of the pronouncements was very carefully nuanced.”

Catholics should not expect a just or unjust war classification for Iraq from the Vatican anytime soon, according to Bishop Olmsted.

“It is rare that the Church would proclaim a conflict as being an unjust war,” he said. “Usually we try to lift up the principles derived from natural law and our faith, and the facts as we know them.

“We are dealing here with attempts to apply ethical principles to concrete situations,” he said of the application of the just war theory to the current war in Iraq. “In doing that, people of good will can differ on the facts as well as on the way the principles apply to them.”

Fraher notes that the discussion changes once a war has begun.

“Once we’re in the midst of the war itself, once the circumstances change and the war has begun, the criteria for moral judgment may change in that situation,” Fraher said. “I’m not saying that just war theory changes, but the criteria for an individual to serve may change. So that’s got to be formed and informed by the individual soldier.”

Tim Casey, a member of St. Theresa Parish and Pax Christi International, did not want the United States to go to war with Iraq, but feels that at this point in the war “we have an obligation under both international law and moral law to repair the damages,” he said.

No easy answers

As the war in Iraq continues, Fraher hopes that Catholics are “aware of the big picture and not just the picture of American soldiers.” He pointed out that Chaldean Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination in Iraq and that there are two sides to consider.

“Yes our soldiers who are there are human beings and they’re certainly being affected, but there is a country in the midst of being torn apart,” Fraher said.

He hopes Catholics of the Phoenix Diocese consider how to “minister to the soldiers that are there, but also to the people who watch their brothers and sisters die on a daily basis because of suicide bombs.”

“We may be called to ask ourselves — not what is the American thing to be doing — but what is the Christian thing to be doing,” he said.

The deep split over the war in Iraq is obvious to Commander Neumann.

“Is there violence over there still? You bet. And it’s always going to be there,” Neumann said. “But you’ve kind of got to step back and look at what the long term goal is. It’s going to be a long war, it’s not a cut-and-dry type of conflict.”

Moving toward the end of the war, Bishop Olmsted hopes Catholics will continue to pray for peace.

“We also need to pray for all those leaders who exercise influence in the present conflicts,” Bishop Olmsted said. “It is our duty as well to keep ourselves informed of the concrete situations as they unfold, and to make our opinions felt in a respectful way.”

For information on the just war theory, visit www.catholicsun.org/bishopolmsted.html for Bishop Olmsted’s articles on the subject. For statements from the U.S. bishops on the war in Iraq visit www.usccb.org/sdwp/peace.