Some of you are bristling already at the title of this post, but I urge you to read on, you might be surprised. The last post on this subject was way back on 14 April, so some of you have probably forgotten that I said that we needed to go on with some more discussion of communion and pro-life.
First, it is important to note that the Church Fathers treated killing when serving as a soldier with much caution. Saint Basil even suggested that those who have killed as soldiers ought to avoid communion for a time after killing someone. To this day, Orthodox priests are forbidden from celebrating the Divine Liturgy if they have spilled blood after being ordained. That is, war is viewed as a violation of God’s desire, “Peace be with you.” This does not mean that the Early Church Fathers were pacifists–I can already hear the post coming from Fr. Huw–but it does mean that there was no triumphalism in them, nor any desire for war to happen. War may be a necessity until the Lord returns, but we should always pray for peace, as Saint Paul taught; we should always be peacemakers, as Our Lord Jesus Christ taught; we should strive to be at peace with all around us. Saint Basil’s attitude was that war was so much a part of the evil that goes back to Satan himself (who is called a murderer in Scripture) that even “innocent” soldiers somehow indirectly participated in that evil and should thus avoid communion for a time.
When Saint Augustine of Hippo arrives on the Christian scene, there is a necessity to define a very important subject. That subject is the question of when is war justified. I have posted before that Saint Augustine’s rules are the beginning of the development of what are today the Geneva Conventions that have to do with war. But, most important, they have defined for Christianity, both East and West, the basic definitions for when a war is just and when a war is unjust. This has profound implications for those who claim to be pro-life, if you think about it. Obviously any ruler participating as the aggressor in an unjust war is committing murder the same as any person involved in an unjust killing. [Note: the ruler defending his/her country from an unjust attack is not guilty unless unjust means are used.] This was the principle behind the Nuremberg Trials. Not only was the war unjust, but the treatment of the civilian population and of captured soldiers was unjust (genocide, torture, etc.). It is under this concept of both war and police powers that General Augusto Pinochet of Chile was arrested in Spain. It is under this same concept that the previous Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, was under trial at The Hague.
However, as I pointed out in an earlier post, only those directly and personally involved in the decisions that were unjust have been brought to trial, whether Pinochet or Milosevic or the Nazis or the Japanese leaders or the Civil War leaders from the South. And notice that the definition of who was involved was very narrow. This is as it should be. The regular soldier is generally left alone, except for people such as some of the prison guards.
But, this brings up an important question. If a war is found to be unjust by the Church, should not those who were directly and personally involved in the decision to go to war be denied communion by the Church? If the death of one infant, if voting directly for “choice”; if personally advocating choice as a legislator; if the use of embryonic stem cells from an abortion is sufficient for pro-birth people to call for the Church to deny communion to those directly and personally involved, should not all of us pro-lifers be doing the same for those leaders directly and personally involved in the decision to go to an unjust war?
This section is only for Orthodox and Roman Catholics
If you are Protestant, this next section does not apply to you. This is because you neither have the theological concept of the authority of the Orthodox hierarchs, nor do you have the theological concept of the Magisterium found among Roman Catholics. Thus, you will not find what follows to be “convincing” for you. In fact, classic Protestantism would disagree vehemently with those concepts.
To you who are Roman Catholic and pro-birth, I particularly remind you of the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq. As I have posted before, the Roman Catholic bishops warned President George W. Bush that going to war with Iraq would violate the Church’s theology of a just war. On the eve of the attacks, a letter was even delivered from the hand of the Pope, by the Papal Nuncio, warning that this was not just the opinion of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but was his opinion as well. As well all know, President Bush insisted on going to war, despite Church warnings.
Here is my question. Where were the pro-birth people in calling for a denial of Communion to President Bush after the war started? I realize that he is not either Orthodox or Roman Catholic. But, should there not have been some type of denunciation of the President, as a Christian, by those who are Orthodox or Roman Catholic and pro-birth? Should they not have been backing up their bishops with all the vigor that is placed into a pro-birth stance? After all, is not an unjust killing still an unjust killing whether it is the killing of a child in the womb or a killing in a war unjustly declared?
Even months later, when it became quite clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction, no yellow cake, etc., should there not have been a re-evaluation and an acknowledgment by those who so clearly fight against the unjust killing of a child in the womb that perhaps they should have also fought against the unjust killing of those in a war? Where are the calls for accountability? I guarantee you that many of a certain age in the pro-birth movement still refuse to forgive Jane Fonda in any way for her “traitorous” acts. Where is their moral outrage over an war called unjust by their own bishops and by the Pope?
It is a matter of consistency. More than one wag has said that the difference between a liberal Roman Catholic and a conservative Roman Catholic on the issue of pro-life is whom they are willing to allow to be killed. One side allows the killing of infants in the womb under the rubric of choice. The other side allows the killing of soldiers in an unjust war under the rubric of the need to support our President and to be patriots to our country. It is no wonder that the Pope has refused to impose Communion sanctions. In order to actively apply those sanctions, given what the Pope has said about both abortion and Iraq as an unjust war, he would have to apply sanctions to those personally and actively involved in the support of either of those acts.
In case you have not figured it out by now. I am still in favor of denying communion to those actively and personally involved in anti-life activities whether in abortion or unjust war.
===MORE TO COME===
Fr Ernesto –
This is one of the things that seriously annoyed me about “neoCath” bloggers and, if you will, “neoOrth” ones as well. The Catholics, when questioned directly – I had a couple of email exchanges – said that Anti-Abortion teaching was an official teaching of the Church but that Anti-war was just a leftist reading of the Church and they could do anything they wanted. They also had similar reasons for wanting Israel to basically wipe out Palestinians and maybe other Arab sorts as well. NeoOrths told me flat out there is no “Just War” theory in Orthodoxy so they were free to be Patriotic as they saw it.
So… yes, I’m with you. But experience shows that in general people don’t want to support the Church, they merely want the Church to support them (and their political choices). I don’t pretend to be outside of that “in general” as you know.
Yes, I agree with you on that. In fact, many of the Religious Right Caths and Orths actually use the exact same reasons that the liberals use but simply apply them to other subjects. For instance both conservatives and liberals argue that the Church does not have the right to speak to the State. Conservatives argue that the bishops do not belong in the running of “war” or of our “security policies.” Liberals, of course, argue that the bishops do not belong in the area of a “woman’s choice.”
I could go on, as there are other parallels, but each side claims the Church when they oppose the State on a certain issue, but rejects the Church when they agree with the State on a certain issue.
In a situation like the Iraq war, I always wonder if there was classified information that still cannot be made public that motivated President Bush to make the decision he did. My father (career Army) was in a position at times in his career to have information of the sort that jokes are told about. “I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.” He often said about several incidents that happened after he retired that he would like to be a fly on the wall at Presidential briefings (like the ones he had to make at times) to know what was REALLY going on. There is just too much that we do not know and that we should not know to protect agents in place and so on that I always wonder…….
The problem is that that type of argument can be used to justify anything. You know, “if you only knew what I knew then you would know that we were right to do what we did even if it appeared wrong.”
That is why the just war theology that was written by Saint Augustine required that the defending country be attacked. Any country that attacks first, short of a massive accumulation of troops on the other side of the border, is automatically engaged in an unjust war. No allowance is made for secret intelligence; no allowance is made for any argument such as the type you mentioned. The reason is because even back then they knew that such an argument is too easy to fake. Remember that Machiavelli wrote on the subject of devious reasoning and diplomatic maneuverings to gain advantage long before modern times.
So, it really does not matter what claimed “intelligence” there was. Just war theory does not allow for that. It is a restrictive approach on purpose. Saint Augustine’s assumption appears to have been that it is better to take a chance on loss of life in your country than to take a chance on an unjust war. That goes against a lot of what we would tend to think nowadays.
I am not saying I do not agree with you. I just wonder…..like my father–would like to be a fly on the wall at many a briefing and meeting to see what the thinking is…..;because a lot of it doesn’t make sense to me. I am all for the idea–if they attack me, I defend myself, but I don’t attack others…..Even with the Japanese and the Nazis….if someone is bent on world conquest, they will get to me before long. I also think that we have over expanded the definition of…..if they attack me to if they attack me or my friend or the friend of my friend or the second cousin once removed of the friend of my friend or the guy who lives next door to the second cousin once removed of the friend of my friend……sigh…..
Milosevic is kaputt. March 2006