Veterans Day seemed like an especially apt day to publish this Working Paper, for which comments are gratefully solicited. Summary:
This Article analyzes the changes in orthodox Christian attitudes towards defensive violence.
While the article begins in the 19th century and ends in the 21st, most of the Article is about the 20th century. The article focuses on American Catholicism and on the Vatican, although there is some discussion of American Protestantism.
In the nineteenth and early in the twentieth centuries, the traditional Christian concepts of Just War and of the individual's duty to use force to defend himself and his family remained uncontroversial, as they had been for centuries. Disillusionment over
World War One turned many Catholics and Protestants towards pacifism. Without necessarily adopting pacifism as a theory, they adopted pacifism as a practice. World War Two and the early Cold War ended the pacifist interlude for all but a few radical pacifists.
Beginning in the 1960s, much of the American Catholic leadership, like the leadership of mainline Protestant churches, turned sharply Left. Although churches did not repudiate their teachings on Just War, many Catholic and mainline Protestant leaders seemed unable to find any circumstances under which American or Western force actually was legitimate. Pacifism and anti-Americanism marched hand in hand. Today, pacifism now has greater respectability within orthodox Christianity than any time in the past 1700 years.
Among the influential thinkers profiled in this Article are all Popes from World War II to the present, Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker Movement, and the Berrigan Brothers. The article suggests that some recent trends in pacifist or quasi-pacifist approaches have been unduly influenced by hostility to the United States, and by the use
of narrowly-focused emotion rather than the rigorous analysis that has characterized Catholic philosophy.
Evolving Christian attitudes towards personal and national self-defense
[DK: Oops.I just added the link. http://www.davekopel.org/Religion/Evolving-Christian-Attitudes.pdf ]
However, while I agree that American Catholic pacifism is a Left phenomenon, it is careless to treat post WWI pacifism as a Left phenomenon. There were just as many Rightists, and even more, who jumped on that bandwagon, and the Kellogg-Briand pact was signed by one of the farthest right administrations the U.S. has had.
The analogy especially fails since the US was in no danger of being invaded by Germany in WWI. Our invovlement in it was a matter of choice. A good one, I think, but a choice nonetheless. York could still have been a CO.
For good revisionist writing, I suggest you take some tips from the inimitable Dr. Bernstein.
Here's an extremely problematic sentence:
"In some cases, Catholic conservatism was beneficial, as in the Church’s visceral distrust of Communism, a philosophy which would eventually lead to the greatest mass murders in history."
No, no, no! If the Catholic hierarchy had been somewhat less conservative, it might not have played into the "communists or fascists" dialectic. I seem to recall that in the last paper (on pacifism), you chided the democracies for failing to take action against Hitler. Part of the reason they left him in place was that they figured he was better than the the only alternative they could imagine: communism.
That was the casus belli as far as the British were concerned, a violation of the treaty of 1830.
Kenneth Anderson's assertion about 'just war' doctrine not being prominent among American Catholics does not match my experience. I got a dose of just war doctrine in elementary school, and a much bigger dose in Catholic high school.
No, it's you who can't understand it.
who finally figured out the Assumption of Mary in 1950
I suppose you knew it all along?
and didn't apologize to Galileo until he was dead for 350 years?
Let me guess, you want an apology for something NOW? Perhaps that the mean ol' Church doesn't conform to your morals?
Well, Jesus WAS tortured by being placed on a cross, then killed. For someone who is the son of God and able to perform any miracles he wanted, he could have easily smited his enemies in his defense. Instead, he let them do their work, and asked merely that God forgive them.
"It's hard to know what to make of Randy's assertion that no other country was invaded in 1914. Belgium? "
True, but would Belgium had been invaded by Germany if Russia didn't push the first domino? And still, no one invaded the US, so York's analogy still fails. He could in good conscience refuse to serve in the war as a pacifist.
As I recall, the Vatican had no problem in the Middle Ages maintaining an army and going to war. The popes called upon the Crusades to fight the infidels. They used torture during the Inquisition. They burned others for merely questioning church orthodoxy. So, historically, the Catholic Church had no problem with supporting war and violence. This surprises people?
We can all do so with a smirk, knowing that Jesus was actually ready to go to war to defend his interests. Peace doesn't seem to enter into the equation.
So why do we sing that song, then? Must be feelgood liberalism run amok....
Simple, no?
According to Tuchman, when the Belgian ambassador to Berlin called to demand his pasport, the foreign minister tut-tutted a bit and said that, after all, who could, in August 1914, know what the verdict of history would be?
The ambassador replied that whatever the verdict was, history would not say that Belgium invaded Germany.
Whatever happens, pacifists can always be depended upon to let other people pull their chestnuts out of the fire. York was a rare, almost unique, honorable exception.
Not His role.
Just goes to show -- you can interpret the Bible any way to fit what you want.
But Harry, the fact is that Germany would have had no reason to invade Belgium had Russia not started the war. Now, perhaps Germany would have nonetheless, but at that point you are at mere speculation. My point is that York's conclusion was that you can't be a pacifist if someone is attacking YOU. I have no argument with that. However, if someone is attacking someone else, then you can make a reasoned argument that you have no obligation to get involved.
also, like Aubrey, I don't take 'turn the other cheek' to compel abject surrender. the moneychangers in the temple example should be enough to cast doubt on such a glib take.
rather, I take it metaphorically, as yet another example of this challenging injunction - forgive your transgressors, and love your enemies.
but you can do both while still defending yourself.
The instruction about turning the other cheek has to do with insult. That is, if the blow were lethal or crippling, no instruction to remain passive would be necessary.
It also fails to discuss the three-party problem. How does it apply to defending others?
Nope. Not a reference to pacifism.
As a practical matter, we cannot suppress all of it. The pacifist concludes, therefore it is immoral to stand uo against any of it.
The way you'd have it, York would be justified in defending his own house from a marauder but not his neighbor's, even if, say, his neighbor was a bedridden invalid incapable of, say, using her own Second Amendment right/privilege of looking after herself.
Jesus, who I don't believe existed, had something to say about that; or somebody using his name did.
The practice of venerating relics (fractions of body parts, such as bone or blood) of saints and martyrs dates to the first century. As you might expect, unscrupulous individuals trafficked in fraudulent bones and blood.
But we have no evidence that anyone ever tried to pass off a bone as belonging to Jesus or Mary. Why? Because Christians believed that both Jesus and Mary were bodily in heaven.
But of course there is the Shroud of Turin, enough fragments of the "true cross" to build a house, and enough pieces of the holy grail to stock a bar.
But so what if they're all fakes? I'm not saying that any particular relic is authentic. Even if they're fakes, they're evidence of belief. No one in the early Church tried to pass off anything as a relic of Mary, because no one believed that access to Mary's bones was possible. Additionally, there's no evidence of any Christians gathering at Mary's grave or building a church there, like they did with many other saints.
No, but how many weeping or bleeding statues of and purported sightings of Mary have there been by deluded, misguided and downright mentally ill people, some of which the Church has sanctified (e.g. Lourdes)? And don't forget the regular appearances of Mary in baked goods and pastries, on buildings and almost anywhere there is a trick of light or smudge on a wall or sidewalk.
That is not faith, but delusion.
No Harry, that's not the way I would have it. But arguing with someone like you who keeps putting words in my mouth gets increasingly tiresome. I never claimed to be a pacifist, and I believe that pacifism has many nuances to it, and each person can claim a different set of nuances.
Aubrey: "Jesus forgave his tormentors because, although evil is inevitable, woe be to the man who brings it. They had a choice. They chose evil."
What woe came to his tormentors? Jesus certainly didn't wish them any woe. in fact, he asked that they be forgiven, which is pretty much the opposite of woe.
Perhaps what Jesus is saying that when you meet violence with violence, it only causes more misery. At least, that's one interpretation. But if you know everything, please go ahead.
Course, there's that little issue about Judas. He had a role to play, and yet he's been condemned for centuries for it.
And perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus's tormentors had a role to play as well. Afterall, if Jesus had a role to play, he couldn't have played it without the help of those same tormentors. Perhaps they weren't so evil at all, but actually were doing God's work.
Which, of course, is another way of saying that each person does what he does not because he wants to 'do evil', but precisely because he truly believes that what he is doing is 'right.'
I'm sorry, I don't see what you're getting at.
Someone said that the Assumption of Mary was "finally figured out in 1950," and used the recent promulgation of that dogma to attack the legitimacy of the Catholic faith. I countered that the belief was not of recent vintage by pointing out that early Christians did not behave as we would expect them to if they believed that Mary's body was in a grave somewhere.
The validity of the dogma is not at issue. I don't care whether you believe it or don't. I'm just saying that early Christians believed it, so to say that it's a recent invention is false.
As for Lourdes, well, even Catholics are not required to believe that anything happened at Lourdes. The Church has established that there will be no new public revelation (i.e., revelation that the faithful are required to believe) until the Second Coming, although there may be private revelation that deepens personal faith, provided it does not add to or contradict any teaching of the Church. Really anything can be a private revelation, from an appearance by Mary to a simple granting of a prayer.
I enjoyed reading the paper, thank you. I was very recently having a discussion on this topic with my father, who had recently seen Marquette University's play on pacifism - "Poor, Poor, Poor, Tom" or something like that. Anyways, one of the things I don't recall seeing in your work is the "Peter, put away your sword" verse I hear quoted so often. It is interesting that Jesus refutes Peter's potentially lethal retaliation against non-lethal force (at least, non-lethal immediately to Peter) by reminding him that he is not defenseless (something about calling to God to send a legion of angels, or something?). Certainly a good indication that Jesus knows his right to defend his life, but chooses not to.
Oh, and I'm not sure what amount scholarly work is out there to support this, but I have always been taught (100% Catholic school educated . . .) that the commandment is not "Thou Shalt Not Kill," but rather, "Thou Shalt Not Murder."
I've always found the "What about Hitler" question (as posed to pacifists) to be anything but extaordinary. I mean, what about a common thief who would kill you over $17.50? (I refer here to the murder of a delivery driver near my workplace last year.) Certainly such a person can not reasonably be held as likely disuaded by pacifism? It is not the scale of the evil in my book, but rather, the basic principles involved. If a good man must use violence to destroy evil, then he must indeed.
[DK: Thanks! I discuss the question of whether the Gospels mandate pacifism here: http://www.davekopel.org/Religion/Is-the-best-defense-a-good-book.pdf ]
I understand that. But why would Jesus's tormentors be considered evil when they were merely playing their role? If they didn't kill Jesus, someone certainly would have to in order for him to die.
Or else, Jesus could have just found a scorpian to sting him. But then that sidesteps the whole issue of forgiveness. So obviously, it was necessary for a person to kill him.
The only thing that makes sense is that God chose an evil role for his killers, and they properly acted it out their role, for which they would have to suffer, but for Jesus's asking for forgiveness.
The issue is the same for Judas. And recently, old scrolls have been found that indicate that Judas knew he was supposed to betray Jesus to get the ball rolling. So, Judas wasn't an evil man at all -- he was merely doing what was required.
Anyone who considers that evil would be himself evil, in my book.
They can be forgiven, but repentance is necessary.
The Catholics have a sacrament--I think it's a sacrament--called conditional absolution. It's used when a person can't hear confession before something dire happens. Say, a unit about to go into combat (I think the first time it happened in North America involved the Irish Brigade before they went into the line at Gettysburg.) The people solemnly repent their sins and resolve to seek confession at the first opportunity. And they're forgiven. So repentance only takes an instant's thought.
BTW. When I was in the Infantry, I learned the Sh'ma (phonetically), the Twenty-Third Psalm, and the Act of Contrition. Just in case. I'm not a theologian, but you never know who'll be wanting The Word.