“However, in context I was not talking about secular statute law. Let me clarify: by “crime,” I was speaking of grave moral wrong.”
Okay, but the original article spoke of “war crimes,” which must be understood to mean crimes with reference to international law.
“Do you really wish to take an explicitly anti-Magisterium position?”
I don’t mean to imply anything about you personally, but we—you and I—have often seen that argument used by those who have infiltrated or taken over an organization and are trying to turn it upon itself. We Catholics are at liberty to question or even reject things that are not inerrant or infallible, especially where they contradict all that has gone before.
“If you wanted to make a case that the acts of an ecumenical council are null, you would have to extend your dissent back to quite a few pontiffs.”
I am not making a case that all acts of VatII are null. I do assert, along with many others, that abuses were perpetrated by theological leftists—those whom Pope Saint Pius X called “enemies of the church” in “Pascendi Dominici Gregis - On the Doctrine of the Modernists.”
“Consider the language with which the Council framed its verdict against target=city bombing:”
Consider the language Pius X used to describe such people in Pascendi Dominici Gregis:
“2. That We should act without delay in this matter is made imperative especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary man.”
“this most Holy Synod makes its own the condemnations of total war”
There’s a problem with your argument. What is “total war?” Is it the bombing of a single city, or the laying waste of an entire country? Admiral Nimitz wanted to blockade the Japanese archipelago and starve every inhabitant. Would that have been “total war?”
The bombings of H and N were intended to shorten the war and save lives, and that’s just what they did. How can a measure that is more parsimonious of life than the alternatives be truthfully described as “total war?”
It cannot, and your argument fails on those grounds alone.
“already pronounced by recent popes”
They are indicted by their own words: “recent popes.” That is an admission that popes prior to those “recent popes” pronounced no such thing.
“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”
That is so clearly a slap in America’s face that it could have been issued by the Supreme Soviet. I assert that it is not a legitimate teaching of the Magisterium, but a misuse of the Church’s teaching authority by theological leftists for the purpose of advantaging the Soviet Union in Cold War I.
“1. Cf. John XXIII…2. Cf. Pius XII”
I anticipate that history will seat those two in the pantheon of the infamous.
“This is solemn”
What is the significance of that? Any lying scoundrel can be solemn.
“…and on the same footing as the declaration in the very same conciliar document which stated…abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.”
Woah, Nelly. A person would need a jet pack to take a leap of that magnitude. The fact that a document is right about one thing hardly shows that its every assertion is equally right.
“Moreover, these two judgments are based on the same moral reasoning, namely, that the deliberate destruction of innocent human life is the crime of murder, and cannot be justified by any calculus of utility or benefit, however pressing.”
The Holy Scriptures I quoted in my last note, and which YOU HAVE SEEN FIT TO IGNORE, indicate that this moral reasoning is faulty—according to God’s Word, at least.
“…that those who pressed for the strongest condemnation of target=city bombing were the conservatives/traditionalists, e.g. Cardinal Ottaviani.”
Not surprising, when one considers the times. They foresaw the use of nukes by evil empires.
“At the same time, those of a more liberal frame of mind, e.g. John Courtney Murray, were arguing for a policy of nuclear deterrence and even for the moral possibility of limited nuclear war. He was joined by the still more elastic “situational ethics” people who denied in principle the existence of “intrinsically evil” acts.”
Of course. All leftism, including theological leftism, is of and from Satan. It is only to be expected that they would want no interference with the use of nukes for evil.
“What these people have in common: they admit the existence of exceptionless norms.”
The Bible shows that the destruction of cities is *not* one of those exceptionless norms. Which, I think, is why you choose to ignore the scriptures I quoted in my last post. To confront them is to admit that your position is incorrect.
“If I understand you correctly -— and please correct me if I’m wrong -— you have difficulties with this teaching.”
No, I think that “this teaching” was introduced and advanced by malicious forces, and is contrary to authentic Catholic teachings.
“rather than to announce that I take umbrage at papal and conciliar teachings.”
I didn’t say that I take umbrage at papal and conciliar teachings. I took umbrage at *your* argument that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “intrinsically depraved.”
Unfortunately, a great deal of error introduced in the last hundred and fifty years or so is now accepted as authentic, even by those of good faith. These errors must be identified and ripped out, root and branch.
You say: “We Catholics are at liberty to question or even reject things that are not inerrant or infallible, especially where they contradict all that has gone before.”
Show me the contradiction here. Show me where some Pope or Council, some Father or Doctor of the Church, or even some pre- (how far back do you want to take it? pre-1914? pre-1870? pre-1532?) textbook on Moral Theology or Natural Law, has taught that one may kill innocent persons, in a deliberate or objectively indiscriminate fashion, if one has a good reason.
Show me one of the above, who would define murder in a way that excludes these constitutive elements found in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1917) (Link):
“The direct killing of an innocent person is, of course, to be reckoned among the most grievous of sins. It is said to happen directly when the death of the person is viewed either as an end attractive in itself, or at any rate is chosen as a means to an end.”
You say: ”I am not making a case that all acts of VatII are null. I do assert, along with many others, that abuses were perpetrated by theological leftists [Modernists]…”
This is certainly misdirection. Those of a Modernist tendency deny objectively gravely morally offensive character of such acts as sodomy, contraception, and the killing of an innocent person or whatever age or stage; whereas those of traditional and orthodox convictions --- I mentioned some of them in my last post---- oppose such acts which, if done in a deliberate and knowing manner, are mortal sins.
Your quote from Pascendi Dominici Gregis seems also an instance of misdirection. In the passage you cited, Pius X speaks of “enemies of the Church” who “degrade [the Sacred Redeemer] to the condition of a simple and ordinary man.” This has nothing to do with a great and doctrinally sound Cardinal like Ottaviani, for instance, the bane of Modernists, and the defender of the constant prohibition against murder, traditionally defined.
You say: “Admiral Nimitz wanted to blockade the Japanese archipelago and starve every inhabitant. Would that have been “total war?”
Yes.
You say: ”The bombings of H and N were intended to shorten the war and save lives, and that’s just what they did.”
If you had argued, instead, that the deaths at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, etc. were eithr entirely inadvertent or were collateral and proportionate, we’d have some semblance of a Catholic argument to work out. But if you try to justify the choice of using a method of indiscriminate killing as a means to an end e.g. ending the war, you have gone into Situation Ethics and Consequentialism and thus quite beyond the bounds of Catholic discourse.
You say: “recent popes.” That is an admission that popes prior to those “recent popes” pronounced no such thing.”
This does not follow. It is not such an admission. This is eisegesis, reading your own meaning into a text in a rather obvious way; second, the Fathers could have found previous authority going all the way back, if you please, to Genesis.
You say: ”This [declaration] is a misuse of the Church’s teaching authority by theological leftists for the purpose of advantaging the Soviet Union in Cold War I.”
This is not just slightly inaccurate, but the polar opposite of the truth. The teaching that the use of force in war must be discriminate goes back, in a formal sense, to ius in bello via Aquinas and Augustine; mind you, the prohibition of the “shedding of innocent blood” goes ALL the way back to the Author who prohibited such acts some 15 or 18 times explicitly in the Old Testament alone.
And you think this is the work of a pro-Soviet cabal? Is your "other" screen name Dr. E… ? Please.
This is unsupportable in the light of the actual controversies in the period before, during, and after, the Council debate, in which it was the orthodox and traditionalists (e.g. Ottaviani) who held the line on the objective judgments about killing the innocent, as a means or as an end. It was men of a more Modernist and even Americanist tendency (e.g. John Courtney Murray) who were a good deal more elastic about it.
Your citation of the total slaughter found in, for instance, the Book of Judges, does not prove your point that targeting noncombatants is just. If one could prove such a point in this manner, it would prove a great deal too much, since in the OT one can find many morally objectionable acts by men who are elsewhere called “just” men or driven by “the spirit of the Lord” such as Abraham offering his two virgin daughters to the rapists in Sodom (“and you can do what you like with them”); the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter in accordance with a vow to God; the dashing of Babylon's babies against the rocks; the authorization of soldiers’ sexual abuse of captured women; and Lord knows, many other depraved acts both in wartime and in other circumstances.
A preference for one's personal interpretation of Scripture, and an open antagonism toward Popes, Councils, Doctors of the Church, and Natural Law, is, of course, a expected staple of the FReepin’ Squeekin’ Religious ControversiesTM so typical of this forum; but I would have expected otherwise from a Catholic.