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.
Okay, I’ve been thinking about this, and I just don’t see any way around your habitual failure to address the arguments I actually make.
Instead of addressing what I actually propose, you make a practice of misconstruing my arguments, then “rebutting” your own creations, and, importantly, of assuming that which must be demonstrated.
I don’t know if you are doing this inadvertently or intentionally, and in the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter.
For instance, you asserted that I do not share the belief that “an evil thing (e.g. the slaying of an innocent person) must not be willed or chosen, neither as an end in itself nor as a means to an end...”
What is actually happening there is not that I do not share that belief, but rather that you are unwilling to consider that this principle simply may not apply here. And no matter how many times I say that, your reply is inevitably some variant of “you are advocating the killing of the innocent.” That sort of discussion is as futile as it is useless. It avoids the difficult moral questions by reducing the complexity of human existence to a black and white cartoon caricature.
You try to invalidate Holy Scripture by denigrating it as only my “private interpretation of the Old Testament.” Your reference to the obedience of the Jews to God’s commands as “depraved acts” is simply beyond the pale of reason.
On the basis of nothing whatsoever you conscript “Augustine and Aquinas...the very basic teachings of Natural Law and the Right to Life as the foundation of International Law...” as supporters of your position WRT nuclear weapons.
You misrepresent an assertion that Catholic teachings on acts permissible in *war* were different in the past, as one that “one may kill innocent persons, in a deliberate or objectively indiscriminate fashion, if one has a good reason.”
There, you not only misrepresent my argument, but (a) *assume* again that the concept of “innocent persons” is applicable here, and do so without making the slightest attempt to support your assumption; and (b) *assume* that the decisions that led to H and N were “deliberate or objectively indiscriminate.”
In saying “Show me one of the above, who would define murder in a way that excludes these constitutive elements found in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1917),” you are either accusing me of defining murder in such a way, or *assuming* that the deaths at H and N were “murder.”
If you are accusing me of defining murder in such a way, you are putting words in my mouth. If you are *assuming* murder, I’m throwing a flag on the play. You must first demonstrate that those deaths were murder before you can use that assertion to bludgeon people about the head and shoulders.
In response to my mention of the well-known abuses perpetrated by theological leftists during or around the time of VatII, you say, “This is certainly misdirection. Those of a Modernist tendency deny objectively gravely morally offensive character…”
Modernists and modernism cannot be circumscribed and limited in such a way. Satan is both more intelligent and more subtle than we, and the attacks of modernists on the Church are a veritable kaleidoscope of gambits, strategies, sophistry, and deceit. In short, you have no grounds whatsoever for dismissing so cavalierly a reference to the wisdom of the Saint. You do not offer an argument, but attempt to dismiss an argument without considering it on its merits.
“and the defender of the constant prohibition against murder, traditionally defined.”
Once again, you imply that my position is in conflict with the prohibition against murder, while ignoring the fact that one is allowed to kill the enemy during a just war, and that incidental civilian casualties inflicted in that activity are not—I say again, not—murder. You simply *assume,* again and again, that the entire question is simply the deliberate and indiscriminate killing of innocent people, without ever examining the key subtleties that separate the soldier and the surgeon from the criminal, or acts committed in wartime from those committed in peacetime.
You contradict the most obvious observations, as when I noted that citing “recent popes” is an admission that there is a difference between those “recent popes” and earlier popes. If that were not so, there would be no need for the word, “recent.”
Nonetheless, you insist that “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.”
It is the meaning of the text that is obvious, and when you deny it you might as well be insisting that the sky is red.
You go on to equate the murder of Abel by Cain with every act of military resistance to evil throughout the existence of humanity. I’m sure that every soldier that fought for this country would be grateful for your explanation.
I can’t continue with this exercise in futility. When you ignorantly mock a mention of the well-known and thoroughly documented activities of the enemy and the Enemy during Cold War I, you make it abundantly clear that there is simply no point in attempting to discuss or debate these matters with you.
At such time as you decide to refrain from the offenses against reason that I described above, that might be different.