that's not the position my Priest took at Mass yesterday. He stated that the attck on the WTC and Pentagon were acts of pure evil and that we are obligated to fight. He said that we were already at war and that this war was just and necessary!
The least reliable people (I'm truly sorry to say) to consult concerning the teaching anfd the position of the Roman Catholic Church are a bunch of American Nuns. Unless they were in full habit, including veil and whipple, I don't care what they had to say.
I witnessed the 1993 bombing. My wife and my two brothers witnessed this attack. My son survived ground zero. My son and I were back at the scene the next day, in the pit, digging with our hands. We went with my wife's blessing even though surrounding buildings were still considered too shaky to stand. The number of Irish, Italian and Puerto Rican in the NYFD and NYPD make up the overwhelming percentages of these services. They made up the bulk of the over 300 dead from these services. When we were working in the wreckage the majority of the VOLUNTEERS with us were from the construction trades. Most of these are also Catholic. My parish lost six members. Italian Catholics were the most represented ethnic group in service in WW2.
Catholic Americans have always and will always hold up our end and more in whatever our country asks of us. To go out of your way to focus on the forgiving words of a nun and a few un-named others betrays your own prejudice. A prejudice based on religion....sound familiar?
Anger is a desire for revenge. "To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit," but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution "to correct vices and maintain justice." [St. Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II q158, a1 ad3]
The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war. However, "as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed." [Cf. Vatican II, Guadium et spes 79, 4]
Especially since we have been in a religious war for the past twenty years. For many baby boomers the Church has become irrelevant anyway.
BUMP