Whether it is always sinful to wage war? (Aquinas on Just War)

I will get it to you if you are interested.

I'm interested. Wish I could go to that lecture.

A Bump for get'em any way ya can and let God sort it out HIS way!

BTTT

Interesting article. Raises many questions:

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged.

This is an important doctrine that has been ignored— again. Why are we so afraid to declare war in a Constitutional manner? Not declaring war has a deleterious effect on every side: logistics, combat and general morale. Let’s declare war against (Islamic) terrorists and get on with it. I don’t care what the UN or some other third-world dictator says.

Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault.

Here we are finally able to align with the proper course. We have been unjustly attacked and have every right, as a nation, to declare war against these cowards. Let’s declare war!

Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil.

Here we get into those despicable gray areas. The advancement of evil is apparent, but is our own “goodness” so apparent? We are afraid to even call evil by its name. We seem almost preoccupied by revenge rather than the advancement of peace.

Or is it just that we spread the false peace that Jesus warned against? Is our freedom given for licentiousness—sexual immorality, theft, idolatry, lying and murder? An America unrestrained by Christian morality is the greatest danger the world has ever known. Imagine Nero with nukes . . .

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

This is an important doctrine that has been ignored— again. Why are we so afraid to declare war in a Constitutional manner? Not declaring war has a deleterious effect on every side: logistics, combat and general morale. Let’s declare war against (Islamic) terrorists and get on with it. I don’t care what the UN or some other third-world dictator says.

I agree that we should declare war, if nothing else on Osama and his merry men. I would go for the Taliban too, since in all reality we are fighting a war with them. Might as well be official about it. I think this element of the Just war theory is met anyway, Bush clearly has Congress’s approval. There is no Christian requirement that a democratically elected Congress declare the war, it is still being waged by the proper government. We just should dot our Is and cross our Ts.

Here we get into those despicable gray areas. The advancement of evil is apparent, but is our own “goodness” so apparent? We are afraid to even call evil by its name. We seem almost preoccupied by revenge rather than the advancement of peace.

Very true for some. With occasional exceptions, I do think that the government is going about this fairly well. They are putting effort into forming a better government, feeding the people (which I admit is the right thing to do even though I detested it at first), and targeting the leadership that is most responsible for that evil. There will be gray areas, black ops and all that.

One big just war question remains for me, and that is the prospect for victory. My big beef with Clinton’s follies was that the things he did in response to terrorism had no, absolutely no, chance of winning the fight. They only prolonged it and increased suffering.

We don’t know what all Bush & Co. have planned for down the road, but we need to do more then we see coming now. We need to take down the roots of terrorism and recognize that we have many perpetual enemies in some parts of the world. Calling people who do nothing to help us allies won’t get us anywhere. Appeasing one group of terrorists to aid our fight against another group won’t help either. We seem to be operating about 20 years behind the times. Once the terrorist groups had all of their cells in one country, and you could kill them by concentrating your efforts on that one country. Today you can’t do that, these terrorists intermingle. Dismantle the groups in Afghanistan and their refugees just turn up in another country and start using the established terrorist apparatus there. We need to take a global view of this thing, and remove it globally, rather then locally.

An America unrestrained by Christian morality is the greatest danger the world has ever known. Imagine Nero with nukes . . .

Yes. Islam can’t beat us. Communism can’t. Secular humanism can.

Dominus Vobiscum

patent +AMDG

Bookmarked. That's a long one. Anything in there about civil war?

Not much, it is a bit of a different subject and IMHO depends a great deal on whether you are a monarchist or democrat. The article does contain this up front:

However, a people in revolution, in the rare instance of an effort to re-establish civil government which has practically vanished from the community except in name, or to vitalize constitutional rights reserved specifically or residuarily to the people, is conceded to be in like juridical case with a State, as far as protecting its fundamental rights by force of arms. Grote insisted that war was a more or less continuous condition of conflict between those contending by force; and so indeed it is; but even Grote, when seeking to determine the grounds of right and wrong in such a condition, necessarily moved the question back to the right to acts of force in either contending party, and so justified the more accepted juridical definition of a contest at arms between contending states. The judicial condition of the contending parties to the war is spoken of as a state of belligerency, while the term war more properly applies to the series of hostile acts of force exercised in the contention. To present here the position of Catholic philosophy in this regard, it will be convenient to discuss in sequence:

Dominus Vobiscum

patent +AMDG

Ayn Rand agrees with St. Thomas:

Defense of Liberty: Just Intervention

I wouldn't be surprised. I came to St. Thomas via Aristotle and Rand. Obviously I don't agree with her atheism.

Slightly off topic but have you read the section wherein he pits Lewis (Abolition of Man) against Aquinas in Peter Kreeft's "Lewis for the Third Millenium"?

Nope. Sounds like a good one that I'll have to check out.

Speaking of Kreeft, have you read Ecumenical Jihad? I wonder if he's changed any of his opinions with regard to finding common ground with Islam.

Check that. I have the book on my bookshelf. I'll have to give that one a read!

Without war Islam would've conquered the world hundreds of years ago. I wonder if Aquinas would've said this was God's will?

BTTT

Would have said what was God's will? Fighting the spread of Islam?

No, allowing Islam to crush all other religions and subjugate humanity.

Definitely not.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was mumbling something about Aquinas and Just War to my Sunday School students the other day, but really did not know what I was talking about. Now I will understand what I am talking about, but they won't! Well, we'll just have to work on that.

Kreeft's sympathies bother lots of folks.

I guess I consider Mohammed as simply one of the most successful heretics the world has ever seen.

That said, I see very little difference between the militance, materialism and rationality of Islam and that of various Protestant sects or Catholic heretics at different times in history. Given the "brother against brother" nature of their bloody conflicts using religion to premise and cloak their purely political purpose, I find theirs almost worst, actually.

All heresies sort of die on the vine eventually (even if the universal errors on which they're based recur in various forms). If Islam's proven the more enduring, powerful and compelling, I think it's because (1) it was the greater heresy and (2) those with an eye to capitalizing on the Use of religion these days seek as a rule to render an impotent pansy social worker the Christian soldier as they "organize" the ignorant or misguided into the militance necessary to lever the balance of power and the forming of coalitions in reaction.

I've got a book on my desk called "Reading the Muslim Mind" by Hassan Hathout. Granted, he's older, wiser and gentle but obviously bright and I can't believe for a moment that his presentation of Islam as practiced by faithful Muslims is so off the mark.

Found interesting the other night some snippet of a PBS show detailing the rise of the "Islamic Jihadist Front" (or whatever) in Egypt.

Same M.O. as always for any "Front" (for communist repression and terror) ... violence, terror, assassination and -- the dead giveway -- a wealthy son of the wealthy whose consciousness had been "raised" into radicalism to serve as leader, spokesman and enjoy certain privileges re: freedom of movement and from prosecution in the EU.

I just can't equate faithful Muslims with so-called "radical" Islam anymore than I equate Judaism with Israel or Catholicism with liberation theology.