Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich delivered an important address in Nagasaki yesterday (Aug. 7) about the church’s teaching on war. Cupich was there to mark the sad anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on that city and on Hiroshima in 1945. Three other U.S. prelates — Washington Cardinal Robert McElroy, Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester and Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne — were on the pilgrimage to the two Japanese cities as well.
War invites us to dehumanize our opponents. “Historians tell us that when President Harry Truman decided the atomic bombs should be used he did not find it a difficult decision,” Cupich said. Indeed, for Truman, he saw his primary obligation as commander-in-chief to be shortening the war and limiting the casualties of American soldiers above all.
The cardinal then turned to a consideration of just war theory. The intentional targeting of civilians must become “unthinkable,” he said. “The just war tradition must be a resource for the moral formation not only of the military but the general population of a nation. Helping people resist ideas of retribution, hatred, ethnocentrism, and nationalism should be a necessary element in any articulation of the just war tradition. For the just war tradition to remain a credible moral approach it must be situated within the broader context of an ethic of solidarity which gives priority to peacebuilding.”
In common usage, people think a war is just if the cause is just, but just war theory has many requirements before it considers a recourse to war as a just decision. And it also has strict requirements about the conduct of war, including the insistence on never targeting civilians. It is not enough that the cause be just. War must be a last resort, and engaged in by competent legal authorities. It must have a reasonable chance of success and be a proportional response to the crime it aims to end. And war must be fought in ways that are just too.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Michael Sean Winters, where this article originally appeared.
