In your timeline and its cited sources on the debate about the American/Israeli war against Iran (“Americans at odds,” May 1 issue of Angelus), Church officials offer generalities about peace and dialogue and assert the “thousand-year tradition” of warfare being moral only “in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.” They make no specific application of the “just war” doctrine’s criteria (CCC 2309) to the governments’ asserted rationale.
Is this ancient doctrine, so conceived, adequate for the nuclear age?
The two allies seek primarily “to eliminate the imminent nuclear threat” of a terrorist regime bent on “death to America” and “death to Israel.” They seek also to stifle its long-range missile capabilities and its proxy terrorism and wars. These goals seem consistent with the Church’s “principle of non-proliferation of nuclear arms” and its absolute “condemnation of terrorism.”
In a Vatican II-era moral theology manual (“The Law of Christ”), Father Bernard Häring said: “Every offensive war in the strict sense of that term must be characterized as unlawful and immoral. However, to anticipate an unjust attack of a hostile power which has been certainly agreed upon, prepared, and organized, is not aggressive war, for the hostile purpose and plan is thwarted by a preventive but clearly defensive act.” Thus, the Church has contemplated the legitimacy of pre-emptive self-defense.
Please tell us: Can nations justly wage a last-practical-resort, preventive-defensive war to deny nuclear arms (for extortion or use) to a 47-year terrorist adversary that has been able to enrich uranium to near weapons-grade levels?
— Steve Serra, Mission Viejo
