No Longer Impossible: The Nonviolence of Gandhi and Jesus by André TrocméJesus Christ, Gandhi and George Bush by Stephen Hand
War is not the Answer by Thomas Cahill, Sojourners
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Iraq Crisis by Al Staggs
Radical Love by Dennis Apel
Leo Tolstoy: To Fight Against War
At the Root of All War is Fear... by Thomas Merton
Daniel Berrigan on the Old Just War Criteria
3 comments:
David,
As an officer in the military and a Catholic, what is your personal assessment of Daniel Berrigan's view that the just war tradition is irrelevant? (Or, rather, that "there is no just war, the gospel is always relevant")? -- Is Ghandian nonviolent protest and pacifism the only legitimate answer in light of the gospel? What do you think of the just war tradition today?
I believe and support the teachings of the Magisterium supported by Sacred Scripture, the CCC, and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. On this topic, I have found Chapter 11 (The Promotion of Peace) of the Compendium to be extremely helpful and edifying.
Relevant to this discussion is the thought of our current Holy Father as recorded in his first encyclical letter DEUS CARITAS EST (paragraph 28).
"The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics... Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God (cf. Mt 22:21), in other words, the distinction between Church and State, or, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, the autonomy of the temporal sphere.[19]
...The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State... A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church."
Thanks!
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