Print Issue: November 21, 2002

U.S. Bishops: 'Difficult To Justify The Resort To War Against Iraq'

BY GRETCHEN KEISER

Staff Writer

WASHINGTON, D.C.--U.S. bishops in mid-November continued to articulate Catholic just war principles as a moral plumb line against which to measure the fluid and potentially hair-trigger dynamic between Iraq and the U.S. government.

"Based on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature," said a statement approved 228-14 with three abstentions by the body of bishops Nov. 13.

The bishops said in Catholic teaching "just cause" for war is limited to cases in which an aggressor has inflicted damage that is "lasting, grave and certain" on another nation.

The concept of a preemptive strike against Iraq does not appear to meet these criteria but rather would expand the definition beyond its traditional limits.

"We are deeply concerned about recent proposals to expand dramatically traditional limits on just cause to include preventive uses of military force to overthrow threatening regimes or to deal with weapons of mass destruction," the bishops said.

Acknowledging that the situation is fluid and unpredictable, they welcomed U.S. efforts to achieve the recent unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to meet its obligations following the Gulf War to disarm the country of all nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the missiles to launch these weapons.

"We have no illusions about the behavior or intentions of the Iraqi government," the statement said. "The Iraqi leadership must cease its internal repression, end its threats to its neighbors, stop any support for terrorism, abandon its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, and destroy all such existing weapons."

Despite the destructive power of modern weapons-nuclear and biological and chemical-the just war principles still apply, Archbishop John F. Donoghue said, and he believes they have to be clearly raised regarding a preemptive U.S. strike against Iraq.

"The principles have held up. There are a lot of people who don't want to see those principles enunciated any longer" because of the fear of nuclear war, he said. "I disagree with that. We are going to be killing people left and right, innocent people, because we are afraid of nuclear war."

The bishops' statement said, "In assessing whether 'collateral damage' is proportionate, the lives of Iraqi men, women and children should be valued as we would the lives of members of our own family and citizens of our own country."