Letter to the Editor from Peachtree City

Published: November 23, 2006

To the Editor:

In the most detailed contemporary presentation of Catholic teaching on war and peace, “The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” cites the authoritative teaching of the church condemning warfare in unequivocal terms:

War is a “scourge” and is never an appropriate way to resolve problems that arise between nations, “it has never been and it will never be,” because it creates new and still more complicated conflicts. When it erupts, war becomes an “unnecessary massacre,” an “adventure without return” that compromises humanity’s present and threatens its future. “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war.” The damage caused by an armed conflict is not only material but also moral. In the end, war is “the failure of all true humanism,” “it is always a defeat for humanity”: “never again some peoples against others, never again! ... no more war, no more war!” (par. 497)

Before the outbreak of the Iraq conflict in 2003, the American Catholic bishops joined their voice to that of the Holy Father in warning of the dire consequences likely to follow from preemptive war. Our own Archbishop Wilton Gregory, then president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, expressed the “serious ethical questions and concerns” of our church leaders. “With the Holy See and many religious leaders throughout the world, we believe that resort to war would not meet the strict conditions in Catholic teaching for the use of military force,” wrote then-Bishop Gregory, who cautioned that “we must value the lives and livelihood of Iraqi civilians as we would the lives and livelihood of our own families and our own citizens” and warned that “(a)n already long-suffering Iraqi population could face terrible new burdens, and a region already full of conflict and refugees could see more conflict and many more refugees” (“Statement on Iraq,” USCCB, 2/26/03).

Sadly, however, more than six out of 10 American Catholics supported military intervention in Iraq (“Different Faiths, Different Messages,” Pew Research, 3/19/03), and many Catholics who are otherwise faithfully observant of church teachings allowed themselves to become cheerleaders for a war which has now taken the lives of nearly 3,000 American soldiers and thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians (“Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq,” Lancet, 10/21/06).

In the wake of the 2006 mid-term elections, our bishops have again reminded us of the “moral urgency” of ending the violence in Iraq. At the USCCB meeting in Baltimore this month, the current USCCB president, Bishop William Skylstad, called on Americans to move “beyond the divisive rhetoric of the recent campaign and the shrill and shallow debate that distorts reality and reduces the options to ‘cut and run’ versus ‘stay the course’” in that troubled nation. Heeding the bishops’ call, we should all pray that our leaders will have to the grace to join in “open and courageous dialogue to examine where things stand in pursuing justice and peace in Iraq, assess what is achievable there, and evaluate the moral and human consequences of alternative courses of action.” As the bishops emphasize, our “prayers and solidarity” should include not only our own soldiers and their loved ones, but also “the Iraqi people, who have suffered so greatly under a brutal dictator and now face continuing violence, instability and deprivation” (“Call for Dialogue and Action on Responsible Transition in Iraq,” USCCB, 11/13/06).

Ron Chandonia, Peachtree City