Thought for the Week

Sunday 11 November 2007 – Remembrance Sunday

Readings: Job 19, 23 – 27a

Psalm 17, 1 - 9

2 Thessalonians 2, 1 – 5 & 13 - end

Luke 20, 27 – 38

A truck driver pulls up at the greasy spoon café, and orders double egg and chips, with a round of bread and butter, and a big mug of tea. He settles down to read the Sun newspaper in a corner. No sooner is his food delivered, than in walk four Motorcyclists.

“Hello grandpop!” And they all crowd round his table.

One of them eats his bread and butter, and another snatches the mug of tea, and drains it. Two of them take an egg each, and they all polish off his chips. He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t react at all. He just pays his bill, and leaves quietly.

“Wassamatta with him, then,” says one of the bikers to the bloke behind the counter, “Chicken is he?” “Dunno,” says the proprietor, “he doesn’t come in very often. He’s not a very good driver, though.” “Oh isn’t he?” “No. He’s just backed his lorry over four motorbikes.”

Satisfying little story isn’t it? Yet, Jesus in the Gospels, and the Church ever since, have always told us to turn the other cheek, to forgive our enemies, and to love them and do good to them, no matter what they do to us.

Does that mean that Christians should never take up arms? Well, some would say, yes, that is exactly what Jesus meant. Christian Pacifists are just as much part of the Church as we are, and their moral point of view is valid. Even if we may not share it, we should always listen to what they have to say. Sadly, they often do not regard the rest of the Church, that is us, as Christian.

However, the Pacifist point of view is not the only Christian standpoint, nor is it the majority view. Most of the rest of us subscribe to Just War Theology. The roots of Just War go right back into history. As early as writing began we find terrible curses reserved for those who fight wars unjustly, for example by poisoning wells. For Christians, we owe our concept of Just War to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. In 1369, Pope Urban V gave Aquinas’s remains to the Dominicans of Toulouse, and he lies here still in the Chapelle des Jacobins. He was probably the greatest theologian the Roman Catholic Church has ever produced. He began writing his great work “Summa Theologica” in 1265, but died in 1274, before it was finished. Nevertheless, most Roman Catholic theology has been based on it ever since.

In Summa Theologica he developed the concept of Double Effect. Every action has both good and bad consequences. Aquinas says we may do good acts, even though we know that they have bad side effects under certain circumstances:

1. We must intend to do the good, not the bad.
2. We must not use the bad effects to achieve the good.
3. The good effects must outweigh the bad.
4. We must keep a sense of proportion.

Here is an illustration of each of these four. Suppose you go to the dentist with toothache.

1. The dentist must try to treat you to relieve your pain.
2. You may not pull out a gun, and say, “Cure me, or I shoot you”.
3. He may stick a probe in your gum, and say tell me when it hurts, because the good of a sure diagnosis outweighs the bad of the prick from the probe.
4. He may not cut off your head to take away the pain – even though it would work, that would be disproportionate.

For the pacifist, the flaw in double effect is that they believe that the good never outweighs any deliberate bad. For them, you should never choose to do anything with bad consequences, however good other consequences may be. The problem for the rest of us arises in judging; judging the good effects against the bad, and judging what is proportional.

In Just War Theology, these principals are applied in an attempt to reduce the horror and pointlessness of war, because we believe that God is love, and even in war, the overriding principle of loving your neighbour still applies. First the Just War theologian would say that the war must have a Just Cause, second that it must be started in a Just Way, and third that it must be fought in a Just Manner.

The four generally accepted Just Causes of war are:

1. Self defence (i.e. repelling an invasion or attack)
2. To regain land and/or people taken by force
3. To defend an ally (against invasion or attack)
4. To help an ally regain land and/or people taken by force

There is a fifth, but it has never gained universal acceptance:

5. To defend a people against their own totally unacceptable form of

government.

Both the World Wars, I and II relied on 3, defending an ally. The Falklands conflict relied on 2, re-taking land and people taken by force by the Argentineans. It was initially claimed that the Iraq conflict relied on 1, self defence, but now that it has become known and generally accepted that the intelligence material about weapons of Mass Destruction was modified by the politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, the Just Cause of the Iraq conflict has somehow become 5, regime change, to use the modern term.

To start a war in a just way, first it must be winnable. There is no point in starting a war that you know you are going to lose. Great human suffering will be caused for no good end. You must have at least a reasonable chance of winning.

Second, all other possibilities must have been exhausted. In the case of the Iraq Conflict, the French and Russians refused to allow the United Nations to take steps short of war, and they therefore bear a major part of the blame for its starting.

Third, it must be declared. Many of us will have heard a recording, and perhaps some the actual broadcast, when Neville Chamberlain said,

“No such re-assurance has been received, and I therefore have to tell you that a state of war exists between our two countries.”

In fact, war in modern times is not usually declared by sovereign states, but by a resolution of the United Nations, urging a nation or coalition to take all possible steps to …. Because no such resolution was forthcoming for either the Falklands or Iraq, they are technically not wars but armed conflicts.

To wage a war justly, two principles apply, discrimination and proportionality.

Proportionality means that you cannot take military measures that are way beyond what is reasonable to achieve the object, though you still have to prosecute the war as vigorously as you can to bring it to a swift end.

Discrimination means:

• War must only be waged against legitimate military targets.
• Deliberate harm to civilians, the wounded and prisoners is not allowed.
• The war must be finished as soon as possible
• Casualties and damage must be kept to a minimum

Sadly, civilian casualties are virtually unavoidable. But strict Just War Theology says that deliberately targeting civilians to achieve Victory is wrong.

Your Chaplain owes his very existence to the Atomic Bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His father was a young cavalry officer fighting in Burma, and without the early end to the War, it is most unlikely that he would have survived to father Father Charles. The best allied estimates are that it would have cost nine million allied lives to take mainland Japan, based on our experiences in the battles of Midway and Iwo Jima. To that could probably be added three times as many Japanese lives. The two bombs took Japan out of the war. They cost some three hundred thousand lives, but spared perhaps thirty-six million people, and untold damage to Japan. Clearly this is proportionate, but it goes right against the principle that says the good must not be achieved by the use of the bad.

It is a long time since British forces were fighting an unpopular war, to which a considerable section of the population was opposed. The last one like that was probably the Boer war, some hundred and twenty years ago.

Discrimination also means that the civilian population in an occupied land must be looked after properly. The murderous, and entirely foreseeable, shambles into which Iraq has now descended is a dreadful indictment of the governments of the USA and of Britain. The machinery of the Ba’athist dictatorship has been quickly and successfully dismantled, but nothing effective has been put in its place, and anarchy and rule by terrorists, robbers, murderers and thieves has resulted. This is an absolute disgrace, and the whole of civilised society should be appalled and ashamed that such a thing can be allowed to happen today.

On the other hand, we can be justifiably proud of the men and women who have gone to serve our government, and thus to serve us, in this difficult and thankless war. They have fought desperately hard in the heat. They know that a sizable proportion of our people do not agree with what they are about. They are starved of resources; there are far fewer troops in Iraq than we need to maintain security to allow the infrastructure to be re-built, and during the early part of the conflict British soldiers were short of basic equipment like boots, body armour and even water and rations. They strive to follow the just war principles. They risk their lives to limit civilian casualties, even though many of those “civilians” have taken up arms against them. They are fighting a terrorist enemy with no such scruples, who will happily site an anti-tank gun in a hospital.

Jesus says “Greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friend.” That is exactly what these young people are doing. The Iraq conflict, in its cause, its starting and its conduct may fall short of the demands of Just War Theology, but the heroism and selflessness of our people serving there is a reminder that there is no place on earth, no human situation, where the love of God is not present. May God preserve you and all for whom you pray from the violence of the enemy, and may you know his love in every part of your life. Amen.

Fr. Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude

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