Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.catholicpeacefellowship.org/nextpage.asp?m=1000 Expect Pontiff to take strong position against war: Scholars examine thought of Pope Benedict to determine his views on conflict and peace by William Bole June 12, 2005, Our Sunday Visitor Is Pope Benedict XVI the "new peace pope," an answer to the prayers of those who queston the morality of modern warfare? Some Catholics who style themselves as orthodox in their theology and unwarlike in their geopolitics think so. "It's undeniable. He wants this to be a mark of his papacy," said Michael Baxter, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and national secretary of the Catholic Peace Fellowship. "More personally, he has seen the ravages of war up close and is rightly wary of the big talk you hear from heads of state when they seek to justify wars and invasions," said Baxter, alluding to Pope Benedict's decision in 1945 to desert the German army. The Peace Fellowship's coordinator, Michael Griffin, has written an analysis titled "Benedict XVI: A New Peace Pope," published by the online Catholic magazine Godspy. The "old" peace pope would be Pope Benedict XV, who famously cried out durng World War I, "War, never again!" Pope John Paul II often repeated those words, and now his successor has taken the name of the pontiff who conceived that cry. As a Vatican cardinal, Pope Benedict spoke out against America's invasion of Iraq and the concept of "preventative war." He has also questioned whether any war can be morally justified in an age of massively destructive weapons. Pronouncements like these can be a boon to an organization like the Catholic Peace Fellowship, which encourages conscientious objection to war. But other observers are quick to point out that Pope Benedict's approach to war and peace is simply in step with that of his recent predecessors, especially Pope John Paul. That is enough to please some Catholics, and worry others. Vatican Thinking Among those who would like to see the Holy See re-examine its approach to international relations is George Weigel, a Pope John Paul II biographer and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. In an interview with OSV, Weigel refrained from directly criticizing Pope Benedict's past statements, including a comment he made two years ago to the Rome-based news service Zenit - "Today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a "just war." Asked about that and other Pope Benedict remarks, Weigel said, "All of this falls under the rubric of things that need rethinking by the Holy See." The first line of Weigel's attack is the Vatican's regular support for peacemaking initiatives of the United Nations, which he described as a "thoroughly corrupt institution." Weigel also took aim at what he called the Holy See's "functional pacifism." This is "not a pacifism of principle, but a default position" in which Church authorities in Rome oppose practically all wars, he said. Clearly, the Holy See has been impressed by displays of nonviolent resistance to social evil, especially the largely peaceful toppling of communism in Eastern Europe. But Weigel questioned if this huge event - the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - is "universalizable" in conflicts throughout the world. "I think they [Church authorities] are over-learning the lesson of 1989. It's not at all clear to me that you can apply that lesson to the Taliban," he said, referring to the Islamic extremist regime that formerly controlled Afghanistan. Weigel doubts that nonviolent resistance could have dissuaded the Taliban from giving safe haven to Osama bin Laden. In fact, the Holy See was widely viewed as sanctioning the United States' invasion of Afghanistan in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But a year later, Church authorities spoke out against war in Iraq, partly because of the unilateral thrust of that U.S. invasion. At the time, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, said: "It should never be the responsibility of just one nation to make decisions for the world." Grounds for war Branding the Vatican as "functionally pacifist" is a stretch, said Baxter, citing Rome's acceptance of the military campaign in Afghanistan. "I think there were clear just-war grounds for making the distinction" between what was perceived as a defensive war against terrorist operations in Afghanistan and "preventive war" against Iraq, he said. Baxter himself would be hard put to favor the flexing of any military muscle. He and Weigel, who cheered on the invasion of Iraq, would represent two poles of American Catholic thought on war and peace. Others who view themselves as closer to the Church's mainstream on peace matters would be delighted to see Pope Benedict follow the course set by Pope John Paul and his advisers, including then-Cardinal Ratzinger. "Given the direction of [Church] statements on war and peace over the past half century, it would be surprising if Pope Benedict were not a peace pope," said Gerard Powers, a former adviser on international affairs to the U.S. bishops who now directs policy studies for the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. "He can be expected to continue to insist that we must find peaceful alternatives to war," while recognizing that a limited use of deadly force may be morally justified under strictly defined circumstances, Powers said. For his part, Baxter expects Pope Benedict to be more explicit on these questions than was Pope John Paul, whose critiques of war often sounded more poetic than systematic. Pope Benedict's well-known penchant for theological precision "will translate into a more clearly critical perspective on the waging of modern warfare," Baxter predicted. "He's got a theologian's mind, a scholar's ability to make important distincitions and the clarity to make a point stick." _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in the US Copyright Law.
