It's very disappointing for a catholic like myself to see two presidential candidates being catholic and understanding nothing about the catholic view about wars. The Catholic Church has a long, millenar tradition of explaining when a war is legitimate (jus ad bellum), and how it must be conducted to remain legitimate (jus in bellum). This whole tradition goes at least to the times of the great theologian, St. Augustine. Later, St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus (angelical doctor - the angels are the only creatures who really possesses objective knowledge, that's why it's such a great reverence to call him Angelicus), upheld the same doctrine of the Just War.
If anybody still had any doubt about the catholic view, this doubt should have ceased. The Cathecism of the Catholic Church is inequivocal. In the number 2,309, the Cathecism, which represents the official doctrine of the Holy Church, puts 4 conditions that must be simultaneously fulfilled so a war is legimately engaged:
i) The war must be a defensive war. One doesn't need to be attacked to strike back, but the attack must be imminent and there cannot be a reasonable doubt about it. (Conclusion: there can be no nation-building war, no pre-emptive attacks wars, no regime-change war, no "they might, someday, have a weapon, and, then, they might consider attacking us, when they possibly acquire the means to do it" wars.)
ii) The war must always be the absolute last resort to. One cannot engage in a war if every possible means to secure peace hasn't been tried. (Last night, on Peirce Morgan's show at CNN, Rick Santorum said that US cannot "appease" Iran anymore (anymore?), and that America must attack Iran with Israel.)
iii) The damages inflicted by the war must be, at most, proportional to the damage which would be inflicted (or was inflicted) by the original agressor. So, any war that kills, for example, 100 thousand people in retaliation for the killing of 10 thousand people is illegitimate, according to the Catholic Church.
iv) The war must be winnable. This condition just requires that the war is not eternal, it's not a conquest war. If one cannot specify what would be the conditions once obtained would stop the war, then the war cannot be legitimately engaged.
This is just a few requirements for going into war.`
One can see that the neoconservative foreign policy violates EVERY one of these requirements. Every single one! And "catholics" such as Santorum and Gingrich support this very policy. What is most important is the hypocrisy of Santorum's words in the last debate. He said that his faith was the most important thing to guide his policies, that he cannot distance one thing from the other. How can he say that if he profoundly disbelieve the Catholic Church doctrine? In fact, he lied in one occasion when asked about it, and presented the neoconservative foreign policy as the Just War theory (to portray an anti-Catholic doctrine as Catholic is the very definition of HERESY!)?
Furthermore, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedictus XVI condemned the war in Iraq (http://catholicism.about.com/od/thechurchintheworld/f/popes_on_iraq.htm). I think every catholic should understand that St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, the very Catholic doctrine expressed by the Cathecism, and two popes must understand about catholicism better than the heretic Rick Santorum. As Tom Woods said, the two Popes are probably better moral theologians than the heretic Rick Santorum.
If anybody still had any doubt about the catholic view, this doubt should have ceased. The Cathecism of the Catholic Church is inequivocal. In the number 2,309, the Cathecism, which represents the official doctrine of the Holy Church, puts 4 conditions that must be simultaneously fulfilled so a war is legimately engaged:
i) The war must be a defensive war. One doesn't need to be attacked to strike back, but the attack must be imminent and there cannot be a reasonable doubt about it. (Conclusion: there can be no nation-building war, no pre-emptive attacks wars, no regime-change war, no "they might, someday, have a weapon, and, then, they might consider attacking us, when they possibly acquire the means to do it" wars.)
ii) The war must always be the absolute last resort to. One cannot engage in a war if every possible means to secure peace hasn't been tried. (Last night, on Peirce Morgan's show at CNN, Rick Santorum said that US cannot "appease" Iran anymore (anymore?), and that America must attack Iran with Israel.)
iii) The damages inflicted by the war must be, at most, proportional to the damage which would be inflicted (or was inflicted) by the original agressor. So, any war that kills, for example, 100 thousand people in retaliation for the killing of 10 thousand people is illegitimate, according to the Catholic Church.
iv) The war must be winnable. This condition just requires that the war is not eternal, it's not a conquest war. If one cannot specify what would be the conditions once obtained would stop the war, then the war cannot be legitimately engaged.
This is just a few requirements for going into war.`
One can see that the neoconservative foreign policy violates EVERY one of these requirements. Every single one! And "catholics" such as Santorum and Gingrich support this very policy. What is most important is the hypocrisy of Santorum's words in the last debate. He said that his faith was the most important thing to guide his policies, that he cannot distance one thing from the other. How can he say that if he profoundly disbelieve the Catholic Church doctrine? In fact, he lied in one occasion when asked about it, and presented the neoconservative foreign policy as the Just War theory (to portray an anti-Catholic doctrine as Catholic is the very definition of HERESY!)?
Furthermore, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedictus XVI condemned the war in Iraq (http://catholicism.about.com/od/thechurchintheworld/f/popes_on_iraq.htm). I think every catholic should understand that St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, the very Catholic doctrine expressed by the Cathecism, and two popes must understand about catholicism better than the heretic Rick Santorum. As Tom Woods said, the two Popes are probably better moral theologians than the heretic Rick Santorum.
