As a Roman Catholic I believe the words of the Holy Father must be treated with the utmost respect, particularly when it comes to issues of faith and moral judgment. At the same time, respect for reason is one of the hallmarks of the Catholic tradition, which has never embraced the notion that faith involves the sacrifice of intellect. It must be a special challenge, therefore, when a statement by the Holy Father about the consequences of moral principle appears to fail the test of logical reasoning. According to media reports, when speaking to a gathering of pilgrims in St. Peter's Square Wednesday, the pontiff twice emphasized that "nothing can justify the spilling of innocent blood."
From the viewpoint of Christian faith, we are immediately required to assume some modification of this pronouncement. After all, God loved the world in such a fashion that He gave His only begotten Son for the forgiveness of sins. Christ is the very epitome of innocence, and without the blood of Christ, shed on Calvary, God's plan of salvation would not have been fulfilled. As Christ's blood alone justifies our fallen nature in the eyes of God, so God's will justifies Christ in His decision to accept the shedding of innocent blood (His own) to fulfill His Father's intention.
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Of course, God did not kill Jesus. That was the work of human hands. Yet the conundrum of God's omnipotence raises the issue of His responsibility, even when actions result from human agency. God has the power to prevent any and all human actions.
Moral reasoning places a heavy burden of responsibility on someone who has the clear (in this case absolute) power to prevent evil and fails to do so. For people of faith, this implies no possible censure of God. Rather, it raises the question "Why is it right for God to permit evil?" This question goes beyond even such grave matters as the killing of innocents, since it touches upon the occasion itself that brought death into the world. Just as human choice can lead to murder, human choice led to the original sin that separated human nature from eternal life. From the very beginning, God chose to respect human choice. He therefore considered respecting the possibility of human freedom more important than preventing the possibility of human wickedness. He fashioned the universe in such a way that sin could enter in, knowing full well that the death of His only begotten Son would be the price of conquering it.
In all fairness to the Holy Father, whatever the interesting theological issues raised by his statement, he clearly spoke in the context of human, not Divine action – or else we would be hard put to understand how God could have commanded the Israelites to destroy virtually every living thing in cities like Jericho when they moved into the Promised Land, and punished them when they failed strictly to obey His command. Of course, from God's perspective at the time, the inhabitants of the cities in the Promised Land were not, strictly speaking, innocent. Their worship of false gods led them into abominations, so their presence and influence would corrupt the Israelites and lead them astray. This meant that, even when they had been defeated and disarmed, their very existence implied harm to God's plan for His chosen people. The harm done to God's intention outweighed the physical harm done to the conquered men, women and children He commanded the Israelites to slaughter.
In a sense, these people of the Promised Land had to be sacrificed in order to defend the purity of Israel's relationship with God. This accords with the logic implied in every sacrificial offering. The physical life of the sacrificial victim is taken so that the life that springs from the relationship with God can be preserved or restored. Put differently, the sacrifice represents the truth that rather than surrender the true life that arises from our obligation to God, the righteous will give up or destroy mere physical life. Though the innocence of the Canaanites can be called into question, this premise of sacrifice obviously applies to innocent life as well. Of this the Crucifixion is sufficient evidence.
As a matter of Divine justice, therefore, it seems more and more difficult to understand the statement that "nothing can justify the spilling of innocent blood." Even speaking, as the Holy Father did, in the clear context of a particular human situation, however, his statement raises difficult questions.
If he had said nothing justifies the purposeful, or intentional, planned or premeditated spilling of innocent blood, many of these questions would be avoided. But instead of emphasizing the heart, which Christ identified as the true source of evil in human affairs, the statement quoted in the media emphasized the source: "I want to repeat that nothing can justify the spilling of innocent blood, wherever it is coming from." Coupled with his call for an immediate cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the statement suggests that, from a moral viewpoint, it makes no difference whether innocent blood is spilled in defense of evil, or in the fight to bring it to an end.
If this is so, how could there ever be a just war, e.g., a battle fought by good and decent people to defend their lives and homes from the violent depredations of the wicked? Especially in a democratic republic, when a leader or commander sends soldiers into battle, they include many who must be considered strictly innocent until the moment they enter the military. Once in the military they are under the discipline of military command. The leaders who send them into battle bear responsibility for doing so on right moral grounds, knowing in most cases that some of their blood must be spilled as a consequence. But if nothing justifies spilling innocent blood, what moral grounds exist to justify their decision?
Assuming just leaders could nonetheless find such grounds, I am hard put to think of a battle in human history fought entirely without risk to non-combatants, i.e., to innocents in the more strictly juridical sense. This was true even in the days of swords, bows and arrows, when such risks were more easily confined to the immediate environs of the battlefield. Obviously, the risks of modern warfare are harder to contain, particularly when the war-making infrastructure includes factories, stockpiles and command structures manned by civilians or located in and about heavily populated areas. Mercifully, the difficulties of limiting civilian casualties did not lead people to give up the effort. Instead, a body of international agreement has evolved, meant to preserve respect for innocent life even in the midst of the destructive power and complexities of contemporary warfare. The bedrock prerequisite of this effort is the commitment on the part of civilized states and peoples everywhere to eschew decisions and actions that intentionally endanger innocent lives. This commitment reflects the fragile common ground of moral opinion that makes the international community something more than a rhetorical convenience.
The Holy Father's statement, however, goes beyond this common ground. If accepted, no action could be justified in war that results, however unintentionally, in the spilling of innocent blood. To be sure, if everyone simply accepted and acted within this moral limit, most contemporary war-making would cease. The problem is that the chief enemies of peace in the world today are precisely those groups and states that reject or ignore the claims of innocent human life. Terrorism, by definition, involves the planned and premeditated use of violence against the innocent to engender fear, expose the weakness of opposing governments, and ultimately force societies to submit to the terrorists' will. Terrorist groups and states will not only target the innocent, they will use civilian populations as the cover and shield for their attacks.
Any government or people that accepted the moral limit prescribed by the Holy Father's statement would be helpless against this strategy of terror. In the present war between Israel and Hezbollah, for instance, the Israelis would have to accept a rain of terror from the skies, so long as Hezbollah launched its rockets from towns and villages where civilians are put at risk. By mixing civilians into all their transport columns and vehicles, Hezbollah commanders could prevent Israeli efforts to inhibit the movement of Hezbollah's supplies and fighters, and so forth.
Obviously, once ruthless aggressors realized that decent states and peoples meant to observe this moral limitation, they would be encouraged to organize their forces accordingly, assuring a general victory for evil. In case we're tempted to believe this would be something new, I think we should consider the fact that throughout most of human history this was exactly the state of affairs for the mass of the people. In many parts of the world, the training and arms for war were restricted to an aristocratic warrior class, and the armies gathered under their auspices. People everywhere were, in effect, the helpless hostages of those most able and willing to practice violence. What fear and a natural distaste for the dangers and hardships of war accomplished in the past, the disregard of moral intention would accomplish today. Conscience would disarm itself. As the armies of terror trampled the vineyards of innocence into the bloody vintages of power, decent people would have no choice but to surrender to whichever conscienceless group of thugs emerged as the victor. In many respects, the history of Lebanon in the last several decades tragically confirms this grim prospect.
As a matter of fact and moral prudence, it is right and necessary to put tough questions to Israel, the U.S. government and any other supposedly civilized state as it wages war, even if the war is a just response to terrorist aggression. We cannot allow carelessness, or casual disregard for innocent life to pose as unintentional harm. But all such questions and the judgments we make about them must take account of the strategy of terror. When ruthless evil exploits the vulnerability of innocent life to expose the vulnerability of decent conscience, it must bear a heavy burden of responsibility for the lives its takes, and for the lives it causes others to take against their will. If we make no distinction between the strategists of terror and those locked in desperate battle against them, will we not bear responsibility for the general triumph of evil that must inevitably result? Provided, of course, anyone takes us seriously.
This last thought points to what may be the greatest danger of all. For what contributes more to despair or cynicism than the thought that the triumph of good conscience requires the destruction or surrender of good communities? Sometimes in order to give hope to righteousness, we must choose our words in careful remembrance of the truth that we live in a world that crucified the Christ, and that only partially accepts the law of love that triumphed in His resurrection. If people truly strive to make that law supreme in the intentions of their hearts, may they not do the best they can and leave the rest to God?
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