EXCERPT:I am baffled: no one else seemed to notice the very thing that struck me most about Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
While some wrongly compared Obama’s discourse on war and peace to George Bush, and others rightly pointed out Obama’s debt to Franklin Roosevelt and the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, no one I have read noticed this: Catholic Church teaching on war and peace is now shaping American policy at the presidential level for the first time.
Obama is clearly no pacifist. He clearly embraces “just war” theory, not only in name, but in its substance. As The New Republic’s Michael Walzer noted, he is not the first President to invoke the theory: "Other presidents have done that, but this one seemed to have a better grasp of the theory than any of his predecessors did."
Secular and Protestant thinkers too, including Niebuhr, have also espoused the just war concept—but they were adopting (and sometimes adapting) an idea of Catholic origin. Obama here became the first US President to adopt Catholic teaching as his own. Without naming it, Obama was making the Catholic case for peace.
For years I’ve told parish groups that we American Catholics are in trouble: a President can claim “just war,” and his Catholic listeners can’t tell he is invoking a Catholic concept, let alone judge whether the claim is legitimate.
But now we hear a President who not only claims “just war,” but explains what he means by it– with an explanation solidly rooted in Catholic thinking. Fifteen centuries after it first emerged, the just war concept is now US foreign policy.
There remain some grounds for disappointment. Obama failed to say that, while Afghanistan may meet just war conditions, Iraq never did. He failed to argue that success in Afghanistan is “morally certain” – a key just war condition. He never answered those who believe “total war” can never meet just war criteria. He never admitted that just war has never actually prevented a war. He failed to link defense of every person’s dignity with the fate of the unborn.
Still, just war theory is a major contribution of Catholic tradition to public policy thinking, and Obama’s speech marks the first time this contribution has been enshrined as the official peace platform of any US President.
Who knows? The day may come when America, invoking this very speech, avoids or ends a war. On that day, not only will humanity take one giant step toward genuine peace, but the Catholic Church will have proven its worth as a global force for good. As Advent approaches the arrival of the Prince of Peace, no Christmas gift could be greater than this: our Church sowing the seeds of a President’s pathway to peace.
I stumbled upon this article through a Google search, and thank God. You've really nailed it.
ReplyDeleteI'd only add upon what you said here: "He never admitted that just war has never actually prevented a war."
What's missing from his speech is the understanding that war can and must be abolished - not forever, but for our generation. He invoked the great names of MLK and Gandhi, but ended up dismissing them, and nonviolent love, as unrealistic in a global setting. How at odds this is with Catholic teaching. John Paul II asked us to unite to fight violence and conquer war, and prayed that people would renounce war as we discovered ways to fight for justice that didn't include killing our enemies - the very enemies Christ commands us to love.
Thanks again for the insightful commentary!
Nate-
ReplyDeleteGlad you found my comments helpful. You're right that there is a fine line here: how to give hope for ending war if one is NOT a pacifist?
The just war traditon allows SOME war under the right conditions, so then the challenge of ending war becomes: how to eliminate such conditions? We are not even close to that--we are barely at the point of limiting ourselves to wars that DO meet those conditions. Once we do that, perhaps we move on to reducing the number of cases where such conditions exist.
For pacifists, the solution is simpler: outlaw all war, and rely on non-violence to win the day.
Obama's position--that non-violence is fine for social leaders but not for heads of state--goes back to Constantine, who refused baptism until his deathbed in the belief that he could not be a good emperor (sending troops to kill) and a good christian at the same time.
By the way, this blog has only EXCPERTS from my piece on Obama. Contact me at bfswain@juno.com for the whole article.