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 HOW JUST IS THE WAR ON TERROR?:
A Question of Morality, by
Eileen P. Flynn. Paulist Press. 121 pp.
$14.95.
Reviewed by the REV. DANIEL KROGER,
O.F.M., publisher/CEO of St. Anthony Messenger
Press.
THE WAR ON TERROR will impact
2008 elections, so this book is timely.
Offering an overview of war ethics,
Flynn reminds readers that the way
American officials and armed forces
conduct themselves reflects upon every
citizen.
Chapter One reviews the just-war
tradition as a product of religious and
secular elements. Flynn
surveys Cicero, Augustine,
Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria
and international law to
show that the Western tradition
of ethics includes a
set of principles about going
to war and a set about fighting
honorably.
Nations should not go to
war unless the war: 1) is
defensive; 2) is a last resort;
3) has a reasonable chance
of success; 4) is fought to
produce a just peace; 5) achieves greater
good than evil.
Once engaged in war, armed forces
must fight rightly. Civilians may not be
targeted; military actions must be limited
to what is needed to restore justice
and establish peace.
Flynn observes that wars once considered
just are not just by today’s standards.
The Crusades and Europe’s wars
of religion are prominent examples.
Flynn insists that our present war on
terror cannot overlook principles concerning
justice. For example, war
should be considered the last resort,
not the first option for governments
seeking justice. Today’s just-war tradition
rejects both religion and revenge
as legitimate reasons for declaring war.
Flynn writes for readers from varied
religious and secular backgrounds.
Thus, her focus is not on Catholic
teachings or teachings of other religions.
Catholic readers can examine
the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2307-2310) for the Church’s just-war
principles.
Catholics may remember that Pope
John Paul II judged the invasion of Iraq
unjust. Based on just-war principles,
the pope pleaded with President George
W. Bush not to invade Iraq.
In March 2003, President Bush called
the invasion of Iraq a “preemptive”
war. He claimed invading Iraq was
just, based on findings that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction.
Most members of
Congress accepted the
president’s judgment, presuming
he had accurate
intelligence information.
Some ethicists disagreed
with the president, because
even if Iraq had such
weapons, Iraq posed no
imminent danger to the
United States.
Concerning the moral
qualities of good soldiers,
Flynn discusses how soldiers should
form their consciences, because they
face difficult decisions in combat. Since
March 2003, hundreds of thousands
of Americans have fought honorably in
Iraq. Thousands have given their lives;
greater numbers were wounded.
Unfortunately, some soldiers acted
shamefully, as proven in the Abu
Ghraib case, where American soldiers
tortured and abused prisoners. Concerning
the case, Flynn observes: “It is
surprising that volunteers for military
service could exhibit the level of ignorance
of the prison guards at Abu
Ghraib, and the fact of this ignorance
underscores the need for instruction
in military ethics.”
Some accused guards argued that
they were following orders, an excuse
considered legally indefensible since
the Nuremberg trials in 1946. Disobeying
unethical orders is a moral
obligation. While officers receive training
in ethics, Flynn wonders if soldiers
in today’s volunteer army grasp their
obligations.
Discussing right conduct during war,
Flynn reminds readers that terrorism
and counterterrorism are nonconventional
forms of war where the “rules of
engagement” need constant scrutiny.
For example, civilians are not to be targeted;
however, when irregular fighters
hide among civilians, there are bound
to be unintended civilian casualties
and “collateral damage.”
Furthermore, soldiers facing car
bombs, IEDs (improvised explosive
devices) and suicide bombers cannot
engage in calm, ethical analysis. Flynn
stresses that commanding officers are
responsible for the conduct of their
subordinates.
Flynn discusses conscience formation
and the difficult decisions concerning
war that governments, soldiers
and citizens must make—usually with
limited knowledge.
Flynn emphasizes the moral obligation
of planning for postwar peace.
Contemporary just-war ethics is
enriched by focusing on postwar
prospects. A just war includes a realistic
plan for peace. The present events in
Iraq demonstrate that the U.S. government
lacked adequate plans for post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
The victory President Bush proclaimed
after invading Iraq was not the
beginning of a democratic Iraq. Instead,
the fall of Hussein brought guerrilla
warfare, as well as religious and civil
strife.
Ultimately, this book raises a tough
question: How far should America compromise
its principles of democracy
and freedom to fight the war on terror?
You can order HOW JUST IS THE WAR ON TERROR?: A Question of Morality from St.
Francis Bookshop.
AMERICAN CATHOLICS TODAY: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church, by William V.
D’Antonio, James D. Davidson, Dean
R. Hoge, Mary L. Gautier. Sheed &
Ward Book/Rowman & Littlefield,
Publishers. 214 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed by NORM LANGENBRUNNER,
a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati,
former high school teacher and current
pastor of St. Bernard of Clairvaux Parish
in Cincinnati, Ohio. He serves on the Archdiocesan
Tribunal and on the Archdiocesan
Education Commission.
“COMMITMENT TO THE CHURCH is
in gradual decline.” This is the conclusion
of a sociological study on trends
among American Catholics. Using
Gallup surveys from 1987, 1993, 1999
and 2005 (plus several other national
surveys), four sociologists compiled an
informative, substantive and perhaps
provocative analysis of the state of
Catholicism in the United States in this
first decade of the 21st century.
They divide today’s Catholics into
four generations: pre-Vatican II, Vatican
II, post-Vatican II and the Millennials.
They make a distinction between a
Catholic’s commitment to the Church
and a Catholic’s sense of what it means
to be Catholic. They outline the major
problems in the Church as laypeople
see them. They conclude that the frequency
with which a Catholic receives
the sacraments is proportionate to the
intensity of his or her commitment to
the Church.
They found that older Catholics have
a higher commitment to the institutional
Church than younger ones, but
both Vatican II and post-Vatican II
Catholics do have a strong commitment.
Because data for the Millennials
is sparse, one must be cautious about
interpreting it.
Catholics with a high level of commitment
(21 percent) tended toward
the notion that one must hold to all the
teachings currently held by the Vatican
to be considered “a good Catholic,”
while most medium-committed Catholics
(64 percent) did not think that
dissent from some teachings keeps
someone from being a good Catholic.
One outstanding caution from the
authors opposes the common tendency
to think of the 1950s as the criterion (a
golden age) for judging all previous or
future periods of U.S. Catholic Church
history. If we note, for example, that in
the mid-20th century Sunday Mass
attendance was about 75
percent, we may be dismayed
that in 2005 the rate
was about 34 percent.
Several factors explain
the difference, especially the
significant cultural and
theological changes of the
past 50 years. These changes
include a decline in anti-Catholicism, Catholics having
fewer children, and the
shift in pastoral teaching
from sin and hell to forgiveness
and the Kingdom of heaven.
We must acknowledge that the 1950s
are history and a new age has come.
Nostalgia for the past does not set the
plan for the future.
In the thinking of today’s Catholics,
the chief problems facing the Church
are the child-abuse scandal, the priest
shortage and the gap between the
Church and young adult Catholics.
Older Catholics are concerned that
younger ones are not involved in the
Church. Younger Catholics
are concerned about the
glaring discrepancy they
see between Church teaching
and their own views on
artificial contraception,
abortion, homosexuality
and the ordination of
women and of married
men.
American Catholics Today addresses the state of the
Catholic Church in our
country in our day. It is a
thoughtful and thought-provoking presentation,
offering statistics from a
number of surveys, comparisons with
past times, conclusions about the
Church’s status quo and suggestions for enhancing Catholic commitment,
strengthening Catholic identity and
directing Church leadership for a productive
future.
This is a most helpful book. Bishops,
priests and lay Church leaders
will find it a compendium of insights
and a handbook for dialogue and planning.
Diocesan commissions, parish
staffs, discussion groups and the so-called
“Catholics in the pew” can benefit
from the easy-to-follow analysis
and will refer to its conclusions in talking
about the Church of today and
planning programs for the remainder
of this decade.
Those concerned about the state of
the Church can use this book to stay
grounded in reality even as they work
to strengthen the overall level of
Church commitment.
You can order AMERICAN CATHOLICS TODAY: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church from St. Francis Bookshop.
ONE HUNDRED GREAT CATHOLIC
BOOKS: From the Early Centuries to
the Present, by Donald Brophy. BlueBridge. 222 pp. $16.
Reviewed by PAT McCLOSKEY, O.F.M.,
editor of this publication and an avid
reader.
AS ACQUIRING EDITOR and managing
editor of Paulist Press for many years,
Donald Brophy knows Catholic books
well. He describes this volume as “simply
one hundred books, chosen because
they approach classic status
(at least the older ones) and
are considered worthy by
readers to this day. But every
choice is naturally subjective—the ‘greatness’ of any
book is a very subjective
matter.
“The brief summaries on
these pages try to place
them in historical context,
give a short digest of their
contents, and suggest what
the experience of reading
these books—some of them quite old—is like for a contemporary reader.”
Brophy succeeds very well in carrying
out this goal.
He writes, “To be in this volume a
book has to be of interest to general
readers. The contents gather a smattering
of theology books, histories, a
touch of philosophy, biography and
autobiography, some poetry, a considerable
amount of fiction, and a great
deal of spiritual writing.”
Not all writers were Catholics when
they wrote the books noted here
(Chesterton, Orthodoxy) or ever became
Catholic (John Neihardt, Black Elk
Speaks, or Simone Weil, Waiting for
God), but the subject matter is always
Catholic/catholic.
The first 30 books were written
between the fourth and 20th centuries.
Some were literary breakthroughs
(Life of Antony, by St. Athanasius,
for example, opened up the
life of a non-martyr saint). Concerning
The Little Flowers of St. Francis, Brophy
writes, “Loving God basically comes
down to letting go of all that is not God.”
Brophy mistakenly asserts
that St. Bonaventure “ordered
the destruction of all
writings on Francis so that
only the official version
would survive.” A Franciscan
general chapter ordered
that destruction, not St.
Bonaventure.
Women authors featured
in this volume include
Heloise, Hildegard of Bingen,
Catherine of Siena,
Julian of Norwich, Teresa of
Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux,
Maria Montessori, Caryll
Houselander, Simone Weil,
Dorothy Day, Flannery
O’Connor, Annie Dillard,
Ann Belford Ulanov, Edith
Stein, Jessica Powers, Elizabeth
John, Patricia Hampl,
Helen Prejean and Alice
McDermott.
Recently published male
authors in this book include
Raymond Brown, Robert
Ellsberg, Eamon Duffy,
Robert Schreiter, Ronald Rolheiser, Paul
Lakeland and Paul Elie.
This volume ends with a short listing
of another 50 great Catholic books, 10
pages of notes on editions of the 100
titles featured and a five-page Index.
The books introduced here can open
up many hearts.
You can order ONE HUNDRED GREAT CATHOLIC BOOKS: From the Early Centuries to
the Present from St.
Francis Bookshop.
GOD IS NOT GREAT: How Religion
Poisons Everything, by Christopher
Hitchens. Twelve/Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, U.S.;
McClelland and Stewart, Canada. 307
pp. $24.99, U.S.; $32.99, Canada.
Reviewed by BRIAN WELTER, a doctoral
student in theology from North Vancouver,
in British Columbia, Canada. He is a
teacher of English as Second Language to
Adults, and has a B.A. in history from
the University of Saskatchewan, with a
concentration in medieval, Renaissance
and Reformation history.
AT THE BEGINNING of God Is Not
Great, Christopher Hitchens attempts to
cloak his book in academic, social scientific
jargon so that it reads
less like a rant—which it
clearly is—and more like a
sober, balanced study of religion—which it clearly is
not.
According to Hitchens,
there exist “four irreducible
objections to religious faith:
that it wholly misrepresents
the origins of man and the
cosmos, that because of this
original error it manages to
combine the maximum of
servility with the maximum of solipsism,
that it is both the result and the
cause of dangerous sexual repression,
and that it is ultimately grounded on
wish-thinking.”
Hitchens engages in his own wish-thinking
and misrepresentation. He
judges past history by today’s standards,
thus committing the imperialist’s
error of universalizing to all times and
places his own values. One of the contentions
of God Is Not Great is that
Christians, Muslims and Jews do this
universalizing toward others. Hitchens
never admits to this double standard—basic to the book—or explains it.
From his own modern, global, matriarchal
perspective, he criticizes the
Bible for silly nonissues: “[T]he context
is oppressively confined and local. None of these provincials, or their
deity, seems to have any idea of a world
beyond the desert, the flocks and herds,
and the imperatives of nomadic subsistence.
This is forgivable on the part
of the provincial yokels, obviously, but
then what of their supreme guide and
wrathful tyrant? Perhaps he was made
in their image, even if not graven?”
Hitchens’s lack of respect for religious
believers reflects a common attitude
of atheists. Having decided that
religious people are stupid, violent hypocrites,
he acts as if he has the duty and
right to debunk their “stupid” beliefs in
as rude, shocking and disrespectful a
manner as possible.
In addition to using words like
“yokel” to describe believers, he
engages in something that is essential
to the bigot’s arsenal: crude anecdotalism.
“In 1844, one of the greatest American
religious ‘revivals’ occurred,” writes
Hitchens, “led by a semiliterate lunatic
named George [William] Miller. Mr.
Miller managed to crowd the mountaintops
of America with credulous
fools who (having sold their belongings
cheap) became persuaded that
the world would end on October 22
that year....When the ultimate failed
to arrive, Miller’s choice of terms
was highly suggestive. It was, he
announced, ‘The Great Disappointment.’”
In this story, as in many others, the
author chooses a happening that
exposes the supposed falsehood, backwardness
or stupidity of religion and
the religious. As an extension of this, he
also follows the well-worn path of antireligionists
of cherry-picking the Bible,
taking biblical scenes or injunctions
out of the scriptural and historical context,
rather than at least explaining
why certain practices seem so strange.
Hitchens is as equally disrespectful of
Islam as he is of Christianity. He displays
ignorance about how religious
tradition develops and comes to function.
He targets with empty—though
strongly worded—criticism the Islamic
hadith, the series of stories about
Muhammad and the earliest beginnings
of Islam: “Great chunks of more
or less straight biblical quotation can be
found in the hadith, including the parable
of the workers hired at the last
moment, and the injunction ‘Let not
thy left hand know what thy right
hand does,’ the last example meaning
that this piece of pointless pseudoprofundity
has a place in two sets of
revealed Scripture.”
Given that Islam acknowledges Jews
and Christians as “People of the Book”
and its own tradition as in some way
following on these earlier traditions,
why wouldn’t Islam have borrowed
greatly from the Hebrew and Greek
Christian Scriptures?
This book is not a serious study of
religion.
You can order GOD IS NOT GREAT: How Religion Poisons Everything from St. Francis Bookshop.
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