|
Previous
Article |
Next
Article
|
Fr. Ziliak Courier & Press
article, Saturday, March 22, 2003
It is underway and
we are still left with a profusion of feelings and reactions.
We lift up our voices in
prayer for our young men and women serving in our military forces.
May they be kept safely in the arms of God and quickly be able to
return to our home shores.
We, likewise, pray for
the many men, women and children of Iraq who are innocent bystanders
in this land of hostile activity. May they be kept from harm's way.
We pray for civil leaders
in countries throughout our world. We pray that they are able to rise
above personal feelings to find noble ways of joining in common human
endeavors rather than looking to the issues that separate one from
another.
We pray for religious leaders
of many denominations, in many lands across the globe. May they be
selfless and humble in seeking the hand and will of God in a world
that invokes the same God to help in differing and hostile acts.
We pray for parents, spouses,
children, family and friends of those serving actively now in the
Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea areas. May their concerns and fears
be minimal. May their joy be great to have their loved ones in safe
places.
We pray that people of good will throughout
this great world work together for the benefit and development of
all peoples.
We pray that this war be a short duration.
We pray that deaths and injuries be minimal.
My prayer is that
peoples across the globe will then review the deeds that have led
to this war and seek the agenda that will prevent such national hostilities
in the future. There are major rifts in the definition of what is
considered to be a just war.
St. Augustine, who died in 430 A.D.,
is attributed with articulating the rules governing the resort to
war, namely, a just cause, legitimate authority and right intention.
In time, moral theologians added several limiting notes to the rules.
War was to be seen as a last resort, and force was to be used only
in proportion to the opposition and the action was to have good prospects
for success.
Pre-emptive military strikes were seen
as an innovation in Catholic just-war teaching. Other voices have
allowed for preventive measures as a moral means to deal with possible
pre-emptive strikes on the part of the opponent.
Our own National Security Strategy
says that the United States has the prerogative "to exercise
its right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively." In threatening
circumstances it will attack first "to forestall or prevent hostile
acts." Furthermore, the position states that it would brook no
competitors. This position is directly at odds with the Augustinian
notion of right intention, which excludes the lust for power.
In Catholic just-war teaching, a preventive
war is a dangerous innovation. The United Nations also has no provision
for a preventive war. Morality and legitimacy of war itself will become
more and more an issue for us and for future generations. Just as
attitudes toward capital punishment vary among many people, so this
issue of war will become an ever greater issue.
We do
very little here except to hint at the fact that people are of different
minds on these issues. Now is not the time to oppose, but rather to
pray that all military actions in Iraq be quickly at an end and the
various forces find a peaceful future.
Wars and rumors of war have been
with us for ages and ages. May we find ever new ways of interacting,
so that hostilities between individuals and nations become a thing
of the past.
Rev. Joseph
L. Ziliak is pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church
in Newburgh.
