A review of encyclical and letters from the Vatican in the past decades to determine the position of the Church on war may show an approach that is in transition to abolition of war.
Navy in Harbour
David Carroll Cochran writes that that Catholicism’s call to abolish war, like its call to abolish the death penalty, is far from foolish.
Those who study trends in warfare find that greater economic development, more participation in international trade, and deeper involvement in regional intergovernmental bodies all significantly reduce a country’s risk of war. So too does democracy, the rule of law, and effective governance. The research also shows that there is much that the international community can do to promote these economic and political trends in countries most at risk of war. The use of mediation and peace agreements to resolve disputes between and within countries has been increasingly effective. Meanwhile, international peacekeeping missions and peace-and-reconciliation initiatives have significantly reduced the risk of conflict breaking out again in places where it has recently ended. Those who study armed conflict have also shown the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions in influencing state behavior without resort to war. Finally, studies show that in the past century nonviolent civil resistance has been twice as effective as armed struggle against both domestic dictators and foreign oppressors—and this effectiveness gap has grown even greater in the past few decades. The church’s ideas about peacemaking turn out to be pretty realistic after all.1
Some critics dismiss the church’s peacemaking commitments as more unrealistic sentimentality. George Weigel, for example, has described faith in greater international governance and multilateral cooperation as “inexplicably stupid” and lamented that this “fantasy” continues to appear in papal encyclicals. It is remarkable how much social-scientific research on armed conflict supports the effectiveness of the very tools Catholic teaching emphasizes.
Douglas P. Fry, Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Geneviève Souillac, Associate Professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, report that peaceful societies are not utopian fantasy. They exist. They comment that skeptics might respond that there is no need to eliminate war from the planet. But such thinking is flawed in many respects.
“Peace systems” are clusters of neighboring societies that do not make war with each other and sometimes not at all. That means some peace systems are completely non-warring, whereas others only engage in acts of war outside the boundaries of the system. A systematic study of peace systems may hold valuable lessons about how to promote transborder cooperation desperately needed to meet the threats of climate change, pandemics, ecological collapse, and ticking nuclear catastrophe.2
Overblown military expenditures not only fail to deliver true security but also divert funding from sustainable development, education, healthcare, and other human necessities. Wars destroy the lives of combatants and civilians alike. The very presence of nuclear arsenals imperils the entire species, if not all forms of life on Earth. Wars distract attention, divert resources, and impede the concerted action required to successfully address plummeting biodiversity, soiling of the seas, displacement of peoples, ethnocide of indigenous peoples, pandemics, cataclysmic wildfires, and global warming itself. Waging of wars and oversized militarism hinder concerted “all hands on deck” responses to existential threats.
Charlie Smith, editor of the Georgia Straight Vancouver writes that author Seth Klein wants us all to wage A Good War to prevent a climate catastrophe.
The war effort made great use of posters, public radio, and the National Film Board to generate public support. Klein discovered in his research that the King government modified its message over time to woo more Canadians to fight fascism. Initially, government officials relied on traditional propaganda, with messages like ”Go get Hitler!” “Then they realized in ’41 that they actually had to shift gears,” Klein says. “If they were going to get the enlistment numbers that they needed, they had to engage people in a conversation about what kind of society they were going to come back to.” That led to economist Leonard Marsh’s 1943 Report on Social Security for Canada, which called for social insurance and public-welfare supports. It formed a blueprint for the creation of a welfare state after the war. Klein points out that the first income transfers occurred during the Second World War. And Tommy Douglas was elected premier of Saskatchewan in 1944, putting that province on the road toward creating the country’s first public health-insurance program.3
Some of the actions of a government at war have been experienced during the Covid epidemic.
Shift to Emergency Mode
War time like government involvement is likely to be required to implement the policy required to reduce the tremendous impact that the climate crisis will have on the world.
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