Just War Theory and Practice

  

 

The recent disagreement between Pope Leo and President Trump over the war in Iran is unfortunate, mainly because I think they could and should be on the same side. Let me explain.

Pope Leo is an Augustinian, a member of that famous religious order that traces its origins to St. Augustine, a fifth century bishop generally regarded as one of the two most influential philosopher/theologians of Christianity. He lived during the time of the barbarian incursions into the Roman Empire that led to the famous sack of the city of Rome in 410 A.D, and his famous book, The City of God, attempted to demonstrate that the supplanting of the ancient Roman gods by the God of Christianity did not cause Rome’s military disasters. In doing so, Augustine created what is still known as the “just war theory” to explain under what circumstances Christians could depart from pacifism. 

Coincidentally, I have been slowly working my way through Augustine’s lengthy book and found the following description of what Augustine obviously considered a just war. He told the story of Radagaisus, king of the Goths, a conspicuous worshipper of pagan gods, who had led his army into the Italian peninsula and was besieging the city of Fiorentia in the year 406 until a Roman relieving force won an overwhelming victory. Here is an excerpt from Augustine’s account.

 

"When Radagaisus, king of the Goths, having taken up his position very near to the city, with a vast and savage army, was already close upon the Romans, he was in one day so speedily and so thoroughly beaten, that, whilst not even one Roman was wounded, much less slain, far more than a hundred thousand of his army were prostrated, and he himself and his sons, having been captured, were forthwith put to death, suffering the punishment they deserved. For had so impious a man, with so great and so impious a host, entered the city, whom would he have spared? what tombs of the martyrs would he have respected? in his treatment of what person would he have manifested the fear of God? whose blood would he have refrained from shedding? whose chastity would he have wished to preserve inviolate?"

Warfare has changed since the time of Augustine. It is no longer possible to wait until the enemy is at the gates now that missiles can cross oceans and destroy whole cities. Nevertheless, just war principles can still be applicable and despite his critics I believe President Trump actions qualify on a number of counts. 

In the first place, he has shown a remarkable concern for human life not only American but also Iranian lives. From the first he has refrained from attacking civilian targets, and advanced technology has enabled our forces to strike only military targets with pinpoint accuracy. This achievement is truly remarkable and praiseworthy. We would do well to compare his policy with that of the Iranian regime that recently killed more than 30,000 Iranian protestors.

Second, he has shown an incredible desire to negotiate a settlement before the attack began and still continues to the present day. No one can say the Iranian regime was not warned, but a combination of foolishness, and fanaticism led them to think President Trump would back down as other Presidents have done.

Finally, the President’s repeatedly stated goal is peace, and not destruction or conquest. He has expressed no desire to occupy Iran, as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even change its regime. He does not need or want Iran’s oil reserves. He just wants Iran to be a normal nation with no ability to attack us or its neighbors now and in the future. Remember that Iranian negotiators had claimed that they had enough enriched uranian to make not one but eleven nuclear bombs.

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Today's Quote: The urge to save humanity is almost always a face for the urge to rule it. H.L. Mencken

 

The Problem of Pain

  

Camille Paglia

This post about an interview with author Camille Paglia that appeared in the Wall Street Journal back in 2019 was reprised here in 2023 after a personal family tragedy.  I still think it is relevant today. 

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The Wall Street Journal weekend edition regularly features interviews with  prominent personalities on its op-ed pages. Last weekend the interview was with Camille Paglia, the well-known feminist author, lecturer, and professor. At the age of 72 Paglia has come under fire from students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia who are demanding that she be fired. Despite her feminist credentials, some of Paglia’s positions, like her praise of Capitalism, are no longer in favor. *

I do not wish to get involved in feminist debates but would just like to discuss a seemingly unrelated incident in Paglia’s life that she remembered quite vividly. In fact, she regarded it as a turning point. At the age of fifteen she was in religious education class when she had the nerve to ask the teacher, an Irish Catholic nun, a very challenging and provocative question. In those days we would have called it a smart-ass question. Naturally, the nun reacted and condemned Paglia roundly in front of the class for even asking such a question. That was it for Paglia. From that day on she would have nothing to do with Catholicism. 

Coincidentally, over the weekend a friend told me of an acquaintance who left the Church because of another seemingly trivial incident. The woman had invited a soloist to sing at her wedding but after the Mass was over, the priest chided her for taking business away from the church’s own soloist. Boom! That was it. She has never gone to church again. Reactions like these are not unusual. In my lifetime I have heard of many such incidents or personal confrontations that led people to stop attending church. It is usually not a question of belief or doctrine, nor does it mean that they become bad people.  

There are more serious reasons for losing one’s faith in God or ceasing to practice the faith of your fathers. Perhaps the greatest is the problem of pain and suffering. In an email exchange, also over this weekend, an old friend told me that he had trouble believing in God and that he no longer attended church. He wrote, “If God is so good, how do you explain little children suffering from cancer?” He also asked me to explain all the pain and suffering that will result from natural disasters like hurricane Dorian.

The problem of pain and suffering, some call it the problem of evil, has been around since the dawn of recorded history. My wife and I sat down over the weekend to watch a National Geographic documentary on great animal migrations. After ten minutes we had to shut it off. The carnage and killing were horrific.  The crocodiles, leopards, and other predators did not seem concerned with the problem of pain. Human beings are obviously just as capable of inflicting pain and suffering but I believe that we are the only animals who think or worry about it.

Philosophers, theologians, and scientists have grappled with it and no one has yet come up with a completely satisfactory answer. Certainly, I haven’t. In ancient times personal suffering and natural disasters were attributed to the gods. The gods were either punishing people for their misdeeds, or were merely malevolent, playing with humans like a cat with a mouse.

In thinking about my friend’s question, I wondered if the answer could be found by considering the example of Jesus, the founder of Christianity.  No matter what you think of Jesus, his approach to the problem of pain and suffering was revolutionary. Even a cursory reading of the gospels indicates that Jesus was a healer. When confronted with pain and suffering, he healed the pain and did not blame God or anyone else. 

He gave sight to a man who had been blind from birth. Ordinary people claimed that the blindness was the result of the sins of the man’s parents. Jesus would have none of it, and just restored his sight. When a man suffering from paralysis was brought before him, rather than blaming him for his sins, he forgave them and then cured his illness.

When he heard that people had been killed when a tower collapsed in a nearby city, he told his hearers that the people who died were no more sinful than anyone else. I’m sure he would have said the same about the victims of hurricanes and earthquakes. His response to the problem of pain and suffering was to heal and minister to the suffering. He instructed his followers to do the same.

In the teaching of Jesus, God is not the cause of suffering but the cure. Those who believe in Nature believe in a cruel god who never forgives. We speak of Mother Nature but she is not the kind of mother any of us would like to have. Scientists may tell us that many must be sacrificed to cleanse the herd in the interests of survival and progress but something inside of us tells us to deplore pain and suffering and do our best to prevent and heal. That something inside of us is as much a sign of the existence of a loving God as anything else the philosophers and theologians have ever thought of. 

Camille Paglia’s wise-ass question to the poor nun, who was giving her life to educate children like her, was: “If God is infinitely forgiving, is it possible that at some point in the future He will forgive Satan?” It is true that the nun should not have blown up, especially since she only had to turn to her catechism for the simple answer. In the catechism Catholics are told that God must forgive those who repent and ask for forgiveness, and so He certainly would forgive if Satan repents and asks for forgiveness. Unfortunately, Satan, like many wise fifteen-year-olds, will have none of it.

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* Note: Students failed to convince the University of the Arts to fire Professor Paglia back in 2019, but the school closed its doors in 2024. She now functions as an independent scholar.

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Quote of the Day: "I would not want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member." Groucho Marx

Easter Hope

 

Easter Bombing in Pakistan

Today, I reproduce a post written ten years ago about attacks on Christians at Easter time. Ten years later I still find it difficult to understand why so many hate Christians and Easter.

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 Reputed members of the Islamic State murdered four nuns of the Missionaries of Charity working in an elder care facility in Aden, Yemen on March 4, 2016. The only crime of these nuns, like some many thousands of others brutally persecuted in recent years, was that they were Christians. What is so bad about Christianity? 

Personally, I like practically everything about it, especially the belief in, and hope in the resurrection from the dead. 

It is clear from Scripture that, even after the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, his subsequent Ascension forty days later, and the incredible events of Pentecost, St. Peter did not fully understand the implications of the Resurrection. Only after a personal vision convinced him that Jesus died and rose for all, did Peter see the light. He said,

“Now I really understand that God is not a respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. He sent his word to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (who is Lord of all). You know what took place throughout Judea: for he began in Galilee after the baptism preached by John: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all who were in the power of the devil; for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did in the country of the Jews and Jerusalem; and yet they killed him, hanging him on a tree. But God raised him on the third day and caused him to be plainly seen, not by all the people, but by witnesses designated beforehand by God, that is, by us, who ate and drank with him after he had risen from the dead. And he charged us to preach to the people and to testify that he it is who has been appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that through his name all who believe in him may receive forgiveness of sins.” *

I have come to believe with Peter that “God is not a respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Nevertheless, I like being a Christian, especially a Catholic.  As I said, I like a religion that believes in and holds out hope for resurrection, for a life after death. 

I like to think that the four nuns murdered in Yemen by Moslem fanatics earlier this month are living a new life, and that they are not just rotting bodies being picked apart by vultures. It also strikes me that those four nuns, like tens of thousands of other Christians who have also been brutally persecuted in our own time, had already given up their lives in the service of others when they took their initial vows. Like Jesus, they went about doing good and healing.

Even today, the day after Easter, there is the terrible news that Taliban suicide bombers murdered at least 65 people and wounded over 300 in Pakistan just because they were Christians celebrating Easter.

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*Acts of the Apostles 10: 25-37.

Silver Mania

 

For years I’ve held 500 shares of ishares Silver trust (SLV) in my investment portfolio. During that time it usually hovered around $20 a share and did little else. I’m not sure why I held on to it. It never paid a dividend or provided any income. Perhaps I thought it would be a haven if all else went to hell.

But in the last 12 months things changed. I checked one day and found that last October, the share price had jumped to around $50, a gain of about 150%. I have always believed that when any asset goes up that far and that fast, it is time to sell and take profits. I don’t like to be greedy. So, I sold 400 shares and netted about $20,000. But for some reason I held on to 100 shares.

Incredibly, the price of metals like gold and silver continued to soar, and by January of 2026, my SLV shares had jumped to $105 per share. I sold my remaining shares at what now looks like a top and netted over $10,000. 

I don’t know who bought my shares that day. Millions of SLV shares were being traded every day in January. The volume indicates that major investment firms were involved. Many of these entities use sophisticated computer programs in decision making.

Then, weeks before the USA attacked Iranian military sites on February 28, gold and silver prices started to drop causing speculative buyers to take big losses. On March 24, SLV closed around $64 a share, down about 40% from the January high. That’s big money. Of course, the shares are still considerably higher than they were last March, but if you bought in January, you took a big loss.

I’m trying to understand what this precious metal mania meant for ordinary people. As the price of gold and silver soared, it obviously took more dollars to buy an ounce of each metal. That means that as gold and silver prices rose, the dollar weakened and had an inflationary effect. It just took more pieces of paper to buy an ounce of gold and silver, or anything else. Now that metal prices have dropped, does that mean the dollar is stronger, and will that impact inflation figures?

Unfortunately, I could find little information or interest in the movement of gold and silver prices in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, or various media outlets over the past year. So, I can only guess about what happened. I certainly don’t want to try to predict what will happen going forward.

Was it just a speculative mania or “bubble” that finally burst in January? Or perhaps the meteoric rise was caused by investors who feared that President Trump was not bluffing about Venezuela and Iran and who were seeking what is normally a safe haven for their money. 

Despite the rise in precious metal prices, inflation moderated and oil prices stayed relatively stable. Only after the attack on the Iranian military sites on February 28 did oil prices spike.  Even though energy prices are not included in official inflation figures, ordinary people are feeling the effect at the pump.

During the past year major stock indices continued to rise to record levels, and people would have seen substantial increases in their 401k and other investment accounts.  The Dow Jones Average and other market averages hit all-time highs in early February but began to drop a few weeks before the attack on Iran.

Everyone knows that real estate prices have risen over the past year. A quick check on Zillow indicates that my modest home has reached an all-time high value. But like most people, if my wife and I wanted to cash in, where would we go?

Most people don’t consider that their homes fluctuate in value like stocks and precious metals but maybe it doesn’t matter. At least we can live in our homes no matter what the value.

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