2007-01-14 - "The Lateran Council of 1139 banned ..."

The Lateran Council of 1139 banned the use of the crossbow in tournaments on the grounds that it was unsporting, since it killed at a long distance. Boxing has been an avocation of mine, and my African gym instructor, being a sporting gentleman, does not take advantage of my inferiority to his skills. He is too reluctant to punch me, and it is only when I jab him that he responds.

War is not a sport and it brings out the worst in people. It also brings out the best, and the finest gentlemen I know are among my soldier friends. Among our parishioners are young men now engaged in war and the delicacy of their conscience is unsurpassed. In my experience, mothers about to give birth and soldiers going into battle are most ardent in their desire for a priestly blessing.

In wartime, shoddy moralizing can be as fatal as death itself. Catholicism does not appoint sentimentality a vicar for reason. A prominent cleric in Rome, surely for the best of intentions, in reference to the execution of Saddam Hussein, stumbled over himself in mistakenly describing the Church’s teaching on capital punishment as always an act of revenge and “a crime.” But our present Pope wrote in a memorandum for the U.S. bishops in 2004:

“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”

The leader of the Iranian people has said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” This is no more hyperbolic than the animadversions in Mein Kampf were theatrics. Mr. Ahmadinejad wants more than a crossbow to enforce his strategy and only the most naïve would believe that his uranium enrichment program is to provide better lighting for Iranian households.

When J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had worked on the Manhattan Project, watched the atomic test in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 14, 1945, he muttered a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death, shatterer of worlds.” Leaders entrusted with devastating power need our prayers. Not all killing is a crime or base revenge, and those who are not moved by reason must be held accountable to justice.

Fr. George W. Rutler