Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

THE WAR ON TERRORISM: A JUSTWAR? 43
After the terrorist act of September 11 th 2001, journalists
asked some Catholic spokespersons, whether an armed response
was justifiable in terms of “traditional just war teaching.” As J.
Bryan Hehir has well pointed out, this is too narrow a question.
16 Nevertheless, it does call for an answer. To what does “tradition”
refer here? Does it mean the secular tradition which
emerged and separated from the Christian tradition, with a view
to providing a generally acceptable, rational code governing the
initiating and conduct of war, which is now, at least in part,
embodied in international law? Or does it mean, as Michael
Walzer proposed, that set of commonly accepted, but largely
unarticulated principles on which we base the arguments we
have about war 17 ? Or does it mean the just war doctrine as it
developed and is maintained within the Christian, or specifically
within the Catholic tradition? 18 The answer can make a considerable
difference to the way in which the doctrine is interpreted.
The criteria of the JWD, as stated above, are abstracted
from the tradition or traditions within which they were formed,
and if they are to be understood must be interpreted within
those traditions. Since the question to be answered in this article
is the appropriateness of the use of the doctrine by Catholic
spokespersons, the following explanation will be concerned
principally with the Catholic tradition, while taking others into
account.
Since there is no generally accepted notion of “tradition,”
and in particular of the kind of moral tradition we are dealing
with here, it will be necessary to make some stipulations about
the meaning of tradition. John Courtney Murray, in discussing
the morality of war, referred to the “tradition of reason,” but
without explaining in any depth what this might mean. 19 What I
16 J. BRYAN HEHIR, “What can be done? What should be done?” America
Oct. 8, 2001,URL http://www.americapress.org/terror.htm.
17 cf. MICHAEL WALZER, Just and Unjust War (New York: Basic Books,
1977).
18
JOSEPH JOBLIN, L’Église et la Guerre: Conscience, violence, pouvoir
(Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1988) 9.
19 John Courtney Murray, S.J. “The Problem of the Moral Vacuum,” in
Idem., We Hold These Truths (London: Sheed and Ward, 1960) 285.