Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

ance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust for power, and such like
things, all these are rightly condemned in war.“ Whoever wages war with such an intention
incurs serious guilt, even if the war was begun with a just cause. 22
It is a testimony to the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas that his three conditions for a just war
were taken over by the theologians of later centuries. Theologians point out explicitly that a
war „for the expansion of the kingdom“ and „for the glory of the prince,“ thus an imperialistic
war of conquest, is a crime. 23
Whoever abuses the property or life of his citizens in order to become famous is, according to
Francisco de Vitoria († l546), not a king, but a tyrant. 24
Theologians were, of course, aware that the wars waged at that time were frequently, or usually,
a violation of the Christian message of peace. With relish they tell a story that Augustine
quoted in his City of God from Cicero 25 A pirate was once brought before Alexander the
Great. „Alexander asked him why he was making the seas unsafe with his plundering. He
answered with obstinate candor that he was doing it for the same reasons that Alexander was
pursuing the whole world. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘because I do it with a small ship, they call me
a robber. Because you, however, do the same thing with a mighty fleet, that is, with a multitude
of nations, you are called Emperor. For there is no other difference between you and me
except that I am compelled by need and you by limitless greed.’ Finally, Alexander died and
was plunged into Hell with his plunder.“ 26 „Who could count up all the evils,“ writes the
Florentine Archbishop Antonym in the fifteenth century, „that wars entail! Plunder without
end among friend and foe. So many rapes, adulteries, ravishments, and fornications!“ 27 In the
sixteenth century, Bartholomé de Las Casas designated the colonial war in America as „robbing,
giving scandal, dragging men off to prison, tearing them to pieces, depopulating kingdoms,
and making the Christian faith and the Christian religion a stinking refuse among the
peaceful heathen.“ 28
The traditional teaching on war and peace sought not to open the door to war, but to set limits
to war. Jörg Fisch has demonstrated that the conclusion of a peace treaty in the Middle Ages
was determined by the notions „guilt - repentance - forgiveness,“ which were expressed by
words like ‘forgiveness’ and ‘pardon’. In the modern period, secularized terms such as „cancellation,“
„forgetting,“ and „amnesty“ have taken their place. 29 Another spirit speaks from
the Christian tradition on war and peace than from the words of Heinrich Rogge that war is „a
habit of the collective struggle which man has in common with some other (!) social animals.“
30 Carl Ph. G. von Clausewitz also erred when he thought at that time that the wars of modern,
educated peoples are „much less cruel and destructive than the wars of earlier times.“ 31 The
proclivity towards unscrupulous, extreme violence is inherent in war as such. The more ‘distant
from God’ mankind becomes, the more cruel will be the forms that wars assume.
22 Thomas Aquinas, II-II, 40, 1, c.
23 Cf., for instance, Francisco de Vitoria, Relectio „De jure belli“ (Getino), II:398; and Luis de Molina, De justi-
tia et jure, Tract. II, disp. l02, n. 2
24 Op. cit., 399.
25 The passage is found in Cicero, De republica, Lib. 3, and in Augustine, De Civitas Dei, Lib. 4, c. 4.
26 The text is found in Antonin of Florence, Summa theologiae, Pars II, Tit. 1, c. 12, § 3.
27 Ibid., Pars II, Tit. 7, c. 7, § 3.
28 Bartholomé de Las Casas, Disputatio Controversia con G. de Sepulveda, Resp. ad obj. 4, p. 100.
29 Jörg Fisch, Krieg und Frieden im Friedensvertrag. Eine universalgeschichtliche Studie über Grundlagen und
Formelemente des Friedensschlusses (Stuttgart, 1981).
30 Heinrich Rogge, Nationale Friedenspolitik (Berlin, 1934), 537.
31 Carl Ph. G. von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 9th ed. (Berlin-Leipzig, 1915), 4 (1st ed. 1832-1834). Lenin recommended
that all party functionaries „thoroughly study“ this work.
142