Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

„guile of a purely tactical pacifism which narcotizes the opponent one wishes to overcome
and kills the sense of justice, duty, and sacrifice in people’s minds.“ 35
Second, it does not serve peace if the Sermon on the Mount is misinterpreted. The message of
the Sermon on the Mount „left the people spellbound“ (Mt 7:28) even at that time. We too
should be spellbound when we hear the words of Jesus: „Offer no resistance to injury. When a
person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other...Love your enemies, pray
for your persecutors“ (Mt 5:39, 44).
Christian love „does not put on airs.“ „It is not self-seeking, it is not prone to anger; neither
does it brood over injuries“ (l Co l3:4-5). It does not avenge itself through reprisals, but is
ready to renounce its own right and to tolerate injustice for the sake of reconciliation. Every
Christian should be filled with this attitude; one should also urge it upon one’s neighbor. I am
therefore not able to agree with Johann Baptist Metz when he says that the Christian „is not
allowed to encourage the one who has been struck on the right cheek to hold out the left.“ 36
The exhortation to reconciliation and to the renunciation of retaliation holds, not only for the
individual Christian, but also for states. St. Augustine pointed out that „cruel vindictiveness“
and an „irreconcilable attitude“ are culpable even in war. 37 The case can arise where a state
must renounce its legal claims for the sake of peace.
Jesus’ summons to reconciliation and to the renunciation of revenge does not, however, mean
that law and order are abrogated. The individual person as well as the state can renounce this
or that right, but may never deliver right itself and truth itself up to injustice and lies. When
Jesus was struck on the face by the court attendant, he did not offer him his left cheek, but
answered: „If I said anything wrong produce the evidence, but if I spoke the truth why hit
me?“ (Jn l8:23). Another time „he made a (kind of) whip of cords“ and drove the traders „out
of the temple area“ (Jn 2:l5). That was no contradiction to the Sermon on the Mount. The
governmental authority, which assures the common life of people through the order of law, is
„established by God...It is not without purpose that the ruler carries the sword; he is God’s
servant, to inflict his avenging wrath upon the wrongdoer“ (Rom l3:l, 4). The government is
obligated to defend the life and freedom of its citizens against unjust aggressors. The Sermon
on the Mount does not forbid that. Had the state of Israel been in existence during the last
world war, and had the National Socialist army advanced against that country, Jewish soldiers
would have had to defend the lives of their women and children and should have done so.
Third, it does not serve peace if the use of violence is recommended to revolutionary movements.
Warlike acts of violence on the part of revolutionary movements have increased considerably
in recent decades, especially in the Near East, in Ireland, in Latin America, and in
Africa. Even if no new world war has broken out, local acts of war have nevertheless been so
frequent that in the years l945 to l980 there were only sixty days on which there was no war in
the world. 38
The demand of the traditional teaching, which does stand in the service of peace, that intranational
authorities and movements, such as cities and provinces, 39 not wage war is being undermined.
35
„Botschaft Papst Pauls VI. an alle Menschen guten Willens vom 8. Dezember l967 mit der Aufforderung,
künftig den 1. Januar auf der ganzen Welt als Tag des Friedens zu begehen,“ in: Dienst am Frieden, pp. 85, 87.
36
Johann Baptist Metz, „Laudatio auf Ernesto Cardenal,“ in Hinweise für Öffentlichkeitsarbeit (Bundesministerium
der Verteidigung, January 12, 1981), 12.
37
Augustine, Contra Faustum, Lib. 22, c. 74.
38
Cf. the French commission, Justice et Paix, „Le Monde entre deux Eres,“ in Überlegungen über Krieg und
Frieden in der gegenwärtigen Zeit, February 20, 1980, p. 2.
39
Cf., for instance, Luis de Molina, De justitia et jure, Tr. II, disp. 100, n. 14; Francisco Suàrez, Tractatus de
Caritate, III, 13, sect. 2, n. 2.
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