From the Editor’s Desk

As this issue goes to press, the world watches in heart-wrenching dismay the violence being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine, staggering violations of human dignity reported in disturbing textual detail and hauntingly graphic images. Over fifty years after Paul VI’s 1965 exhortation to the United Nations, “No more war, war never again,” Pope Francis has cuttingly condemned this most recent conflict as “a cruel and senseless war,” where “the powerful decide and the poor die.” War is “a barbarous and sacrilegious act!” ¹

The treatment of civilians by Russian forces has generated outrage in the international community, and perhaps that outrage offers a bitter consolation, as it might reflect some scintilla of moral progress. The carpet bombing by Allied forces in World War II, in contrast, provoked mostly silence. John Ford was one of the few to challenge the practice in his 1944 article “The Morality of Obliteration Bombing”—which remains the most cited essay ever published by this journal. ²

We in the US can acknowledge our luxury, privilege, of debating the morality of war at a comfortable distance from the consequences of war itself and of our deliberations about it. The debate, nonetheless, must be had, and removal from war’s fog sometimes allows, we can hope, something approaching genuine insight.

Deliberations about just war have appeared in a number of TS essays, and I call your attention to several signposts among them. ³ In his 1959 “Remarks on the Moral Problem of War,” John Courtney Murray asks whether the advent of “nuclear arms” and “the methods of bacteriological and chemical warfare” argue for a relative Christian pacificism, not that “war is intrinsically evil” but rather that it “has now become an evil that may no longer be justified.” He answers, however, that this view cannot “be squared with the public doctrine of the Church.” ⁴ At the same time, he argues that significant, new restraints on war were imposed by Pius XII. As a result, the only just war now possible is a defensive war, and any other reason for going to war must be rejected. As Murray summarizes:

The justness of the cause is irrelevant; there simply is no longer a right of self-redress; no individual state may presume to take even the cause of justice into its own hands. Whatever the grievance of the state may be, and however objectionable it may find the status quo, warfare undertaken on the sovereign decision of the national state is an immoral means for settling the grievance and for altering existent conditions. ⁵

The 1983 letter by the US Catholic bishops, “The Challenge of Peace,” generated a flurry of debates about just war, during both the letter’s preparation and its aftermath. The bishops generally agreed with Murray’s verdict that the advent of nuclear weapons did not preclude just warfare, but were more appreciative of the burgeoning pacifist tradition and more cognizant of the distinctive dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction. The debate surrounding the letter is well summarized in a literature review provided by John Langan in his 1985 “Moral Notes.” ⁶

In the 1991 Gulf War, US-led coalition forces successfully intervened to reverse Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. Commentators have noted similarities and contrasts between that conflict and the war in Ukraine. For those wanting an overview of the concerns raised by the Gulf War, John Langan once again comes to our assistance, this time in his 1992 “Just-War Theory after the Gulf War.” ⁷

Kenneth Himes examines the status of just war theory after the 2003 start of the protracted Iraqi War. ⁸ He agrees with Murray’s verdict that Catholic just war theory has held, in the wake of Pius XII’s teachings, that only a defensive war undertaken to resist aggression can be considered justifiable. However, that limited justification for war is being challenged by new contemporary threats that, one could argue, demand an interventionist war to address: humanitarian crises, threats of terrorism, and the prevention of nuclear proliferation. Himes examines each of these to assess whether they require revisions to just war theory. He concludes that contemporary church teaching has yet to achieve conceptual clarity on the matter but instead continues to espouse, as it has since the 1980s, an approach that comprises an unclear mixture of pacifist and just war elements.

For a final suggestion, I note Lisa Sowle Cahill’s 2019 review essay “Just War, Pacifism, Just Peace, and Peacebuilding”—a great resource for understanding the contemporary Christian terrain. ⁹ In addition to describing different approaches that support some form of just war along with their pacifist counter-voices, she looks at what some propose as an alternative to the traditional just war framework: just peace. This approach advocates for a spirituality of nonviolence that takes inspiration from Christ and argues that the creative tools of nonviolence are more capable of transforming society’s violent forces and thus are more promising of effecting a sustainable and lasting peace.

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The journal hopes to contribute to these deliberations about war in a future issue, but for now we turn to other important discussions. Each of this issue’s four articles reflects the contemporary insight that social structures significantly shape our behaviors and attitudes. Anyone interested in a quick and helpful overview of some of the most theologically relevant sociological and structural theories can find it in Richard Gaillardetz’s “The Chimera of a ‘Deinstitutionalized Church.’” He makes a convincing case that critical realism (one of the several sociological schools of thought discussed) offers an effective tool for ecclesial reform: it identifies possible modifications to church practices and structures that can help correct underlying problems while also preserving the good of institutional life.

Karen Peterson-Iyer’s “Human Trafficking, Coercion, and Moral Agency in Agricultural Labor” and Paul Scherz’s “Data Ethics, AI, and Accompaniment” both highlight structures that threaten human dignity. Peterson-Iyer examines the situation of agricultural laborers. The social forces, practices, and structures confronting them are severe and constrain their agency in significant ways. In a meaningful sense, these laborers are coerced into the work they do and the conditions in which they do it—an unjust circumstance that should lead us to reconsider our understanding of and public response to trafficking in agricultural labor. Scherz’s focus is on medicine’s growing reliance on data and AI to make judgments about patient care. Data processing is used to help physicians and social workers identify regimens that are both promising and cost effective. However, the danger, as Scherz shows, is that relying on such processed and filtered data can ignore the important particulars of a patient’s circumstance and, ultimately, undermine the personal accompaniment with the patient that is so valued in the Catholic medical tradition.

Antonio Alonso’s “A Blemished Offering” looks at the historical case of Bartolomé de Las Casas and his conversion away from an earlier support for and participation in slavery. Against a well-known account of this conversion, which stressed its immediate, “epiphanic” nature, Alonso shows that there were several stages that preceded his conversion and at least one that followed it. Las Casas’s early assessment about his newly achieved ethical purity ended up being premature and hasty, cautioning us that one-time conversions rarely suffice for detaching ourselves from sinful structures.

Helping us better understand the complicated process of conversion and human resistance to it is, I believe, one of Bernard Lonergan’s more important contributions. We can be thankful then, that the late Robert Doran—a prolific North American theologian, key expositor of Lonergan, and editor of his collected works—took Lonergan’s insights and developed them further. In our final offering for this June issue (before our book reviews and shorter notices), John Dadosky’s “Reaching up to the Mind of Lonergan” provides a rich overview of Doran’s life and his contributions to theology. Particularly helpful is his explanation of how Doran introduced a psychological component into Lonergan’s theory of conversion, one which supplemented the intellectual, moral, and religious levels already present in his approach.

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The journal notes with sadness the passing of Andrew J. Christiansen. Drew was a generous contributor and reviewer for Theological Studies, and, among many areas of scholarly expertise, was one of the church’s recognized experts on just war theory. His upbeat, gentle kindness towards others will be missed in the Georgetown community, Jesuit and at large. RIP, Drew.

With hope in the resurrection, the journal wishes its contributors, co-laborers, and readers a blessed Easter, one graced by that fragile and timeless belief that God will transform whatever goodness can be found in our labors and make them leaven for a better world.

Christopher Steck, SJEditor in Chief