In an article published simultaneously in L’Osservatore Romano and in Vatican News (the latter in several languages) on Oct. 6, Catholic University of Milan professor Luigi Franco Pizzolato adds weight to the Pope’s campaign against the doctrine of “just war.”
Under the headline, “St Augustine’s Reservations About ‘Just War‘”, Prof. Pizzolato demonstrates that the paternity of the Just War doctrine is wrongly attributed to Augustine; in reality, Augustine was against war even when it might seem justified. The strongest evidence of that is Augustine’s exposure of the Roman Empire tactics of creating alleged military threats to justify “just wars” of aggression.
“Augustine observes that throughout the history of the world, in a humanity marked by sin, just war is a condition that, strictly speaking, does not exist,” Pizzolato writes, “because in the real world even a just war is both an effect and a cause of sin and serves, at best, to disguise it. For more than a thousand years, the Roman state expanded its dominion precisely by invoking the principle of ‘just war’. Taking as a pretext acts of injustice—real or alleged—that arose in different parts of the world, Rome intervened militarily, ostensibly to redress them but in reality to expand its empire and impose its own order: ‘The injustice of those against whom just wars have been waged has contributed to the increase in the power of those who waged them […] Injustice played a major part in increasing their power and created the unjust, so that there would be people against whom just wars could be waged and power increased’ (The City of God, IV, 15).”
The analogy with current events is striking.
In another section of his The City of God, Augustine wrote, a state “will never be able to exercise lasting dominion over those whom it has succeeded in subjugating through military victories” (The City of God, XV, 5).
And later on, “Augustine argues that ‘the wise man’ is reluctant to wage ‘just’ wars because, precisely because they are just, he feels obliged to fight them; yet in doing so, he violates his own role as a wise man. To remain true to his nature, he should not find any necessity for war, not even in the face of injustice (The City of God, XIX, 7).
“Whereas in the first observation Augustine, as a historian, highlights the will to power historically inherent in just war—which serves instead to advance the imperialism of the stronger party—in the second, as a wise man, he identifies the contradiction inherent in the very concept of just war,” Pizzolato writes.
“… It seems to me that, from an Augustinian perspective, just war represents the latent presence, under a false guise, of that sin which, in the dark and evocative words of Genesis (Genesis 4:7), lies crouching at the door of violent Cain.
“It is for each reader to judge how deeply Augustine’s observations may penetrate the very logic of our own thinking. They accord with another, more luminous and more emphatic statement by Augustine, again from his later period and therefore, one might say, representing a concluding position: ‘It is more glorious to kill war with words than men with the sword, and to acquire and obtain peace through peace, not through war’ (Letters, 229, 2).
“This is a hymn to the true mission of political wisdom. It challenges the idea that peace can ever be the fruit of war and calls instead for a dialogical and persuasive search for solutions to conflicts, before they degenerate into war; it also channels the pursuit of worldly glory, so characteristic of the politician, towards peace.”
