Freedom Fighters of Old
Antiochus wanted to have a world that was conformable to the Greek understanding of civilization. It bothered him a great deal that a little captive nation called “Israel” or “Judea” would not get with the program and just be Greek, much as it bothers certain figures in the Islamic world that the “dar el Harb” (or “world of war”) will not just get with the program and become Muslim.
So Antiochus struck upon an ingeniously simple-minded solution: terrorize the people of Israel into being Greek. The books of the Maccabees portray some of the scenes from this terror campaign. A mother and her seven sons, slowly tortured to death one by one for refusing to renounce the faith of Israel. Pigs slaughtered on the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem. Various acts of state-sponsored terror against any and all in Israel who would not comply with the New Order. It all seems so very familiar.
Israel, that great and noble nation, the bearers of God's burden of revelation to the world, looked as if it was to go under for sure. But then, one day, a man named Mattathias and his sons stood assembled along with the rest of a crowd of cowed Israelites, watching somebody step forward to offer sacrifice like a good toadie to the regime. The man in the crowd and his sons had had enough. They sprang forward, killed the traitor and the government officials running the charade, and mounted a long and successful campaign to throw these brutal thugs out of the Holy Land, and gain back the Temple from the hands of its desecrators. It is a story of courage, derring-do, and sheer grit that would thrill the heart of anybody who loves Robin Hood, Star Wars, or Braveheart. These people were simply Right. And they fought for the Right nobly and well. Along with a coalition of freedom fighters, they threw off the yoke of terrorism and ethnic cleansing. They stood tall against evil. They were genuinely great men.
And, in due time, they and the various other freedom fighters who fought off the threat of domination by the Gentiles gave rise to the Pharisees, who hated, plotted against, and ultimately sought the death of the Son of God.
Desire for Vengeance
The books of the Maccabees stand, in their curious way, as a warning of the enormous danger we face in being Right. Really Right. Deeply and profoundly Right. For when you are Right, and even more, when you are a victim of cruel evil as we are, who is there to tell you when you do wrong? Who will dare speak when the legitimate desire for justice mutates into the illegitimate desire for vengeance? Who will dare speak when the wronged victim takes up the tactics of the victimizer to win? Who will dare speak when we make our right of victory absolute and more important than the counsels of God himself.
It is a real question and it faces us now. Make no mistake. I support the American-led war against the terrorists and the rogue states that feed, clothe, house, support, network, and very possibly direct them. These people must be stamped out, their infrastructure destroyed, and the states who have given them shelter filled with terror at the thought of ever giving them shelter again. Our cause is, I believe, completely righteous. Not to prosecute that war would be, I believe, a far more grave evil since it will guarantee future — and worse — acts of war. Prudence (that is, the clear-eyed recognition of what is and of how to respond accordingly) clearly demands that war be waged till this threat is crushed with overwhelming force, rooted out, and exterminated. No half measures. Destruction for terrorism, utter and complete. Prudence demands it and Justice approves it.
But there is another cardinal virtue: Temperance. What of it? Catholic Just War theory tells us (CCC 2309) “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.”
Already there are voices in our midst calling for the use of nuclear weapons in this war. Such weapons are simply impossible to justify from Catholic teaching. Their indiscriminate nature means we are effectively targeting whole populations, combatant and non-combatant alike. Arguments such as “they did it first” are to be repudiated by any thinking Catholic. Arguments about the need to win “by any means necessary” take us back to rudiments of moral reasoning repudiated by the gospel itself. There simply is no way a Catholic can say, “Let us do evil that good may result” (Romans 3:7-8).
Temperance and Fortitude
Catholic teaching forever finds itself at cross purposes with the world. On September 10, 2001, a huge number of Americans would have agreed that Christians centuries ago betrayed all it meant to be Christian to engage in battle with attacking Islamic forces at Lepanto. True Christians should have just rolled over and taken it. All war was wrong. Christians who attempt to justify it were just hypocrites. True Christianity was indistinguishable from pacifism for many, many Americans.
The next day the world changed forever. We discovered again the barbaric ferocity of which men are capable. We discovered again that there is Just War and that it would be irresponsible to deny it. But beyond the boundaries of the Church (and within it), people are now discovering other, darker things. They are discovering vengeance. They are saying, “May God have mercy on you for we will have none.” They are discovering the sinister thrill of being able to unleash pure, unashamed hatred at a truly evil foe. They are discovering the dark joy of being able to contemplate and enact the full fury of the might of this nation on the heads of those who hurt us. They are discovering the dangerous truth that there is really quite little to stop us should we unite in an orgy of rage.
What they may not be discovering (in a culture as emotionally incontinent as ours has become in the Age of Jerry Springer) is the need for Temperance in this war lest we forget that we too are fallen. The voices calling for nuclear attacks on rogue states are hearing only Justice, not Temperance. They are, like all heresies, taking part of the truth (the bit about Justice) and forgetting the rest of Catholic teaching: that war is to be made against warriors, not against civilians. They are adopting, slowly but surely, the mind that blew up the World Trade Center.
Christians must denounce this as forcefully as they denounced the attack on the WTC. It means, of course, that Christians will be in the weird position of having to defend peace to a warlike nation as they have to defend just war to a pacifistic one. And this will be all the more difficult because America's cause is, in very truth, just and right. It will call for the last of the cardinal virtues — Fortitude — to do it well.
(Mark Shea is a writer/editor for Catholic Exchange and Catholic Scripture Study. You may visit his new website at www.mark-shea.com.)
