Posted on 09/15/2013 10:52:48 AM PDT by RBStealth
Pacifism is the capitulation of orthodox Christianity to the pagan Enlightenment.
Forty years ago a tide of pacifism swept through the Christian churches as again it is doing today. In 1940, Reinhold Niebuhr tried to stem this tide with a book of essays entitled Christianity and Power Politics. “It is the thesis of these essays,” he wrote, “that modern liberal perfectionism actually distills moral perversity out of moral absolutes. It is unable to make significant distinctions between tyranny and freedom because it can find no democracy pure enough to deserve its devotion; and in any case it can find none which is not involved in conflict, in its effort to defend itself against tyranny.” Then he added a most damning indictment of liberal perfectionism: “It is unable to distinguish between the peace of capitulation to tyranny and the peace of the Kingdom of God.”
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The Roman Catholic has Bellum iustum, going back to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.
Excellent article from 1984. The truths contained therein are even more obvious today. Pacifism in the face of evil is cowardice.
True. But just war theory does not support fighting a war on the wrong side, as Clinton and Obama have both insisted on doing.
Also, as a reminder, just war theory does not support starting a war unless you intend to win it. Killing a few people and then backing off or fiddling around endlessly are not good options.
As Dwight Eisenhower told JFK just before the Bay of Pigs, Don’t start a war unless you intend to win it. And he would have said the same thing about the conduct of the Vietnamese War. Nothing wrong with that war in principle, except that JFK and LBJ just didn’t try to win it.
How do the Christian Pacifists explain Joshua, David et al?
bookmark
Ya wanna know why the church went “Pacifist”, lack of pastor like this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_T._O%27Callahan
Not true - JFK fought to win, and was winning, and planned on finishing up and pulling out.
LBJ was part of the group that saw that as a problem.
“Christian””Pacifists”= DAMN SELFISH COWARDS
Jesus surrendering to his captors was not pacifism. The believers in Hebrews who”joyfully accepted the confiscation of [their] property” were not pacifists. A couple of examples that require faith to know when to fight and when to surrender.
Certainly in general, pacifism in earthly government is suicidal: “Whatever allows itself to be devoured is devoured, and no one thanks one for it”—Amiel
Yes and no. JFK was doing fairly well, until the Buddhists started burning themselves up to protest a war led by the Catholic head of state of South Vietnam and the “colonialist” Americans.
As it notes in the Pentagon Papers, JFK ordered the CIA to assassinate Diem. That basically killed the alliance, and made it necessary for the Americans to do most of the fighting that the South Vietnamese had been doing. It was basically all downhill from there.
I agree that LBJ made things much, much worse. But it started under Kennedy. I’m afraid that Kennedy was terrified of being criticized as a Catholic President himself—the first Catholic President—so he went out of his way never to act like a Catholic. Assassinating his loyal ally, Diem, was one example of that stupid policy.
Niebuhr had lived through 1942, when it seemed that Western Civilization was about to come crashing down.
Ike had helped set up the Bay of Pigs operation. If Nixon had won, it would have been set in motion as originally planned, and Castro would have been gone.
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