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(CNSNews.com) – “Christians must do everything within their powers to protect their lives from being snuffed off by Satanist-driven Islamic organizations,” Bishop Joseph Bagobiri, the Roman Catholic head of Nigeria’s Kafanchan Diocese, said Sunday, according to Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper. Bishop Bagobiri also noted, according to the Vanguard, that Christians have a "grave duty" to use “moderate and proportionate force” to defend their families against Islamic groups such as Boko Haram, which is responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians since 2009. Boko Haram became internationally known after it staged a mass kidnapping of more than 250 Nigerian schoolgirls in...

In our constitutional republic there are two criteria for determining if an action by government is moral and/or legal. Would U.S. military action against ISIS, which has become the face of evil in the world at the moment, meet that criteria? The first criteria is the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God." This requires the action committed by government to be moral, which means to be in accordance with natural law. This natural law requires military action to be morally justified given the human toll at stake. Dating all the way back to Augustine's City of God, this is what's...

Might moral theology, in the form of the venerable just-war tradition of moral reasoning, point a path beyond the fantastic mess that is American policy toward an imploding Syria — a fiasco created by the Obama administration’s dangerous combination of ideological besottedness, fecklessness, and mind-boggling incompetence? The question is not as odd as it may seem at first blush. For the better part of 1,500 years, the just-war tradition — initially developed by such sophisticated thinkers as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas — has provided a framework for collaborative deliberation about ordering various means (armed force and other instruments of political...

Bishops want to apologise for Iraq war By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent BISHOPS of the Church of England want all Britain’s Christian leaders to get together in public to say sorry for the war in Iraq and its aftermath. The bishops say that the Government is not likely to show remorse so the churches should. They want to organise a major gathering with senior figures from the Muslim community to make a “public act of repentance”. The bishops admit that their suggestion is provocative and bound to attract massive criticism, but insist it is not “a cheap gesture”. Their renewed...

Ecumenical Councils of War by David B. Hart An Antiochene Orthodox priest of my acquaintance recently told me, with every appearance of sincerity, that he had converted to the Eastern Church because he was a pacifist. For a moment, I was uncertain as to whether he was attempting to baffle me with some cunningly constructed paradox. I would have found it a no more impenetrable non sequitur had he announced that he had joined the local Elks’ lodge because of his passion for beautiful young women, or that he enjoyed reading Calvin for the witticisms. But it soon became...

On a thread regarding Vatican condemnation of Israel's killing of the terrorist Yassin, a poster wrote that "Just War Theory is not 'Church Doctrine.' The Church can never endorse violent action." I am not Catholic but am surprised to hear that St. Augustine's and St. Thomas Aquinas' theories about when it is proper to wage war have no theological standing. So, I am putting the question to any interested Catholics on this thread: Is Just War Theory, as developed by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, official Church doctrine (e.g., Christ's teachings), or are Christ's teachings limited to remaining within...

The most important statement on the war, defining America’s intentions, was that of Colin Powell. Evidently, former the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, asked him at a conference in Davos, Switzerland, if the United States should not have chosen “soft power” (promote moral and democratic values) as opposed to “hard power,” that is force. The Secretary of State thought a bit and answered that it took “hard power” to free Europe before “soft power” could be used. “We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years.... We have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury...

Introduction Just war theory deals with the justification of how and why wars are fought. The justification can be either theoretical or historical. The theoretical aspect is concerned with ethically justifying war and forms of warfare. The historical aspect, or the "just war tradition" deals with the historical body of rules or agreements applied (or at least existing) in various wars across the ages. For instance international agreements such as the Geneva and Hague conventions are historical rules aimed at limiting certain kinds of warfare. It is the role of ethics to examine these institutional agreements for their philosophical coherence...

Moral Clarity in a Time of War George Weigel Copyright (c) 2002 First Things 128 (December 2002): xx-xx.In Book Three of Tolstoy’s epic, War and Peace, the hero, Pierre Bezukhov, arrives at the battlefield of Borodino to find that the fog of war has descended, obscuring everything he had expected to be clear. There is no order, there are no familiar patterns of action, all is contingency. He could not, Count Bezukhov admits, “even distinguish our troops from the enemy’s.” And the worst is yet to come, for once the real fighting begins, chaos takes over in full.From the Iliad...