J.K. CREEVEY’S strange and rambling defence of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as ‘the lesser of two evils’ (CL 25/7/04) would surely make the original formulators of the just war theory shake their heads in despair.
The attack on Iraq was condemned tirelessly by the Pope and declared ‘unjust and immoral’ in a statement endorsed by Australian Catholic bishops in March 2003.
Still, like every war since Constantine, it has been declared to fit the ‘just war’ theory by many Christians.
Similarly most Catholics in World War II Germany fought for Hitler with a good conscience, buoyed by their theologians’ assurances that Hitler’s wars of liberation were just.
Perhaps it is time to abandon the just war theory as a failed exercise and indeed a contradiction of the non-violent message of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps we should see again Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ with an open mind and we may be able to see Jesus’ total rejection of violence as a solution to our problems.
After much study of the Gospels and observing how Christians lived, Mahatma Ghandi declared that ‘Christians are the only ones who can’t see that the message of Christianity is non-violence’.
Of course non-violence does not mean non-action, as Ghandi, and indeed Jesus Christ, showed us.
If we had a tiny bit of faith, (maybe not even as big as a mustard seed), perhaps we could honestly embrace the non-violent message of Jesus and not continually return to the ‘redemptive violence’ of ‘this world’ for solutions to our problems.
JIM DOWLING
Ocean View, Qld
