DOSSIER CENTRALE
PROFETI DELL’AMORE
E SERVITORI DELLA RICONCILIAZIONE
As a consequence of the murderous attacks committed on Tuesday September 11, we, the victims, need to think clearly and act justly, without malice or hatred in our heart.
Some have called for this to be a time of reconciliation. Although well intended and religiously motivated, such appeals are not only premature, they are not grounded in the truth nor are they capable of attaining justice.
Our first obligation is to speak the truth in such a way that there is a correspondence between what happened and what is said about the events. On September 11 several thousand innocent people were randomly but deliberately murdered.
Those who planned, enabled, and carried out these acts are solely responsible for them and they alone bear the guilt. To imply that there is any other “cause” of these crimes is to weave a Narrative of the Lie which not only intends to negate the facts but also to deny the human dignity of the victims and to legitimize the rationale of the evil doers. “Reconciliation can only come about if the nature of the violence perpetrated is acknowledged, and its conditions for continuing or reappearing are removed”. This requires the proper naming of the crime, its victims and its perpetrators, and the initial steps to re-establish justice.
The first obligation of justice is punitive: the apprehension, trial, conviction, and punishment of the wrongdoers. A society cannot simply move on from and injustice to a state of reconciliation as though nothing had happened. The evil that has been done must be confronted and its first remedy is a justice that is punitive. Unlike reconciliation among individuals, the process of reconciliation on a societal level begins with repentance by the guilty, followed by forgiveness from the victims, and finally reconciliation is achieved. There is no possibility of reconciliation with unrepentant evil, the only remedy is punishment. “Legitimate public authority has the right and the duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offence”.
In his encyclical on The Gospel of Life (n. 55) Pope John Paul II lays out the nuanced but unequivocal teaching of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life and the obligations of self-defense. “… to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin. Only God is the master of life! Yet from the beginning, faced with the many and often tragic cases which occur in the life of individuals and society, Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding of what God’s commandment prohibits and prescribes. There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God’s Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defense, in which the right to protect one’s own life and the duty not to harm someone else’s life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defense. The demanding commandment of love of neighbor, set forth in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, itself presupposes love of oneself as the basis of comparison: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:31) … Moreover, “legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life, the common good of the family or of the State”.
Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason”.
Therefore, as Catholics, it is our duty to affirm that the united governments of the world have the moral right and obligation to punish all those who are accurately identified as having planned, enabled or abetted the mass murders of September 11, 2001, and to render them incapable of committing similar violence in the future (ius ad bellum). In addition, it is our duty to be vigilant and to hold the governments accountable to the just conduct of self-defense in regard to proportionality and noncombatant immunity (ius in bello). Only proportionate force is morally justifiable, but the force must at least be proportionate to achieve the goals of justice, which are to punish the guilty and render them incapable of doing further harm.
Franklin, September 14th, 2001
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Paul J. McGuire, scj from the United States Province, has been the Director of the Dehon Study Center in Franklin, Wisconsin, since 1994. Prior to that he had been a teacher of theology, an university chaplain, and a pastor. He received a doctorate in theology from Fordham Jesuit University in New York City in 1976.
1. Rober J. Schreiter, Reconciliation. Mission and Ministry in a Changing Social Order, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books, 1992, p. 22.
2. Cf. Robert J. Schreiter, The Ministry of Reconciliation. Spirituality and Strategies, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books, 1998, p. 121.
3. Cf. Robert J. Schreiter, The Ministry of Reconciliation…, p. 64.
4. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Second Edition. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, # 2266.