Rick Santorum’s pattern of deviation from core Catholic teachings
This post is really easy to write, as somebody else has done the work! John Gehring has written a fantastic piece, detailing the many ways in which Santorum’s views deviate from Church teachings on so many important issues.
But I admit to grudging respect for Santorum. He is well-intentioned, and sincerely believes what he says – a vast improvement over the corporate ghoul that is currently the Republican front-runner. But I fear that he is just as influenced by the flawed theology of much of American evangelicalism than he is by his own church.
Faced with such a litany of deviation, our friends on the right would normally dub him a “dissident Catholic”, a “cafeteria Catholic”, or a “Catholyc”. But of course, we know that is not going to happen – because it’s not really Catholic teachings they care most about, is it?
“He is well-intentioned, and sincerely believes what he says”
I can no more say that about mr. santorum than I can anyone else I do not know personally.
I do not know what lies in his heart.
I suppose I should have written “he seems well-intentioned…”
Some of the points are tendentious.
1) There’s nothing in Catholic teaching that expressly contemplates public sector unions, and the reasons for supporting unions (workers vs. capital owners) are completely inapplicable to the public sector. In the public sector, particularly as to teachers’ unions, the “workers” are electing their own bosses for the most part, and there’s no profit-making enterprise in the first place wherein capital owners might be keeping an unfair share.
2) There’s a wonderful book on the financial crisis from U. Penn Press, making the case that it was capital adequacy regulations (plus risk categories that favored mortgage-backed securities) that really led to the financial crisis. http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14917.html An office in the Vatican has no competency to declare the “truth” on a matter such as this.
(1) You misunderstand the source of Church teaching on unions. It derives from the natural right to form associations. That applies equally to the public sector. And it is certainly possible that public sector workers are denied justice in wages, working conditions etc. And by the way, what is Santorum’s record of support for private sector unions?
(2) There were many regulatory causes of the crisis. Basel was certainly not blameless. Under it, banks held too little capital, especially systemic banks; the system of risk rating was bogus, and banks were actually allowed assess their own risk, and could avoid holding capital against assets held off balance sheets. But there were
other problems unrelated to Basel, such as unregulated predatory mortgage lending, a lack of derivatives regulation, no controls on size or too-big-to-fail, compensation based on short-term returns, and a philosophy that raised profit and shareholder value above all else.
There’s nothing in Catholic teaching that expressly contemplates public sector unions,
That is really not true. The Church mostly has taught about unions in general, not so much about particular kinds of union (public, private, non-profit employers; craft or industrial unions; amalgamated or single shop unions). Her teachings apply to the natural law right for workers to form union. Finding insufficent commentary on a specific type of unions is like saying the Church doesn’t expressly address union’s who name starts with the letter “A”.
Cardinal Gibbons had warm relations with the German and Irish Catholic led union at the Government Printing Office. Lech Walesa was a government employee as were the founding members of Soldiarnosc. There are European Catholic confessional public sector unions founded by the Church and in fact the Catholic unions are disproportionately public sector.
and the reasons for supporting unions (workers vs. capital owners) are completely inapplicable to the public sector.
MM answers this well. The Blessed Mother is free from original sin as a singular grace. Public sector employers are not and therefore the natural law right of workers to organize is not abrogated.
In the public sector, particularly as to teachers’ unions, the “workers” are electing their own bosses for the most part
There is no congressional district, state assembly district or school board district in the country where teachers are a majority of the electorate. Teachers retain their rights as American citizens, just as unionized private sector workers retain the rights as shareholders should they hold company stock.
Teachers are by far the most powerful interest group in American policies — their donations over the past twenty years outstrip any other single interest group, and they contribute hugely in terms of non-monetary volunteer efforts. Moreover, they vote in school board elections in large disproportion to their numbers.
There is absolutely no reason to think that they actually need, under Catholic teaching, the additional protection of collective bargaining rights to ensure that they have even more ability to stack the democratic process in their favor.
Yes, teachers are definitely more powerful than bankers, which is why they get trillion dollar bailouts and practical immunity from prosecution … oh, wait.
Seriously, your argument seems to rest on the fact that teachers have successfully organized. Penalize success. A strange argument for a “conservative.” Is there something you detect in Catholic teaching that says a group of workers has the right to organize so long as they are ineffectual?
There is absolutely no reason to think that they actually need, under Catholic teaching, the additional protection of collective bargaining rights
Secular conservatives trying to sound moderate concede the allowability of trade unions in extraordinary circumstances, all of which they find only exist in the past, never in the present day. The Church however, teaches that worker organization is not an extraordinary act to respond to an extraordinary denial of justice, but ordinary, normative, natural, universal and indispensible to economic justice.
No, the Church teaches nothing of what you stated.
Well, they have pension systems that are underfunded by nearly a collective trillion dollars nationwide, which means that they’re being promised pension benefits that they’re not paying for. So yes, they are extremely powerful as a political interest group. No serious observer of politics can deny that.
That’s unresponsive, too. If Bill Gates started a “CEO Union” to enable CEOs to bargain more effectively with boards, it would be perfectly alright to respond, “That’s not the sort of union that is contemplated by Catholic teaching, as CEOs aren’t generally in need of extra help to represent their interests.” And it would be quite silly to respond, as you did, by saying, ” Finding insufficent commentary on a specific type of unions is like saying the Church doesn’t expressly address union’s who name starts with the letter “A”.”
That’s not the point at all: the point is that the REASONS the Church gives for supporting unions are NOT reasons that generally apply to CEO unions, or to public sector unions either.
Then, in order to respond to that argument, you have to 1) be aware of the reasons that the Church gives for supporting something called “unions,” and 2) have an argument as to why those reasons are satisfied in this particular case.
Well, they have pension systems that are underfunded by nearly a collective trillion dollars nationwide, which means that they’re being promised pension benefits that they’re not paying for. So yes, they are extremely powerful as a political interest group.
Doesn’t follow. Look at Wisconsin. In collective bargaining, teachers and management negotiate over employer and employee contributions to the pension plan. The Union has negotiated less pay in exchange for higher employer contributions because of the tax advantage of doing it this way to employees with no additional cost to the schools. The pension fund must be fully funded based on management estimates of the return on investment (the union cannot negotiate over this factor). The shortfall is entirely do to management misestimating the fund’s performance in the Bush Recession. You can find that unavoidable or irresponsible on management’s part, but it has nothing to do with the union being too politically powerful.
That’s unresponsive, too. If Bill Gates started a “CEO Union” to enable CEOs to bargain more effectively with boards, it would be perfectly alright to respond, “That’s not the sort of union that is contemplated by Catholic teaching, …
Actually, Catholic Social Teaching DOES speak about how employers and managers should also form associations for the purposes of social solidarity and the advancement of their professional skills and legitimate interests. What you seem to be missing is the Church’s teaching on the social nature of man and how is it normative for workers (and others) to organize, not just something done in grave situations.
That’s not the point at all: the point is that the REASONS the Church gives for supporting unions are NOT reasons that generally apply to CEO unions, or to public sector unions either.
Then, in order to respond to that argument, you have to 1) be aware of the reasons that the Church gives for supporting something called “unions,” and 2) have an argument as to why those reasons are satisfied in this particular case.
The Church supports worker organization because it is natural. Man by his nature is social. Unions are not something that provisionally exist because of a transit and grave injustice but are the normative means of labor management relations.
The fact that the Church does not reject unions for the public sector is shown by her direct support and creation of public sector unions in Europe in the Christian Labor union federations; her support for the public sector union Solidarnosc in Poland; Cardinal Gibbons support for the union at the Government Printing Office; and even her recognition of a union where she is the public employer, namely the union for the lay employees of the Government of the Vatican City-State.
The shortfall is entirely do to management misestimating the fund’s performance in the Bush Recession
That is absolutely false. The recession didn’t help, but public pension funds were hundreds of billions underfunded as of 2006. This is because many of them made extravagant promises and even made them retroactive (such as California’s 3%-at-50 rule, adopted in 1999 under the false pretenses that it would be free).
As for the public sector unions you mention in Europe, were/are any of those the most politically powerful special interest group in their respective countries? And anyway,we’re getting two things confused here: whether employees have “associations” or whether they additionally get a huge artificial advantage in having collective bargaining rights.
Teachers in Texas, for example, have an official association, and that association does negotiate with school districts, but there is not any official collective bargaining. You haven’t shown me anything whatsoever indicating that Catholic teaching somehow frowns on the situation in Texas.
Well, read the book — they make a persuasive case that there’s no evidence for the factors that you mention. Greed, for example, doesn’t explain the crisis — greed for profit has always existed. What’s needed is an explanation for why greed was funneled in a particular in the 2000s. Their answer is capital requirements that actually gave preference to mortgage-backed securities, treating them as less risky than, say, business loans, along with mark-to-market requirements that forced banks to halt business lending as soon as their capital was marked down.
in a particular direction, that is.
As for other factors: I’m not sure what predatory mortgage lending even is (banks taking too much risk by giving people access to houses that they didn’t earn?), but it doesn’t explain why a full-fledged crisis emerged. As for a lack of derivatives regulation, it’s only because of naive hindsight bias that anyone imagines that regulatory agencies could ever have conceivably restricted or banned derivatives that, in the real world, were heavily *favored* by those same regulatory agencies.
It means inducing people to accept loans on highly unfavorable terms, even if they would qualify for better. The mortgage originators did this because they immediately sold the loans onto the investment banks, who kept demanding riskier loans that got them bigger profits as they sold them on. The investment banks became increasingly creative in piling up this crap into mortgage-backed securities and CDOs, stamped with a seal of approval from the idiotic credit rating agencies.
Why did a full-fledged crisis emerge? Very good question. It was not simply because a bunch of housing loans went bad and the underlying asset prices collapsed, although this did happen. On its own, this would have caused a manageable recession. No, what happened was the investment banks began magnifying the risk by using derivative products (CDSs) to create new “synthetic” CDOs. So the collapse was many times greater than it should have been.
And yes, there were plenty of sensible people calling for derivatives regulation at the time, but they were beaten down by vested interests. Why did Simon Johnson call his book “13 Bankers”? It refers to the line Larry Summers used to threaten Brooksley Born when she tried to regulate derivatives in the late 1990s.
There’s a huge amount of books out there telling this story. My two favorities are Johnson’s “13 Bankers” and Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short”.
“. The investment banks became increasingly creative in piling up this crap into mortgage-backed securities and CDOs, stamped with a seal of approval from the idiotic credit rating agencies.”
And what you’d see, if you read the book I mentioned, is that commercial banks (not investment banks, which weren’t the real problem) were investing in this stuff precisely because regulators and credit rating agencies (which had been given a regulatory monopoly) actually REWARDED having mortgage-backed securities as compared to other forms of capital.
SB, have you ever heard the term “regulatory capture?”
“13 Bankers” is outstanding, by the way.
Here’s one guy’s gut reaction to the “predatory lending” argument: http://rwcg.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/homeowners-hurt-by-the-crisis/
if that is your idea of intelligent commentary on the crisis, then it clearly explains the rest of your comments here. The words “facile” and “adolescent” come to mind.
Oh, well, I guess my criticism of favored Catholic lefties will not fly here. But maybe this will. Santorum is the antithesis politically of everything the Catholic Church has stood for ….ever. Ironically, he is even worse that the RC church’s worst moments. A nightmare.
I don’t like all these things about him either. But “show me the dogma.”
Vox Nova’s tactic has fallen ridiculously flat of trying to “give the conservative heresy-hunters a taste of their own medicine” by trying to draw equivalency with disagreement on the prudential question of the concrete means of implementing social teachings (of which the absolute abstract moral principles in themselves…are much broader and more vague than you’re making them out to be, and there IS plenty of room for debate on whether this or that given solution fulfills the criteria).
Now, albeit, I do generally believe the in the approach of the Vatican and USCCB towards economic questions and immigration and war, etc. But to act like Catholics have to toe the line on specific policy questions like that is very dangerous. The conservatives may (with things like the culture wars and abortion and gay issues) bring religion too much into politics, but the sort of “obedience” to “Catholic social teaching” you are proposing here would bring too much of politics into our religion!
I support both positions, to be sure, but amnesty for immigrants or supporting Medicaid or opposing the Iraq War…are simply not De Fide questions, and there is certainly a lot more room for debate and disagreement about the application of various moral principles there than is about the statement “the State has a duty to defend unborn life.”
You need to be careful not to get sucked into the right-wing game of drawing a clear line between one component of Catholic social teaching that is non-negotiable and another that is prudential, and so can be safely ignored. The Church has being saying very clearly that this is not right – from Pius XI/ John Paul II insisting that the teaching on economics is part of moral theology to Benedict XVI criticizing artificial divides.
True, some issues are more morally grave than others. If you like the distinction based on intrinsic evils, then Santorum is indicted for his support of torture (and disqualified from communion if you buy cardinal Burke’s logic). Torture is right up there in the hierarchy of modern evils in Gaudium Et Spes.
A more fundamental issue: it’s not so much the gravity of the issue itself that is important in these debates, but the ability of the person to influence it. Hence I would argue that Santorum as president would have little ability to influence abortion rates, but a great ability to bomb Iran, violate distributive justice, overturn health care reform and financial regulation, and destroy the environment. In each of these areas, he stands squarely against the Catholic position and would violate the common good.
One more point on the prudential issue. Yes, there are legitimate disagreements among Catholics on the application of principles to policy. But one must first have common agreement on the principles themselves. This is not the case with Santorum. He doesn’t understand the true meaning of solidarity, subsidiarity, the universal destination of goods, the priority of labor over capital, or the preferential option for the poor. He instead starts from the wrong premise – based more on American Protestantism and liberal thought than Catholicism.
“You need to be careful not to get sucked into the right-wing game of drawing a clear line between one component of Catholic social teaching that is non-negotiable and another that is prudential, and so can be safely ignored. The Church has being saying very clearly that this is not right – from Pius XI/ John Paul II insisting that the teaching on economics is part of moral theology to Benedict XVI criticizing artificial divides.”
That’s not the divide I’m proposing though. What I’m saying is that what constitutes the actual doctrine (ie, actual moral principles) in social teaching is much broader than some liberal Catholics give the impression. The casuistic implementation of moral principles to given concrete situations is always more a prudential question, and sometimes very contingent (and thus debatable) indeed, especially in the complex realm of social policy where the efficacy and hidden consequences of things can be so complex and hard to predict.
You’re speaking as if “the government must provide healthcare,” or “the US must give amnesty to illegal aliens,” or “Iraq should not have been invaded,” or “always side with the labor unions” or things like that are social teachings of the Church. They aren’t. They are one possible interpretation of how to apply the more general principles in our given historical situation. Claiming any more authority for them than that gets dangerous.
“I would argue that Santorum as president would have little ability to influence abortion rates, but a great ability to bomb Iran, violate distributive justice, overturn health care reform and financial regulation, and destroy the environment. In each of these areas, he stands squarely against the Catholic position and would violate the common good.”
Again, you act as if no war with Iran is “the Catholic position.” It’s not. The Catholic position on war is the “just war” thing. It is debatable whether any given war is just, debatable whether the threat Iran represents is “immediate” or merely “remote” etc.
There are general principles of justice too, but it is not clear that they mandate healthcare reform or a certain tax structure, or that a given environmental policy enshrines good stewardship (especially when it needs to be weighed against other priorities and considerations). The answer to that depends on concrete contingencies of the present social situation which are much more debatable.
“One more point on the prudential issue. Yes, there are legitimate disagreements among Catholics on the application of principles to policy. But one must first have common agreement on the principles themselves. This is not the case with Santorum. He doesn’t understand the true meaning of solidarity, subsidiarity, the universal destination of goods, the priority of labor over capital, or the preferential option for the poor. He instead starts from the wrong premise – based more on American Protestantism and liberal thought than Catholicism.”
Ah, now HERE is what you should be saying all along. If THIS can be proven (and I suspect you are right and that it’s true, though I am less sure that it could be definitively demonstrated) then THAT is what we should be concentrating on.
But you’d have to lay out statements that prove his error on these PRINCIPLES, and not merely assume it from the pattern of specific policies he supports.
Though I tend to hold the “Vox Nova” opinion on most of these social and economic questions (along with the USCCB and the Vatican)…I have seen orthodox Catholics make strong arguments for the opposite on almost all those questions, arguments by people who understand and accept the general principles you lay out, but who have nevertheless been able to make persuasive cases for how the opposite (in terms of concrete policy) could be reconciled with and even grounded in those principles. The differences usually being based on different analyses foreseeing what the concrete consequences will actually be (which is something relevant in the moral equation).
Now, almost all of those people “deviated” from what we might call “the USCCB Platform” on only a few cases, and were largely in agreement otherwise. When someone’s disagreement (like Santorum’s) is “across the board” in a manner that SEEMS to have an “internal logic” indicative of some OTHER underlying philosophy then, yes, I think we do need to be suspicious, cynical even.
Then again, shouldn’t we give the benefit of the doubt? Santorum has some positions that deviate from the conservative orthodoxy (about, say, foreign aid and education). Maybe he really has arrived at each of his positions FROM the Catholic principles (simply applied or argued differently than you and I, when it comes to the specific casuistry, which, as I’ve said, I’ve seen done convincingly on almost all the policy-matters in question), and his platform’s [superficial] similarity to the “results” you’d get from big-bad-Republican-conservative-orthodoxy…is a fluke or coincidence.
Unlikely, maybe, but not impossible. And if a position CAN be held by a Catholic as derived from Catholic principles (with the difference usually being disagreement on the concrete facts to which the principles are being applied)…does it really matter practically if someone is holding it for the WRONG reasons?
If prudential disagreement on the concrete specifics of policy is allowed (and it almost always is, as long as your reasoning invokes the right principles)…then, in practice, I don’t think it really matters if the politician is, in fact, doing it “for the right reason.”
If that were the case we couldn’t support people whose support of various policies we do support came from an atheistic Marxist standpoint or something like that.
And yet, I see Vox Novans sympathizing with such things all the time (obviously many Liberals in the country DID support the healthcare reform for “socialist reasons” instead of “Catholic reasons”). Which is just fine, because ultimately all we can ask is whether supporting a policy in itself is allowable (and, as I said, it almost always is on socio-economic questions; an “argument can be made” according to the Catholic principles for both sides of concrete proposals usually, exactly because there is “no one right answer” to the question of how to best solve society’s problems)…WHY this or that politician holds it is less important.
Picking on teachers, really?
I don’t get conservatives, claiming all “common man” stuff! Except for teachers, and liberals, and police and fire fighters and employees of regulatory agencies. In the religious realm, one can see a pattern of damning criticism about catechists, altar servers, music volunteers, and Eucharistic ministers.
The conservative memo needs to be written identifying for the rank and file that the huge swath of America conservatives reject as unAmerican routinely are common folk.
Dan — it’s not that teachers are “unAmerican” (good grief, what a ridiculous overreading). It’s that they undeniably have huge political power by being by far the largest donor group, and they are already good enough at procuring their wishes through the normal democratic process.
As I said above, if Bill Gates started a “CEO Union” to enable CEOs to bargain more effectively with boards, it would be perfectly alright to respond, “That’s not the sort of union that is contemplated by Catholic teaching, as CEOs aren’t generally in need of extra help to represent their interests.”
Catholic teaching does not say, “Give your blind support to absolutely anything that labels itself a ‘union.’” If Catholic teaching says that “unions” are a good thing, that isn’t because of the name “union,” it’s because of the reality of how certain groups function in certain contexts for certain reasons. To be more specific,
In order to show that public sector unions (especially teachers unions) are contemplated by Catholic teaching, you have to 1) be aware of the reasons that the Church gives for supporting something called “unions,” and 2) have an argument as to why those reasons are satisfied in this particular case. No one has yet risen to that challenge.
As for Church teaching, what I see in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is that unions are valuable because they “protect their just rights vis-à-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production.” That is a description of private sector unions, not a description of any random group of people who title themselves a “union.” I don’t see anything there, or elsewhere, that seems even remotely to be contemplating workers organizing in opposition to democratically elected officials, such as school board members who don’t own anything and aren’t making a profit (indeed, school board members often aren’t paid at all).
“True, some issues are more morally grave than others. If you like the distinction based on intrinsic evils, then Santorum is indicted for his support of torture (and disqualified from communion if you buy cardinal Burke’s logic). Torture is right up there in the hierarchy of modern evils in Gaudium Et Spes.”
I have said before, here, though most Vox Novans have simply dismissed the logic: if State infliction-of-death is not “murder,” then it is unclear that State infliction-of-pain qualifies necessarily as “torture” as a moral category.
Especially since (when you consider things like imprisonment or even just fines) distinguishing what constitutes “torture” (in itself meaning just infliction of pain or discomfort) becomes more a matter of DEGREE than nature.
I am very wary of the State using its powers of physical coercion AT ALL (whether it be through corporal punishment, capital punishment, imprisonment, confiscation of property, or even just the power of police to physical restrain or incapacitate an active threat) but it opens a can of worms to claim that certain acts of corporal force necessarily constitute “torture” even when preformed by public agents (considering that death itself can be legitimate). If death can be a legitimate tool of State enforcement in extreme cases, I don’t see how you can exclude pain.
Pointing to a Vatican II document and then appealing to the popular (but imprecise) definition of “torture” is hardly an argument. As far as I understand, “murder” and “torture” are categories of acts, morally speaking, preformed by private individuals.
You are a true equivacator, “Sinner.” In favouring pre-emptive war with Iran State and with almost anyone else who opposes the expansionist policies of the neo-fascist, apartheid Zionist State, as he does, Santorum–resembling the heretic “Dispensationalist”–has clearly rejected the “just war” theory of Catholic Christianity, which is a CENTRAL teaching of the Church. Based on what he has clearly said, there can be no doubt about this, and to raise specious doubt about it IS to create moral confusion among the laity, which is exactly what you are contributing to:
http://lewrockwell.com/orig9/finnigan8.1.1.html
You are living up to your nom de plume here.
And also, you need to try to understand that “dispensationalism” (the notion that the Zionist state has a central role in bringing Jesus back that preempts any responsibility to treat Palestinians as human beings possessed of dignity and rights) is ALSO a heresy against the traditional teachings of the Roman Church regarding basic human rights:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/the-gop-and-biblical-israel.html
Santorum is clearly a heretic on two central accounts, and yet you are trying to equivocate that his positions are debatably within the realm of “prudential judgment.” On at least two very important parts of his “platform,” they clearly are NOT.
digby,
I don’t like Santorum, and in fact am supporting Ron Paul in this election.
However, I am also for precision in argument and concepts.
And I do not think it is “clear” that supporting a war with Iran necessarily implies rejecting Just War doctrine.
There is a leap between general principle to concrete contingent application in a given situation that depends on one’s casuistic understanding of the particulars of that situation and how they fit into the abstract framework.
For example, when it comes to self-defense, people may agree on the moral principles, but have different evaluations of what constitutes the minimal necessary force to disable the aggressor. Someone may, in the moment, drop-kick someone brandishing a knife at them (because they sincerely think it’s an attacker) when someone else knew that it was just a knife salesman. This would not be a failing in principle, merely a failing in fact.
It is possible that a disagreement about war in Iran is not a disagreement about what principles to apply to the concrete facts, but rather a disagreement about what the concrete facts are. Santorum may believe, for example, that “the damage inflicted by” Iran “on the nation or community of nations” is or will be “lasting, grave, and certain.” He may accept the four principles laid out by the catechism and we and he may simply disagree that those four principles have been fulfilled (which IS a much more contigent prudential sort of judgment).
But, even if these AREN’T Santorum’s reasons for supporting a war in Iran, even if he HAS rejected Just War doctrine…isn’t really relevant to voters. We don’t need to judge politicians on their reasoning, merely on the policies they will support.
A Catholic who arrived at the conclusion that the conditions of Just War doctrine have been met with Iran…could support Santorum even though/if Santorum has rejected that teaching.
Just as a Catholic who believes (as I do) that the conditions for a Just War have NOT been met with Iran…can support someone against the war even if their opposition comes from some other philosophical reason (isolationism, absolute pacifism, etc).
“a vast improvement over the corporate ghoul that is currently the Republican front-runner.” May I ask if “corporate ghoul” is polite speech? There is a tenor of conversation at Vox Nova which I greatly appreciate precisely because it is respectful of the opponent. I’m just wondering, dear Minion, if this crossed that line?
I bet that the poor proletarians whose jobs Romney destroyed at Bain Capital would call him something a lot worse than a “corporate ghoul.”
And look at “Sinner” now saying “it is debatable whether ANY given war is just.”
No, it’s not, “Sinner”; a “pre-emptive war of ‘choice’” is not “debatable”; it is, instead, a WAR CRIME, according to a rather clear definition of “just war” in the Catholic catechism.
Who said so? Only BOTH recent Supreme Pontiffs of your religion.
An attack on a country that never attacked us–never once, historically–and which has EVERY RIGHT, considering what she’s surrounded by, to achieve nuclear parity with her enemies, would be the exact moral equivalent of Hitler’s attack on Poland–which attack, by the way, the Nazis attempted to justify on the basis of a spurious “Polish threat” against ethnic Germans.
I’m not saying their aren’t unjust wars, digby. I’m saying that it is a casuistic and debatable point whether any particular war is just. “Pre-emptive” war is not universally condemned. We do not have to wait for an aggressor to make the first move if an attack is imminent. The debate becomes, then, about whether an attack is imminent. I think the Iraq War, for example, was clearly unjust as the evidence for imminent threat was very weak/non-existent. But, that’s my judgment (and the prudential judgment of the Popes). I wouldn’t deny the possibility that George W. Bush and such were sincerely convinced that there was an imminent threat.
And, by the way, I totally agree that this notion that certain countries can be “allowed” or “trusted” to have nuclear weapons and that others can’t is bogus. If the US can have nuclear weapons, Iran has every right to as well. Ironically, the war that the US and Israel seem to be pushing with Iran seems to justify their desires to protect themselves and achieve such parity, as we are essentially being aggressors in that regard.
However, that’s how the facts appear to me. It is possible that US politicians (or Israel) or certain members of the intelligence community etc…are sincerely convinced that a threat on on us or our allies is imminent. I don’t see it. But I’m not willing to say it’s impossible that anyone else might see it that way.
If you have to wait for the perfect catholic candidate how could one vote for Obama? Or should you abstain?
Here’s another explanation of the faults with Basel: http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2011/12/western-world-is-in-freefall-and-no-one.html