Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Further to the article by David Quinn in the May 5 issue ‘The Church must keep just war theory’, I wish to take issue with the defence of such a theory. With reference to how Hitler led the German aggressive invasion of Poland in 1939 and the subsequent World War II in which more than 55 million died, a great number of these deaths could have been prevented if the way of peace was properly tried.
The Catholic Church in particular has an immense capacity to ‘wage peace’ when inspired and empowered by the Prince of Peace, Our Lord Jesus Christ. He comes to us in the Eucharist to strengthen us in peace and brotherly love for the whole human family and so we must use only the weapons of peacemaking to oppose violence wherever it occurs in our troubled world.
War and violence is always evil and its only fruit is further evil. If we Christians truly followed the way of peace or understood the power of peace and when we work along with others of goodwill, the evil of violence would be defeated. There are enough proponents of war in our world without the Church adding its voice in any kind of defence of it.
We have never had more resources for being peacemakers available to us such as; the way of dialogue, mediation, arbitration, negotiation, an ethically engaged media along with social media to name a few in a great library of peacemaking resources. But peace is first of all an internal conversion and total commitment to the way of peace and love. Sadly we rarely make such a commitment and the proof of this is the many wars and conflicts afflicting mankind.
Yours etc.,
Peter Leonard,
Raheny, Dublin 5.