War and Peace

Extract

From a German Dominican, Fr. Franziskus Stratman, O.P., comes ‘the first complete examination of the problem of Peace and War by a Catholic theologian since 1914’—so the publishers tell us. The result of this examination—conducted most gravely and dispassionately—is not only unfavourable, severely unfavourable, to war in general, it leaves all the wars of history, ancient and modern, condemned by the theologians and finds the makers of war guilty of doing violence to Christian principles. The clear statements of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, of Francis de Victoria, O.P., of Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus Liguori, quoted amply and relevantly by Fr. Stratman, prove fatal to proposals for the justification of war. No government in Europe of the nations called to war can be acquitted of offending against justice; so stringent are the conditions of a just war, so many are the rules laid down by theologians to bind mankind in the ways of peace.