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Noncombitant Immunity and St Thomas: carrying the debate further

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Daniel A. Dombrowski
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In 1983 one of the most powerful nations in the world, the United States, fought one of the weakest, Grenada. Even in this lopsided affair, which lasted only a few days, twenty innocent people were killed when United States fire hit a mental hospital. The American people received this news with equanimity, in that they had become inured to the slaughter of innocent people, say by the Nazis against the Jews or by the Soviets against their own people, but also by their own government’s bombers at the end of World War Two or by its lieutenants at My Lai. Nuclear weapons notwithstanding, the issue of noncombatant immunity poses the greatest threat to the continued efficacy of the just war theory.

At present James Turner Johnson, of Rutgers University, editor of The Journal of Religious Ethics, offers perhaps the most sophisticated treatments of just war theory, specifically Christian just war theory, and he astutely claims that a primary task of the Christian ethicist is to reintroduce acquaintance with what has been lost in Christian tradition (HT, 300). But what is the Christian tradition regarding noncombatant immunity? Obviously no answer to this question can afford to ignore St. Thomas Aquinas, but exactly was his position on this issue? The American Catholic Bishops and various Thomistic textbooks, acting as distilling agents for the various drops of Catholic tradition, imply that for St Thomas it is always wrong to intentionally kill noncombatants, which leaves open the possibility of killing some noncombatants if such killing is compatible with the proportionality dimension of the principle of double effect.

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 67 , Issue 791 , May 1986 , pp. 216 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 See Time, Nov. 14, 1983, pp. 23–24. The Time writer called the bombing of the mental hospital an ‘understandable error’.

2 See his: (1) Idelogy, Reaon. and the Limitations of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200–1740 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar, hereafter: IR; (2) Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, hereafter: JW (3) ‘Historical Tradition and Moral Judgement: The Cause of Just War Tradition’, The Journal of Religion (1984): 299–317, hereafter: HT; (4) Can Modern War Be Just? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, hereafter: CM.

3 The bishops are by no means clear on this issue, however. On pp. iii, 34, 47, 56–57, 81 they indicate that only the intentional or deliberate killing of noncombatants is always wrong. But on pp. 4, 61 they indicate that noncombatant immunity is universally binding and any violations merit unequivocal condemnation. Hence, on p. 34 they are forced to admit that debates are likely regarding the meaning of the term ‘intentional’. See The Challenge of Peace (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1983)Google Scholar. Two examples from the Thomistic textbook tradition of allowing ‘incidental’ killing of noncombatants are Fagothey, Austin SJ., Right and Reason (St Louis: Mosby, 1976)Google Scholar; and McKenna, Joseph C., ‘Ethics and War: A Catholic View’, American Political Sciencc Review 54 (1960): 647–658CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 La doctrine scholastique du droit de guerre (Paris: A. Pedone, 1919)Google Scholar.

5 As John Ford SJ, ‘The Morality of Obliteration Bombing’. Theological Studies 5 (1944): 261–309, ably argues in his classic study, even if it is more dificult to determine who is innocent in contemporary war than in medieval war, the task is by no means impossible.

6 See, e.g., Ramsey's The Just War (N.Y.,: Scribners, 1968)Google Scholar.

7 Blackfriars edition (London: Eyre & Spottiswode; New York: McGraw‐Hill).

8 Russell, Frederick, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 264, 273–274Google Scholar, hereafter: R. Russell has apparently convinced Johnson that it is only in retrospect that St Thomas looms as an important figure in the development of the medieval just war theory, and that the monists were much more significant. Even if these claims are correct, which I will grant for the sake of argument, there is still a need to understand well St Thomas' contributions. At the very least, the fact that St Thomas is assumed by many to give the classic formulation of the just war theory makes it necessary to get to the bottom of his views.

9 Likewise if a judge knows that an innocent person is being convicted he should question the witnesses all the more searchingly. But if he Cannot free the man he is not guilty; rather the guilt lies with those who allege the innocent man's guilt. See 2a 2ae, 64, 6. Again St Thomas is clearer here than Johnson and Russell indicate, and more consistent than they indicate.

10 One of the reasons why Johnson is not as precise as I would like about St Thomas‘ treatment of noncombatants is that he is sceptical as to whether 'absolute‐sounding approaches‘ can attain practical results in time of war; on practical grounds he is more attracted to the ’contributions’ of less absolute, secular versions of noncombatant immunity. Quite frankly, I am at a loss as to which modern restraints have had the efficacy Johnson claims, bur it would take another article to confront Johnson on this issue.