Although other ages have seen a multitude of wars, in the twentieth century, we have developed a chilling efficiency for aimed conflict which seems to rise in intensity with each passing year. Historically, Catholic thought on the moral justification for war has tended to accept the possibility that, in strictly defined circumstances, a state has the right to engage in warfare. Yet, in recent years, papal statements have tended to severely limit even the few circumstances which have traditionally been permitted for the moral use of warfare by the state. In particular, John XXDI is often cited as an example of this trend.

This article will explore the thought of John XXIII on the particular issue of his interpretation of the criterion of just cause. This particular element of the set of criteria which govern the prospective use of lethal force by the state against another state, jux ad bellum, is significant for any discussion of modem just war theory. This criterion judges the moral end of the use of lethal force by the state. Traditionally, three reasons have been advanced as just causes: ad vindicandas offensiones (to gain justice over a completed offense), ad repetendas res (to retake property which has been stolen) and ad repellandas injurias (to resist an armed attack which is in progress). The trend of modern just war theories have been toward excluding the first two reasons and giving grudging acceptance to the third.

John XXIII unlike his predecessor, Pius XII, was not explicit concerning the moral permissibility of self-defense.

John Paul II’s recent letter on faith and reason is the thirteenth encyclical of his twenty year papacy. Three of the thirteen are social encyclicals in the traditional sense. They explicitly place themselves within the line of social encyclicals which stretches from Rerum Novarum, published by Leo XIII in 1891, to Centesimus Annus, John Paul II’s encyclical to mark the centenary of Leo’s letter in 1991. This line of encyclicals has dealt with social, economic and political questions and reflects all the great events and changes of the 20th century. John Paul II marked the ninetieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum by publishing Laborem Exercens (1981) and the twentieth anniversary of Paul Vi’s great encyclical Populorum Progressio was honoured with the publication of Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987).

But John Paul’s encyclicals include also a number which might be termed ‘cultural encyclicals’ or ‘encyclicals of cultural critique’. Where the traditional social encyclicals, charting a middle road between the extremes of communism and capitalism, work within the general social and democratic drift of twentieth century development, these cultural encyclicals sound a more critical and, it may be, a more radical note. The letters I include under this rubric are Veritatis Splendor (1993), Evangelium Vitae (1995) and Fides et Ratio (1998). It is the middle one I want to consider here.

One of the best guides through the territory of the pro-Fascist sympathies of the British Catholic literati is Robert Speaight, who, in his biography of Belloc and his autobiography, achieved a dispassionate view of 1930s English Catholicism, while making no secret of his own moderate temperamental inclination to the Right, even admitting to having been attracted to Action Franchise. Speaking of the 1930s Catholic intelligentsia he remarks:

He refers to both the influence of continental Rightists and that of the Church in teaching Catholics to fear Communism. Of Belloc he observes he had ‘nothing but contempt for the representative government. ... he seemed to think that, on the whole, fascism was a good thing for foreigners.’