Joe Heschmeyer, a Catholic apologist, addresses the complex moral question of innocent civilian casualties in warfare. Joe explains the Catholic Church’s Just War theory, emphasizing two crucial aspects.
Transcript:
Tom’s in Jacksonville, Florida, listening to EWTN on channel 130, Sirius XM satellite radio. Tom, welcome. Go ahead with your question for Joe. All right. I appreciate it. The good nuns all the way through school for me told me that when war is justified, the taking of human life is justified as well. I’m having a little trouble with what about innocent civilians that we know are going to die who are non-combatants and maybe don’t even know there’s a war going on and their life gets lost. And how do we try to justify that or do we?
Yeah, that’s a great question. All right. Thank you, Tom. Go ahead, Joe. So when we’re talking about just war, there’s two levels to just war. The first is do you have a just cause to go to the war?
And so the catechism talks about this in paragraph 2309, where you have to look at several strict requirements. You’re supposed to look at the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain. So it can’t be for a trivial reason. Two, all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
Three, there must be a serious prospect of success. This is a controversial one in the modern day. Does Ukraine have a serious prospect of success against Russia, friends?
Fourth, the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. And then it notes here the power of modern means of destruction was very heavily in evaluating this condition, that a lot of damage can be done with modern means of warfare. So we have an even greater than before impetus to seek peace and avoid war. But even if those are all met, that doesn’t give you the right to just do anything.
The catechism of Odyssey in 2312, the church and human reason built a certain, the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. The mere fact that war has been broken out does not mean that everything becomes illicit between the warring parties. So you can’t, for instance, ever intentionally target innocent civilians.
One thing that every pope from Pius XII on has been very clear about is that the use of atomic weapons in places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not morally acceptable. It would be wrong to intentionally light one innocent person on fire.
It would be more wrong to intentionally light an entire city’s worth of innocent people on fire.
Now we want to caveat this and say there are times where you’re pursuing a legitimate military end and you foresee but do not intend civilian deaths. So you go to bomb a military base, but it’s in the heart of a city. So you know that bombing this military base, some people are likely to die who are innocent civilians. They’re not trying to kill them. That’s a side effect. The military uses the term collateral damage. The church uses the language of side effect, meaning it’s not an intended effect and it’s not a means to get to your end.
It’s a thing that unintentionally is caused by your action.
In some cases, someone dying as a side effect is morally permissible. This is true in medicine. You can have an experimental drug that will help a lot of people. Even if you know one of the side effects is that it might kill a small number of people, you’re not trying to kill them.
Say you’ve got a drug for cancer and it saves 10 people and kills one, that would be morally permissible. That one is a side effect. You’re not intending their death and you’re saving 10 people. That’s what you’re intending to do. And the death of one isn’t necessary for the saving of the 10.
The doctrine is known as double effect. And so we want to be really clear that in war, number one, it’s not an anything goes. And the catechism is extremely clear about that and human reason should be clear about that too. Number two, if you want to know, well, if it’s not true that anything goes, what does go? This is where you want to look. You want to look to what am I intending to do? Am I intending to do something evil? Or is the death of the innocent an unintentional side effect?