Sentences with phrase «presumption against war»

Of course, people on the left can be morally arrogant, but it would have helped if he had offered some specific evidence rather than simply the fact that those writers had argued on moral terms for a stronger presumption against war or a greater redistributive role for the state.

Soft just war theory is characterized by seven key components: a strongly articulated horror of war; a strong presumption against war; a skepticism about government claims; the use of just war theory as a tool for citizen discernment and prophetic critique; a pattern of trusting the efficacy of international treaties, multilateral strategies and the perspectives of global peace and human rights groups and the international press; a quite stringent application of just war criteria; and a claim of common ground with Christian pacifists.

Msgr. Robert McElroy writes in America («Why We Must Withdraw from Iraq») that «the popes of the contemporary era have unequivocally taught that a presumption against war lies at the very center of Catholic thinking on war and peace.»

Monsignor McElroy thinks it is the latter, supporting his conclusion «that a presumption against war lies at the very center of Catholic thinking on war and peace.»

If, then, they claim, debates about the propriety of particular wars are begun by stating a general presumption against war, this will be to skew the debate and to misrepresent the tradition.

There is in this sense» the only interesting sense, conceptually speaking, so far as I can tell» a presumption against war enshrined in the just war tradition.

Then there is the sad and, to my mind, unmistakable fact that people who have adopted the so - called «presumption against war» tend to get things wrong, time and again: as the U.S. bishops got the dynamics of the Cold War wrong in their 1983 pastoral letter, «The Challenge of Peace»; as most religious leaders and intellectuals got it wrong in predicting a Middle East Armageddon in the first Gulf War and the recent Iraq War.

The Challenge of Peace, without reference to the logic of prima facie duties, replicates the structure of Childress» argument exactly: just war theory begins with a presumption against war, and the just war criteria function to override this presumption (or to show that it should not be overridden) in particular cases.

Such an interpretation magnifies the evils to be expected from a resort to force, regardless of any arguments for the justice of the cause, and thus transforms the presumption against war into a functional pacifism.

The third root of the U.S. bishops» recasting of the Catholic conception of just war as beginning with a presumption against war was the pragmatic need to find a compromise between proponents of traditional Catholic just war theory and those Catholics who, under a variety of influences, had come to regard their faith as opposing war altogether.

Moreover, how is it possible to read the reference to «the power of modern means of destruction» without recalling the role of this judgment in leading to the novel idea of a presumption against war?

The widespread nature of this judgment is likely one of the reasons this «presumption against war» concept, original to the United States Catholic bishops, has since 1983 become more broadly accepted as descriptive of the just war idea.

In its original context the second important root of the presumption against war was a formulation of this concept of just war set out in the Jesuit journal Theological Studies in 1978 by James F. Childress, an American academic ethicist of Quaker background.

There is no presumption against war here.

One root of the idea of a «presumption against war» was thus this kind of judgment against modern war as such.

The description of Catholic just war teaching as beginning with a presumption against war and ending with criteria whose function is to say when, if ever, that presumption can be overridden is faithful to neither of these Catholic traditions, that of the religious life or that of just war.

The idea that Catholic just war teaching begins with a «presumption against war,» more recently phrased as «a strong presumption against the use of force,» first appears in the United States bishops» widely read 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace.

Finally, and much as I appreciate rhetorical high spirits, I hope Professor Griffiths will permit me the observation that it really doesn't advance the ongoing debate to suggest that James Turner Johnson is blowing smoke when he explains how James Childress» seminal 1978 article on prima facie duties and the just war tradition jump - started the «presumption against war» trope.

The hubris has gotten so out of hand, in fact, that one prominent «presumption against war» advocate recently proposed that the Catechism be amended, so that a consensus of bishops, the faithful, and theologians (the last presumably shaping the judgment of the first two) be required for judging a given military action morally legitimate.

On the one hand, there is a strong resistance to the use of military power, rising in some Roman Catholic documents and papal statements to a «presumption against war» and the suggestion that recourse to military power is always bad.

The «presumption against war» is sometimes expressed as a presumption against violence, with violence defined as any use of lethal force.

Joining the continuing debate over whether pacifism and just war doctrine share a prima facie «presumption against war» are Helmut David Baer of the University of Texas and Joseph Capizzi of the Catholic University of America.

It is not helpful to confuse that necessary conversation and debate by injecting a formula such as the prima facie presumption against war.

Not exact matches

In these pages, papal biographer and theologian George Weigel rejects the notion that any thinking about just war ought to begin with a «presumption against the use of force,» as it seems Pope Francis has done.

It is simple confusion to think otherwise, and Johnson's recent effort (see FT January) to construe presumption - against in terms of worries about the inherent morality of war, or about the nature of prima facie duties, amounts to nothing more than the blowing of thick clouds of smoke.

The section on just war theory closed with a warm affirmation of the value of a pacifist witness within the Catholic Church, claiming that it shares with just war theory «a common presumption against the use of force as a means of settling disputes.»

In September 2002, when a hundred scholars and ethicists signed a petition that read, «As Christian ethicists, we share a common moral presumption against a preemptive war on Iraq by the United States,» Elshtain was not numbered among the signatories.

Hard just war theory reverses these emphases, replacing them with the following: a presumption against injustice and disorder rather than against war; an assumption that war is tragic but inevitable in a fallen world and that war is a necessary task of government; a tendency to trust the U.S. government and its claims of need for military action; an emphasis on just war theory as a tool to aid policymakers and military personnel in their decisions; an inclination to distrust the efficacy of international treaties and to downplay the value of international actors and perspectives; a less stringent or differently oriented application of some just war criteria; and no sense of common ground with Christian pacifists.

Only if «extraordinarily strong reasons» exist «for overriding the presumption in favor of peace and against war» may war be considered.