An electronic billboard displays the flag of Ukraine
along Interstate 295 outside Gibbstown, New Jersey, south of Camden.
Simply because it is not true that war never achieves any good, nor that violence never produces anything good, does not mean that even that unicorn of history, a “good war,” is not deeply dangerous to all involved.
It can be good and necessary to lament the “tragedy” of war, and even fruitful generically to decry “violence,” but such positions are made tenable only by eschewing the difficult moral reasoning that is necessary to discern when waging war is not only permitted, but virtuous; and when violent action is not only allowed, but called for.
The Catholic Church has a deep and rich tradition of reasoning about such matters, often under the banner of “just war theory.” Deep and rich also means long and complicated, and in modern times peoples’ appetites for slogans, and attention spans tuned to sound bites, has left much of this treasury unexplored and underutilized. Such moral oversimplification leaves us vulnerable – to sin.
The breathtaking consensus that has unified most of the world in decrying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the past week has accomplished much good, for the Ukrainians as well as for many world citizens shaken from soporific complacency and preoccupation with petty problems and contrived crises. The attack and the violence are real, and demand attention; manifest is the evil of the reasoning, intent, and goal of the action. Suddenly, the Ukrainians are engaged in that rarest of things, a good war. There is no question that they are justified in fighting with all of their resources for their homes and families.
But the moral danger was brought to me yesterday as I watched a video clip of Ukrainians shooting down one of a number of attacking Russian helicopters. The man narrating the video was cheering enthusiastically – and of course so was I.
It is a thread that I picked up reading over the years books by authors who had lived through the last “good war” – World War II. Kurt Vonnegut, especially in his masterwork Slaughterhouse Five, but also, as best I recall, in Cat’s Cradle; and Walker Percy, in both his essays and his fiction, point to the same phenomenon: the good and even gentle man, who by necessity of war not only becomes proficient in doing death and destruction, but also comes to relish it.
Here I find not only the place of many good and gentle Ukrainians who now find themselves called to prepare for, carry out, and find their satisfaction and even delight in the death and destruction of their fellow men. Let us not neglect the virtuous Russians whose service is motivated by a laudable love of country and fellow countryman, but whose obedience and discipline are misdirected by lies and brute tyranny; they too can be brought to hatred by the hatred they engender, and come to desire the death of those who desire their death and kill their friends.
The death itself; the displacement, deprivation, and destructions; the wounds, physical, familial, and emotional; the illnesses and absences; all of these results and realities that make us tear up and turn away for grief are in fact the tragic consequences of every war, even the good ones. The redemption of these evils by their being endured in the service of a greater good, and selflessly for the good of another, does not ever make them good in themselves. But let us never, ever lose sight of the enormous difference between the loss of a life, and the loss of a soul.
We began Lent this week, with much groaning and grumbling about what it portends for the coming days. But part of the genius of Lent is that we know when it will end. We can handle almost anything, for forty days.
The war in Ukraine is just getting started. A worldwide (near-) consensus of who is in the right, and who is in the wrong, does painfully little to bring about its end, or even let us know when that will be. The next time you catch yourself cheering some success against the “bad guys,” pause and pray for the protection of your soul from sin, and the deliverance of a nation from the clutches of the devil.
