#307 Vatican Rejects Just War, Compassion for Animals, and Quotes - April 22, 2016
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Vatican Conference Rejects Just War Theory In a solid step toward more official rejections of the “just war theory” as one that’s failed in its original idea of restraining war and has been too often applied to justifying initiating a war, the April 11-13 conference at the Vatican we mentioned a couple of weeks ago has concluded that the theory should be rejected, that there should be a re-commitment to nonviolence, and that they hope the pope will issue an encyclical to that effect. While co-sponsoring groups such as Pax Christi (a CL member group) could be expected to come to such a conclusion at any conference it participates in, the official Vatican connection makes this a promising development for one of the world’s largest institutions, and one with influence on many other institutions.
See the full statement here. CL Endorser and conference participant John Dear wrote a report of the conference for the Huffington Post, The Church’s Turning Toward Nonviolence.
Connection to Compassion for Animals Christopher White has published a commentary that Being Pro-Life and Pro-Animal Welfare Go Hand in Hand. He points out that advocacy of compassion toward animals establishes a foundation for persuading people on the importance of protecting unborn children. As is usual when connecting issues, it also goes both ways: pro-lifers would be more effective if their compassion on the vulnerable were not isolated to one class of vulnerable beings.
If you’re interested in how we’ve covered this issue before, see our Subject Index under the “Animals, compassion toward” entry. The index is also available for any other topic you’d be interested in.
Latest CL Blog: Treasure of Pre-Roe Pro-Life History We've mentioned before the book Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-life Movement before Roe v. Wade, and the New York Times review whose author was amazed to find so much left-wing opposition to abortion pre-Roe. CL board member Carol Crossed offers her own review of the book, with some enthusiasm for having consistent-lifers read it so we know that the history of the movement in the past few decades is more consistent-life oriented than is generally known.
Quotation of the Week: Nick Neal
If anything truly compromises the sanctity of life it is marriage of pro-life/pro-war ideology. When we as pro-lifers try to convince people that all human life is sacred but take a step back and say "well except in war and capital punishment" our larger message becomes compromised, the sanctity of life suddenly becomes morally relative rather than morally absolute. (I thought Pro-Lifers were against moral relativism.) The same is for the peace message when it is compromised to accommodate abortion and euthanasia. Why not abolish the death penalty for the elderly and end the three decade war on fetuses?
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