Earlier this year participants at a conference co-sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace called for the Pope to ditch the centuries-old just war tradition endorsed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church in favour of a “new framework that is consistent with Gospel nonviolence.”
The idea is not new. As far back as 1947, traditionalist firebrand Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani argued that “no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction … which war today entails.” The apocalyptic potential of modern weaponry, he claimed, made the idea of “just” war obsolete.
