{"id":2125,"date":"2007-04-15T23:30:10","date_gmt":"2007-04-15T23:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/okay-one.html"},"modified":"2007-04-15T23:30:10","modified_gmt":"2007-04-15T23:30:10","slug":"okay-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/okay-one.html","title":{"rendered":"Okay, one"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something to chew on: Peter Steinfels looks at three viewpoints on Catholicism and the definition of just war: <\/a>George Weigel in First Things<\/em>, a response editorial in Commonweal <\/em>and an article in America.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In his latest essay, Mr. Weigel grapples with the fact that those costs have become painfully evident, and the larger concerns of security, justice and freedom increasingly elusory. Now his case for war scarcely mentions the earlier suspicion of weapons of mass destruction but stresses a need to defeat jihadi terrorism and establish responsible government and peace throughout the Middle East. <\/em><\/p>\n

He laments \u201cmistakes made by analysts and U.S. policy makers,\u201d who remain unidentified except for the \u201cconvenient scapegoat,\u201d <\/em>Donald H. Rumsfeld<\/em><\/span><\/a>. Finally, he defends the administration\u2019s latest strategy against an alternative that he defines simply as \u201cwe\u2019re out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In all this, he merely alludes to his earlier critique of the \u201cpresumption against war\u201d and makes no mention of the \u201ccharism of political discernment.\u201d But his animus toward antiwar religious leaders is unabated. <\/em><\/p>\n

Which is what struck the editors of Commonweal, who have consistently opposed the war. In contrast to the second thoughts of many liberals originally convinced of the Iraq war\u2019s necessity, the editors note, \u201cno such admissions of error, or even regret, have been issued by outspoken Catholic neoconservatives.\u201d Does Mr. Weigel\u2019s long list of American miscalculations, they wonder, \u201ccast doubt on his claim\u201d about the government\u2019s \u201ccharism of political discernment\u201d? Reviewing the prudential warnings and moral qualms issued by the <\/em>United States Conference of Catholic Bishops<\/em><\/span><\/a>, \u201cit is hard not to conclude,\u201d the editors write, \u201cthat the bishops\u2019 charism, rather than the president\u2019s, has better served the nation.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Both Commonweal and Monsignor McElroy, in America magazine, deny that given the potential destructiveness of modern warfare, just-war teaching has been deformed by making a \u201cpresumption against war\u201d its starting point. To reject this development, Monsignor McElroy writes, reduces \u201ca living, breathing moral tradition\u201d to \u201ca historical artifact.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOne implication of this strong presumption against war,\u201d Monsignor McElroy adds, is that \u201cmoral scrutiny of the decision to wage war should take place not merely at the beginning of a conflict, but at every stage of its duration.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something to chew on: Peter Steinfels looks at three viewpoints on Catholicism and the definition of just war: George Weigel in First Things, a response editorial in Commonweal and an article in America. In his latest essay, Mr. Weigel grapples with the fact that those costs have become painfully evident, and the larger concerns of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOkay, one - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/okay-one.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Okay, one - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Something to chew on: Peter Steinfels looks at three viewpoints on Catholicism and the definition of just war: George Weigel in First Things, a response editorial in Commonweal and an article in America. In his latest essay, Mr. Weigel grapples with the fact that those costs have become painfully evident, and the larger concerns of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/okay-one.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-04-15T23:30:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Okay, one - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/okay-one.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Okay, one - Via Media","og_description":"Something to chew on: Peter Steinfels looks at three viewpoints on Catholicism and the definition of just war: George Weigel in First Things, a response editorial in Commonweal and an article in America. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}