{"id":3627,"date":"2005-08-18T13:22:22","date_gmt":"2005-08-18T13:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/at-the-corner.html"},"modified":"2005-08-18T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2005-08-18T13:22:22","slug":"at-the-corner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/at-the-corner.html","title":{"rendered":"At the Corner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg asks:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Why shouldn’t the Catholic Church bring back its army? <\/p>\n

Hold on, hold on. I’m serious — at least insofar as I’m seriously asking the question. I’m not saying they should use an army for crusades for new lands or for conversion or anything like that. But why shouldn’t the Catholic Church have peacekeepers of its own? The use of force isn’t forbidden by Catholic law, I know that much. And the Swiss Guards still have weapons even on Vatican property. Why couldn’t the Pope dispatch armed soldiers to restore order, open food supplies, secure humaintarian efforts etc? The benefits here are many. Normal nations have to answer to all sorts of political contituencies and considerations that would not apply to the Papal Peacekeepers. I’m sure unwanted and unwarranted violence would result at some point. But Church doctrine already covers this. Meanwhile the Church could do an immense amount of good in the world. It could establish clear-cut guidelines about how and when it would intervene and the soldiers would obvious be very motivated to behave in an ethical manner. Dishonorable discharges are one thing, excommunication is another.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg asks: Why shouldn’t the Catholic Church bring back its army? Hold on, hold on. I’m serious — at least insofar as I’m seriously asking the question. I’m not saying they should use an army for crusades for new lands or for conversion or anything like that. But why shouldn’t the Catholic Church have…<\/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-3627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAt the Corner - 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\/2005\/08\/at-the-corner.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At the Corner - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jonah Goldberg asks: Why shouldn’t the Catholic Church bring back its army? Hold on, hold on. 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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\/3627","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=3627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}