Along with many other Americans, I have been watching Ken Burn's documentary about the Second World War this week on KPBS. Although I was not born until four years after that war concluded, I lived in the long shadow of it as a child in the 1950's. When I played "army" with my friends, the uniforms we dressed up in were from that war. When I watched war movies on our small black-and-white television (with rabbit ears and only five channels), I saw real film footage from that war. And when I began to read "adult" books, Winston Churchill's six-volume history of that war were among the first. I believe that WWII had more impact on my life than many events I can actually remember, including President Kennedy's assassination, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War.

I never served in the armed forces, as did many of you here at St. Dunstan's. My daughter Aimee Robinson's army deployment to Iraq for the past year has brought me closer to the emotions of such an experience. I could identify with those parents during the Second World War, who worried and prayed about their children fighting in faraway lands. I know I will feel a huge load lifted off me when Aimee returns to the States at the end of her deployment in two weeks. Even now I rejoice with Clint and Cathleen Smith on the safe return of their son Schuyler from Iraq.

Army troops wade ashore at Omaha Beach 6/06/44

Watching the Ken Burn's film, filled with so much violence and death, has made me think again about the Christian view of warfare. Of all the interviews, the one with the senator from Hawaii stood out in my mind. He said something like this: "Before the war I went to church, and even taught Sunday School. There I learned ‘Thou shall not kill.' Then I found myself [in Italy] shooting and killing German soldiers." Clearly, many faithful Christians throughout church history have gone to war in support of their country or their monarch. Yet the killing involved does seem to raise a sense of doubt in some of them. So, Christians have developed three different views of participation in war.

The first is pacificism: Christians should not serve in the armed forces nor participate in war, except perhaps in the medical area to help heal the wounded. This is the oldest documented Christian position on war, dating back to the second century. It continues today in what are called the "historic peace churches," e.g. the Amish, the Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethern. C.S. Lewis gave an Anglican response to this pacifist position in a 1940 talk entitled "Why I Am Not a Pacifist".

The second Christian view is holy war: Christians should not only fight in wars, but God actually directs them to fight certain people who are his enemies. This view came to the forefront under the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, because he believed that God had led him in the battle to conquer Rome. It was the motivation of the Crusades, and other "wars of religion" that followed. The problem with this view was really exposed in the First World War, when both sides believed that they were doing God's bidding (remember the book All Quiet on the Western Front).

The third Christian view is called just war: God does not want us to wage war unless the consequences of not going to war are worse than the results of doing so. This view originated with St. Augustine in the fifth century, and was put in its clearest form by St. Thomas Aquinas. According to him, we are justified in going to war under the following conditions: 1. it must be waged by a properly constituted authority; 2. its cause must be just; 3. there must be the intention of establishing good or rectifying evil; 4. it must be waged by proper means (Dictionary of Christian Ethics, edited by John Macquarrie). When we apply these criteria to the Second World War, I believe we can see that the result of letting Hitler achieve world domination would have been so much worse than waging war to stop him. Ken Burns' documentary The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick is a great argument for the Christian just war view.

Fr. David Montzingo