Bishops & Their Critics

The April 20, 2007 issue of Commonweal contains an informative editorial regarding those who opposed the war in Iraq and those who supported it.

President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq was initially supported by a host of liberals, among them New Republic editor Peter Beinart and New Yorker writer George Packer. These commentators were convinced that Iraq posed an imminent threat to its neighbors and that Saddam Hussein’s regime had to be removed for both security and moral reasons.

As the administration’s case for war was gradually exposed as a fabrication and the botched nature of the occupation became clear, most of these liberals have admitted they were wrong.

No such admissions of error, or even regret, have been issued by outspoken Catholic neoconservatives who, using the most tortured just-war arguments, publicly defended Bush’s war of choice. Michael Novak, of the American Enterprise Institute, even flew to Rome to persuade the Vatican not to oppose the invasion. In First Things, George Weigel, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, memorably lectured religious leaders on the “charism of political discernment” enjoyed by those in the White House (“Moral Clarity in a Time of War,” January 2003). It was a charism, Weigel pointedly wrote, “not shared by bishops.” He assured the war’s critics that elected officials “are more fully informed about the relevant facts.”
. . .
It is true that the moral responsibility of statesmen is different from that of bishops and ordinary Christians. Still, looking back at the many nuanced statements issued by the USCCB regarding the war in Iraq, it is hard not to conclude that the bishops’ charism, rather than the president’s, has better served the nation. As early as November 2002, the bishops wrote of their deep concern “about recent proposals to expand dramatically traditional limits on just cause to include preventive uses of military force.” Repeatedly, the conference expressed the gravest doubts about the moral justification for the Iraq invasion. The bishops also reiterated their support for the right of conscientious objection and selective conscientious objection. In a prescient February 2003 statement on the likely consequences of war, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, who was then president of the conference, warned that “a postwar Iraq would require a long-term commitment to reconstruction, humanitarian and refugee assistance, and establishment of a stable, democratic government at a time when the U.S. federal budget is overwhelmed by increased defense spending and the costs of war.”

The entire editorial is here.