No Conceivable…Justification” for aerial warfare, “dreadful weapons”.

Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII and John XXIII, wrote in 1947:

“The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent people are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever.

“And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations? These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern – theoretically – a just and lawful war.” (Emphasis mine)

“Aerial warfare has become more and more dreadful.

“Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails”.—-Relationes societatum perfectarum in statu conflictus

Daniel Berrigan [Who was he?]:

“Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation”.

“The sponsors of war closely resemble the weapons they create. And smart bombs, depleted uranium, land mines, rockets and tanks, rather than protect ‘widows and orphans and strangers at the gate’, are designed precisely to create ‘widows and orphans’, to transform strangers into enemies and enemies into corpses.”

“But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of truth? And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?”

Abortion

“The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.”

“… It’s an unborn child only if it’s wanted – if unwanted it’s demoted to embryo or fetus. To dare recognize that it’s an unborn child, and thus deserves protection, is to be against choice, and choice is what the American way of life –  and way of death – is all about.”

Father Berrigan was staunchly pro-life, and challenged peace activists who were “pro-choice” to think.

Pius XII, 1939

‘The danger is imminent, but there is still time … nothing is lost with peace. With war, everything is lost. Truth advances by way of reason, not through the power of weapons. It is with the strength of reason, not the strength of weapons that justice will prevail. And empires not founded by God are not blessed by God.’ — Source

65. Unquestionably the progress of man’s inventions, which should have heralded the realization of greater well-being for all mankind, has instead been employed to destroy all that had been built up through the ages.

Only One Way Out [Christmas Message, 1944]

75. But one thing We know: that the moment will come, perhaps sooner than the people think, when both sides realize that, all things considered, there is only one way of getting out of the meshes in which war and hate have wrapped the world, namely a return to the solidarity, too long forgotten, a solidarity not restricted to these or those peoples, but universal, founded on the intimate connection of their destiny and rights which belong equally to both.

76. No one certainly thinks of disarming justice in its relations to those who have exploited the war situation in order to commit real and proven crimes against the common law, and for whom supposed military necessity could at most have offered a pretext, but never a justification.

77. But if justice presumed to judge and punish not merely individuals but even whole communities together, who could not see in such a procedure a violation of the norms which guide every human trial?” — Pius XII, Democracy And A Lasting Peace.

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— New Oxford Review: What Dobbs Does and Doesn’t Mean