I argue there is no pacifist commitment implied by the practice of mothering, contrary to what Ruddick suggests. Using violence in certain situations is consistent with the goals of this practice. Furthermore, I use Ruddick's valuable analysis of the care for particular individuals involved in this practice to show why pacifism may be incompatible with caring passionately for individuals. If giving up passionate attachments to individuals is necessary for pacifist commitment as Ghandi claims, then the price is too high.

Michael Walzer's endeavor to disentangle and explain the conflicting scriptural stories of the conquest of Canaan is resourceful and instructive but unfinished. The adequacy of his account as a means of coming to terms with the historica witness is compromised by what he does "not" examine: he does not, for example, examine very closely the lineaments of the program of limited war he praises, does not convey the complexity of the cultic pratice of "herem" and does not take account of (...) the impact of the failure of the Israelite experiment in royal statehood.more importantly, by treating the passages regarding holy war as an embarrassing problem to be solved, he leaves dangling the function of these texts in the life of the faith community. (shrink)

The past thirty years have been marked by an energetic renewal of traditional just war theory. Now changes in relations among nations and changes in military technology may require a recasting of the just war ethic comparable to its recasting by Vitoria and Suarez in the six-teenth century. After reviewing the way the just war tradition met the practical tests posed by Vietnam, nuclear deterrence, and the Gulf War, I will argue that the erosion of the Westphalia legacy and the (...) collapse of the cold war press two questions upon us: Can any modern war be defended as just? Are there resources in the just war tradition for assessing what constitutes morally defensible, even morally required, intervention by one state in the affairs of another? (shrink)

In advanced technological societies there is growing concern about the prospect of protracted deaths marked by incapacitation, intolerable pain and indignity, and invasion by machines and tubing. Life prolongation for critically ill cancer patients in the United States, for example, literally costs a fortune for very little benefit, typically from $82,845 to $189,339 for an additional year of life. Those who return home after major interventions live on average only 3 more months; the others live out their days in a (...) hospital intensive care unit. (shrink)

Physicians have long aided their patients in dying in an effort to ease human suffering. It is only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the prolongation of life has taken on new meaning due to the powers now available to physicians, through new drugs and high technology interventions. Whereas earlier physicians and patients could readily acknowledge that nothing further could be done, today that judgment is problematic.Most often, aiding the dying took the form of not doing anything further to (...) prolong life. Morally, this act of restraint was not difficult, because few options could have been considered. However, some physicians, rarely, would help patients die either by hastening death directly or by increasing pain control with the risk of hastening death, the so-called double effect. When directly hastening death, physicians either directly caused the death of the patient through euthansia, or supplied the means to the patient to bring about death with or without encouragement to use these means. The latter is physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

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The military might of the modern era poses devastating threats to humankind. Wars result from struggles for material or ideological power. In this context the probability of flouting agreements made during peaceful times is great. The rights of victims and the rights of medical personnel are vulnerable to State and military momentum in the quest for sovereignty. Scholars, scientists and physicians enjoy little enough influence during times of peace and we should be sanguine about their influence during war. But we (...) also must avoid becoming co-opted by partisan political forces. The universal ideals for which we strive, need to be cherished and kept central in our field of vision if we are to rise above man's basest instincts and if we are to preserve professional integrity, individuality and humanitarian concern for the sanctity of life — even the lives of our foes who are engaged in battle against us. Such compassion also recognizes the coercion implicit in recruiting persons into wars they detest and which pits them against their own image. Man's inhumanity to man, most evident during war, must not be allowed to pervade the sanctuary of medical care. Health professionals must constantly be encouraged to serve humankind with empathy and compassion and great social effort needs to be expended to facilitate this role globally and under all conditions. (shrink)

Just war theory and pacifism are not parallel theories about violence; they represent fundamentally different conceptions of Christian identity. Both ways of life encompass two quite different historical forms: Augustinian and Thomistic styles of just war thinking, and pacifism oriented by obediential discipleship as against pacifism grounded in compassionate solidarity. Though the comments of Pope John Paul II on particular modern conflicts have some affinities with the solidaristic pacifism of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, his arguments remain firmly within the (...) framework of thought developed by Aquinas and revitalized in the twentieth century by John Courtney Murray. (shrink)

In this paper the author argues that a narrative approach to understanding assisted suicide has been compromised by the notion that all narratives must be both coherent and unified. He asks what we are to do with those narratives that cannot seem to cohere or be other than full of disunity? Is suicide the only way to make meaning out of suffering? He then proposes that the narrative found in the Gospel of Mark leads Christians to a life in hope (...) and compassion in spite of apparent incoherence and disunity and threats of abandonment and suffering. (shrink)

Military deterrence by means of the threat to retaliate if attacked has traditionally involved two intentions—on the one hand, the unconditional intention to deter attack, and, on the other hand, the conditional intention to retaliate if attacked. Nuclear deterrence—that is, military deterrence using nuclear weapons—also involves both intentions, but at the cost of a moral quandary. On the one hand, there is the intention to deter attack in order to preserve peace and freedom. But, on the other hand, there is (...) the intention to retaliate with weapons that would most likely massacre millions of innocent persons. How can the intention to deter attack be morally right, if it presupposes an intention to retaliate if attacked that is morally wrong? (shrink)