Focused Link: On War, the Catechism and the Challenge of John Paul II

Perhaps our present disjunction between just-war and pacifist approaches to this issue reflects uncritically the sort of extrinsicist theology of nature and grace characteristic of the modern period. Excerpt below.

The full article:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/social_justice/sj0020.html

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) treats the fifth commandment in three sections. The third deals with safeguarding peace and avoiding war. This essay will propose a reading of Section III in light of recent papal pronouncements on the Gulf War and the conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. After a brief summary of the Catechism's treatment of the fifth commandment, the body of the essay will treat recent papal statements. Following this review, the essay will conclude by considering how what might be called the "evangelical realism" of these statements helps to flesh out and enrich the necessarily general and schematic form of the Catechism's teaching.