"No, Jesus did not bear arms, but..." - The American Spectator

Behind the controversial and attention-grabbing title of Mark Tooley's article, Whom Would Jesus Shoot? in The American Spectator (July 30, 2014) lies his counterpoint and answer to a question that the Judeo-Christian tradition has answered (I believe very adequately, as I wrote about a few years ago in my three-part series, Faith and Firearms):

Does the moral imperative to pursue peace and non-violence automatically trump our responsibility to provide a legitimate defense and repel the assault of unjust aggressors against innocents and those charged to our care, using violence if necessary?

Tooley's conclusion is spot-on:

"No, Jesus in the Gospels did not bear arms. But the whole message of scripture and Christian tradition carefully allows that some of His followers may be called to bear and deploy weaponry in certain circumstances where justice requires. The ultimate question is not so much What Would Jesus Do but rather What Does Jesus Tell Us to Do?"

Read the entire article here.

Faith and Firearms, Part 3: Double Effect

Part Two of "Faith and Firearms" left off with a discussion of exactly what constitutes "legitimate defense", and a few statistics to highlight the reality that law enforcement cannot be everywhere at all times to protect us in the critical moments of a violent encounter.

My apologies for the delay in being able to get out this Part 3; as always, life is happening and when it comes to spending time with our precious Abigail or blogging, her smile and laugh takes the cake.

But, now that I'm actually here, I wanted to return from the practical to the philosophical with a brief recap of the  doctrine of double effect.  I emphasize the word brief because this doctrine has been explored and pored over by moral philosophers for centuries, and could be the subject of extended discussion.

The doctrine or principle of double effect was introduced by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica (II-II, Qu. 64, Art.7).  His doctrine makes the point that, as with all of our actions, the lawful, natural, and right action of defending one's life against the unjust action of an aggressor often has more than one effect.  In the case where lethal force is used, the secondary effect could very well be--and often is--the death of the aggressor.

“Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. … Accordingly, the act of self-defense may have two effects: one, the saving of one's life; the other, the slaying of the aggressor.”

His discussion continues with the follow-on assertion that such an action is justified, provided that the primary effect--protecting one's own life--is justified, but that the justification of such an action also comes with conditions:

“Therefore, this act, since one's intention is to save one's own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in being as far as possible.  And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore, if a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful, whereas, if he repel force with moderation, his defense will be lawful.”

In other words, it is permissible to use as much force as is necessary to repel or stop the intended aggression, but anything more (excessive force) renders the act unjust.  A second, equally critical condition is that the act may not be committed in anticipation of unjust aggression.  The act of aggression must have already begun in order for it to be justly and lawfully repelled.  This puts the defender at a distinct disadvantage, because the aggressor more often than not has the elements of both cunning, skill (violent criminals are often repeat offenders), and surprise.   This is where the importance of being aware of surroundings, being selective in personal associations, and following your gut instinct come into play.  Violence, just like with sin, should be avoided at all costs.

It is just--and in some cases an even a greater good--to forgo one's right to self-defense for the sake of charity.  Christ himself, who is the personification of charity, modeled this most perfectly by refusing to defend himself from the most heinous of violent actions, and clergy are called to model this same charity.  However, as I discussed in Part Two, there are other situations and offices where a person's duty or obligations require the defense of either themselves or of another person, for example a father to defend his children or a husband to defend his wife.

So how does this all relate to "keeping and bearing" a firearm?  The stark reality is that violence is not always avoidable.  Sometimes the aggressor finds us regardless of our intention to avoid them, and in those situations we must be prepared to respond according to our responsibilities.  As Cody Alderson, the author of a thought-provoking article entitled, "It Bothers Me," (Concealed Carry Report, February 2, 2011) put it,

Unfortunately, the force needed to put a criminal into a condition of not being able to continue their heinous crime of rape, maiming, or murder can very well cause loss of life to the criminal. We have no reliable system or tool to render rapid and total incapacitation that can be used by the public in defense against crimes of violence other than the gun. It is by far the best available tool for a victim to be able to use to deploy enough force to rapidly incapacitate a violent criminal.

That's it for "Faith and Firearms" for now.  I may revisit the topic sometime in the future, as the Spirit prompts.  In the mean time, for a more in-depth discussion of the Catholic teaching on self-defense, visit New Catholic Encyclopedia, "Self-Defense."  A deeper philosophical discussion of double effect can also be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

+AMDG+

Faith and Firearms, Part 2: Legitimate Authority

Part 1 of this series ended with section 2265 of the Catechism:


2265  Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others.  The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.  For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.


So, anyone who holds legitimate authority has "not only a right, but a grave duty" to protect the lives of those they are responsible for.  So, what does "those who legitimately hold authority" mean?  Does that mean ourselves?  Local law enforcement (police)?  The government?  Well, according to the natural law, yes, yes, and yes.


Authority and responsibility go hand-in-hand.  The most basic unit of the "civil community" is the family and, until recently, it has been broadly accepted across demographics, cultures, and faith traditions that the husband and father, as the head of the household (in case anyone has any questions about what this means from the Christian perspective, see Ephesians 5:25), holds the responsibility to serve, provide for and protect the family.  This is certainly not to say that the wife/mother and children are not capable of defending the family, but the primary responsibility--the responsibility to lay down his life--falls squarely on the shoulders of the father.  If we accept that the father holds the ultimate responsibility within the family--that God has entrusted them to his care--then he (and certainly the wife and mother, if he is not present) has a right and a "grave duty" to repel aggressors against it, using arms if necessary.


A common retort is, "Those rules don't apply anymore.  We have enough police now that are only a 911 call away."


Well, true, the police will usually come if you call 911, but (depending on the city) the average time for responding to a priority 1 call (a life-threatening situation) is 7-10 minutes.  According to the Justice Department's 2005 Report of Criminal Victimization in the United States, in 71.1% of violent crimes, it took law enforcement more than 5 minutes to respond. Smaller, local departments may be able to respond more quickly, but even as we saw in the case of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, where Sgt Kimberly Munley arrived on scene within a matter of minutes to heroically stop Nadal Hassan, his damage--13 dead and 38 others wounded--had already been done.  As the saying goes, "the police are only minutes away when seconds count."  This is certainly not meant to be a ding on police officers who put their lives on the line day in and day out, only an acknowledgement of the reality that they cannot be everywhere and at all times.  As a note, according to 2007 U.S. Justice Department Statistics, there are 463,000 sworn officers in the various jurisdictions within the U.S. Assuming three 8-hour shifts per day, that leaves 154,000 officers on duty for a national population of 300 million.  In other words, there is approximately one officer on duty for every 2,000 citizens.  It may feel like they're going to be there right away, until you're the one that needs them there right away.


There is more to it than just the time aspect.  The Supreme Court has ruled consistently (over ten separate times, in fact, including 1981's Warren vs. District of Columbia, 1989's DeShaney v. Winnebago County, and most recently in 2005 Castle Rock v. Gonzalez) that, despite the common motto, "to protect and serve," police do not have a sworn obligation to protect individuals.  If they did, citizens would have legal--and possibly criminal--recourse against police for not saving the lives that depended on their action.  Their primary and only constitutional responsibility is to enforce the law and, by doing so, to maintain the order of society at large.  More often than not, that means prioritizing their limited resources and apprehending those suspected of violent crime after the fact so that the can be brought to trial.  Individual incidents of violent crime--particularly crime against law-abiding citizens--generally cannot be dealt with beforehand by police because before the crime has taken place...no crime has taken place.


So, the police cannot respond instantaneously to protect us, and cannot respond to a crime until its commission has begun to unfold.  In that gap until they can, and in as much as we can anticipate potential crimes through awareness of our surroundings and circumstances, the legitimate authority for defense defaults to the individuals who are present.  In a situation where the threat is against the family, that responsibility falls primarily on the father.


Again, as I stressed in Part 1, the decision to keep and bear arms in the form of firearms--as is our Constitutionally-protected right--is a very personal one.  But should the worst happen, I for one want to be prepared to respond to any predator who threatens the life of physical well-being of my family with whatever amount of force is necessary to stop them.  If I can help it, and cannot convince them that harming my family is not in their best interest, I would prefer to keep that fight beyond arms' reach, and firearms are the logical tools that allow me to do that.


Look for next week's return from the practical to the philosophical, as I'll explore in more depth the doctrine of double effect.


+AMDG+

Faith and Firearms, Part 1

It's the new year, I'm back into the blog world after deciding to take a break from grad school, and I'm going to start 2011's posting off with a bang...literally.   This is the first in a series of posts (however many it takes) to discuss two things that, until a couple of years ago, I never saw as being related: faith and firearms.  I've focused until now on the spiritual battle that we are called to engage in, but the reality is that we are not only spiritual beings.  God has put us, body and soul, to live and work in a physical world.  As we saw with the tragic shootings in Arizona last week, and that we hear about all too frequently these days, evil is very real and very much at work within that world.  It manifests itself in the hearts and the physical actions of men, often with devastating effects.  Where it is within our ability and responsibility, we have a duty to prevent those acts, and where we cannot prevent them, to repel them with force.

Since my wife and I began dating over five years ago (man, how time flies), and in particular during our engagement, I had to think long and hard about one of the grave responsibilities that would soon fall upon my shoulders as the head of the household: the physical protection of my family.  That has been brought into even sharper focus now being a father, and was finally stirred to the point where I knew I needed to put something down in writing when I listened to an episode of one of my favorite independent living podcasts, Off the Grid News, entitled, Does God's law require us to own a gun?

In response to the title's immediate question, are we morally obligated to own a firearm?,  I would argue that no, there is no direct moral imperative to own or train to use any type of weapon. It is a personal choice.  But before we can discuss that specific choice, another, deeper question has to be considered: How far does my duty as a husband and father to protect my family extend?  If it came to a point or situation where there was no other option to protect their lives (or my own) from the malicious intentions of a ne'er-do-well, would I be able to do what was necessary to stop them, even if stopping them requires lethal force?  Where is the line between relying exclusively on God's providence for protection, and recognizing that He has put resources at my disposal to carry out this particular responsibility, as far as it is within my capacity to do so?  I don't relish even having to think about the potential of malicious harm coming to my family, but the reality is that it happens every day, hundreds if not thousands of times per day, to people who never thought that it would happen to them.  Although statistically unlikely, it is very real, and has very real and grave consequences.

So, we are led into the deeper philosophical discussion of legitimate defense.  The Catechism addresses directly in Part Three, Article 5: The Fifth Commandment (2264-2265):

2264  Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality.  Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life.  Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow: 

If a man in self defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful...Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than another's. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, 64,7)

 2265  Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others.  The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.  For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

I quickly came to the conclusion that: (1) I am responsible for the lives of my family, both physical and spiritual, as far they are within the authority and ability that God has given me to serve them and protect them; and (2) I therefore have a grave duty to be working constantly toward ensuring the defense of both.

As the last sentence of 2265 alludes to, there are divisions of legitimate authority, beginning with the family and extending into the community and society at large, and so there are divisions (or layers) of responsibility for providing legitimate defense.  More on that in the next post, Faith and Firearms Part 2: Legitimate Authority.

+AMDG+