Journet on the Impossibility of Christian Holy War

Abstract

Journet on the Impossibility of Christian Holy War Gregory M. Reichberg Whether the medieval Crusades can be deemed justified still elicits debate. Thus, when President Obama cited the Crusades as evidence of wrongful Christian violence in the past (as a strategy for explaining how Islam as a religion should not be singled out for blame on grounds that it is especially prone to violence),1 friends of the Crusades stepped forward to defend the noble spirit of self-sacrifice that animated the Knights Templar and other Christians who had sought to protect their co-religionists from harm and to regain the inheritance of Christ from Muslims.2 Indeed, if we survey the vast literature on the Crusades, it can be normatively divided between those who paint this religiously motivated warfare in dark strokes (as premised on a misguided belief in divinely sanctioned violence) and others who express their admiration for the high values that motivated the crusaders and even hold it up as an example of Christian behavior that could be applicable in all times and places. Thus, the theological apologists around General Franco encouraged his prosecution of the Spanish civil war (1936–1939) on grounds that this war against [End Page 511] Republican "unbelievers" who were endangering the Catholic identity of Spain was a spiritual continuation of the medieval crusade against the infidel Moors.3 And in our own day, some have criticized Pope Francis's conciliatory stance vis-à-vis Islam and have instead suggested that a fifth "crusade" should be initiated in the Middle East in order to protect fellow Christians from attack by the Islamic State and other militant groups.4 Echoes of this thinking may be discerned in a 2014 Vatican address5 by Steven Bannon (former chief strategist for the Trump administration) when he stated: "If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West's struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers kept their stance, and I think they did the right thing. I think they kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places. … In like manner, it is incumbent on all of us … to really think about what our role is in this battle that's before us."6 From the context, it is made abundantly clear that this is a war to defend the "Judeo-Christian West" and its values. This is what, in earlier times, was known as a defensive holy war, "a crusade." A Normative Viewpoint on the Crusades Determining the normative status of the Crusades—vis-à-vis the past but also as mode of Christian action that could be undertaken today—was a central topic of theological inquiry for Charles Journet in the years 1937–1939. As can be gleaned from his correspondence with Jacques Maritain, it was the outbreak of civil war in Spain that had prompted the Swiss abbé to reflect on this issue. In May of 1937, [End Page 512] Journet read the first draft of Maritain's polemical essay "De la guerre sainte"7 ("On Holy War"), which aimed to discredit theological claims that the Nationalists were rightly engaged in a "holy war" to defend Christendom.8 Several months later, Journet published his own essay on this topic, "Le pouvoir indirecte de l'Église: les Croisades" ("The Indirect Power of the Church: the Crusades").9 In it, we find mention neither of the bloodletting in Spain nor of the ongoing attempts to justify it by reference to the "holy" medieval Crusades. As its title indicates, Journet's piece was written as a dispassionate theological examination of a question relative to Church jurisdiction: did Popes such as Urban II, Eugene III, or Gregory VII issue a crusading call to arms by virtue of their canonical role as supreme shepherds over Christ's Church? Or did they do so by virtue of another role, say insofar as they were temporal rulers themselves? In raising this question, Journet sought to discern whether the Crusades were a direct expression of the popes' spiritual ("canonical") power or, inversely, whether this power was only "indirectly engaged." If the former was found to obtain, the Church, Christ's...