Recent teaching on peace

ELOQUENT though be John Prangley's plea for the renunciation of war as a means of settling disputes between nations (February 22) he makes no allowance for the development of doctrine since the days when an early council could declare "it is not permitted to make war".
The second Vatican Council, in its pastoral constitution on the church in today's world (Gaudium et Spes) states: "War has decidedly not been eradicated from human affairs. So long as the danger of it persists and we have no competent international authority equipped w.ith adequate force, it will not be possible to deny governments the right of legitimate selfdefence, given that they have exhausted every peaceful means of settlement".
It is not my contention that the Gulf war is legitimated at every point by what is set out in the accompanying context of Gaudiunt et Spes. What I do contend is that the right — and even the duty — of states to carry out the policy of the UN, as expressed by its security council, when the victim state can no longer exercise its right of effective self-defence, is recognised by the church.
That the tone of Vatican ll's
statement is permissive is clear in consideration of another, a few paragraphs earlier, where the fathers said "in the same spirit, we cannot but praise those who renounce violence in defending their rights and use means of defence which are available to the weakest, so long as this can be done without harm to the rights and duties of others or of the community".
I only wish to add two things. First, that there will always exist the possibility that even a competent world authority can be wrong in its policies, in which case it too must be opposed by all who subscribe to the church's teaching on peace and justice. Second, that humankind has always the duty to work for the eradication of war, notwithstanding that, aware of its own sinfulness, it cannot visualise circumstances in which that aim will be achievable.
Group Captain H J Dodson Oxford IT is a strange paradox that those English Catholics who agree, heart and soul, with Pope John Paul on the immorality of this war, are regarded by so many fellow-Catholics as dissidents.
Joyce Kohn Maidenhead.