Roger BERGMAN. Preventing Unjust War. A Catholic Argument for Selective Conscientious Objection. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade (Wipf & Stock), 2020. PP. 199 + xiv. $26.00 pb. ISBN 978-1-5326-8665-8. Reviewed by Anthony J. BLASI, 4531 Briargrove St., San Antonio, TX 78217.

Contemporary Catholic thought on war and peace has two schools of thought: pacifism and just war theory. Pacifism enjoys the lustre of idealism but runs into trouble when asked difficult question: Should the United States have allowed the planter class in the South to secede in order to maintan slavery? Should the allies in World War II have left Hitler in power over the European nations? Should the western powers have left South Korea at the mercies of the Kim tyrants? Just war theory appears more workable, maintaining a presumption against war but grudgingly allowing for it in limited situations, but governments have abused it often, generating lies to satisfy its demands in the eyes of their citizens. Roger Bergman writes in the just war tradition, but he wants to make it difficult for governments, especially democratic ones, to abuse it. He favors non-violent resistance when it is a true alternative to violence, as well as a strict adherence to the just war limitations.

The book takes its inspiration from Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, the Austrian farmer executed in 1943 by the Nazis for refusing to serve in what he viewed as an unjust war. Jägerstätter’s pastor and bishop did not support his stand but respected the primacy of his conscience. He did not look to the Church authorities but to the early martyrs, about whom he learned in 1936 in the course of his honeymoon in Rome.

Bergman reveiws the approaches of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, the neoscholastics Francisco de Vittoria and Francisco Suárez, the Protestant thinker Hugo Grotius,  Pope Pius XII, Gaudium et spes #79 from Vatican II, and statements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Augustine and Aquinas seem to presume that individual soldiers have insufficient information to decide matters of going to war (jus ad bellum) but certainly should disobey orders to perform unjust acts in a war (jus in bello). Vittoria and Suárez held that a soldier who believed a war is injust should not participate. Grotius saw it as an obligation of soldiers to ascertain whether going to war would be just. Pius XII did not think soldiers should take it upon themselves to make decisions in matters of jus ad bellum.  Gaudium et spes spoke of a right to conscientious objection. The American bishops, beginning in 1966, spoke of individuals having the prerogative of making moral decisions in matters of war, and from 1968 specifically endorsed selective conscientious objection—i.e., one has the right not to participate in a war that one believes unjust.

Bergman introductes the phenomenon of moral injury into the discussin. The reference is not to post-traumatic stress disorder, which could occur apart from moral injury. "Moral injury is caused by a betrayal of what’s right by legitimate authority or an inividual’s perpetrating, failing to prevent, witnessing, or learning about an incident or its aftermath that violates deeply held moral beliefs and expectations" (pp. 82-83). The condition includes enduring and debilitating anger, guilt, and shame. The suggestion is that absent selective conscientious objection, military personnel could suffer from the condition.

In order to prevent unjust wars, Bergman proposes establishing an ecclesiastical court to issue public rulings on cases of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The proposal is modeled after proposals for international secular tribunals, proposals formulated by thinkers since David Urquhart (1805-1877). The idea is to make it more difficult for governments to persuade their populations to participate in unjust wars. Bergman also urges that a just war consciousness be promoted in Catholic educational institutions; he notes psychological evidence that adolescents have the ability to engage in advanced moral reasoning.

What resides behind the author’s sensitivity to just war thinking? He was a student during the American war in Vietnam. The legitimate authority in the United States ignored factual intelligence (as the Pentegon Papers revealed) and was moved by its public image as a world power rather than by the common good of the Vietnamese peple. Bergman would add to the "legitimate authority" criterion in just war theory the inclusion of true factual bases for action.