International Casuistics

INTERNATIONAL CASUISTICS HUMAN actions and intentions at all the levels of interest and value, must be judged according to the basic norms of ethics. This is the case also for factual situations and probable events involving deliberate volitions. In order to ensure the correctness of our judgments and our decisions, we must observe jointly the requirements of several virtues. Now, an exhaustive analysis of all human virtues has been made along general lines, as well as with regard to special cases of conscience. But it has not been formally extended yet to cover fully all acts of nations. This may be accounted for partly by historical and partly by practical considerations. When the Christian nations were closer to the Chair of Peter and looked to its wisdom and prestige for world-leadership, it was customary for the Pope to pass final judgments on their acts and their ambitions. His words, heavy with fatherly righteousness and penitential power, actually bound the conscience of rulers and nations alike; to the Roman Pontiff were left ultimate decisions affecting peace or strife among Christians , and even between Christians and Infidels as history shows. Hence theologians hardly dared to go beyond such Papal pronouncements, by establishing a positive political doctrine for their justification. As their immediate duty was to guide men towards God and eternal life, and to protect the purity of Christian doctrines and traditions, they· were concerned mainly if not only with the analysis and appreciation of human actions from a strictly individual, rather than from a national or international point of view. This situation explains why the Doctors of the Church failed to think of a positive law, which would bind nations together 353 4 854 THOMAS GREENWOOD by drawing distinctions between good and evil on a collective level. The eternal law being recognized as the ultimate foundation of all relations between nations, they judged from first principles any particular case affecting two or more nations. In so doing, they centered their doctrinal discussions concerning political matters on the state as such and more particularly on its ruler, rather than on the well-being of the family of nations as the expression of the common good. The age of geographical discoveries and conquests having brought the Christians into contact with the less civilized peoples of America, it became expedient to state expressly the moral rules of their mutual relations. This led the great Dominican theologian, Francisco Vitoria, to develop the idea of a law of nations (jus gentium) which he defines as "the rule which natural reason has set up among nations." To be sure, he went beyond the concept of the independence of nations, which had been generally held before him, by stressing the wider principle of the interdependence of nations forming a natural society. Thus, 'he gave the broad lines of a moral theology of nations, by expressing the ethical structure of this natural society in a set of positive rules derived from first principles. These Christian foundations of the law of nations have influenced all subsequent thinkers, even those with a positivistic outlook, who helped strengthen and develop such a system of rules binding nations together, by analyzing and defining their mutual rights and obligations. Today, the distinction between goo~ and evil influences international relations more and more, as governments and citizens show a growing interest in the moral worth of acts of nations. The Roman Pontiffs encourage constantly this moral awareness, with lofty pronouncements on the conditions of a universal peace. On their part, governments endeavor to establish binding rules by which their mutual obligations are to be determined, and to prescribe ways and means for the proper discharge of these obligations. Various academic institutions and civic associations help to foster interest and INTERNATIONAL CASUISTICS 855 understanding among the public for these worthy and vital questions. To be sure, the new law of charity expressed by Our Lord, now takes a wider connotation when extended to nations. By enjoining His disciples to "go and teach all nations," 1 He allows us to think of the nations as such, as worthy of His dogmatic revelations and moral counsels. Indeed, nations will be judged as such, according to the prophet...