CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION. - The act by which a citizen refuses to obey the order of the public authority to perform ordinary military service or to mobilize in the event of war is called c.o., opposing personal motives of conscience, which are usually religious, moral and humanitarian. This could have a broader sense than that described. Nothing, in fact, would prevent calling any resistance to the injunctions of the public authority for moral reasons a c.o., especially if the latter exceeds the limits of its power. In a broad sense, the martyrs were, for example, conscientious objectors. However, only improperly today could such a designation be attributed to them, since the meaning of the expression is restricted to passive resistance against military service.
Furthermore, in order to have a clear grasp of the crux of the moral question that c.o. raises, one must distinguish opposition made for general motives, from which derives the absolute condemnation of the use of arms in any supposition whatsoever, from opposition founded on particular motives, for example, the believed injustice of a specific conflict. Although the second is also substantially a c.o., nevertheless by such a designation only the first is meant, and therefore only it will be treated.
C.o. is a rather recent thing.
It found the favorable ground for its birth in the individualistic subjectivism introduced by the Protestant Reformation, whose principal promoters, basing themselves on certain texts of Sacred Scripture interpreted according to the subjectivist criterion, declared any war immoral and unlawful and consequently not permitted cooperation with the performance of military service, and more generally upheld the principle of personal inspiration, which was to serve as a pedestal for the elevation of subjective persuasion to the sole criterion of the moral life. In fact, some Protestant sects, linking themselves to these presuppositions, adopted the principle of non-resistance to evil, and, declaring unlawful any recourse to force, because it causes the death of one's neighbor, forbidden by the V commandment, raised disobedience to conscription laws to a religious principle, particularly in the event of war. Such are the Mennonites, Dunkers, Schwenkfelders, Shakers, Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
The Protestant origin of c.o. can be demonstrated by some statistics, albeit imperfect. From 1914 to 1915, 350 conscientious objectors were tried in Switzerland, of whom 206 invoked religious motives, 77 moral, 67 political; however, almost all were of the Protestant religion. During the last world war Canada had 10,700 objectors, among whom only 28 professed the Catholic religion. In the same period the United States had 30,000 objectors, the majority of whom came from the sects of the Mennonites and the Quakers, and only 150 from the Catholic community.
To reinforce, however, today's abstentionist movement, besides the dissident sects, the pacifist and humanitarian currents have contributed, which have carried out an intense propaganda against war and in favor of peace, arousing conscientious objectors everywhere, even in the Latin countries, where until a short time ago they could be said to be unknown. The attitude of the public authority toward c.o. is diverse. England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland recognize it legally and have drawn up a special statute, more or less liberal, toward objectors. In some legislations only c.o. for religious motives is accepted, as in the United States; in others for any motive, as in England, and the objectors are assigned to auxiliary services or to ordinary labor. In the other countries it is not recognized and the objectors are punished with various sanctions for refusal of obedience.
Catholic doctrine, unanimous in rejecting it until a short time ago, particularly after the Second World War has divided into a double current. In order to have an exact picture one must present the arguments of the two opposing opinions, and then deduce from them the definitive conclusions. The motives on which the opinion favorable to c.o. rests are of a religious and moral order; however, a tinge of pacifist humanitarianism is not lacking in them.
From the religious aspect, it is observed that the use of force, and consequently also war, is contrary to the divine precept of non-resistance to evil, of charity toward one's neighbor and to the spirit of meekness that pervades the Sermon on the Mount, in which the most exquisite essence of Christianity is contained. Furthermore there exists the V commandment thou shalt not kill, which both the individual and the State are called to observe. To support these positions the tradition of the early Church is invoked, which would have been contrary to military service, and Tertullian, Lactantius and Origen are cited as representatives of such a tradition, along with some cases of military resistance by Christians.
From the moral aspect the motives are derived either from the right of the subjective conscience or from the objective immorality of war, especially modern war. The conscience, according to Catholic morality, is the ultimate and proximate criterion of the morality of the act, which man must always follow, even in the supposition that it is erroneous, under penalty of falling into a moral fault imputable to him. The conscience creates, therefore, an obligation, to which, it is added, a right must be joined, duty and right being correlative, which the public authority must respect. The objector has, therefore, the right to be respected and to assert his own opposition to military service, refusing obedience to the order of the civil power.
All the more so, it is added, since modern war, because of the immense evils it produces and their disproportion to the right that it would purport to defend, must be regarded in every case as unjust, and since cooperation in injustice is morally unlawful, resistance to the call to arms and to the performance of military service becomes lawful, since the latter has no other purpose than to prepare for future conflicts. Nor must one forget how the supreme authority of the Church has several times reproved obligatory conscription and how moralists have for their part defined the relevant laws as penal laws, which do not bind in conscience. The conscientious objector would therefore legitimately oppose the injunction of the public authority.
The principle, on the other hand, on which the contrary thesis rests is twofold: the instrumentality of the use of force, and the requirement of the common good. The use of force, and consequently war (v.), is in itself neither good nor bad, but derives its morality from the end to which it is directed. If the end is the defense of an individual or social right, it is just; in the contrary case it is unjust. From this exact formulation, centered on the instrumental nature of violence, it follows that the use of arms is in itself indifferent; were it not so, the maintenance of an armed police force for the protection of internal order would not even be lawful. This conclusion has not changed by the fact that modern war is more destructive than those of the past, since the right always remains the greatest social good of the moral order, whose violation cannot be equaled by any evil of the material order. As such it must be protected and defended, and such defense, as long as no superior authority capable of providing for it exists in the international society, will fall to the States. In any case, granted the immense evils caused by modern wars, the right of legitimate defense can never be denied, and therefore, if offensive war can be called unjust, the same judgment cannot be pronounced for defensive war, since vim vi repellere omnia iura permittunt. Now, if the use of arms can be legitimate in one case only, as is undoubtedly that of legitimate defense, then the performance of military service remains legitimate and obligatory, and the objection of conscience loses any objective foundation.
Furthermore, the common good requires that the citizen, who participates in all the goods of collective life, should then defend this life in case of necessity against the enemies that threaten it both within and without. The rights of the collectivity are, moreover, stronger than individual rights, which must yield to them when the superior exigencies of the social good require it. Man must, therefore, be disposed to the sacrifice of his personal good in order to defend the existence, the freedom and the unity of the social body to which he belongs. The conclusion is, accordingly, the same: as long as the homeland does not become an empty name, it is obligatory to render it the service necessary for its defense.
Against this straightforward thesis it is of no avail to have recourse to the evangelical counsels, which, being directed to individual sanctification and suggested in view of an otherworldly reward for the renunciations accepted for their observance, cannot equally be applied to social life, since this has no future life in which it can receive the reward of the renunciations it has encountered. The precept of non-resistance to evil cannot be applied without crime remaining unpunished and order being overturned. It must indeed be emphasized that the public authority does not have the power to make such renunciations, since by them it would injure the rights of its subjects, whose defense is its supreme duty.
It is clear, moreover, that the commandment thou shalt not kill cannot be attributed the absolute meaning given to it by conscientious objectors. Undoubtedly man has a sacred right to life, and yet there are cases in which it loses its force before the exigencies of a higher right. Such is certainly the case of legitimate individual defense against an unjust aggressor, which can, by the common judgment of Catholic theologians, go so far as the killing of the adversary. The State too possesses the right of legitimate defense and therefore can legitimately bring about the death of its adversaries, without the V commandment being thereby violated. As for the opposition of the early Church to military service, it is by now firmly established that the Fathers were not opposed to it for a religious principle, but sometimes advised its abandonment because of the moral dangers that Christians encountered in its exercise. The three names that are customarily cited do not constitute the tradition, which was differently oriented. From history it further emerges that Christians served in the armies of the pagan emperors, without perceiving in this any contradiction with their religious profession, until it was sought to impose idolatrous worship upon them.
The argument drawn from the presumed right of the subjective conscience is internally vitiated by the equivocation of modern moral subjectivism. There is no doubt that conscience is a norm of conduct, to which the individual has the duty to conform, even on the supposition that his practical judgment is erroneous. Such an obligation, however, when the conscience is subjective, is not accompanied by the right, as is falsely asserted, to translate itself into practice in social life, within which, both for the certainty of law and for the maintenance of order, only the objective norm, whether natural or positive, can have value. He who finds himself in error, embraced in good faith, has only the right not to be disturbed in his private life and not to be forced to change his opinion; but when he acts socially, the subjective norm must yield to the objective norm of justice. Were it not so, the hinges on which social life rests would be torn away, since, if one admits, even for the sole case of the objection of conscience, the faculty of the subjective conscience to assert itself by opposing a refusal of obedience to the order of the authority, since the principle is general, one would have to recognize the existence of the same faculty with regard to any disposition, whose binding force would, in the final analysis, come to depend on the acceptance of the subjects. And this would lead directly to anarchy.
The argument based on the condemnation of compulsory conscription has no greater probative value. Granted the full legitimacy of the condemnation, in the conclusive judgment one cannot disregard the fact that today all nations maintain standing armies and that, therefore, it is not possible for one of them to remain unarmed if it wishes to provide for its own security. The necessity and the defective organization of international society impose, in this case, the duty of being armed, nor could the public authority act otherwise without failing in its office. In view, therefore, of the superior social good, the citizen too has the duty to submit to its orders, performing the required military service. It is to be observed, moreover, that conscription laws can be called in some way penal only with respect to ordinary military service and never with regard to a mobilization called to repel an unjust aggression. The presumed messianic inspiration of certain conscientious objectors does not merit dwelling upon. Right and duty cannot be established and measured by the vague and obscure criterion, deduced from a false and nebulous mysticism. Gathering the fruit of this critical examination, one can conclude with the traditional thesis that the objection of conscience finds no support either in morality or in law, and therefore must be rejected as disobedience imputable to the objector and punishable under the terms of the law. This does not prevent, however, the public authority, for practical reasons, from tolerating it, regulating it legally.