MILITARY SERVICE. - I. THE MILITIA AS A PROFESSION. - The militia, from Lat. militia, can be considered both as a profession and as a temporary or occasional rendering of military service. Setting aside everything that is purely military art or history, and the legitimacy or otherwise of war (v.), the exercise of military life, which has accompanied and accompanies the history of human life as one of the professions freely or coercively undertaken, has raised and raises problems of an ethical and social order.
As a profession, it is not one of those intrinsically unlawful. The Jewish people too had its militias, and Sacred Scripture refers to military service as an image of man's life on earth, in struggle with his own passions and with the seductions of the external world (Job 7:1; 14:17; II Cor. 10:4; I Tim. 1:18; Jas. 4:1; I Pet. 2:11), and compares the heavenly hierarchies to armed hosts (Deut. 17:3; II Par. 33:3; Isa. 24:21; Jer. 8:7; Luke 3:13; Acts 7:42).
Among the first to hasten to the baptism of penance of John the Baptist are soldiers (Luke 3:14). The case is repeated with the preaching of Jesus and the Apostles. Jesus, healing the centurion's daughter, weaves a eulogy of the officer's faith (Luke 8:1-10; Matt. 8:5-13). And St. Peter is sent to baptize, first among the pagans, the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10:1 ff.).
Among the first Christians figure hosts of soldiers, and it would suffice to recall the almost affectionate expressions of Pope Clement in his letter to the Corinthians ("our legions," "our generals": I Cor., 37) and the Christians serving in the Twelfth Legion, called Fulminata (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 5, 2-6). Tertullian, still a Catholic, pointed out to the pagans that even in the militia there were Christians (vestra omnia implevimus... castra ipsa, tribus, decurias: Apol., 37, 4: PL 1, 525). When later he inclined toward Montanism, he maintained that Christians could not be soldiers, bringing to light the patent antithesis between the two states and describing in detail the practices required by military life, from the oath to death, which are in contrast with the Christian faith and morality, which can never recognize the necessity of sinning (necessitas delinquendi). The ground of this necessity of sinning is for Tertullian the acts with which military life was filled (sacramentum, gladium seu praelium, inimititia, stationes, infractio diri dominici, custodia templorum, coenae [orgies], cecilia, crematio). In particular the oath (sacramentum), which is directed more to the pagan divinities than to the emperor, is a solemn act, a pompa diaboli (De idol., chap. 19: PL 1, 767-68). Moreover the Christian, a son of peace, cannot familiarize himself with instruments of death, of war, of ruin (De Corona, 11: PL 2, 11-13).
The excessive rigorism of Tertullian on this matter was not shared by the true ecclesiastical tradition, which has always regarded the military profession as lawful, however laden with dangers of a moral order. And in practice, even after Tertullian, Christians continued to serve in the army, so much so that Galerius, at the beginning of the 4th century, in order to root out the Christians proceeded to a work of purging within the army (cf. Riche-Martin-Frutez, II, p. 422). The whole moral diagnosis of the military profession has stopped at indicating the dangers to be avoided in military service, such as plundering, corruption of morals, etc., without condemning the exercise of arms in itself, so long as the military profession remained free and not obligatory. St. Augustine briefly summarizes the traditional thought: Quibus proprium stipendium sufficere debere praecepit, militare utique non prohibuit (Epist., 138, 2, 15: PL 33, 531-32; cf. also De diversis quaestionibus, 79, 4: PL 40, 92). The Augustinian practical Rule, which undoubtedly echoes the Baptist's admonition to the soldiers (Luke 3:14 ff.), will be taken up by St. Bonaventure (In Evang. Lucae, chap. 3, v. 14, n. 31: Opera omnia, VIII, Quaracchi 1895, p. 77). Moreover the Catholic doctrine of just war (v.), under certain conditions, in a world internationally little or not at all organized, entails as a consequence the lawfulness of the military profession.
Only in the Middle Ages, when the upheavals and the fusion of ecclesiastical and civil powers, provoked by feudalism, enticed even ecclesiastics to the exercise of arms, and there occurred the sad phenomenon (even if in some cases necessary for a quasi right of legitimate defense) of bishops, abbots, etc., who led armed hosts, did the Church intervene to condemn this abuse (Roman Council [1059], can. 10: Mansi, XIX, 915; Council of Tours [1060], can. 6: ibid., 927; Council of Gerona [1068], can. 5: ibid., 1071), claiming rather for clerics absolute abstention from arms (v. PRIVILEGI DEI CHIERICI). St. Peter Damian went so far as to condemn the conduct of Pope Leo IX, who took the field against the Normans, affirming that not even for the defense of the faith was it lawful to take up arms (Ep., IV, 9: PL 144, 316). Which was to be contradicted shortly afterward by the preaching of the Crusades (v.) and by the action of the Church in that field.
II. MILITARY SERVICE TODAY: RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN
Until the French Revolution the system of volunteer service was in force for the recruitment of the public force. For the first time obligatory military service and the equality of all citizens before it were proclaimed in France on Jan. 1, 1794. The Napoleonic invasions gave the first impulse to its acceptance in almost all States during the last century (cf. L. Taparelli, Saggio di diritto naturale, 8th ed., II, Rome 1949, n. 1220, p. 142 ff.). In Italy it was introduced in 1875. Today in very few nations is the primitive system of volunteer service adopted (England, the United States, etc.), with a marked tendency toward obligatory conscription even in these nations.
Taparelli himself wrote around 1830: "Immense and useless harm did the first one who increased armies with a permanently forced levy do to humanity; for every other society could and had to do the same, and thus the contrast of the two warring sides remained equal and the harm to individuals immensely greater" (ibid., n. 1354, p. 225). The thought was taken up by Leo XIII at the moment when obligatory conscription was becoming generalized in Europe, and still in the midst of war Benedict XV declared (letter of Nov. 4, 1917): "Conscription has been, for a century now, the cause of a multitude of evils." Nevertheless the Church has never preached rebellion against this state of things, because that would mean social disorder. It regards obligatory military service not as a normal mode of organizing the army (as is today customary especially in the nations of the European continent), but as a means to which recourse must be had only in extreme cases (of national defense), to be abolished as soon as possible. Nonetheless, since the question of knowing whether national defense at this moment requires or does not require obligatory military service is a technical question, and it is for rulers, enlightened by experts, to decide, the citizen must submit to it, even though he is not forbidden to move public opinion in the direction of the abolition of obligatory military service, so that this may bring pressure to bear on the government and the government in turn on others in the international field. Thus it is not only lawful but obligatory to combat, on the basis of Catholic moral principles, the idea of militarism (v.) as a caste and authority unto itself, as though constituting an autonomous force within the State to the detriment of the common good, of the other classes and of individuals (cf. the encyclicals of Benedict XV, Pacem, Dei munus pulcherrimum, May 23, 1920 [AAS, 12, 1920, pp. 209-18] and of Pius XI, Nova impendet, Oct. 2, 1931 [ibid., 23, 1931, pp. 393-97]).
Since, however, grave collective necessity justifies military service, at least in practice and for the present, so-called conscientious objection (v.) against it is illicit (according to the prevailing opinion of Catholic moralists). Military service is at present a personal tribute that the citizen owes to the State by legal justice (the opinion that these are penal laws is difficult to maintain) and by obedience to the law of the State, which demands of able subjects a training, so as to be ready on occasion for the defense of the public and social good. It can also in particular cases become unjust insofar as it is either directed to an unjust war, or is excessive in its manner, or violates natural, positive and ecclesiastical laws (in Catholic countries), as, for example, by demanding service from a person indispensable for the support of the family, by not sufficiently providing for the practices of religion and for good morals, by obliging invalids and those exempt by ecclesiastical law to military service (cf. can. 121 and the Lateran Concordat, art. 3).
This premised: 1) it is not lawful for a citizen legally obligated to withdraw from military service. In doing so: a) in the case of voluntary enlistment, or of voluntary substitution of a person under obligation of military service, commutative justice is violated (for a contract lies at its basis) and one is bound to restitution (v.). Indeed, by deserting under such conditions, the guilty are bound to return to service: they can be excused from returning only in consideration of the very grave penalties inflicted on deserters. Whoever by contract substituted for another, by deserting, must compensate the damage suffered by the one he substituted for. b) In the case of obligatory conscription, desertion, being only a violation of legal justice, does not entail an obligation of restitution. In time (or in the imminence) of war desertion is of itself a grave sin against legal justice, and often it is also against charity toward oneself and against piety, insofar as one exposes oneself with greater certainty to death (imposed as a penalty) and causes grave troubles to one's family members, who may even be deprived of military allowances, perhaps indispensable for their support. Deserters, however, must not be compelled by obligation of conscience to return, given the grave penalties that ordinarily they incur. In times of peace desertion is not too readily to be imputed as a grave sin, since no grave harm comes to society, under ordinary circumstances, from individual desertions. Grave harm could easily arise if desertions were carried out en masse, for ideological motives contrary to right social order. 2) Those who are illegally forced into military service (sons necessary for the family's support, clerics, etc.), by withdrawing from it, do not sin, if the means employed are lawful; if the means are unlawful, they sin because of the unlawfulness of the means, but not against justice; if they desert, after having taken an oath of fidelity, they sin only against the violated oath. 3) Those who corrupt doctors or public officials, in order to be exempted from military service, are not bound to restitution. According to the more common opinion, doctors and officials assigned to control examinations are bound to carry out their office faithfully by commutative justice; therefore in the case of an unjust exemption granted they are bound to restitution, which in practice, however, cannot be imposed, given the probability of the opposite opinion of an obligation only of legal justice.
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Pietro Palazzini