Why the Catholic Church is Not Pacifist | Prof. Joseph Capizzi

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2020

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Professor Joseph Capizzi discusses why the Catholic Church is not pacifist, exploring the historical and theological contexts that justify the use of force in certain situations, particularly in defense of vulnerable people.

This lecture was given at Duke University on February 13, 2020.

For more events and info please visit thomisticinstitute.org/events-1.

Prof. Joseph E. Capizzi is Ordinary Professor of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of America. He teaches in the areas of social and political theology, with special interests in issues in peace and war, citizenship, political authority, and Augustinian theology. He has written, lectured, and published widely on just war theory, bioethics, the history of moral theology, and political liberalism. Dr. Capizzi is also the Executive Director of the Institute for Human Ecology at Catholic University. He received his B.A. from the University of Virginia, his Masters in Theological Studies from Emory University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. He lives in Maryland with his wife and six children.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Why the Christian Church is not pacifist.
0:03.0	This is not like a canned talk that I do.
0:06.0	This is one that was prompted more or less by the occasion
0:09.0	to come and speak with you guys here.
0:12.0	The title merits some explanation.
0:16.0	Very interesting for me to be here at Duke University talking about why Christianity is not a pacifist,
0:23.6	you know, generally speaking, church or a group of churches.
0:28.6	Because as all of you know, right, this is the place where Stanley Howard was taught for, you know, over a quarter of a century,
0:34.6	that Christian churches ought to be pacifist or they're apostatizing.
0:39.3	I at Notre Dame, studying under Stanley's mentor, John Howard Yoder, and I were in close dialogue
0:48.3	over these kinds of questions. I come out of, of course, the Catholic faith.
0:53.3	So, right, this is a serious question for us as well.
0:57.0	But the question itself was prompted by an essay that
1:00.0	Howerwas and Yoder are themselves responding to.
1:04.0	In 1940, Reinhold Niebuhr writes this essay by the same title,
1:10.0	why the Christian Church is not pacifist,
1:12.6	responding to certain trends at the time in the 1940s
1:16.9	during the war, concerned about the Christian posture
1:21.4	towards killing in war.
1:24.5	You may know that, or some of you will know, I hope everybody knows who Reinhold Niebuhr was,
1:30.4	and maybe I shouldn't have assumed that. Ryanhold Niebuhr was a very prominent Protestant
1:35.0	or evangelish, essentially a Protestant minister who came out of Detroit where he had spent
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.