Jack Crawford’s letter, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” in the May 13 edition, makes several assumptions while presenting them as settled moral truth.
As a Roman Catholic, I also take seriously Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But Catholic teaching has never treated that passage as a command for absolute pacifism. The Magisterium of the Church has long recognized that while peace is always the goal, governments also have a grave duty to protect innocent life and resist evil when necessary.
Mr. Crawford appears to assume that because he opposes certain military actions, those actions must therefore be contrary to God’s will, and that public officials who speak of faith in that context are violating the Third Commandment. That is a serious accusation. It also presumes a certainty about God’s will in complex matters of war, peace and national defense that none of us should claim too casually.
There is a real difference between using God’s name to excuse wrongdoing and believing, sincerely and imperfectly, that difficult decisions may be morally justified. Faithful Christians can disagree about policy without reducing one another to caricatures or accusing one another of blasphemy.
Mr. Crawford also draws a false contrast between the Roman Catholic Church and what he calls a “MAGA-infused evangelical Christian church.” That may be an effective political label, but it is not a fair description of millions of sincere Christians.
Peacemaking is a noble calling. But peace is not preserved by slogans alone. Sometimes it is protected by people willing to carry difficult burdens in defense of others.
Arthur Tom
Valencia
