By Father Drew Christiansen, S.J.

The "just war" tradition is fast becoming a contested field of ideas in Catholic circles. The growing division of the Catholic community on issues of war and peace was on clear display recently at the annual "Social Ministries" meeting in the nation's capital. There, an audience of diocesan social action workers vigorously challenged the pro-just-war sentiments voiced by a range of speakers.

At one extreme of this debate are peace activists like members of Pax Christi USA who reject the very usefulness of the traditional just-war theory. They can conceive of virtually no circumstances that would justify the use of military force. As Sister Kathy Thornton, president of the Catholic social-justice lobby Network, said at a recent anti-war rally, "To (our) legislators we're saying the most patriotic thing you do is to say 'no' to war."

At the other extreme are "the enablers," especially politically conservative Catholic intellectuals. They are a permissive just-war school that would legitimate most uses of force contemplated by the United States government. For them, the primary function of "just war" is to enable government to employ force in the pursuit of justice. They are skeptical, if not scornful, of applying just-war norms to limit the savagery of war.

In this debate, the middle may turn out to be the cutting edge. It is there we find people wrestling with the complexities of Church teaching, rather than simply overthrowing the tradition or using theology to bless war as an instrument of policy.

For example, other conservatives like John Finnis and Germain Grisez are aiming to fashion a coherent, pro-life moral theology. In doing so, they have developed a more restrictive understanding of what constitutes a just war.

Another broad party in the middle consists of those who take a similarly stringent view of just-war principles. This group speaks of a "presumption" against the use of force and seeks to limit the scale of war by applying just-war criteria restrictively.

Here one finds the U.S. Catholic bishops, who in their statement, "Living with Faith and Hope After September 11," endorsed using non-violent alternatives before resorting to war. Behind the scenes, there are people like University of Notre Dame peace-studies professor George Lopez and the staff of the U.S. bishops' Office of International Justice and Peace, directed by Gerard Powers. Above all, you have Pope John Paul II challenging the culture of death in war making as in abortion.

John Paul stands at the heart of this debate. His sweeping teaching on war and peace might be summarized: "If you want peace, seek justice (nonviolently) -- and forgiveness." That was the thrust of the Pope's message for the World Day of Peace, observed January 1.

Last month, while welcoming the new Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, the Holy Father counseled, "The pillars of peace in your land, as everywhere else, are justice and forgiveness: the justice that seeks to ensure full respect for rights and responsibilities, and equitable distribution of benefits and burdens, and the forgiveness which heals and rebuilds troubled human relations from their foundations."

To some proponents of the just-war tradition, the Pope's insistence on forgiveness in the midst of "the war on terrorism" sounds worryingly softheaded. The Holy Father -- as critics see it -- has been muddling the teaching with his cautious warnings about the consequences of violence and pleas for forgiveness.

These hard-line just warriors feared that the Second Vatican Council's call to look at war "with a whole new attitude" was a fuzzy notion to begin with. They criticize the U.S. bishops for their articulation of a presumption against the use of force as a premise of just-war theory.

On the other hand, many of these same just warriors were reluctant to accept the Holy See's pleas for "humanitarian intervention" or peacekeeping operations in places like Haiti and Bosnia in the 1990s, believing U.S. troops should be reserved for war fighting alone. And, they chafe at any hint that the just war theory is intended to limit military options and not just permit the use of force in "a just cause." Catholics among them keep a stiff upper lip whenever the Pope speaks of the dangers of war.

Most of all they worry that official Catholic thinking is slipping into closet pacifism. In his book, "Morality in Contemporary Warfare" (Yale, 1999), James Turner Johnson contends that modern Catholic teaching -- going as far back as Vatican Council I in 1869 -- has inclined toward pacifism out of revulsion for the lethality of modern war. The late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder came to the same view from a pacifist direction, in his book, "When War Is Unjust" (Orbis, 1996).

What is clear is that the teaching has evolved markedly since Vatican II in the 1960s and especially under the leadership of Pope John Paul II.

During and after the Persian Gulf War, the Holy Father repeatedly voiced his skepticism of war as a tool of international policy. In his 1991 encyclical letter Centesimus annus, the Holy Father referred to that conflict in declaring: "No, never again war, which destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war."

What does Pope John Paul II's teaching have to say to the contending parties, and the rest of us? Though scarcely noted at the time, Centesimus celebrated non-violent resistance as the cause of Communism's collapse in Europe. It also contained the seeds of his essential teaching on non-violence, war and peace. Above all, it argued for the effectiveness of non-violence in confronting injustice in the world.

First, the Holy Father teaches that violence always brings a train of woe in its wake. For that reason, we should be skeptical when people say the use of force can resolve conflicts in any real and lasting way. Second, a lesson he drew from the overthrow of communism is that we must "learn to fight for justice without violence" in both domestic and international conflicts. Third, he believes the community of nations should undertake "a concerted worldwide campaign for development" as an alternative to war and a condition for peace.

Although a persistent voice on behalf of nonviolent solutions, the Holy Father also called for "humanitarian intervention" or peacekeeping in trouble spots like Bosnia, Central Africa, and East Timor, even if that meant using force to "disarm the aggressor." His advocacy of humanitarian intervention as much as his praise for nonviolence is contributing to a rethinking of Catholic thought on the use of force in world affairs.

Similarly, the Holy Father's World Day of Peace message allowed for a nation's right of defense against (global) terrorism. However, while this too should inform Catholic just-war thinking, the right of defense is not the heart of his message. It must be read in the broader context of his teaching on international affairs.

An updated and complete Catholic theology of war and peace, following John Paul II, must grapple with an array of components. These include the culture of death, the effects of violence, the usefulness of non-violence as well as just war, the need for justice through development, and the place of forgiveness in peacemaking.

By that standard, the stale U.S. debates between pacifists and just warriors, and between less and more stringent just-war types, have very far to go.

As a first step, it is natural for Catholics to take a fresh look at the just-war theory in light of September 11 and the war against terrorism. Catholic teaching, though, ought not evolve solely in response to circumstances. It must move ahead in view of the Church's theology of war and peace as well as its reading of the signs of the times. Pope John Paul has set the stage for a reformulation of Catholic thinking about war, peace and non-violence. Will the squabbling factions in the U.S. debate engage him?