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Pirates or Superpowers Reading Augustine in a Hall of Mirrors
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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Recent just-war discussion over the Gulf Crisis has focused attention once again on what are, by now, the familiar mysteries of that particular rosary: just cause, last resort, proportionality, legitimate authority, right intention. Bishops and theologians who cite the theory in order to justify military actions consistently fail to recognise that the cultural vantage points from which they conduct their calculus cannot be guaranteed free of distortions which render their solemn judgments as erroneous on a moral plane as calculations of the position of the stars taken from within the earth’s atmosphere are on a physical plane. In both cases observations vital for a correct analysis are ‘refracted’ through a medium which distorts the information without telling prima fade that it is doing so. The assumption that the just-war theory can always be adjusted to accommodate ‘advances’ such as in the technology of modem weapons systems or the status of the U.N. fails to take any notice of the complexities of modem communications and their impact on the set of perceptions and judgments crudal to the conditions of classical just-war theory.
There are numerous problems involved in trying to describe this dilemma: ‘mass media’ are by no means a trifling difficulty for just-war thinking, nor do they lend themselves to simple, hasty analysis. But even if only the contour of some of the issues can be described it may still become clear that what is required now is the application of a more critical hermeneutic to just-war theory.
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- Copyright © 1991 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 John Paul Szura, OSA. ‘Vatican II Foundations of the U.S. Peace Pastoral: Source of Strength, Source of Weakness,’ Biblical and Thelogical Reflections on The Challenge of Peace, ed. John T. Pawlikowski, OSM. and Donald Senior, CP (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier) 1984, p. 123–134.
2 Szura 125.
3 Szura 126.
4 Mention should be made of Wesley Carr’s book Ministry and the Media (London: SPCK) 1990, with its helpful bibliography.
5 David, Paletz and Robert, Entman, Media, Power, Politics (New York: Free Press) 1981. p. 3Google Scholar.
6 See Paletz /Entman 22.
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12 I am borrowing this term from Samuel Ijsseling, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Coflict. An Historical Survey, trans. Paul Dunphy (The Hagw: Martinus Nijhoff) 1976, p. 2.
13 Paletz/Entman 24. The authors offer a number of detailed explanations and mpls similar to thosc which I have briefly mentioned. This section of the book merits close attention.
14 Loch K. Johnson’s recent book. America’s Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford U.P.) 1990, provides an entire chapter on this issue p. 182–203: ‘The CIA and the Media’). Johnson is more valuable, however, as a source for information and references rather than as a critic. Important revelations of CIA involvement in the media were first disclosed by Stuart H. Loory, ‘The CIA’S use of the press: a “mighty Wurlitzer”,’ Columbia Journalism Review 13:3 (September –October 1974) 9–18. See also Daniel Schon, ‘The FBI and me.’ Columbia Journalism Review 13:4 (November–December 1974) 8–14; Paletz/Entman 217–218; and ‘The CIA’S 3 Decade Effort to Mold the World’s Views,’ New York times. 25 December 1977, p. 12.
15 Carl Benstein, ‘How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the (Sen. Frank) Church Committee Covered It Up,’ Rolling Stone (20 October 1977), p. 58, cited in Patelz/Entman 217. See also ‘The CIA Established Many Links to Journalists in U.S. and Abroad,’ New York Times, 27 December 1977 , p. 1, 40; Bob, Woodward, Veil: The CIA Secret Wars, 1981–87 (New York: Simon and Schuster) 1987Google Scholar.
16 Johnson 197,308–309 n. 92. See also Loory 12–13. An extraordinary report written in the course of a U.S. congressional investigation into the effects of CIA propaganda upon U.S. and foreign media reports is provided in the ‘Aspin Hearings,’ taking its name from Rep. Les Aspin, the subcommitte chairperson: U.S. Congress, House, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Subcommittee on Oversight, ‘The CIA and the Media,’ Hearings (Washington: Government Printing Office) 1979, especially p. 90–91 on ‘blow back’.
17 See William Scobie. ‘Secret army’s war on the Left,’ Observer, 18 November 1990, p. II; Giovanni Maria Bellu, ‘Era un esercito anticòdmunista,’La Repubblica, 16 November 1990, p.2–3.
18 This theme has been skilfully treated by Claude Lepelley, ‘Spes saecvli: Le milieu social d’Augustin et ses ambitions Séculières avant sa conversion.’ Atti del congresso internazionale su s. Agostino nel XVI centenario della conversione, Roma 1987, 1:99–117. A general treatment of the panegyric is provided by Sabine Mac Cormack, ‘Latin prose Panegyrics: tradition and discontinuity in the later roman Empire,’ Revue des Éludes augustiniennes 22/1–2 (1976) 29–77. More specific studies of the political propaganda and enemy dehumanisation techniques employed in the panegyrics are provided by Marina Franzi. ‘La propaganda costantiniana e le teorie de legittimazione del potere nei Panegyrici Latini,’ Atti delle Scienze di Torino, Classe di Scienze morali. storiche e filologiche 115 (1981) 25–37; and Domenico Lassandro, La demonimzione de nemico politico nei Panegyrici Latini,’ Contributi dell’istituto di storia antica dell’ Università del Sacro Cuore 7 (1981) 237–249.
19 Conf. 1, 13, 22: legimenturn erroris.
20 See conf. 3,. 3,. 6: hoc laudabilior quo fraudulentior.
21 See conf. 1, 18, 29; 4, 2, 2.
22 Rowan Williams. ‘Politics and the Soul: a Reading of the City of God, ’Milltown Studies 19/20 (1987) 55–72.
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25 See ciu. 4. 32; 5. 13.
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27 Ciu. 4, 32.